Rock N Roll Dreams

Still very much a work in progress, here are my current notes on The Jim Steinman RPG inspired by Brand Robins, using adapted Dogs in the Vineyard mechanics:

A game of rock n roll opera, of desperately pretty rebels without a cause, 50's ambiance with 80s hair and modern hyper-sexuality. It's all about the Bat Out of Hell, Nowhere Fast, Streets of Fire, I Would Do Anything for Love over the top emo porn modern fairy tale, with nothing less than 3 true loves, 5 broken hearts, a fight with sledge hammers under the L train in a thunderstorm, a beautiful 57 Ford, and the blowing up of that beautiful 57 Ford. If you'd offer your throat to the starving wolf with the red, red roses in the pale moonlight, this is the game you were born to play.

I've run it three times so far:

• 2008/5/17 at Endgame, all 4 PCs as students
• 2008/5/30 at Kublacon 2008, 2 students, 2 bikers
• 2008 Go Play NW more, for 3

I also ran it twice at the 2012/11/3 Endgame minicon using Monsterhearts, with the second game set 21 years after the first.

Useful links:

• Character Generation Summary
• Character Sheet (PDF) (ABW)
• Brand Robins' glorious concept
• Jim Steinman Lyrics
• Graham Walmsley's Meat Loaf LARP Too Much Rock for One Hand

Rule changes

• See the character generation link above for differences there.
• Every PC can take a bond (in this case, "But I won't _____") and gets that die at the start of every conflict as long as the bond is true. (Taken from Afraid.)
• The third highest die of your fallout is placed in a central bowl. A player can award a die to another player during a conflict for doing something extravagantly over the top and enjoyable. The player who gets it can roll and add it to his dice pool. (Inspired by fan mail in Prime Time Adventures).
• I'll probably make guns d8 fallout like other weapons, and change the Acuity+Will arena with d10 fallout to Murder (like Afraid).
• I'm experimenting with alternative to ceremony but it hasn't come up yet. If your narration of your raise includes the following you can opt to inflict fallout dice as shown:
  • Fluttering in the Wind (d4)
  • Rain (d4)
  • Moonlight (d6)
  • Motorcycles (d6)
  • Music (d6)
  • Rock n Roll (d8)
  • Love (d8)

Things that happened

The Rock n Roll Dreams run at Kublacon 2008 went great, with the bike mechanic PC who once touched Elvis (1d6) winning the race and riding off into the moonlit night on her own, the biker back from the war and his ex-ex-girlfriend being chased by a swarm of police cars into legend, and everyone else dying in the big race. The cherry red '57 mustang was not even scratched in the sledgehammer fight, and still sits outside that dive bar at the edge of the godforsaken town, rusting prettily.

last updated Mon Nov 5 09:47:07 UTC 2012