fly had been dining on just prior to making a swan- dive down my trachea front of hundreds of fans and a goddamn video camera. Things wentwrong . First I choke. Then I cough. Then I swallow that goddamn fly and feel the little bastard do a death- dance all the way down. All around me, I hear this loud “AHHHHHHHHH!!!” as people watch me gulp down the world’s biggest goddamn fly right on video. I pull back and start trying to spit the fucker out of my mouth. Then I throw up, right on Dervish’s combat boots. Brian starts laughing. Chipper goes off-beat. Dervish looks up at me with this smear of compassion, disgust and fury running across her face. We trainwreck the song, and fucking Argo tapes the whole goddamn spectacle. Dude. In the back of my head, I hear Rollins lecture me. “Nothing can go wrong,” he says. So I swipe my hand across the back of my mouth, shake my hair out, and roar like a furious god. That scream rolled up out of someplace primal, some inner pit of molten lava that remembered every insult, laugh or fumbled word I’d ever suffered through. Every night I’d coughed up lungs after singing my throat raw. Every hot-chick date that slid through my fingers after the wrong words jumped off my tongue and ran across the table screaming “LOSER!” Every ounce of sweat I’d baked off under bright stage lights. I roared for every person in that crowd, channeling THEIR pain, THEIR hate, THEIR defiance at a world determined to make them small. And I got them back. And I turned it around. And Dervish ripped a perfect matching chord out of that guitar, echoing the sound that explored from my throat. Chipper slammed a four-beat, four-limbed tag and Brian took it up, busting out a bass chord that sounded like a Tyrannosaurus farting out his last meal. All four of us cracked back into synch right where we’d left off. Bliss and Argo filmed it all. We were back, and the audience rolled with us. The set blurred by in a storm of flying bodies, sweat and screaming mouths. We got the requisite ovation, and we happily obliged. As we stumbled offstage in the afterglow, William slapped me on the back. “Good save, Raven,” he told me. “You pulled that back together like a pro.” Bliss handed me a beer to wash away the fly and raw- puke taste. As I raised it to my lips, Chipper knocked her plastic cup of beer against my own. She flashed that Samplemean grin of hers: “All hail,” she said, “the Frogfile Prince!” What a bitch. Oh, well. Some things, you swallow, and some things swallow you. I guess every legends needs a healthy sense of humor.

