Observations of the Fox

30. Share something cool you made if you can at all justify it as RPG related. Last One. With the Shonen Knife concert this week, and the production of an image to possibly get signed by one of my favourite bands, things have been thrown out of their regular schedule. This has been made even worse by other complications around the house, and generally not feeling well. As a result, this post is two days late. One of the curious things I saw as I was doing research for this picture was the fact that on the Band's bio page, two of the members indicate that they enjoy playing games. No specification as to whether they lay board games, card games or RPGs...but the fact that they indicated game play on their biographical details was awesome in itself. Still, I probably can't really justify this as an RPG related share. Instead, I'll have to share the Vulpinoid Studios online store. I've got heaps of things for sale there, and some of it even sells occasionally...

One of those "if I had enough money..." fantasies which keeps recurring to me is the idea of a live soundtrack for an RPG. This would have a reflexive interaction with the game as it unfolds, as the adrenaline pumps, the tempo of the music increases... as the character head to an industrial sector of the city, industrial music takes a stronger element in the mix... if they head to the more elite parts of the city, we get more jazz and classical overtones... in the ghettoes we get the various musics of the people who form that community. The whole thing becomes the ultimate mash-up, continually setting the tone, continually evolving... certain NPCs and villains might even have their own motifs that are inserted strategically into the jam when their influence is felt. Morw than the turn of phrase used in games Powered by the Apocalypse , the person running the game truly becomes the MC... rapper, revolutionary, voice of the people.  I'm revisiting this idea becau...

Looking through my old posts, I see a few ideas that really need re-addressing. One of those is the "Unexploited Resource" series. So to resume the concept, here's an idea I've been thinking about for a while. Music in games. I remember a few years ago, actually it was the mid to late 1990s. It was the traditional "end of convention" trip to the pub...a common occurrence that still happens at Australian RPG conventions. A friend of mine was sharing an idea over a drink. He had recently placed a computer game in a regular CD player on a whim,and he found that the background tracks and theme music for the game were readable as music files on the CD player. This game him a few key music loops that might have proven useful as introductory fanfares for specific NPCs, but more interestingly, the game included a heartbeat. In the computer game, the heartbeat soundtrack sped up as the character became nervous, excited or stressed, and it slowed down when the charact...