Long Term Homework: My Creative Writing Project

I'm using Brave Assemblage as a means of keeping my more creative brain cells all stirred up. Help me do that! Music serves as a pretty solid inspiration for my roleplaying as I know it does most or all of you. You can help shape our Realms and the beings therein by contributing inspirational music.

I'm looking for songs of pretty much any stripe to represent brand new NPCs, settings, and storylines. Genre, period, lyrics, nothing should be ruled out as potentially fitting for this purpose. I know I've got a pile of songs that are really thought-provoking that I've wanted to link to a roleplaying experience but just haven't had a good opportunity. If you share that experience, this is a good opportunity. I only ask that the music you volunteer is actually enjoyable to listen to. (From your perspective, of course. If I don't like it for some reason, I may very well still use it.)

You can offer up songs publicly or privately. You can recommend that they be used for my development of Character(s) (you can even specify "Friend(s)" or "Villain(s)" if you want to), Setting, or Story.

Alternatively, you can just offer up a song and let me figure out where it might add color to the campaign. It's quite possible that I'll never tell you where your offerings came into play in the campaign, but you might have fun trying to guess.

Note, this shouldn't preclude you from making your own song lists for your PCs. That's a wonderful practice and I enjoyed its abundance in the original City of Splendors campaign. Don't hesitate to keep that up here and to share those songs with others.

I pay Microsoft Zune monthly so I can have ready access to whatever songs I want to download (and I can permanently own 10 of them each month under the same fee). If it's a song you like, chances are someone else likes it and it will be available for download. If I fail to find it, I'll probably ask you to provide it somehow in a digital format.

I hope everyone will contribute, but I don't want anyone to go totally nuts unless you're OK with some of your offerings not being used. If I get hundreds of songs, I may not be able to incorporate each and every one. (Although I'm likely to try...)

How about some songs for our first 8/20 game? Give me something to work with, I implore you. *wink*

How about Okkervil's "Your Past Life As A Blast"?

Haha, just kidding. It's just... past life... in the title, so... haha.

Okay, sorry, I'm tired and a little punch drunk. I'll try to think of a serious suggestion.

EDIT: Okay, for serious now. A couple thoughts.

How about Toad The Wet Sprocket's "Are We Afraid"? Might be a good tune for everyone remembering their previous lives and relationships to one another, the dark and scary parts, the beautiful parts. "Aren't we the ones who never got tired? / And I feel like a newborn again / But the night holds on / Hello, I'm coming home."

Also, two Shearwater songs you might like. "Red Sea Black Sea" has some evocative lyrics. "And when it occurred, oh / Yes sir, yes, sir / And the walls came down / It was a fucking disaster / The whole thing's changed in unthinkable ways / And now you have come to inherit it." The other song is "Castaways". "The collapsing sun, the burning wall / that approaches our eyes / you live again in the shuddering light."

I dunno. Just tossing them out there.

I'm not going to go into the "why" of them but here are a few songs that, for me at least, are perfect for a project like this:

"Barton Hollow" by The Civil Wars
"To Make Ends Meet" by the Green Room Rockers
"Roll Away Your Stone" by Mumford & Sons
"Heart of a Lion" by Kid Cudi
"Master Passion Greed" by Nightwish

There will likely be more coming later but these are the first ones off the top of my head.

Orin wrote:
"To Make Ends Meet" by the Green Room Rockers
"Heart of a Lion" by Kid Cudi

Get these two to me somehow. Zune could not provide them.

Will do.

I'm not surprised about the first but the second is off of a hit album.

Ah well. Maybe Kid Cudi won't work with Zune or something.

Cudi's older albums are available for download, it's just this 2011 one that isn't for digital sale. Sometimes they take a little longer to become available.

Looking forward to listening to what I have in just a little bit. M's contributions are absolutely amazing and they inspired me to pick a few tracks of my own from my collection.

The Cudi track is actually from his 2009 album. Don't sweat it though. I'll get it to you sometime this weekend. Possibly with a few more songs as well.

I'm don't know how well my picks will stand up to Mariel's but hopefully they'll do a little something for you.