IMAGE CREDIT: SATYR CREDIT: IMAGE –2– IMAGE CREDIT: SANDI SWAN SANDI CREDIT: IMAGE

Sound and Vision up lovers, addictions, rivalries and other bad habits while searching for that lost chord. Often glamorous but It’s all about the sound. disreputable in the best of times, people who devote their It starts out faintly, then rises toward fulfillment. lives to music are sorcerers of the mortal world. A beat. A shriek. A melody. Music starts as a mother’s In Powerchords, you’re one of them. heartbeat, then swells to the first cry of the first breath So yeah – let’s rock. we take in and release. From there on, our world is filled with song – soft breeze, thunder, the rush of waves or the I Got the Music in Me rustle of leaves. The symphony of life stills entirely. Even as we die, the beat goes on. Powerchords presents a realm of music-based For us human beings, the art of music takes the adventures you can share with any roleplaying game natural songs of life and shapes them toward deliberate system. Based in a world that’s more or less our own, ends. Through voices, instruments, refined study and these adventures focus on the people, places and practices spontaneous jamming, we bend the vibrations of the of musical subcultures. More often than not, they’re filled world around us and make them our own. In the process, with magic, too – faerie patrons, devilish promoters, we make magic – sometimes deliberately, most often not. rock gods and cannibal groupies. You might spin spells Changing the world through artistry and will, we tap with a mystic riff, or face an audience literally from hell. into the essence of Creation. Whether you’re a rock star, folkie or MC, a roadie or promoter, a broke wannabe or wealthy legend – it’s up Supposedly, it all began with sound – an OM, a bang, to you. Will you schlep gear for a vampiric fiddler, jam a thunderbolt or chant of words from an unspeakable beside a real live Muse, or win back the soul you gave force. From there, the vibrations of those primal sounds away for fame? It’s your call, because it’s your adventure. echoed out as far as far can go. As mystics claim, they’re still vibrating even now, shaped and reshaped in eternal And no, you don’t have to play a bard. Sure, we’ll throw orchestrations. To play music, then, is to work with the the term “bard” around a lot in the next hundred pages Sampleor so, but generally that termfile refers here to a consciously essence of eternity. mystical musician, not a motley-wearing sleazeball with What more, really, could you ask for? minstrellian tendencies. A hell of a lot, as things turn out. Musicians, like You don’t have to play a musician, either. Your most artists, are cantankerous as hell. Restless dreamers character could be a bodyguard or businessman, a chasing the elusive sounds inside their heads, they pile devoted groupie or a deejay with a deep understanding of –3– least the ones that can afford to hire lawyers), I’ll be using the following terms when discussing game- related things: • Saga = your game as a whole; the story you tell with your group. • Guide or Storyguide = the game master. • Challenge (with a capital “C”) = the target number you need to beat in order to succeed at a given task. Deliria players might note that I use roll instead of draw in this book, to refer to a toss of dice or the draw of a card. Because most RPGs use dice to resolve tasks, I prefer to simply say “roll” and let the story do the talking. In general, I use the word you to refer to the reader, the player and character. I assume her mix. You might be a warrior with a soft spot for epic y’all know what I mean. ballads, or a tech-head with three terabytes of MP3s. A PUNK GROUP You don’t need charm spells, mandolins, or a penchant OUT OF THE Boosts and Penalties BAY AREA, THE for breaking into song – just a place in your character’s Certain rules and traits harm or improve a character’s CESSPOOL life where music dominates the stage. KITTENS’ ability to get things done. In this book, that happens one FIRST AND ONLY of two ways: ALBUM APPEARED Save Me (From Myself) IN STORES IN • Sometimes, a situation offers a bonus or penalty EARLY 1998; No matter what sort of character you play, that to the character’s roll (her dice pool, trait, Prowess HOWEVER, THE character faces a simple yet implacable challenge: Save CREDITS ON THE or what-have-you). This means that the character’s the music from itself. ALBUM BELONG TO personal ability to accomplish things gets better or A NON-EXISTANT Save the music? What’s there to save? Music is RECORDING worse – she’s faster, slower, clumsier or more graceful COMPANY AND NO everywhere, as close as your laptop or the nearest set of than usual. OTHER RECORD speakers. Anyone can make music these days. Stardom’s COMPANY HAS • Other times, the situation raises or lowers the as close as a TV show or video game. COME FORWARD Challenge Level (see above). This means that her TO TAKE CREDIT And that’s the problem. Because when something FOR THAT external circumstances get better or worse – her RELEASE. magical becomes commonplace, its magic goes away. surroundings are louder, her fans like her, her smoke Mystery becomes trivia, and glamour’s just another machine makes it harder to see what’s going on, and game. “Keeping it real” becomes a pose based more on so forth. appearances than talent. Rebellion’s a commodity for the If this distinction seems too complicated, or if it Establishment to sell. contradicts the rule system you choose to use, simply What, then, can an artist do to make music choose one option and ignore the other. As the Bard miraculous again? Has music’s Age of Heroes passed said, “the play’s the thing.” In most cases, simplicity is away, and is everyone in its shadow doomed to keep bliss. riffing on someone else’s tune? Or can you find the key – musical or otherwise – that opens the door to a fresh, exciting age? Will you become a sonic shaman or a disposable hero? In Powerchords, music matters. The trick, then, is to find out how to bring its power back. Word Up Powerchords is an open-system sourcebook. Although some rules have been included here, I didn’t want to limit this book to a single game system. Feel free to adopt the characters, tales and settings within this book to any RPG framework you prefer. Since Powerchords can also be used as a supplement for Deliria:Sample Faerie Tales for a New Millennium, the terms file and rules employed in this book come from that game’s Compact System. That said, you don’t have to use these terms, don’t need a copy of Deliria, and shouldn’t feel bound to know the Compact System in order to use this book. However, in order to avoid dealing with the legal departments of every gaming company on earth (or at (L), COMMONS CREATIVE , BAKER S.L. CREDITS: IMAGE AND ARCHIVE (R) SWAN DAMIANA SANDRA –4– The Set List Consider this book your saga-jukebox – an iPod of potential stories, characters, settings and gear. Take what you want and use it as you please. Here are some samples of what you can expect: Chapter 1: Bring Me to Life kicks off with suggestions for creating music-based characters. Chapter 2: Who Are You? provides a selection of potential character types – musicians and non-musicians alike. Chapter 3: More Human Than Human

offers guidelines for a variety of supernatural entities who might or might not be musicians themselves. Chapter 4: Diamonds and Rust

features an array of music-based Legacies and Wyrds – edges and flaws that make your character’s life more… interesting. Chapter 5: Delivering the Goods

provides rules for skills, drugs and performances, as well as a basic overview of musical instrument types. Chapter 6: I Put a Spell on You

reveals the magical potential of music. Chapter 7: Turn the Page

provides story hooks and settings, while… Chapter 8: Somebody to Love

opens the floor to bandmates, patrons, rivals and parasites your adventurers might meet. At the core of everything, however, is the music. That’s where the magic begins. Whether you’re managing a pack of scruffy rockers, busting out urban ballets, riding the lightning of big-time stardom or busking on the street for change, it’s the music that matters. The song is the spell. SampleEverything else file is just noise.

