Continuing on from the first volume, Nathaniel has some more to tell us about Barbarians of Heavy Metal, his design process for the same, and Ozzy only knows what else. Check the comments for the real meat!

Editor’s Note: The content that follows was written by Nathaniel, the author of Barbarians of the Aftermath and the forthcoming Barbarians of Heavy Metal. The original post (and the comments thereupon) can be found here. I’m separating out the design diary portions themselves for easy indexing. -tvp-

PART 4: THE BOOKS OF ROCK
Ok, this is the central thematic thrust of the book and, considering the vast breadth of the subject material, is the one most folks will have questions about. After all, if you like Psychobilly music, you might want to know where it fits in to the Rocktagon, why it isn’t represented as a major school and why The Reverand Horton Heat isn’t a major saint. Let me clarify a few things for the music lovers out there:

1. The Rocktagon is designed to create interesting gaming mechanics out of easily identifiable styles. It isn’t a properly academic discussion of rock and its family tree, but a way to get players interacting with the universe and provide them with eight very clear and interesting alternatives for characters (and many more besides that if you count the ‘posers’ and the fact that you can mix licks to create an incredibly diverse set of styles).

2. While you and I might know the subtle differences between Thrash, Death and other types of metal, to the outside world, they all represent speed, emotion and raw destructive power over melody and precision. This creates a good general idea of what the character sounds like, encompasses a number of styles in a tight grouping that keeps the options simple for the layman (the Rocktagon would become a Rocktadodecahedron just for the various styles encompassed in Death alone), and also provides a clear opposition school, in this case Yngwie, which is all about classical precision and complex melodies.

3. The names are all pretty much temporary at this point. I’m pretty set on Sabbathites and Nazarites, but the others are all in flux. The idea is to name them something that really encompasses the general feel of that type of music, but has a more metal name that sounds somewhat like a mystical derivative of the band that best represents that school.

Well, with those explanations out of the way, here is a brief description of the various Books of Rock that make up our Rocktagon and the schools of Martial Music training that are set up around them…

Sabbathite: The original Heavy Metal style symbolized by Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Dio. Heavily identified with occultism, Sabbathites try to cultivate a demonic image in their music and style.

Patron Saint: The Great OZ AKA The Prince of Darkness

Imagery: Ozzy with his arms folded over holding a headless bat in one hand and a headless dove in the other.

Opposition School: The Nazarites. The Judeo-Christian belief system stands opposed to everything truly dark and metal, in the Sabbathite’s eyes.

Great House: House Dio

Hayre: Metal popularized in the late 70′s, early eighties including Motley Crue, Poison and, most importantly, KISS. Very upbeat celebratory anthems with a bacchanal theme.

Patron Saint: The 4-Fold One AKA The God of Thunder

Imagery: A KISS amalgam wearing a combination of the 4 original members costumes and a head with the 4 faces of the original members. Arms are crossed, with an Hookah in one hand and a bottle in the other.

Opposition School: The Nihilists. The followers of Hayre have an intense dislike of killjoys and party-crashers.

Great House: House Simmons

Led: Blues based heavy rock popularized by Led Zepplin, AC/DC and Deep Purple. Lyrically Deep and musically diverse.

Patron Saint: Zoso AKA The Hermetic Twins

Imagery: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant as conjoined twins. Page has an Axe and Bow, Plant is giving a banshee wail of great power and holds a Book with 4 mystical symbols on it.

Opposition School: The Punks. The followers of Zoso find the brash, anarchistic Punks antithetical to harmony in the metalsphere, a disharmonious rejection of the hermetical order of the universe.

Great House: House Bron-Y Aur

Yngwie: Named for Ygnwie Malmsteen, the patron saint of Virtuoso Metal and including the likes of Randy Rhodes and other Guitar Gods.

Patron Saint: Yngwie AKA The Axe Master

Imagery: Yngwie Malmsteen holding an Axe.

Opposition School: The Deadites. The Yngwies are the ultimate musicians (as far as they’re concerned) and the unlovely noise and imprecision of Death disturbs them to no end.

Great House: House Rhodes

Nazarite: Christian Rock like Petra, White Lion and Stryper. Has a mix from all the other styles (except Sabbathite) but the underlying theme is worship of the Judeo-Christian God.

Patron Saint: Gabriel AKA The Messenger

Imagery: An Arch-angel wreathed in fire and holding a Trumpet.