Ooh, "Roll Away Your Stone" is an awesome tune. =)

Thanks! There were actually 3 or 4 songs from that album I considered offering up but I wanted to use a variety.

I may have to tag you to help me get my hands on the Shearwater songs if I can't find them myself.

Shearwater's "Red Sea Black Sea" is seriously exactly the sort of song that I feel captures what our D&D is all about. The first time I listened to it, I stopped working and just let every note and word hit me. It ends abruptly on this really powerful note and when that happened, I just stopped and stared all wide-eyed at my MP3 player for a couple minutes while I listened to it just as intently a second time.

I know I get a little melodramatic about new music sometimes, but I think that's what fuels my energy for little projects like this.

The Mumford & Sons pick was really good. The Civil Wars track was quite a surprise and I'm really looking forward to grabbing the rest of what they have. Nightwish... eh... I think I just don't like Nightwish *chuckle*

Oh, and I wanted to share my biggest musical motivation for thinking about a serious City of Splendors re-boot. It's "Be Here Now" by Ray LaMontagne. It had me imagining a sad reflection by the surviving heroes on all they had sacrificed and lost together.

I'm glad the Mumfor pick was liked. I narrowed it down to that or "The Cave" and decided that I was more intrigued by the lyrics of "Roll Away Your Stone" in terms of our game. I can hook you up with more stuff from The Civil Wars if it'll be easier than you looking for it. And I'm not surprised about Nightwish but it seemed like it could be a neat villain song.

Also, "The Stranger" by Billy Joel.

And I'll be looking for the LaMontagne song asap.

Songs: Ohia, "The Body Burned Away".

Tom Waits - Anywhere I Lay My Head
Leon Russell - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall lyrics
David Bowie - Look Back In Anger
Sarah McLachlan - Black
The Moody Blues - Question

James Gang- Meadows

"Feeling Good" by Nina Simone.

"Where Do We Draw The Line" and "Locking Up The Sun" by Poets of the Fall.

Part of me really wants to pick "Flight of Kings" by The Classic Crime, though maybe because it was one of my COS songs. So was "The Poet" by the same band; it was one of my songs for Tripala. ("Warrior," a poet said, "you're not dead yet - so live like you could be." "Warrior," a poet said, "have no regrets when you're old; have no regrets when you're old.") Really, I just recommend The Classic Crime in general as music about adventurers.

"Wanderlust" by Abney Park is a good song for adventuring, too - As long as the road's clear / A song is in my ear / And I will kiss this place goodbye / And fly! Some people just can't bear to stay in one place very long. (Some people are also nomadic cats. Just saying.)

Moonmad wrote:"Feeling Good" by Nina Simone.

"Where Do We Draw The Line" and "Locking Up The Sun" by Poets of the Fall.

Part of me really wants to pick "Flight of Kings" by The Classic Crime, though maybe because it was one of my COS songs. So was "The Poet" by the same band; it was one of my songs for Tripala. ("Warrior," a poet said, "you're not dead yet - so live like you could be." "Warrior," a poet said, "have no regrets when you're old; have no regrets when you're old.") Really, I just recommend The Classic Crime in general as music about adventurers.

"Wanderlust" by Abney Park is a good song for adventuring, too - As long as the road's clear / A song is in my ear / And I will kiss this place goodbye / And fly! Some people just can't bear to stay in one place very long. (Some people are also nomadic cats. Just saying.)

Which Abney Park album has "Wanderlust"? It's the one song I couldn't track down.

Amazon tells me that the song is off of Aether Shanties.

Orin wrote:Amazon tells me that the song is off of Aether Shanties.

Zune has it not. Can you track that down for me via your methods?

This will be done upon my arrival home.

The Abney Park song is available for your listening pleasure in the normal spot.

Anlyn's theme song for the beginning of game is "Dog Days Are Over" by Florence + The Machine. :)

New Anlyn song!! "Shake It Out" by Florence + the Machine, off of her new album which is AMAZING. ^_^

Anlyn wrote:New Anlyn song!! "Shake It Out" by Florence + the Machine, off of her new album which is AMAZING. ^_^

Agreed!