FARC! (Was: Fark!)

[robotnik2004]

Two very fun gaming sessions this week: jeregenest's Pantellos game on Sunday and Unknown USA last night.

In both cases I think one of the things that made it fun was that the GM was pushing a little, but not all the way, out of their regular comfort zone: Jere kicked off the Pantellos game with a great pulp action sequence—Chase scene on narrow Peruvian mountain road! Incan mummy and Tesla-Marconi gravitic radio in the back! Gorillas! FARCs! It's not his normal style, but I for one ate it up with a spoon. (OK, it turned out they were Shining Path, not FARCs.) But FARCs ("Farks!") is more fun to say.)

And in the UA game, I ran with much less script than I'm used to. About half the characters were on fairly well-prepared paths, but the other half were roaming around with really no preset storyline to follow at all. I had a few bangs to throw at them (and some goodies I didn't get to use) but nothing that had to happen or any real sense of where it would end up. That half of the group probably had more slow time (exacerbated by having 6 (!) PCs, including 2 that had just joined the group), but it also generated the most exciting moments of play (for me, at least), including a 1-in-a-100 roll by John as his old blues man recorded a song in a Memphis record studio. What do you do when someone makes a spectacular roll on something non-spectacular like playing a guitar?

Funny: Jere runs these intricate, intellectual games and I'm kinda pushing him for more straight-forward action. While in my gaming history, action has typically been everything, and I'm now trying to figure out ways to make a scene with an old man playing his guitar as exciting and as valid a climax as a car chase or a shoot 'em up. Playing what you know is good, but so is stretching your muscles.

Comments

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

...but it also generated the most exciting moments of play (for me, at least), including a 1-in-a-100 roll by John as his old blues man recorded a song in a Memphis record studio. What do you do when someone makes a spectacular roll on something non-spectacular like playing a guitar?

Well, I'd say the album becomes a hit throughout the South and they end up playing in disguise at a rally of one of the good ol' boys running for governor. Oh, wait, that's been done before. :)

It's not plagarism, it's an 'homage!'

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Hey- that's exactly what I said! I figured MP3s of the song would be traded all over the net, and someday when Joe is playing in a honkeytonk somewhere and manages to make another successful "THE Blues" check, his mojo will kick in and everyone will be agape: "Holy shit! That really is Blind Joe Biscuit!!"

Don't know who I'll name as 'my brain trust' though. Ben is the only one with a few brain cells to rub together... ;)

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we're definitely going to have to run with this. Like John said, Tepper saved a copy of the recording and somehow it gets onto the net. The MP3s spread, meme-like, and Blind Joe becomes a phenomenon without knowing it.

Homage to O Brother is entirely appropriate in this game.

Of course the key difference here is that the song "Man of Constant Sorrow" isn't, well, evil.

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

And hey, don't forget Elvis' first recording at Sun Records. And he did it for Mama. If you can't take those two sentences and pack them full of occult goodness, I can't help you. :)

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

---
I'm now trying to figure out ways to make a scene with an old man playing his guitar as exciting and as valid a climax as a car chase or a shoot 'em up.
---

Man, that was such a big scene for me. Getting Blind Joe into a studio and having a chance to record again, try to work the old mojo, was one of the main things I wanted to do when I created the character.And to end up rolling a 1 on my 2% chance to work "THE Blues" was just the icing on the cake... :)

Of course, the rest of the party doesn't trust me now because of your cute little flashback cut scene... bastard. ;)

And for the record...

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call Blind Joe Biscuit playing the guitar with the silver strings given to him by The Man at the Crossroads, and singing a song that mixes in a few lines from 'Judgment Day-- The Song of Summoning' a 'non-spectacular' event! :)

Re: And for the record...

[bryant]

It was pretty spectacular to watch, I gotta say.

[agent13.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like the man needs a hellhound on his trail...

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Yes! You are correct, sir. And stones in his passway, too.

One hell hound (of Tindalos?) coming up.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Whaddaya know? FARC = Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia. Learn something knew every day. I guess Simon had better start reading all those briefing packets Pantellos sends him.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Yeah my goof. I'd beenr eading so much stuff on the ELN, FARC and AUC that it popped into my head. Even though my notes said Shining Path.

Not saying FARC will be important for the next session or anything.

Judgment Day

[amberley.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a great session, both of them. I'm a friend of Bryant's ("Did I mention the cliff?") who followed his link here, and was wondering if you were familiar with this quote from Alan Rodgers' Bone Music:

"There is a song all bluesmen know: they call it the song for Judgment Day. Some of them know it in bits and pieces; others know it nearly whole. The oldest, greatest deepest talents among them know the song as it truly will be sung - but none of them would ever sing it just that way.

"None of them would dare.

"As bluesmen and lady blues singers learn their craft they come to know this song a little at a time; as they master the blues the song comes to them more and more clearly. If and when they grow to be Hoodoo Doctors (and few of them ever do) they know it by heart, and in their hearts - no matter how they've never heard it sung.

"No Hoodoo Doctor who knew the song would ever play it. "

"Not -exactly-. he wouldn't dare; anyone who hears the song enough to know it knows what it will do. If you listen to much blues, you've probably heard bits and pieces of it, worked and reworked into blues standards (some of which have gone on to be rock 'n' roll standards) - but even if you've heard them all you've only seen the shadows that this song casts. There's no way plain uninitiated folks can imagine the original from its parts.

"The bluesmen of the Delta call the song Judgment Day - because that's when they'll sing it. Gabriel will blow his horn, and all the Hoodoo Doctors everywhere will hear, and they'll sing Judgment Day. And the sound and the resonance that rise up from their truest song will shatter the Eye of the World.

"When it shatters the Apocalypse will be upon us.

"Terrible things that weigh on a song - things that would hang like doom impending if Judgment Day were just another simple four-four melody. But Judgment Day isn't just a song; it's an unmasterable riff that lives only in the deepest secret hearts of Hoodoo Doctors. Only one man alive has ever deduced the song and sung it just exactly so - and that man was Robert Johnson, and what he sang and when he sang it are the deep root beneath this tale."

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Hiya!

Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier - I was in Canada last week for a job interview and let my email get away from me.

Good catch on the Bone Music reference, and thanks for the quotation, which I think I'll forward to our game's mailing list. I did read that book a while back and I have no doubt it was part of my inspiration for Blind Joe's accursed song. Though I think I've probably wanted to run a game involving Robert Johnson's 30th song ever since the 1980s movie Crossroads with Ralph Macchio. (Steve Vai and the Karate Kid play duelling guitars in Hell! How can you not love it?)