Interesting Bardic Performances

roguerouge

First Post
My player: out! Campaign spoilers!

So, what have you used for memorable entertainment when the party sees a bardic performance?

I've got a 1 player campaign, in which the PC is of the bardic persuasion. So she goes to a lot of clubs and gives a lot of performances. Now she's in a big city and looking to establish herself as a performer. What I'm looking for is to give her a sense of diverse performing styles and contents in a fantasy world's major port city. I'm looking to set up a varied list of such performing styles to consult whenever she goes to a club.

There's a lot of room for creativity in this campaign. For example, I've already used a traditional elven bard singing and using a lute. Her PC tells epic stories. Later, I'll have her encounter an "underground" monstrous humanoid club that features a goblin warchanter using Paizo goblin songs.
 

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Comedy is a type of performance. You can do stand up comedy like Chris Rock.

"You know it's a sign that the world's gonna end when the best wizard is an Orc, the best Barbarian is a Halfing, and the best Bard is a Drawf!"

Improv comedy can be done too. Just reinact your favorite Who's Line is it Anyway sketch. Don't have a favorite Who's Line is it Anyway sketch? FOR SHAME!

You could do Opera too. Just bring a recording of Opera singing.

Boardway is also an option. You can do musicals like "Dire Cats!"
 

Ed_Laprade

Adventurer
Look to vaudeville. Minstrel shows. That sort of thing. (The old Ed Sullivan show!) Various forms of singing, dancing and novelty acts. Polkas, sea shanties, plate spinning! Jigs, ballads, animal acts! &etc., &etc., &etc.
 

Clavis

First Post
Half-orcs drumming and rapping about the size of their genitals, how many sows they've had sex with, and how many gold pieces they've acquired.

Halflings with banjos and steel guitars, singing about their faithless ladies, broken-down carts, and dead hound dogs.

Dwarven a capella singers praising Moradin, and proclaiming that if all Dwarves would only accept him as their personal Lord and Saviour, Moradin would destroy all the Goblins, refill all the mines with gold, and shave all the Dwarf women.

Gnomish one-man bands playing strange mechanical instruments that simultaneously beat a drum, strum a lute, and blow pipes.
 
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roguerouge

First Post
Let's see... what do I remember from the PBS special on vaudeville acts:

3 women throw a handkerchief to one another and freeze in position momentarily when one of them catches it
Grown woman dressed up as a child doing a salacious comedy routine as a 9 year old girl
Guy rubbing the rims of water glasses to create music
Guy with really, really long boots
Pantomiming a drunk person in various situations
Two tap dancers on a very small table
Regurgitator acts (spit gasoline or water, audience choice; swallow a live goldfish and at the end vomits it back up, completely unharmed)
 


Tewligan

First Post
roguerouge said:
Let's see... what do I remember from the PBS special on vaudeville acts:

3 women throw a handkerchief to one another and freeze in position momentarily when one of them catches it
Grown woman dressed up as a child doing a salacious comedy routine as a 9 year old girl
Guy rubbing the rims of water glasses to create music
Guy with really, really long boots
Pantomiming a drunk person in various situations
Two tap dancers on a very small table
Regurgitator acts (spit gasoline or water, audience choice; swallow a live goldfish and at the end vomits it back up, completely unharmed)
Good god, people were hard up for entertainment back in the day!

"Presenting for your pleasure - Mr. Phineas J. Bumbleshot and his extraordinarily long boots! He obtained these boots that reach all the way above his knees while on an expedition to the Mysterious Orient! Not for women, children, or the faint of heart! Twenty-three skidoo!"
 


Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member
Supporter
Guy rubbing the rims of water glasses to create music

The same technique was used to play the crystal harmonica and crystal organ/crystal baschet.

In some places, the sound of such was deemed to be so maddening that the instruments were outlawed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Organ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_harmonica

Similar to the above in tone are Singing Bowls, though they are more often struck rather than rubbed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_bowl

Another interesting instrument is the Fire Organ a.k.a. Pyrophone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_organ
 

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