...and the Music of Doom!

So, after almost a YEAR break (been busy with being senior staff at a convention will do that to you), 20-Sided Tardis is back! And good news, dear companions, the good Doctor himself is climbing back behind the screen and getting ready to run a D&D Campaign!





So, in the spirit of getting back into the swing of things with this blog, I'm going to start chronicling my rules musings, my world building techniques, my campaign world's history and recaps of my groups misadventures. I'm already getting excited about this.


So, after watching various anime and movies, playing some video games and generally trying to remember what creating a campaign is like, I decided I wanted to try some house rules to FURTHER add to the sense of Heroism that D&D already gives, I proposed this to my very confused friend:

D&D Battle Music Roulette.

I'm a fan of adding background music to role playing games. It helps set the mood and atmosphere of a scene, can get the players fired up at the right time, or help with a particular plot twist. However, music can be a crutch or a distraction, so I recommend it's use only if you're prepared to deal with it.

Now, since players all like their characters (why wouldn't they?), I added an extra step to character creation for my campaign: Pick out your character's personal battle theme. This will hopefully help the players figure out their character a bit more, as they try to figure out what music really sums up Grothgar the Barbarian's melancholy fueled rage.

I'll add the tracks to the music I compiled for D&D, and when we enter battle, I hit play on the battle music playlist. Here's where the roulette part comes in.

If your character's theme hits, it's clearly time for them to kick ass and take names , so for the duration of the encounter, you gain +1 to Attack, Damage, All Defenses and Saves (per tier), an action point, and the ability to spend an additional action point this encounter.

Wow, that's ridiculous, right? Well, it gets better! As a reward for good role playing, the DM I currently plays with hands out little tokens that can be redeemed for an +d6 on a d20 roll. I figured I'd do something similar, only the token can also be used to have your theme music start playing.

What do you think? Does this add an element of extra drama to the D&D table, or has Dr. Cid lost his damn mind? Let me know in the comment section and I'll see you in the future, dear companions.