Game Content: A Musical Education

[caption id="attachment_8659" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The "bards" deny any melodrama is going on."][/caption]

“Bards suck”
-Zack Sabbath

“I take that as a challenge.”
-Grumpy Celt

Ouroboros University provides the finest musical teaching for leagues around, providing many with instructions in singing, dance, musical instruments and oration. They also practice the school’s fight song. Because of the instructions of Miss Jennifer Zamzanoble (1), and other teachers, many noted warriors, wizards and wanderers may call themselves… “bard.”

Carrying a Tune in a Bucket

Take a leap of game logic and bard stops being a single class, but an assortment of powers available to all the other classes. In the real world public speaking – something people find more frightening than dying – is terribly useful (2), using a musical rhythm is a useful tool for remembering lengthy stories and the right tune provokes emotional responses in ways nothing else can.
Why then disparage speaking, rhythm and music?

If even the best warriors have to learn to swing a sword properly, then why should a bard not also train their native skills? The opposite is also true.

Bards suffered from a poor initial organization that started a poor legacy of making them a single musical class, rather than a set of skills and powers available to all classes. Imagine there is no single class called bard, but a set of useful features and powers available to all the classes.(3)

Adventure Hooks

• I’ve Got no Strings: The department is home to a puppet theater, which is flexible enough for children’s productions to avant guard productions (which children should watch only if accompanied by an adult). Recently a war between angels and demons took an odd turn and these immortal creatures found themselves stuck in a host of puppets. The good news is they do not have their angelic or demonic powers, one of them stuck in a 1-foot tall puppet with a wooden sword… though it will possess the cunning of ages.
• Try it On for Size: Several ghosts to haunt the campus – two are still on the payroll – and in their off hours, they have taken to trying on outfits in the departments extensive costume shop. The management want this sorted out with as little damage to the girdles and wigs as possible.
• Signs and Portents: It is not all fun and games in the theater department. The facility has a large library of plays, operas, musicals, music, songs and similar forms of entertainment. However, recently something has been causing the text and musical notations to fade, a letter or a word or a note at a time. A blank page remains. Only the tragic works remain unaffected. Those with the “Genre Awareness” feat are the most disturbed by this development.(4)

New Feats

A Minor in Musical Training
Prerequisites: Cha 12 and a semester of training at Ouroboros University for each replacement.
Benefit: You may replace any single power or feature from your class with a power or feature of equal power from the bard class when you advance a level.
Special: Replacing eight powers, features or some combination entitles you to call yourself a bard.

Genre Awareness
Prerequisites: Int 6, Perception 0 and a social life more active than that of a sea-sponge.
Benefit: By training or simple awareness you are exceptionally aware of the patterns of life – you know the Evil Overlord List, possess an intuitive understanding of its heroic counterpart, can pick who are role of characters in the story and know what kind of story in which you find yourself.
Special: This is also known as élan.

Other Systems

The series will nominally be in 4E D&D, though much of the material is system neutral and articles present mechanical alternatives.

Savage Worlds

Background Edge – A Minor in Musical Training
Requirements: Musical education at Ouroboros University, Novice, AB (Miracles), Perform d6+
Training in performance and music at Ouroboros University enable a bard to duplicate many of the abilities of a Troubadour, though it is more difficult for the bard than it is for the Troubadour. While they can perform Miracles and attempt to entertain, the difficulty for bards is increased by +2.
Note: Refer to the Troubadour professional edge on page 7 of the Savage Worlds – Fantasy Companion for more information.

Pathfinder

New Feat – A Minor in Musical Training
Prerequisites: Cha 12 and a semester of training at Ouroboros University for each replacement.
Benefit: You may replace any single feature or special power from your class with a feature or special power of equal power from the bard class when you advance a level. This does not include bard spells.
Special: Replacing eight features entitles you to call yourself a bard.
Note: Refer to the Bard Class on page 34 of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook for more information.

1. Zamzanoble possesses two reputations, the first as an excellent teacher and as someone to getting herself and her students into madcap adventures.

2. You might disparage a politician or lawyer, but you should be prudent enough to acknowledge their social power, much of which depends upon their ability to speak persuasively.

3. Why not? While nominally under the rule system of 4E, Ouroboros University is appearing during the twilight of Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. If the rules only served as guidelines before there is no reason to let them stop us now. For that matter, why give any additional rules for bards or music?

4. It is worse than they imagine.