Magic Bells

Magical powers have been attributed to bells for much of human history, in both the West and Far East. The basic premise is that the chiming of the bell drives away evil spirits/lightning/thieves/bad luck/etc. They are essentially a tool that weaponizes sound, directing it at (often) incorporeal or abstract targets. In Garth Nix's Old Kingdom Chronicles, necromancers use a set of 7 bells, which tap into the powers of primordial beings, to unleash specific effects (sleeping, reanimating, forcing movement, speech, thought, binding, and death itself, respectively). This core concept, bell magic, lead me to write my first set of custom rules, an Old Kingdom Chronicles RPG built on a D&D 3.5 chassis (the only system I knew at the time), and gave me my start as a DM.

Based on the folklore, bellringing works kind of like turning undead - while sound emanates from the bell, a targeted type of thing is driven from the space. If we limit it to types of creatures, the bell may ring in the audible frequency range, but it has distinct overtones beyond it only perceptible by the targeted group (or it magically has a low fundamental that matches the targeted creatures' natural frequency and will, over time, vibrate them apart).

Handbells

Now for the implementation. Silver bells repel Sidh and Yokai, an extension of how silver dispels their magic and burns them.

Handbell players have a variety of options when it comes to playing a handbell - the first is a question of how many bells are played. Everyone can ring one bell per hand, but more skilled players can play with 2 or even 3 bells per hand, sounding either 1 at a time or all of them. Furthermore, while a single strike of the clapper is the norm, the bellringer can circle the bell, causing the clapper to slide around the inside of the bell and sustaining the pitch (like sliding your wet finger around the rim of a partially-filled wineglass).

The first ability is something to take note of for later, but not immediately necessary for these rules. However, the ability of a bellringer to arbitrarily sustain the pitch of the bell is a powerful one in this context.

This means that the most important feature of a bell is its loudness, most importantly, the range at which it is still audible (and thus effective). Finding hard numbers on this is somewhat tricky, so I'll cheat. By rearranging the equation I can find relating audibility distance and loudness, I get

r2=10^(L1-L2)/20

Where r2 is the distance at which the sound is L2 loud, if the sound is L1 loud at a distance of 1 yard from the instrument.

Looking at instrument loudness ratings, the upper limit on the sound of a handbell is 100dB (the approximate volume of a fortissimo piano). Now, a 100dB sound is audible for 56,000 yards (since the threshold for hearing is ~5dB for pitches written on the musical staff), which is a massive sphere of influence for a single bell, even at the extremes - that's about 32 miles (admittedly, 32 miles on what I presume is a flat, featureless plain with no sound competition, but still). Perhaps a better range is 55dB, the loudness of a casual conversation. This reduces our 100dB handbell's effective range to 178 yards, which is a far more reasonable range. However, 100dB is the upper limit on how loud a handbell might be - most are not nearly that loud. A 90dB bell is (roughly) half the volume, and travels only 56 yards before crossing beneath our effective threshold, but I want to use 85dB as the standard - it's the threshold for ear damage from prolonged exposure, which means that characters who ring bells for too long will suffer permanent damage, but they can easily ring the bell more quietly for a limited range indefinitely.

Being a fan of round numbers, we'll say that handbells can be played at 3 volumes: 90dB (loud), 85dB (normal), and 80dB (quiet), with effective ranges of 56, 32, and 18 yards. We'll play one last trick and redefine our distances from yards to feet (so that these loudness measures represent what the bellringer hears, not what someone standing in front of the bellringer hears), which lets us shrink these ranges down to 19, 11, and 6 yards of effective range, or 20/10/5 to keep things nice and round.

Returning to silver bells, Sidh and Yokai within the affected range must succeed an Ascetic test (or Magic saving throw) in to remain within that area and their magic becomes more difficult to manifest, requiring them to make casting checks.

Larger Bells

Of course, bells come in more shapes and sizes than just handbells. Churchbells are still a huge part of the soundscape of most European cities - even competing with modern urban noise, one can still hear the churchbells ring out the hour all across the city. The bell and belltower become the center of those communities lucky enough to have one. In most medieval-fantasy settings, the only "practical" reason for this might be the vantage the belltower provides and the ability of the bell to warn of danger. The bell's function in liturgical communities was obviously as a call to prayer (since they had 7-8 different services every day), but we can do better.

The obvious extension is to add bellmaking as a medium under sculpture for the artist/bard. I'd need a new entry in the table detailing different effects a mastercrafted bell (or set of bells) might cause in the countryside. However, I am intrigued by Alexis' discussion of happiness in bardic artwork. Frustratingly, the solution he proposes is impossible for my game - I don't have character levels, so a mechanic that allows them to be acquired faster is not particularly useful, and expediting other kinds of character growth (notch acquisition) is not a particularly elegant solution.

