That music is evil... Story idea that needs some refinement

[ryanroyce]

I think we're getting somewhere now... I think I'm going to make it a local band, as suggested.  This makes it mire plausible that they'd be doing multiple shows, so a pattern can more easily start to emerge.  I think I'm going to have the whole band have Cassandra's Tears, and they all trigger at random, which is why it's never the same song it works on twice.  I think they won't even know they have it, but all the effects they cause are amassing power for the big nasty of my campaign (whatever I decide that to be... It's early, I can be vague).  Their songs will be almost entirely covers, which also lends to the random effects.  As for the songs themselves and their effects, I'm working on a list.  So far I've got...

Filter- Hey Man Nice Shot - increased suicides, gun murders
Offspring - Come Out and Play - increased youth crime
Nickelback - Never Again - increased domestic violence
Green Day - Having a Blast - suicide bombers
Metallica - One - soldiers returning from Iraq have lost their arms, legs, sight, hearing... This one is REALLY dark...

I need some more.  Anyone got any for me?

You may be able to draw on this old medieval myth about the tritone, too.  Maybe all those monks weren't wrong?  Perhaps when the interval is played by someone with the "right" supernatural heritage, it really IS evil?  Bwahahaha!

http://www.religionnewsblog.com/14485/the-devils-music

Just Google "the devil's interval" or the "devil's chord" and you'll find more info on it.

[Professor]

Try Hierophant...as in Shooter Jennings & Hierophant.  It's a concept album, with Stephen King as a DJ who's about to get hauled away by the "authorities" as freedom of the airwaves ends.

[Surfmonkey01]

I just came up with the band's name... The Raconteurs of Gibraltar.

Has a ring to it, dontcha think?

[Arcteryx]

Based on the kinds of music I normally listen to, I'm having a hard time with the "good"... Give me a few

Also, as noted above, it leans towards the bad because the source of the power is less than benign, and is amassing dark energy for something not good

Well, lets say the acts that we interpret as "evil", the power pragmatically sees as "necessary" - slaughtering that tribe chops off their worship of a small pantheon that includes good gods and bad, but its more interested in stopping the worship of the bad from flourishing (I say good and bad in relative and subjective sense) because its only its way to turning into something worse.

Maybe it wants to destroy a city because its simply the easiest way to disrupt a key ley junction that, in concert with a few other points on the planet, create a foci that's calling to an outer Horror. What's a city of a few million to the survival of the rest of the few billion?

Even if its horrorific, maybe its the lesser horror in a big picture. How awful is it if the players have a chance to stop something... and then force themselves not to, because it really IS necessary for something worse not to happen? And even better yet... not just stand by and not do anything about it, but now fight others and former allies who can't see it that way?

It really depends on what your group is like.

Butt-kickers, tacticians and straight-ahead A-To-B'ers will roll their eyes and be frustrated until you can point them at something to blows-them-up. Your storytellers & method actors will be squirming with orgasmic glee and desperately seeking fresh underwear for the moral dilemna's.

Its one of those things that reinforces that the older and long-lived powers simply see things on a different scale and quite possibly have had centuries to rationalize, justify and think is necessary.

Anyways, cool name for the band

[Arcteryx]

Man... this would also be an unbelievably awesome way to call in any emissaries of power or sponsors, whose power sources may or may not be directly involved in supporting this, or actually be responsible for it, and say this is why you have your power, because they want you to help them out. And you trust them, don't you? Because they've never let you down in the past?

Or changelings who are maintaining relationships with their fae parents...?

Ah, fun times.

[Surfmonkey01]

See, now you're making me rethink leading the campaign off with this... It almost feels too "big" for Book One.  I dunno.  I need to dwell on this some...

Then again, they can resolve then situation with the bad, but that doesn't mean there won't be others later... Hmm... Maybe it is a good Book One after all, they can have a victory but still leave it open for more to come later....

Anyways, more details I've come up with about the band itself... Their symbol incorporates the Third Eye... They meant it as a tribute to Tool, but of course it means more than that.  The Tool song "Anema" is the trigger for their collective powers... It's a very apocalyptic song, and anything they play after it is supercharged by it, thus making it come to pass.  Since the band varies their setlist, it's always something different...

Damn, this is fun.

