[DRYH] Musical Influences

[hida_jiremi]

So, I'm running a Don't Rest Your Head game on Monday nights (alternating with a Changeling: The Lost game) and I'm one of those GMs that lives in his own peculiar headspace filled with music. That is, I use music heavily during my games, I tend to think of various characters as having their own particular leitmotifs, and I listen to thematically appropriate music when I'm working on adventures or ideas.

With that in mind, I've been thinking about what music works for DRYH. Not just what soundtracks are cool and appropriate, but what songs show up on the Mad City's radio stations? What music do other DRYH players and GMs associate with the game?

To lead off, here are my soundtrack picks:
Dark City
Ravenous
Pan's Labyrinth
Rule of Rose
Silent Hill anything
Revolutionary Girl Utena

And some song choices:
12 Stones, "Home", "Let Go", and "Running Out of Pain" spring to mind
Gary Jules, "Mad World" (duh)
Chevelle, just about anything really, but particularly "Antisaint", "Humanoid", and "Panic Prone"
AFI, "The Leaving Song" and "Miss Murder"
Anita Kelsey, "Sway" and "Night Has a Thousand Eyes" (technically from the Dark City soundtrack, but meh)
Bush, "Greedy Fly" and "Mouth (American Werewolf in Paris mix)"
Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Follow You Into the Dark"
Depeche Mode, again, way too many
Jem, "24" and "They"

All right, folks, tell me: What's playing on the radio in your Mad City? Or in your characters' heads?


Jeremy Puckett

[hida_jiremi]

As a secondary consideration, what sort of music-inspired Madness Talents have people come up with? "Rhythm Nation" was pretty cool, but what else is out there?

Mine is Sad Songs (Say So Much): By singing a sad tune, you can create an aura of depression and melancholy that can cause those around you to share their intimate and personal secrets, or to make them just break down from sorrow.

(1-2 Dice) This melancholy melody can cause someone to spill their guts about something they would talk about while drunk or sharing their feelings with a loved one. The sadness in your voice can cause even the deadliest warriors to pause a moment and reflect on the existential emptiness of the universe.
(3-4 Dice) Your sorrow-filled song makes people confess deeply-held truths they would rather not discuss with even their closest kin. Hardened killers break down in tears when you belt out a ballad.
(5-6 Dice) In their last, weeping moments, the targets of this power recall tragedies they had forgotten or suppressed, and would be quite willing to confess to things they haven't done just to make the sadness go away. People who have the full force of your song turned upon them tend to commit suicide rather than face another moment in this bleak world.

As time goes by, you have a harder time seeing the good in anything, filling your every moment with somber dirges and painful elegies. When you fall to the nightmare you have become a Wailing Jenny, one of the mythical banshees whose song foretells sorrow and death.


Jeremy Puckett