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Specialized songs
Specialized songs
#1
I posted this about a month ago in the hostedscripts forum. Bob never replied to it, despite my nagging him about it at AXNY, so I figured I'd try again over here. :-)
I just read all of DW II yesterday and today -- I like it very much! (Found out about it from the Eyrie forum; Gryphon's pause in SoS has lead to some exploring outward...)
If I understood the mechanics of Doug's songpower correctly, the first time he hears the song he can tell whether it's going to trigger his powers, but he can't tell what particular power it's going to be. The second and subsequent times, the power activates.
However, it seems like there are likely to be a number of songs that trigger powers that are only useful in specialized circumstances. So does it sometimes happen that a song doesn't seem to do anything the second time it's played, but still is obviously triggering? How does Doug handle this?
I thought of this because it seems like there are a number of songs that could potentially help him (at least on a localized level, to his area of effect) with his goal of freeing Boomers. There are certainly tons of songs about "Freedom" or casting off slavery -- lots of Sixties stuff, traditional Black spirituals, Rush's "Free Will", etc. Many of these could also likely be useful in Doug's homeworld, as anti-mind control and whatnot. But in the absense of any such condition within Doug's area of effect, it's not clear if the songs would do anything.
Another song along the same lines -- "I Get a Kick Out Of You". Would likely cancel out the effects of intoxicants and other such substances ("I get no kick from champagne/cocaine") with, perhaps, a romantic side-effect.
Another interesting area is non-combat intellectual songs -- skills-boosters, effectively. I was thinking of this when I was going over filk music for songs that could generate powers. I don't know if you're familiar with the Oregon duet Echo's Children (www.echoschildren.org), but two of their songs, "Acts of Creation" and "The Word of God", seem like they'd have the interesting effect of boosting creative or scientific work, respectively -- though they may well be invoking a Power to do it, which I imagine Doug would be exceedingly unconfortable about.
It's out-of-period for Doug, but similarly Andy Eigel's Uplift (www.smacdonald.com/pegasus/songs/uplift.html) seems like a booster of technology/engineering skills, which could have interesting effects.
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Re: Specialized songs
#2
> I posted this about a month ago in the hostedscripts forum.
> Bob never replied to it, despite my nagging him about it at
> AXNY, so I figured I'd try again over here. :-)
Mm. To quote Ed's character "Legion", in Time and Again:
Quote:
"I'm sorry! I'm so SORRY! It was all a mistake! I wasn't looking! Mackie joggled my elbow! Minerva did it all! I wasn't there! The Moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars! It was the Age of Aquarius! I was doing my taxes! The cops were pounding on my door!" He broke into a full Soun Tendou wail. "IT WASN'T MY FAULT!!!"
My apologies, Jonathan -- I really did mean to get to it, but...
> If I understood the mechanics of Doug's songpower
> correctly, the first time he hears the song he can tell whether
> it's going to trigger his powers, but he can't tell what
> particular power it's going to be. The second and subsequent
> times, the power activates.
Precisely. (It works a little bit differently in the V&V campaign. There the power takes effect on first listening, but when starting to write, I realized that failed the reality check -- after all, how could he know what the song's general inclination was, if he'd had no exposure to the whole of the lyrics before?)
> However, it seems like there are likely to be a number of
> songs that trigger powers that are only useful in specialized
> circumstances.
That is indeed the case. One such song is seen at the end of chapter 11 -- "Under My Thumb" is a mind control effect, but because of the lyrics of the song, it only affects women...
> So does it sometimes happen that a song doesn't seem to
> do anything the second time it's played, but still is obviously
> triggering?
We see that, too, in the story -- there are at least two scenes where Doug tries a gate song, and feels his personal energies going to fuel the effect, but nothing happens because the conditions (ie, the starting universe for the gate) are wrong.
> How does Doug handle this?
He can tell when the song is supposed to have an effect -- it will still drain power from him. If nothing useful's happening, he'll just shut off the song.
> There are certainly tons of songs about "Freedom" or
> casting off slavery ... Many of these could also likely be
> useful in Doug's homeworld, as anti-mind control and
> whatnot. But in the absense of any such condition within
> Doug's area of effect, it's not clear if the songs would do anything.
Okay, here's a sloppy analogy. Doug's metagift is like a spigot for a garden hose. One of these songs would be like that hose, with the target being a sprinkler that could be attached on the other end. Without the sprinkler, the water still flows -- it just doesn't do anything constructive.
> Another song along the same lines -- "I Get a Kick Out Of
> You". Would likely cancel out the effects of intoxicants and
> other such substances ("I get no kick from champagne/cocaine")
> with, perhaps, a romantic side-effect.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Similar to that, Doug's got a song in his in-game repertoire -- "Good Morning" by the Beatles -- that gives everyone in his radius of effect a "wake up roll" (a game mechanic which should be obvious in context) every combat round. If no one's unconscious when he plays it, it's just a waste of power.
On the topic of side effects, I've told the story elsewhere of the time that I used in-game an old girl-group song, "I Will Follow Him", whose chorus ran something like
"I love him, I love him, I love him,
And where he goes I'll follow, I'll follow, I'll follow."
I wanted to use it to track a villain; the GM ruled that Doug became quite... um... enamoured of the unpleasant gentleman while the song was running. Ack. And then there's Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive", which makes him tough enough to bask in the solar core, but at the same time turns him into an absolute bastard to be with.
> Another interesting area is non-combat intellectual songs --
> skills-boosters, effectively.
The girl-group song I cited above was basically that kind of thing; I don't have his game song sheet handy, but I think there are a couple others there.
> though they may well be invoking a Power to do it, which I
> imagine Doug would be exceedingly unconfortable about.
Yes, at least until the end of DW5, and even then, depending on the Power in question.
> It's out-of-period for Doug, but similarly Andy Eigel's Uplift
> seems like a booster of technology/engineering skills, which
> could have interesting effects.
I'll have to go check it out. Thanks!

