AnimeJapan 2023 kicks off on the 25th, and TOHO has assembled five all-star teams of artists and animators for Music Films. The result is a collaboration music video from each of them.

There’s one to see below, but first, here’s a shorter trailer.

The next one in the series is out shortly. We kicked off with BUMP OF CHICKEN (SPY x FAMILY Cour 2 OP) and animator loundraw at FLAT STUDIO giving us Tentai Kansoku” (“Stargazing”). Here’s what’s next;

• March 21: “Himitsu no Hana no Niwa” by Ryokuoushoku Shakai with Namiko Ishidate
• March 22: “Neko to Wakai se na” by Hentai Shinshi Club with Mizuki Ito
• March 23: “Detarame na Sekai no Melodrama” by CreepHyp with China at TOHO animation STUDIO
• March 24: “COLORs” by SawanoHiroyuki[nZk] and Motohiro Hata with Tetsuro Araki at WIT Studio

What’s Stargazing like? Check it out;

That means COLORs is out, and then we’re straight into AnimeJapan 2023, which seems like a great way to do it. It’s a celebration of ten years of TOHO animation.

Via Crunchyroll.

Quick Links

• AnimeJapan 2023 (English)

What do you think the original music for the nearly here D&D movie sounds like? Fast and dramatic? Comedy? Chilled?

Australian psychedelic group Tame Impala have released Wings of Time, a new song written for Honor Among Thieves. It’s a mellow anthem. 

The band’s core member Kevin Parker wrote Wings of Time with the aid of Pond’s Nicholas Allbrook. He told press;

Being asked to do a track for the D&D soundtrack seemed like an unmissable opportunity to indulge in my long time love of fantasy prog rock. I recruited my good friend Nicholas Allbrook, who is the person I know appreciates this subject matter the most. We rented a villa in Spain, that kind of felt like a castle, for two nights whilst on tour for Primavera. That location got us in the right frame of mind and it went from there. We stayed up late coming up with weird ideas and song lyrics.”

Parker is on a role and has written for the acclaimed Edge of Reality, the Baz Lurhmann Elvis biopic as well as a collab with Diana Ross for Turn Up the Sunshine which featured on Minions: The Rise of Gru.

The D&D movie features Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant, Rege-Jean Page and the initial select audience reactions have been reassuring. It’s due out on the 31st in the UK, a fortnight or so after Shazam. 

Quick Links

• Honor Among Thieves tickets: Cineworld

J-pop star Eve sings the OP for Jujutsu Kaisen and now performs White Snow. The single is the theme song for the live-action Black Night Parade and has been given its own anime music video.

Directing the music video is Haruka Fujita, who helmed Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll.

The animation was produced by CloverWorks, who have experience with loads of music in Bocchi! The Rock. The art direction was by Summer Time Rendering’s Anna Akasaka.

Via Crunchyroll.

RPG designer Nick Whelan has been recording D&D Christmas carols for years.

The latest is Hark! I Am a Hireling, which he blogs reflects the sad fate of many NPCs.

As is tradition on this day, I’ve crafted a song for you to cringe at! This year I’ve taken the melody of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and replaced the lyrics with a little story from the perspective of a hireling. One that I think reflects a common experience for these ill-fated NPCs in many OSR games

Hark! I Am a Hireling

“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is a popular Christmas carol first published in 1739 in the collection Hymns and Sacred Poems by Charles Wesley. The song’s original version had nine verses, though modern versions typically only include four. It is believed that the song’s melody was borrowed from an earlier German tune written by George Frideric Handel.

If you’re more interested in tabletop history, or equally so, than the musical background, there’s a selection of Nick’s games on DriveThruRPG which includes both the Deadly Dungeons and, well, The Daschund Dungeon.

Other D&D carols

You can listen to a collection of songs from other the years in this playlist

Dark Lord Wenceslaus

Silent Thief, Greedy Thief

O Little Keep on Borderlands

Inkluniati is a computer game by Yaza Games, published by Daedalic, and comes to almost everything and everywhere in January.

As the name suggests, there’s an ink theme, but the game also invokes medieval manuscripts and is an excellent match for the bardcore singer Hildegard von Blingin’.