Opposition School: The Sabbathites are evil incarnate in the Nazarite’s eyes, witches, sorcerers and satanic cohorts who stand between them and the salvation of the metalsphere.

Great House: House Luther

Nihilist (Formerly Alt): Alternative Rock from Nirvana to Goth rock. Basically nihilistic and obsessed with ‘new’ sounds.

Patron Saint: The Suicide King AKA The Gloom

Imagery: Kurt Cobain, arms crossed, with a shotgun in one hand and a joint in the other OR Robert Smith of the Cure, crying blood, with arms crossed holding a pistol in one hand and an Ankh in the other. Haven’t decided which, yet.

Opposition School: Hayre. To the typical Nihilist, the simple, catchy, live fast and party hard rhythms of Hayre smack of commercialism, the ultimate evil to the Nihilist who sees life for what it truly is.

Great House: House Nirvana

Punk: Anarchistic and unlovely, Punk is the music of the ‘true’ rebels (at least as far as they’re concerned).

Patron Saint: The Rotten One AKA The Anarchist

Imagery: Johnny Rotten looking suitably crazed with a nimbus of light around his head giving a banshee wail.

Opposition School: Led. The followers of Zoso are dinosaur rockers, old farts who try to impose order and beauty on an a decidedly random and uncaring universe. This galls the Punks whose main goal is to give the universe the finger and try to take it down with them.

Great House: There is no House representing Punk as that would require an organization and leadership than is totally antithetical in Punk ethos. There is a section of the galaxy known as Punk Space, but it is actually nothing more than a whole swath of Star Systems with ever shifting borders totally dominated by anarchy and dedicated to the punk ideal. Occasionally, the pent up energy of this area will spill out into the rest of the universe as Punk Crusades, massive raids to pillage, vandalize and occasionally (when luck is on their side) conquer neighboring star systems.

Deadite: Death, Thrash and other types of Speed Metal. Long on noise, speed, emotion and raw destructive power over melody and precision.

Patron Saint: The Cowboy from Hell AKA The Sound & The Fury

Imagery: Dimebag Darrell with a Cowboy hat on, grinning maniacally with one hand holding an axe and another stroking a Panther.

Opposition School: Yngwie. Prancing, wussies with their finger exercises and their scales piss off the Deadites to no end, as they revel in the pure sound and fury of musical weaponry over artsy-fartsy technique.

Great House: House Pantera

Each house will have its own Heroic Backgrounds for each musical position a band might have, so you’ll be able to be a ‘Sabbithite Axe’ or a ‘Punk Beater.’

In addition, there will be a set of musical ‘Licks’ that represent some of the musical styles of that School, like the Sabbithite’s ‘Devil’s Triad’ or the ‘Arpeggio’ of the Yngwie school. These will be used in the musical dueling rules.

Finally, there will be a ninth school which will be for the lesser musical schools like Hip Hop, Funk, Country, etc. It will contain a set of generic backgrounds and Licks that you can mix and match to create these custom musical schools, but those of the ninth school will have flaws that make it harder for them to get along in headbanger society.

Editor’s Note: The content that follows was written by Nathaniel, the author of Barbarians of the Aftermath and the forthcoming Barbarians of Heavy Metal. The original post (and the comments thereupon) can be found here. I’m separating out the design diary portions themselves for easy indexing. -tvp-

PART 3: CAREERS
Ok, a short entry today, as the baby madness around the house is building to a crescendo that will only be nullified once the kid is born.

Here is the list of careers for BoHM. There are 24 in all, and not all of them are Metal enough name-wise, so I’m open to suggestions about names as well as new careers.

Assassin: Even in the 31st century, where being loud and brash is the status qou, there are those who forgo all of the killer noise for killer silence.

Barbarian: It’s a BoX product, so there MUST be barbarians. In the game, these represent pretty much everyone living on the very fringes of headbanger society on primitive worlds so far off the beaten path that planetary society regressed ever further back than the feudal age, to a time of barbaric tribes and clans (that’s right. I said it. The Clans in this universe are actually less advanced than their BT counterparts! Take that, FASA!)…

Beast Master: Somebody needs to be able to train all those rottweilers, snakes and pseudo dragons that headbangers buy to add to their metalocity. Oh, and they train beasts of burden as well, for those who want to be true ‘cowboys from hell…’

Dok: The medical arts are still necessary, although most Docs, as are most educated classes, are typically traveling monks from the ‘Great Church,’ typically because few headbangers have the patience to learn anything beyond basic field medicine.

