"Band on Tour" - Campaign idea

[Sir Robilar]

Just as I skimmed the bard chapter of my new Pathfinder Rulebook I had an idea for a campaign. Of course I think it´s awesome. So I´m here to pitch it to you, hoping for some input.

The PCs play a music band that tours from town to town in a regular fantasy world. Every character gets free ranks in Perform for a music instrument of her choice. One character is the lead singer, probably a bard. (If no one wants to play a bard this could be a NPC, one that´s too self-centered to meddle with the other band member´s affairs).

The campaign is episodic: Each session starts with the band coming to another town and is centered around the concert that the band plays there. But of course, each town has some kind of problem. And once our band arrives there they happen to get involved with the local´s affairs and must to do some adventuring to set things straight again. Then, when everything has returned to stability (for better or for worse) and they have played their concert, they travel on.

(This game could blend in some elements from Dogs in the Vineyard. Unfortunately I haven´t read that system so I have no clue what to use from it.)

So what do you think?

 

[Pig Champion]

I don't think you could've tailored a better campaign for me! Dogs of the Vineyard sold me also. I've run a frontier setting where the players had to annex towns into the evil Human empire while dodging the zealot paladins and clerics who came to claim them in the name of their deity.

I also used elements of Dogs and it worked very well with everyone having a complete blast.

 

[Krensky]

Who gets to play the shark?

 

[Wik]

Kind of reminds me of a saturday morning cartoon show. Are you planning on making this a light-hearted game, or more of a serious sort of thing?

 

[Sir Robilar]

Are you planning on making this a light-hearted game, or more of a serious sort of thing?

That would depend on what the players make of it. I´d prepare for a serious game with some possibilities for light-hearted situations.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Our group did this once. (Second or third reshuffling of the original group.) It wasn't intentional at first, but when everyone told what characters they were planning to run someone mentioned that it would make a good traveling group of entertainers. "The bard can sing and play, the MU can cast 'magic trick' spells, the fighter can be a guard, the thief can be our roadie, etc." We had a ball. Of course, the fact that one of the characters was delusional and thought he was a member of the kingdom's secret police, and had us believing him, ment there were even more plot hooks that the GM could throw at us!

 

[Sir Robilar]

I've run a frontier setting where the players had to annex towns into the evil Human empire while dodging the zealot paladins and clerics who came to claim them in the name of their deity.

That sounds like an awesome game! What elements of DitV did you incorporate? As I wrote above, I´m not really familiar with it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sounds cool to me- do sample Jabberjaw or Josie and the Pussycats/JatP in Outer Space if you decide to go the more humorous route.

You might also want to check out RW road stories. I recall...

1. one about a band playing a strip club in Canada whose lead singer leaned out over the crowd...and got domed by the ceiling fan.
2. one about the band Hard Corps whose mix of rap & rock was on the rise. The rapper/lead vocalist, however, had never encountered stage divers, so when a guy jumped up on stage to initiate a little dive & surf, he decked him.
3. one about a euro-metal band in the 1980s who was touring the USA, and somewhere in the western desert states, their tour bus broke down. They called their label's main office to get someone to pay for a wrecker, etc.- after all, nobody wearing skintight leather and a half-ton of Aquanet carries cash (no pockets)- they found out that one of the label's executives had embezzled the company's entire war-chest. The label was as broke as the bus. (Cue howling coyotes in the starry night.)

 

[fba827]

The campaign is episodic: Each session starts with the band coming to another town and is centered around the concert that the band plays there. But of course, each town has some kind of problem. And once our band arrives there they happen to get involved with the local´s affairs and must to do some adventuring to set things straight again. Then, when everything has returned to stability (for better or for worse) and they have played their concert, they travel on.

Sounds like a fun idea over all (i've toyed with the idea of doing something similar once but i never thought i'd be able to pull it off and keep it fresh from town to town for a whole campaign... but maybe just an arc or something).

I am probably over thinking it but maybe after a few towns (once the players seem to be getting too blase about it, shake it up -- there must be some reason that something bad always happens in the towns the PCs are going to right before they get there? (kind of 'the Pretender' tv show style... they stay on the move and where they go happens to be some trouble that isn't necessarily related to them but they get involved and help)

Or maybe embrace the idea that they go to these towns (magically transported? assigned by someone?) because there is a problem and they need to resolve it and the performance is their 'ticket' in to the city that makes them more easily accepted in to the fold of the city for the week (kind of like 'quantum leap' where they go there -because- there is a problem they should 'resolve'.. sort of).

?

but, anyway, as said, sounds like a fun idea. would be neat to hear how it turns out.

 

[Pig Champion]

That sounds like an awesome game! What elements of DitV did you incorporate? As I wrote above, I´m not really familiar with it.

I found the beauty in the game was in character creation and town creation but since I was running a DnD campaign and needed towns quicker than normal, I used Dog's formula for town creation and conflicts.

It's really quite simple but effective, do you have a copy of the book/pdf? If you flick through to town creation you'll see they use a formula of conflicts or problems rather than places/people of interest. Just exchange the list of conflicts they have (as they are specific to a party of Dogs rather than a DnD band of adventures) with ones that you think would be best for your players/campaign. Then simply follow their formula with your new set of conflicts.

I found by doing it this way and just adding faces to the various conflicts that I could have a town done in about 5-10 minutes.

I'd also suggest that you use the "in between" towns time to take care of PC biz like buying new weapons, spells, food etc Kind of like they come across roadside smiths and traveling salesmen as they go. The main reason is because a lot of my PC's kept ignoring all the little intriguing parts of the town to go straight for smiths and taverns straight away. However once I started having them coming upon those sorts of things in between towns they got more into the style of the campaign.

Hope that helps!