Roll Dice, Make Music!!

A picture of Outer Wilds Main Theme sheet musicby Andrew Prahlow.

I've had this idea rolling around my head since GenCon (so not very long) about how ttrpg sessions, regardless of system, could empower a group to create music! I wouldn't call myself a musician, but I used to play in my high school band back in the day, haha. So, I have the smallest idea of what I'm doing when it comes to reading and wrting sheet music.

I'm going to be using Powered by the Apocalypse (PBtA) as an example, since playbooks fit this idea vwell. The premise is that each move you use corresponds to a specific note. String those together, and you get music!! Here's an overview of the process:

1. Roll for Time Signature
2. Map music notes to playbook moves
3. When a player takes a move, mark the Note down and the roll.
4. (Optional) Determine if the note is flat or sharp
5. Play the music!

Let's look at something like Monster of the Week and get into the specifics.

Roll for Time Signature

Before you start playing, you need to roll for your Time Signature which sets how many beats there are per bar. You can roll a d2 or flip a coin to determine time signature. I know these aren't the only time signatures possible, but they are the most common and easiest to grasp.

Map notes to playbook moves

With a time signature set, let's look at the moves in MOTW. They are the following:

• Kick Some Ass
• Act Under Pressure
• Help Out
• Investigate a Mystery
• Manipulate Someone
• Protect Someone
• Read a Bad Situation
• Use Magic
• Big Magic

There are some other Weird and Phenomena ones too, but let's just start with these. Now, let's pair these moves with our notes. Here's a brief on sheet music for those unfamiliar. The whole thing is called the Staff, then we have Lines and Spaces. Notes can be on both Lines and Spaces. We have mnemonics to remember which music notes go where. For the lines, it's "Every Good Boy Does Fine", or as I prefer to remember it, "Every God Bows Down First". The spaces spell out "FACE" with no cool mnemonic to remember.

For simplicity, we're only looking at The Treble Clef which is the fancy lookin 'G' on the left-hand side of the Staff in the picture.

So we're going to take the notes and tie them to moves. You can do this randomly or roll for it or whatever. I'm using the mnemonics from above and going straight down the list, so I know which E note goes where rather than having to guess. So now my move list looks like this:

Marking the Note in Play

Imagine your character sheet or a group handout has all this written up and there's a blank piece of music sheet to mark on as you and your group play. Let's say the first move of the session is Act Under Pressure, and that's a G note. Let's say it was a really good roll of 11.

With PBtA, each Move has a tier of of success that we can pair with note length like so.

So our Act Under Pressure roll of 11 would be a half note of G.

What happens when you fail a roll? Great question! That becomes a rest note, and if you fail consectively, it's another rest.

(Optional) Roll for Flat or Sharp note

Ahhh, but what about flat or sharp notes? You can count odds as sharp, and evens as flats based on the roll.

So, our Act Under Pressure would become a G-sharp for half a note.

Mapping to Sheet Music

You don't have to make the sheet music as you play. Instead you keep a running list of all the moves with their roll and map it later as a post-session activity. The notation then becomes a table like this:

You still have a quick reference/record of it, but this way it doesn't slow down the action of the game at all. After that, you now have a bit of music you could play or share or ask someone you know who is musically inclined to play it for you!

Other Thoughts

Some other ideas/options for this system. The music could be broken up further where each player has their own music and then it all comes together. Maybe player 1 is a guitar, while player 2 is a piano. There are a bunch of directions you could take this idea in.

One-shot sessions could be riffs, while campaigns are symphonies.

Either way, I think the music a group creates could be a fun memento to have.

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