[Arcteryx]

You can totally think of leading the campaign off with this, because you don't launch right into the apocalyptic holyshit the mutherfrogging worldisgonnablowsup end-scene - its going to be a bunch of small things that gradually form that picture when you piece it along with everything else. It would be an entire Buffy season, and each one of the things that come together would be the episodes... over-arching baddie and an epic storyline that leads up to the big reveal...

Cue thunderous climatic music with power guitar!

[Surfmonkey01]

I think the ideas are settling now... Since this is our first game, I want to leave things open for interpretation and adjustment on the fly.  I'm going to have the detective NPC (somewhat in the supernatural know, aspect of "Cop of tomorrow - today!") first bring a case (probably the mass suicides) to the groups attention, then we can go from there.
For the bands aspect, I'm thinking "third eye not-so blind"

Damn, I'm so pumped for this game.

[hank the ancient]

you could just identify them as a really talented local cover band. They don't write their own songs but play others really well. Once people get a little bluesy with their requests, all hell breaks loose

[Attercap]

you could just identify them as a really talented local cover band. They don't write their own songs but play others really well. Once people get a little bluesy with their requests, all hell breaks loose

Or, with even more potential for a wider range of music: a live karaoke band. Which means that people are, in some ways, requesting the doom that befalls them.

[Arcteryx]

Or, with even more potential for a wider range of music: a live karaoke band. Which means that people are, in some ways, requesting the doom that befalls them.

Heck, I'd have all of the above as a problem that's not localized to just one band or musician, but to a pattern of incidences across a city or a region, caused by the same underlying Power That Be...

[MorningDarkness]

I am really enjoying all of the different ideas from people.  I have to say that I just love games with sound tracks.  What about if you had it happening with different bands? Lets say there is a Cult that worships dark power X.  Each member of the cult is a stage hand or a sound director.  As the band is playing, there is a subsonic (or something) recorded ritual that takes about the same amount of time to finish as it does to play 7 songs.  Whenever the end of the ritual happens, it triggers the energies and concepts of the song currently being played.  The sound director would know the playlist and could plan out which song he/she wanted to be triggered.  They could also make subtle suggestions which order the songs should be played in.  The energy of the audiance would feed the generation of the ritual.  This could be happening for any number of local bands (if you make it local, then you don't have to worry about a touring band).  You could also have some mishaps where the crowd begs for a song in the middle of the play list, which would mess things up a bit for cult X (not everything goes right for the bad guys all the time, no matter how well they plan).  This way, it might make it a little harded to track down, but it might also have the problem of being more convoluted. 

Songs: 
Lights Out- Breaking Benjamin      Red Court vamps take a night rampage out on the town  (PCs might have heard that the vamps were planning something like this but they didn't know when it was going to happen)
Drive- Incubus  No reports of any DUIs and a mass drop in unemployment (oops ^_^)
Possibly something from Pearl Jam?
Perhaps something from Disturbed?

[Surfmonkey01]

Damn, MorningDarkness, that's awesome.  I may need to make a few last minute adjustments before my game tomorrow...

[MorningDarkness]

And with multiple cover bands, you can include a female fronted rock/metal band that covers things like Evanescence, Within Temptation, Lacuna Coil, Fly Leaf.  Maybe even some Nightwish or HeavensDust.  Have fun!

Evanescence- Going Under (there is an unexpected flood from a water main that freakishly kills an entire city block)
Evanescence- Imaginary (a prediction of some kind of sleep monster that draws people into a coma and feeds off of their nightmares)
Within Temptation- Gatekeeper (perhaps the prediction of a number/one demon who crosses over into our world, go on a killing spree and then possess a human man)
Within Temptation- The Howling (a prediction that a loup garou comes to town)  **I actually had a whole game that was inspired by listening to this song**
Fly Leaf- I'm So Sick (a disease hits the most populated part of the city:  symptoms include vomiting (emptyness), loss of voice, drowsiness, high pitched ringing of the ears that causes itching and secondary infections, shaking/muscle spasms, and eventually death)  I know, I am horrible :p


Maybe Lacuna Coil-Our Truth but I don't have a good suggestion of what to do with it. 

[Richard_Chilton]

You could also go for songs that are full of meaning... Leonard Cohen's Last Year's Man comes to mind, as does Chris de Burgh's Crusader.  You might even signal the end of the band when someone sing The Day the Music Died.

Richard