–5– YOU CAN DO ANYTHING. YOU CAN GO ANYWHERE. IMAGINATION IS KING. PATTI SMITH

Sample file

–6– CHAPTER 1: Bring Me To Life

t was the road to stardom, almost like playing Monopoly. You gotta start at Go, not in the middle of the game. I PAUL STANLEY, KISS: BEHIND THE MASK

MEGHAN SUSAN I knew I had a gift for this the day I climbed up that age as well) has wanted, deep down, to bathe in the GREEN BUSKS OUTSIDE OF in Dad’s lap and started banging on the keys. He was blazing lights of stardom, belting out That Song that SEATTLE’S FENIX playing something and I liked the sound and I was just makes the young girls cry. For better and worse, our last TATTOO STUDIO WHILE HER a little kid so what the hell did I know, right? He was 60 years echo with rock, hip-hop, country and the blues. “BUDDY” KEEF kinda annoyed and all like, Come on, Meghan, Daddy’s This music shapes our look, language, attitudes, and even KEEPS TO THE INKY working and all this but I reached up past him and just… history. What better word could there by for such effects SHADOWS. I don’t really know how to describe this but I could than magic? see the sounds floating over the keys when I looked at So yeah – welcome to the game. all those black and white strips of stuff and I thought something like Hey I can do this too, and so I did. In Powerchords, you assume the roles of characters dedicated to music. You might play out a saga based And it didn’t sound like noise. It sounded good, entirely around that music, or simply incorporate y’know, and Dad, he just looked down at me and he’s elements of Powerchords into a larger story where only like, Huh, and then he started stroking keys too and one or two characters are musicians. The key, either way, we started playing off each other, and – at least as I is to tap into the mystique of popular music – to bring remember it, it sounded really good. your rock ‘n’ roll fantasy to life. For a long time, everything else seemed to stop and Powerchords doesn’t have to focus on rock music. You fade away. I remember bits of dust suspended in the might be a Delta bluesman, a Celtic-folk enchantress, sunlight in the air over Dad’s piano. I looked up and an electric Paganini or a devil in a cowboy hat. Although his face was… I don’t know how to describe it, it looked popular music is the obvious venue for urban fantasy, complicated, like he was surprised and amazed and happy what matters is the spirit, not the form. Powerchords and maybe a little bit scared. We played for a long time adventures are epics, with larger-than-life heroes and and my Mom – this was back before she… she left… high-as-hell stakes. Music, any kind of music, is a she just walked in and stood there and looked at us both metaphysical force. Folks who understand it draw from and she was really still, and then she turned around something deeper than mere entertainment. Something and walked back into the kitchen really stiffly and said potent. Something magical. nothing to either of us for a long time after that. Dad got me my first guitar, this little kid’s thing but A Farewell to Kings a real guitar, a few days or something later. He used to “Music,” said the philosopher Boethius, “is so hold me in his lap and show me where to put my hands. naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it It was harder than the keyboard ‘cause the strings don’t even if we so desired.” Rooted in the sounds of nature have permanent notes, but I practiced and he seemed and the echoes of the spirit, music remains one of the happy and for a long time that’s what held us together. most significant human arts. Music stirs emotions, For a long time, yeah, I was like Daddy’s little girl. rouses ghosts, seduces elves, and tempts gods, men and devils to dance. Inspiring “peak experiences,” it can bring Rock ‘n’ roll Fantasy us ex histanai: “out of place.” Music has been said to Popular music stars are the gods of today’s mythology. move stones, shatter walls and foment revolutions. Our SampleArtists like Tupac Shakur, Johnny Cash or the Rolling modern world is filled withfile music… and yet, amidst all Stones are our deities. Songs like “Stairway to Heaven” that sound, the deeper significance of this art is often or “Don’t Stop Believin’” have become our gospels. Styles lost. like Punk, Gangsta, Goth and Hippie present cultural It’s easy to take music for granted these days. TVs, touchstones far beyond the music scenes where they iPods and passing cars blast music into every corner of began. Almost everyone under the age of 50 (and beyond our lives. Still, we share a problematic relationship with IMAGE CREDIT: BRYAN SYME BRYAN CREDIT: IMAGE –7– In My Heart (From the Gut) it, too. It’s so pervasive, so commercial, so very often junk that music become literally meaning-less. We can Some artists feed your head, many go for your heart, a rip symphonies from CDs, buy ‘em for a buck or two, number of ‘em punch you in the gut, the dirty ones go link remixes to our Facebook pages, or simply download for your groin, lots of them hit several spots at once, the pleasures of kings for free off the internet. What was, and a handful of them manage to nail you in all four. until recently, a unique transformative experience has become “data” in our world – endlessly replicable and • Head-based artists appeal to intellect, imagination, infinitely collectable. philosophy, experimentation. Their work makes you think, challenges your preconceptions, rattles Speaking personally, I have more music on my iPod your cage, and occasionally drops your thinking right now than most people would hear in their lifetimes process out the nearest window and makes you a century ago… and yet, I constantly crave more of it. enjoy the fall. Wrapped in arcane chord changes We’ve probably got that in common, you and me – and and enigmatic lyrics, “head”-centric music centers we’re in good company there. Like anyone who gets too much too easily, though, we lose track of how precious on ideas. Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Kate Bush music is. To us, its magic has become mundane. We use and Miles Davis (among others) appeal most music for damn near everything. What, then, in our strongly to this region. world does it MEAN? When transcendence is cheap, • Heart-based artists go for sentiment, emotion and what value does transcendence have? How many of us are willing to even ask that question, much less willing passion beyond all else. Sure, any “art” worth that to find out? name makes some appeal for your heart. Truly heart-centric artists, though, snatch it in both Characters and stories from Powerchords reveal hands and, without apology, squeeze. Lots of the deeper levels of music – not the soundtrack of our folks dismiss this approach, but it’s still a valid (if daily buzz, but that transformative and all-too-fleeting often superficial) approach to art. Oh, and yeah – burst of Other. The paradox, though, is that music is so it tends to make a lot of money. Journey, Kenny meaning-full to such people and their adventures that Rogers, Diana Ross and Celine Dion know this it assumes day-to-day roles, yet never becomes routine. A professional pianist practices scales and exercises territory perhaps all too well. for hours each day precisely because music matters so • Guts-based artists grab and squeeze you where much to her. The glamour of a musical life is part of it hurts. Raw pain, fury, joy, and the impulse to Powerchords’ appeal, as well; you wouldn’t be reading throw devil-signs and bang your head come most these words right now if you didn’t want to vicariously rock out. strongly from this region. Guts-based artists might not get you to think, but they’ll sure as hell rock So whatever role you choose in a Powerchords saga, your world. The Sex Pistols, Janis Joplin, Public ask yourself where, how, and why the music affects your Enemy and Mötley Crüe are guts-based artists, character’s life. Whether that character is a musician or irresistible on a primal level even when they hit not, music’s influence will play a major role in the role other goals besides. you choose to play.

