Encore: Adventures And Series About Bands
And now, finally, a thought on RPGs and other stories about bands.
There are two extremes, one where it’s all about the story of the band, and one where a band is an excuse for the characters to be together and for some music in the show. In the middle are a lot of series which mix stories about the music with the old “you’re on the way to a show when the adventure happens” setup.
Umläut models the first kind, designed for one-shots that generate the history of a band, the kind of story that gets told in Behind The Music.
I’ve mostly aimed for the middle this month, wanting the band setup to bring at least some adventure hooks and drama for a spin on a setting.
The other extreme would be something like The Monkees, a post A Hard Day’s Night sitcom that happens to star a prefab band and their day job rarely mattered to plots like the first example I saw of a will requiring would-be inheritors to spend the night in a haunted house.
Josie And The Pussycats is also a helpful demonstration here, with the movie being a satire about the band making it big and the effect it has on them with a mystery to solve, the cartoon being a Scooby-Doo thing with added songs, and the comics often being a mix of comedy, light band drama and “on the way to a show when..." stories.
Band stories in comics often go this way, from Scott Pilgrim via various Pussycats runs through Band Vs. Band. Exaggerations of the ups and downs of bands’ lives, often involving action scenes.
(Not always of course, see Love And Rockets.)
Josie And The Pussycats
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Concept
A small time band with big time dreams and a way of getting in trouble everywhere they go.
Members
Josie, vocals and guitar, really wants this to be a thing
Val, bass, here to support her friends
Melody, drums, what were we talking about
Statistics
Hope 1
Ego 1
Fanbase 1
Cash 0
Performance Traits
Technique 2
Power 4
Stagecraft 1
They can turn their hands to anything so they never Showboat, how dare you
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