14 August 2015

LISTEN TO MY SONG: Or how do play the Minmei in BRP Mecha?

I'm stumped on how to model the power of song  in Macross using BRP.

As I am focused on following the fleet of Megaroad-01, I could simply ignore it as Lynn Minmei is on board and that allows me to place it in the background and wholly GM fiat territory. This is not satisfactory because then noone can start out as a wannabee pop idol who eventually has a massive impact on the relations between the fleet and soon to be former existential threat.

This leaves me wanting something mechanical. I could simply leave it in the realm of the mundane Perform/Sing skill, as is shown in SDF/DYRL?, and thereby ignoring the Song Energy shenanigans of 7 with Basra and Fire Bomber/Sound Force, and I can easily ignore the specifics of Frontier as it's based on a bacterial infection. If I do leave it as a mundane skill then power song would by implication only affect uncultured Zentradi, which leaves for a boring and already done threat. I'm still not even sure how the Sharon Apple Incident happend, was it just mass hypnosis? But even then that still falls into mundane, and only affecting humans and Zentradi. Zero was simply a specific blood-line and a specific song being a key, so I'm inclined to partially ignore that.

But the fact that Zero had a specific song being a key, and DYRL? ending Space War 1 with a translated Protoculture pop song does open up the possibility as mundane song and music as a method of communication with aliens that are also derived/created by the Protoculture, or their artifacts. This changes the focus from music being used as a weapon like the bulk of the franchise.

I could model the power of song as a power. The most likely candidate is one or more psychic powers, specifically a modification of Emotion Control, if I were to favor the Basara Song Energy view of music as a power. The downside is the lack of mass influence that is shown with Minmei and Ranka/Sheryl. Using Song Energy as a psychic power works with the one or a very small number of enemies, such as the individual protodevlin that Sound Force fought, and it might also work alongside the more mundane mass culture shock style influence shown on Zentradi and mind-controlled Varuta.

I don't think mutations or super powers would be suitable for modeling the power of song. The sample magic and sorcery in the BGB also don't look right. I might be able to do something with Spirit Magic from The Magic Book, which by the way gave some ideas for a potential alien species to run into.