The title track from the new album by The Sword – Warp Riders.
To cross the Universe / in hyper-spatial flight.
We ride the warp of space / into the womb of night.
Alright. This needs to be gamed. Soon. The only question is what system to use. I think I want to make a BoL/BotA 60s/70s-style SciFi/metal thang. No one I know will play it, of course. But I still want to do it.
Oh, and for more inspiration, observe the Art of Penguin Science Fiction
I think it lends itself to BoTA with a real BoL flavour – I was reading something about The Sword recently – isn’t the “setting” of the album a blasted world that has stopped moving so that the three suns now scorch oneside and leave the other in darkness forever.
Sounds like a good setting – you’ve got the “ruins of the old empire” – perhaps the remains of the old Terran colony but now little more than charred ruins, occasional scraps of high-level tech and fallout shelters deep underground.
Then there’s the warring tribes – descendants of the old colonists, marines, etc.
And then “The Others” – the original inhabitants of the world, once all but extinct they once more roam free.
Well, that was my take on it
Well now, who’s a gobbo who’s been doing his homework? 🙂 Yep, that is indeed the supposed setting for the story of the new album. It’s definitely got “game” written all over it. Well, “game” or “series of 1970s sci fi novels published by Tor.” Either way, it’s good stuff.
Nice take, amigo!
Sadly, the desire to do such work never translates to real life…
I think it’s an interesting setting – sadly it mean you never have nighttime incidents OR you never have daytime incident if you’re on the other side.
Ain’t that the truth 🙂
It’s a limited world, for sure. Good more for a one shot or a short campaign. But if it’s part of a scifi setting where it’s possible to leave the planet then I think it works nicely. Somehow I have to work out a science fantasy setting that allows me to go crazy the way I want to go crazy 🙂
Suddenly The Sword has exploded everywhere on the gaming scene. Great band, very moody, Black Sabbath style heavy metal.
Indeed. I hope I had a little something to do with that 🙂 I dig ’em quite a bit and they really fit for old school gaming. I haven’t been much of a metal guy since I was a kid playing, well, old school D&D, so their music just feels right to me. Glad you’re enjoying them, comrade!
Been looking over your stuff, VP, it is all very cool! As for that album, I think I’m going to have to get that at some point. This is exactly the type of imagery and sound that inspired the design of the book.
It does work as a setting if you do it right. In order to keep the thing fresh the PCs could be adventurers from the Light who are exploring the world beyond, something normal people wouldn’t even contemplate. Have a few adventures in the Light side as they travel to the Dusk, encountering religious groups determined to destroy them for their heretical belief that there ios something on the other side of the world, mutant raiders warped by the constant UV assault and the occasional ruined adventure site.
The Dusk would last for a few more adventures, and here they would find lost peoples and places and weird creatures who live in the half light, including a highly advanced and peaceful people who are under siege from the creatures of the Night, leading the PCs to eventually go into the night and find the source of the attacks, a creature of great power and consummate darkness who is raiding the Dusk so as to prepare for an assault on the Light…
Howdy, Nathaniel! I’m glad you’re liking the content here. That makes me all kinds of happy 🙂
I really can’t recommend “Warp Riders” enough. It’s an outstanding album chock full of fun. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest record store and grab it!
Great thoughts on how to use the setting of the album in BotA (no surprise there)! You’ve got a solid campaign worked out well. If I can get my players to go along with it, you can rest assured I’ll be stealing it 🙂
Oh, and needless to say, cheers to you on BotA. I love that book something fierce!
I’m glad you like it, VP, that makes me all kinds of happy ; )
And feel free to yoink the campaign for your uses, especially as you and Gobbo planted the seed for it in my head. It seems a very intriguing setting for a short but epic campaign of around 9 parts. I’m thinking it might even be worth developing as a setting expansion for BotA.
It’ll have to wait until after my next BotA project, though. It’ll be done in a few weeks, but I’ll come back and tell you about it as I complete the graphics and get some screen-shots of the completed bits…
Victory for everyone!
Me an’ Gobbo, we’re just idea machines. You do the hard work and we’ll sit back and watch 🙂
I can’t wait to see the next project, Nathaniel. If it’s even half-as-good as BotA it’ll be effin’ great!
I’ve been listening to some of the streaming tracks from Warp Riders lately and I think I’ve found the ‘inspiration album’ to listen to while I’m working on Barbarians of Heavy Metal, in much the same way that I listened to the Heavy Metal soundtrack while writing BotA. I’m going out to see if I can’t find a CD copy today.
Rockin’! Though it doesn’t feature mecha (which I think I remember is a significant part of the BoHM focus) it certainly has the meat for that kind of environment. Their prior two albums are even less thematically appropriate, but you might want to give them a listen as well. The oomph is there for sure. In any case, enjoy!
Now I know precisely why BotA sings to me. The Heavy Metal soundtrack was one of the first LPs I ever bought and was the primary soundtrack to my early gaming days. Hell, when I was a kid I even wrote my own RPG drawing inspiration from as many of those songs as I could. It was a 2d12 roll-high system* called, oddly enough, Heavy Metal and it had a strong focus on Psionics (hello, Veteran of the Psychic Wars). I don’t think I have it anymore (stupid intervening 28 years of moves!), and I didn’t get to play it much, but I have some damn fine memories of it all the same.
Hey, on a different note… did I see that you live in Dallas? Or am I imaging that? I only ask because that’s my hometown (though I’ve been in Austin since ’89). It’s just a bit of small world-ism that makes me ask.
* I love the d12 and always have. Even as a kid I was sad that it didn’t get more love. I’ve always been an egalitarian… It’s only a matter of time until I break down and convert BoL/BotA/Etc. to 2d12 🙂
So congrats, Nathaniel, you tapped directly into my gaming lizard brain with BotA 🙂
I live in Lewisville, which is in the middle of DFW.
I’ have a friend named Robert Hodgson in Austin right now, and I occasionally think about going down there for one of the Old School Gaming conventions, but I never seem to get the time. And with a baby due in the next couple of weeks, it will be some time still before I head that way again.
The unloved D12, if ever a setting deserved it, it is the Heavy Metal movie…
Ah, Lewisville. Not too far from where I grew up, really. I lived at Preston & LBJ and went to Richardson High School. Those were the days 🙂
I don’t know your friend (at least not by name), but if you do ever make it down here to visit him, ping me and we’ll grab a game if we can. But yes, the impending baby probably means it’ll be a while!
I definitely thought the ol’ d12 and Heavy Metal were a match. But 2d6 gets the job done, too 🙂