Flyboy: Pilots of aero-fighters, aircraft that can also travel in space.

Groupie: Basically Courtesans.

Hunter: In a fuedal society, hunting is actually a main source of food. THe best hunters in the galaxy are the members of House Nugent.

Interrogator:Inquisitors, basically, with an extreme dedication to their particular Book of Rock. Their main function is to seek out those who ‘aren’t metal’ enough for their particular segment of the Rocktagon and punish accordingly.

Manager: These are the leaders of Titan Bands, officers of a sort with organizational skill in large scale battles who operate from command vehicles near the back of the line.

Mercenary: There are a ton of military bodies who owe no allegiance to anyone but the highest bidder.

Occultist: The Sabbathites in particular produce a number of mystics and cultists of old, dead religions. These religions are far cries from their antecedents, however, with rites and ‘traditions’ that are usually made up to make them more ‘Metal,’ such as biting the heads off bats or worshiping fictional monsters.

Priest: The ‘Great Church’ is the last bastion of the morals and codes of the ‘old days’ before civilization fell and was taken over by the headbangers. They still send missionaries out into headbanger society, and are actually tolerated for the academic and technical skills they bring with them, skills which are usually unavailable to headbangers or are of no interest to anyone with a truly metal outlook.

Raider: Pirates and planetary raiders are part of daily life in the petty kingdoms.

Roadie: Technical support crew for Titan Bands, they are skilled in construction, heavy equipment usage and drive support vehicles from trucks to tanks. They can repair just about anything that isn’t AdTek, including doing repairs on Titans.

Scavenger: There are those who have been shunned by society for any number of reasons, but typically for not being ‘metal’ enough. They may eventually return to the good graces of the metal community by proving their worth (usually at the cost of proving themselves more metal than somebody else, who takes their place in the scavenger ranks), but most die scavenging scrap and other supplies to sell to survive or join the Great Church, rejoining headbanger society as monks with a different calling.

Scholar: The Monks of the Great Church are the only ones with the patience to take on the more academic tasks that bore headbangers to tears. This is a catch all career that can be used for anything from Lawyers to Accountants to Programmers.

Scout: A combination of forward observer and spy. Sneaky and observant.

Slave: Scavengers are lucky they’re not slaves. Slaves are what prisoners of war become if they aren’t important or rich enough to be ransomed and the degrading life of a slave makes scavenging look like a worthy past time. The only way out of slavery is to escape and hope that you can find someone to take you in just to spit in the eye of your master, survive as a scavenger for a time until they can get back into society, or join the Church.

Soldier: These are the regular troops of the Great Houses and Petty Fiefs and Kingdoms

Tek: Only the monks of the Great Church possess the technical skills to repair AdTek, the lost tek of the ancients, although even they are unable to reproduce such technology and their skills are often shrouded in mysticism.

Titan Rider: The nobility of headbanger society, those who own or can operate these massive behemoths are, by definition, more metal than everyone else. The rock stars idolized by a society of rock stars.

Tradesman: This is a catch all category that allows one to take a career in basic trade skills, like leather working (leather being the preferred clothing of the 31st century second only to flame retardant spandex), farming (something so unmetal that its relegated to slaves) or vehicle detailing (which is how vehicles and Titans get their spikes, metal goblin faces and cool paint jobs).

Warlord: These are the rulers of headbanger society, usually by noble bloodline, who command anything from aa small army to a petty kingdom of linked star systems.

Warp Rider: The warp riders are all possessed of a rare psychic gift that allows them to ‘see’ disturbances caused by space-folds which allows them to steer a ship into hyperspace. They also have slight precognitive abilities which allow them to see a small way into the future, allowing them to plot a course over light years of distance. These individuals are usually identified in childhood and given to the Great Church who trains them in the extremely complex skills necessary for interstellar navigation so that they may keep interstellar commerce alive. As their gifts and skills strengthen they may make longer and longer jumps, and the most advanced Warp Riders, given the title of Navigator or Navigatrix, and can make jumps thousands of light years at a time.

Due to the strange time dilation effects of warp-jumping, most Navigators and Navigatrixes are often centuries older than they look and there are still a few that remember the great war…

Up Next: The Books of Rock…