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Re: Specialized songs
#3
> My apologies, Jonathan -- I really did mean to get to it, but...
Eh, no worries. I figured you'd get to it eventually...I just thought I'd move it over to the new forum so we could start some discussion going over here.
> He can tell when the song is supposed to have an effect -- it will still drain
> power from him. If nothing useful's happening, he'll just shut off the song.
So does Doug have a file of "does something, but dunno what" songs, ready to be pulled out in moments of desperation?
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Re: Specialized songs
#4
> So does Doug have a file of "does something, but dunno
> what" songs, ready to be pulled out in moments of desperation?
No, but he probably should. That's something I never thought of.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Re: Specialized songs
#5
OOOOOhhhh.....
Just throw another log on the fire of "The Game Everyone loves to Play"!!
One other question... what year was it again that DW-Doug went walkabout from the warriors world? I'm confused, because Doug mentions being glad he didn't teach her any manson songs... And I thought manson became big after he left. Of course, that doens'nt include anything he may have picked up in other stops of the walk, does it? "I was an Otaku before those kids came along and changed the meaning of the word."
-- HM "Howling Mad" Wilson to more than one team-mate.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-

NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
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Re: Specialized songs
#6
> One other question... what year was it again that DW-Doug went walkabout from the warriors world?
1998.
> I'm confused, because Doug mentions being glad he didn't teach her any manson songs...
Yeah, that's probably an anachronism, unless I fudge it and say MM hit big earlier than he/they did in real time.
> Of course, that doens'nt include anything he may have picked up in other stops of the walk, does it?
That too. I've tried so far not to supplement his songs with anything post-1998 that wasn't native to the world he was in (for instance, "Konya wa Hurricane"), but to tell the god's honest truth, the first thing he would do in any future milieu is go to a record store and look for "new" stuff by trusted artists and any interesting unfamiliar stuff. (Actually, he has done this in Megatokyo -- when talking about Madonna in chapter 11, he mentions that he has at least checked a list of her albums to see what she's done post-98.)

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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