Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sezarious" data-source="post: 6614887" data-attributes="member: 6792106">Has anyone seen the movie adaptation of the Manga series 'Dororo'.  It's about a warlord who sacrifices his firstborn baby son's body in portions to 48 demons.  For supernatural reasons, the baby is still a living husk of what he should be and his parents send him down the river.  A sorcerer finds his husk and basically re-grows everything he needs.  The baby grows up to basically be a demon hunting samurai, but not before a wandering storyteller mysteriously appears to the sorcerer and gives him a demon killing blade to pass on to the boy at the right time.The bar is a recurring character throughout the story who kind of just follows the party of two from a distance, imparting knowledge or helping only sometimes, playing his instrument other times.  By telling  Dororo, a female thief about the boys origin in the beginning, he has orchestrated much of the story.There's also the movie Krull if anyone has seen it with the old man Ynyr.  An old wise man who lived up in the mountains who comes down to help the main character to save the princess.  He directs the party most of the way using his vast knowledge and his connections.  He's also a storyteller and a healer.As others have mentioned that bards used to be the class that you really had to work hard to earn once upon a time, for character concepts such as the above, I can see why.  I originally always perceived the bard as too 'colourful' a class to be taken seriously, but that's because I didn't initially say to myself, 'well, have I TRIED thinking of a serious bard concept?'As others have said, I think in a more serious game, you play down the musical instrument stuff.In a more serious game I would also play a more experienced character, a once idealistic boy who grew up on the stories of heroes told to him by his dad, turned into a father and farmer, but then turned ex-farmer, becoming a refugee, who tried to feed his then starving, now dead, therefore ex-family by stealing, then he became a now ex-mercenary to fight against whatever pushed him off his farm in the first place.He then jumped into protecting caravans, got on well with the merchants he worked for, telling them wonderful stories of heroes at night around the campfire and because of this and his natural charm, got into sales.Eventually however, when life became somewhat of a mockery of what he once had, the man became sick of what he was doing as it just felt hollow to him.  He gave up on sales and started wandering in search of meaning behind life almost like some wandering priest or monk in search of enlightenment.  He however did not have to be quite as disciplined as a monk or priest and as such, being unrestricted, made all sorts of friends in all sorts of places, tried a variety of cultural and... Recreational activities, started trying to read up on philosophy to find meaning to his life, fell further into the amazing stories of past heroes, started wondering about whether the lands were due for another catastrophe so he could become a great hero too, started obsessing with stories, but also with prophecies, tales of magical items and temples and evil monsters of great power.  I.In his philosophical studies he concluded that he needed to develop a broad range of skills, gain as many experiences as possible and live as well as he could.  The man began to practice certain activities fairly regularly, but lacked the discipline to fit into any other category of class.  His 'training' was chaotic and driven by passion.  He picked up skills that varied from playing an instrument, to competing in drinking contests with the dwarves without dying from alcohol poisoning, to learning sacred healing chants and meditation from the elves to negotiating his way past bandits to putting said bandits to sleep with the secret words he has practiced and deciphered from a song, which when whispered in sylvan in a certain way translates to 'rockabye baby' and holds the power of the sleep spell.Eventually, somebody just slaps a 'bard' label on him and throws him into a dungeon crawl.  Poor guy...  He's so much more than that.</blockquote>

Verification