The YouTube for the official Beasts of Yore song, by Hildegard and for Inkluniati says;

To arms! The rabbits are attacking! I present one last song before the New Year, which I created for the medieval fighting game Inkulinati. They originally asked me to write a song, but I also ended up voicing my namesake character, Hildegard von Bingen. If you play this game you may hear me die over and over again. Or…hopefully win! Inkulinati is an ink-based strategy straight from medieval manuscripts, where a rabbit’s bum can be deadlier than a dog’s sword. Become a master of the Living Ink, build your own bestiary, defeat medieval superstars and collect perks to unleash hidden powers!

The song is loosely based on Neidhart von Reuental’s work, (1180-1237) “Meie, din liehter schin” with original lyrics and a Latin-ish chorus. The characters you see in the video are all units/beasts that you will command in the game.

Inkluniati screenshots

Do you listen to music while you’re working? While you’re designing D&D adventures, worlds or characters? What about Christmas songs?

Workamajig has shared some quirky research. The project management company starts of by drawing attention to a scientific study from Spotify and Dr Emma Gray of The British CBT and Counseling Service in London. The research reveals that songs with beats per minute (BPMs) ranging from 50 to 80 are ideal for productivity, assisting you in becoming relaxed and alert and boosting concentration.

To cover a wide selection of well-known holiday music, Workamajig analysed the list of the most played holiday music according to Slingo and Spotify’s Christmas Classics playlist.

The result is two charts; the best holiday songs for productivity and the most distracting. A whole new set of tabletop RPG design challenges! Here’s a new challenge: designing a Warlock with Christmas carols playing in the background.

Best Christmas Songs for Productivity

Here’s the thing… I can imagine someone writing an adventure to Carol of the Bells!

Most Distracting Christmas Songs 

I can’t say I’ve written or designed much in the way of RPG material to holiday music, but I’m confident I’ve done so to any of the above. Have you?

I know it’s a spot of content marketing, but I imagine Workamjig has some skin in the game as they are a project management solution, and, golly, is that an area many GMs find themselves in!

Dragon Warrior and Tiger Wizard are offering fans and people discovering the hip-hop pair a chance to get their music on CD. It’s the latest technology.

A mini dungeon crawl is included, and the $900 funding goal has already been met. You can find out more or back from the Kickstarter page, and I’ve embedded the Armor Classy album below.

[Back this Campaign]

The CD (Compact Dungeon) is the prize for this funded Kickstarter with a system-agnostic 10-room dungeon crawl that, Epic Levels say, suits characters of any level.

The Kickstarter doesn’t link to a sample, but Armor Classy isn’t hard to find. The campaign, after all, isn’t to pay for the music but the spinny disc.

Like the group’s name, Armor Classy opens with an epic orchestral crescendo on “Rather be Rollin’.” The song then moves into an anthemic banger touting the duo’s preference to playing RPGs over everything else. The album skillfully maneuvers from funky grooves over boom bap beats on tracks like “Liches be Trippin'” and “Underdark Exterminators,” to synth-laden songs with innovative percussion like “Minotaur Musk” and “DM Killed My Character.” The latter’s hauntingly beautiful chorus is brought to celestial heights by Grace Bellury (Karaoke, Del Vinicci, Lille). Armor Classy takes the best bits from the history of hip hop, disregards current trends and forges its own unique path.

Backers who contribute $18 or more to the campaign will get the CD and booklet, with a map, inserted alongside the disc. It’ll ship worldwide.

Step up to $100 as a super-backer, and then Tiger Wizard will also draw you a random monster and include it with the CDungeon and map.

Epic Levels estimate the main discs will be in the post by February, and the Tiger Wizard specials the next month.

When the Moon Hangs Low is a gothic action RPG from Isolation Games, it’s been successful enough to do that rare thing for an indie RPG; it’s back on Kickstarter for a print edition.

As a special treat, Geek Native has a playlist by Rob Leigh, the game’s designer, of music appropriate to the game. It’s inspiration, background music for before or during play or perhaps even for the approach of Halloween.

First, though, let’s take a look at the Kickstarter.

[Back this Campaign]

The original PDF of the game is available on DriveThruRPG where it has a full-size preview and has become an electrum bestseller.

There’s also a Discord if you want to talk about the game, question people familiar with it, or hang around with fellow gamers.

When the Moon Hangs Low playlist

Thanks to Rob for putting together this Spotify compilation.

There are 25 tracks, an hour and a half of music.