• Groin-based artists make you wanna fuck. Plain Gimmie Three Steps and simple lust drives their core appeal. Even Magical music can be as subtle as the groove where with G-rated lyrics (or none at all), these folks just everything seems just right, or as wild as the riff that truly sound dirty. Luther Vandross, AC/DC, Madonna brings the house down. And while you can use elements and the Rolling Stones all epitomize this pure of Powerchords as parts of a larger game, that music still animal sex-machine approach. affects the settings, stories and characters within that game. Before you kick things off, then, get together as a • Again, most artists hit two of these regions or group and answer these three questions: more. Led Zeppelin managed to nail guts, groin • Who do we want to play? and occasionally head with most of the music they released, while Prince can make you fuck and • What sort of stories do we want to share? think at the same time. Very few artists, though, • Where does the music fit in? manage to score all four regions consistently… For the first step, decide who your characters will be. and even fewer survive long enough to make it Jet-setting groupies? Members of a hungry new band? a habit. Like the Tantric Kundalini Serpent, such Roadies for a group that has sold its collective soul to artists strike all chakras, riding from heaven to hell hell? All of them at once? It’s your call. That said, some and back again while taking their audience with common ground is essential. If one player has a hot rap them. TheSample majority, like Jimi Hendrix or the Doors, star, another sings womyn-power folk, and a filethird waits burn bright and fast, leaving legendary afterburns tables at a country-western bar, your saga is over before behind. A handful – David Bowie, Patti Smith – last it begins. To keep your group focused, get together, long enough to become living gods, riding flames brainstorm about the characters you want to play, and so bright and sacred that even they feel helpless in then figure out the common strands that bind those the blaze. characters together. –8–