So I got challenged to a game creation duel by Justin Jacobson. The terms of the duel were set to be -

• Genre: Film Noir
• Theme: Travel
• Mechanics: Musical Scale

So, I have been doing a lot of thought on that issue of late (when I probably should have been busy revising ‘Threads’ instead) and what I have come up with the basis of a RPG that I have named “Sweet, Sad, Song”.

The core of the game is going to come from my (sadly) small knowledge of bebop, a form of jazz which plays as the background to many Noir movies. But why bebop?

Simple, ‘improvisation’.  Jazz is, at its heart, about the collaborative muscial ’storytelling’ of a group of musicians without playing off of a set script. If this isn’t roleplaying then I don’t know what is. At the same time, even though it is freewheeling, as music it is also constrained by a set of pretty strong rules… which led me to my next design ‘thought’… the importance of harmony and discord. Let me explain:

So we have a musical scale that can hold any one of 8 notes. What if each of those 8 positions had a special type of storytelling significance, in line with our noir sensibilities say…

• Position 1: Crime/Money (and its inverse ‘Law’)
• Position 2: Sex (and its inverse ‘Loyalty’…. I realize that this is weak :p )
• Position 3: Violence (and its inverse ‘Honor’???)
• Position 4: Power (and its inverse ‘Alienation’)
• Position 5: Secrets (and its inverse ‘Exposure’?)
• Position 6: Enclosure (and its inverse ‘Freedom’)
• Position 7: Insanity/Addiction (and its inverse ‘Apathy’)
• Position 8: Cruel Fate (and its inverse ‘Random Chance’)

Now these aren’t quite “there” yet, but hopefully you can see where I am going with each category and how they relate to the whole Film-Noir ‘mythos’. But what do those positions have to do with anything?

So, lets say that the title Noir detective is currently interviewing a leggy blond. As the ‘leader’, I decide that I want to have a ganster crash in through the front door (introducing some elements of violence). In order to do this I would need to roll some dice to place a note in Position 3 (currently an E note) [the mechanics for being allowed to do this are not currently in place].

 Simple enough, right? Well, here is where it gets weird: the other players have the opportunity to produce a ‘chord’ and contribute to the information that I have already established. They can either play in ’Harmony’ (elaborating on my idea) or in ‘Discord’ (by establishing an element that complicates the original intent).

Now to make things more complicated (to match music theory), there are only certain positions that produce harmony They can either place a note in a ‘harmonic’ position (either 3 [Enclosure, here]above the note or 5 [Cruel Fate] above the note played). Harmony is ‘mechanically’ easier to perform… but an entirely harmonious song is rather boring.

Discord notes, on the other hand are the way to introduce conflict into the equation.  The ‘discord’ note can be any other note, although there is a reward for playing the 7th postion (because of the ‘Blues Note’). Here is the thing though… once discord/conflict has been introduced, you have to quickly resolve it (through a harmonious cord).

Mechanically speaking, discord is the way that one player tries to rest narrative control from another.

So there is a whole lot more involved in this system that I am looking at (including shifting keys, and chord progression – which means that for a series of notes you must include at least one note from the previous cord or break the note sequence, creating a new scene).

Any thoughts?