About Harrowmire

The game is set in the city of Harrowmire; a decrepit, gothic city in the grip of a terrible curse. The world is similar to our own towards the end of the Industrial Revolution of the 1840s; new discoveries are beginning to revolutionise society but there is still an air of mystery and darkness. Harrowmire is inspired by early Victorian-era London, Prague, Paris and similar cities. It is an imposing and labyrinthine metropolis that reaches into the sky, with towering buildings linked by walkways and bridges that crisscross and overlap. Harrowmire was a place of both incredible decadence and crushing poverty until a series of terrible tragedies left it ruined and mired in darkness.

Once, people flocked to Harrowmire to either seek their fortune in the ancient necropolis beneath the city, or in search of the miraculous life-extending Bitter Sacrament. But now the terrible sorrow plague has ravaged the city, striking down rich and poor alike. While most victims simply die in agony, a small percentage are instead twisted into bloodthirsty ghouls. As if that were not enough, during the chaos of the plague a terrible fire swept through Harrowmire, killing thousands and leaving much of the city in ruins.

Pledges

You can support the game by sharing news of the campaign on social media or by offering some cash. If you can offer £5, you’ll get your name in the book; at £10, you’ll get that and a PDF copy.

There’s a wait for that PDF as Kickstarter is also funding new art, which will need to be added; the layout changed as a result.

Backers who can find £20 to support the project will get a print-on-demand code discount. As usual, that still means there’s a printer and shipping cost.

There’s 1 slot left for anyone who wants to become an Emissary of Darkness and crate a Mark for the game, a sigil that hunters bear.

The estimated delivery for the campaign is April 2023.

Quick Links

• When the Moon Hangs Low

ZineQuest is a season on Kickstarter that encourages creators to try something new by warming up the market of people willing to buy new. Clever, but so is taking two golden oldies and doing something new by blending both.

Maidson’s Eric Garneau has taken inspiration from the seminal power metal of Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow (later of Blackmore’s Night) with D&D. The campaign to bring this 36-page black and white zine to life has two weeks to find $1,000 and is nearly there. You can join in at Kickstarter.

[Back this Campaign]

I’m sure fights have started over this, but I’ll say it anyway; is Rainbow ‘power metal’? I’m not sure.

I am sure that Blackmore: a high fantasy Rock & Roll zine for 5E & OSE, will contain (at least) three connected adventures if it funds. These adventures will be inspired by the 1970s incarnation of Rainbow as well as the D&D modules of the era.

The three adventures are;

• “Catch the Rainbow“: The beautiful Castle Blackmore is the last remaining triumph of a long-gone civilisation, suspended high above the landscape by unidentified magicks. But once a year, during the Year of the Fox, a brilliant rainbow bridge materialises to link the castle above with the lower regions. What riches does the Blackmore Castle contain? (formerly published as a zine; updated, re-edited, and with new illustrations for OSE)
• “Stargazer“: A chance encounter with a fortune teller brings back hazy memories of a trip to a powerful magical location. You must overcome a mysterious foe and discover the mysteries of the night sky and yourself before you can hope to find your way home.
• In “L.A. Connection“, your party must enter the Gates of Babylon at any cost to learn the truth about this strange connection to Los Angeles because they are helpless and alone in a world that doesn’t seem to use magic.

As is common in ZineQuest, the pledge tiers are straightforward, and you can support the zine by telling folks about it.

If you can pledge $8 or more, you’ll be thanked with a PDF edition of the adventures.

Alternatively, if you can find $15 to support the project, there’s a print of the black and white zine and the PDF.

Eric calculates delivery of Blackmore: a high fantasy Rock & Roll zine for 5E & OSE in December.

Pegasus have the rights to the German language versions of Shadow, the cyberpunk-fantasy tabletop RPG, and they commissioned the duo Traumlabor to do an official soundtrack.

Previously, the Shadowrun music was only available as part of a digital download from the Pegasus store. This week, though, Traumlabor also got the rights to publish the music.

So, Traumlabor is publishing it for free, and you can listen to all their Shadowrun music here.

Fans can tip the composers directly via PayPal.

Sarik & Rattle, aka Traumabor, say that the tracks are intended to boost the atmosphere of typical Shadowrun scenes but not get in the way. What’s a typical Shadowrun RPG scene? Examples the pair give are;

• A stroll through the Sprawl,
• a fight to the death,
• the players bugging the DM for Karma

Oh, yeah, these two have played the game.

You can listen to the tracks directly from your browser or download them one at a time as MP3. Geek Native is unable to embed them for you.

Quick Links

• Traumlabor’s Shadowrun tracks.