While Alexis was still musing about in what direction to take the bard, I proposed creating a scale of behaviors based upon happiness - an x-happiness settlement behaves in this way, whereas a y-happiness settlement behaves in this other way. It's a ridiculous amount of work, but I think the benefits extend beyond bardic artwork, especially when I return to talking about the settlement campaign at some point in the future.

We can interpret the list of effects bells were thought to abjure in two ways: the first is that bells essentially make the owner/user more lucky (in avoiding theft, lightning strikes, wildfire, evil spirits, whatever) - they are focused upon evading some potential harm, when the chances of that harm occurring are fairly low already. If I still ran my game from a random encounter table, this might be a sensible choice - if the probability of something bad happening is 1-in-6, a community with a bell has instead a 1-in-8 or 1-in-10 chance of suffering that same event. But I don't do that anymore; I want to approach the game as a narrative written by the players that observes cycles of tension and release, which makes that kind of approach less useful.

Instead, community bells increase the happiness of the population that lives near them. The word "happiness" is somewhat problematic. In modern psychology, "happiness" is a technical term that only tangentially relates to its vernacular meaning: "happiness" describes a state of general contentment and inner peace, which quickly links to Buddhist and other non-Western faith traditions. Within the Western psychological literature, "happiness" correlates with trust and risk-taking (which are somewhat linked already). The idea is that happier people are more willing to take chances on something that might make them unhappy because taking that risk allows them to expand, develop, and grow - it is an awareness that one's comfort zone can only expand by leaving it. It's still fairly abstract, but I think this path will give me a powerful tool in the end.

Die Zauberflöte

I am embarrassed. As a musicologist, my training (primarily) deals with Western Art Music ("Classical" Music or dead-white-guy music). One of those dead white guys was this dude named Mozart, and he wrote an opera about a flute which has magical powers, the Zauberflöte (literally, "magic flute") that takes place in a quasi-medieval environment with witches and curses and princesses. And it never occurred to me, until Jon Miller's comment, to mine it for D&Dables.

Short synopsis ofDie Zauberflöte:

Act I

Prince Tamino is attacked by a giant serpent and faints

The Queen of the Night appears, kills the serpent, and vanishes

The professional birdcatcher, Papageno, (costumed as a birdman) enters the scene just as Tamino awakens

The Queen of the Night reappears, gives Tamino a quest to rescue her daughter from the evil sorcerer, giving him the titular Magic Flute, which transmutes grief to joy, and some magic bells for protection

Tamino and Papageno set out to rescue said maiden

Pamina, the maiden in question, failed in her most-recent attempt to escape and is rechained by the slavemaster (who happens to be black)

Papageno bursts on the scene and is so horrified by the slavemaster's blackness that he flees (while the slavemaster is also revolted by Papageno's birdman appearance. Yay 18th century racial norms…)

The "evil sorcerer" appears and, surprise surprise, is actually a good guy (since if you have two magicians in the 18th c., the evil one is always female) who allows Tamino and Pamina to get married (because love at first sight and, well, it's an opera and that's what ingénues do in opera) if Tamino can pass some manly trials of reason and love of nature and other Freemason-y things.

Act II (this act is better than it looks, but it's less interesting for our purposes)

Tamino passes the trials

The Queen of the Night is pissed

Conflict is resolved through magic

Everyone gets married

Things to pull out of this opera:

2 magic items: the Zauberflöte and protective bells (all bells are magical for most of European history, and it is a terrible shame that most people have forgotten this. I need to talk about bells in a way that probably steals from Garth Nix's Abhorsen series).

Creatures:

Giant serpent (meh)

Birdpeople (yes!) that talk to birds and can look like people or like bird-people and have difficulty finding other members of their species

Bigger things:

Unproblematic Patriarchy (nope. I want to be done with that part of D&D's history. Thank you very much)

Women and night and magic and mystery

Men and day and order and logic and reason and "nature"

Unproblematic Racism (Ibid., Ibid. Just nope)

But I will take conflict via cultural misunderstandings and lack of communication, potentially leading to meaningless hostility and generation-spanning conflicts between "men" and "monsters"

Family Drama (yes)

The top-level conflict in the opera is between two divorced parents (the two magicians) and their approach to parenting. That is super cool. We should think more about what happens when two married archmages get into a pissing contest. (Maybe that's where the Owlbear comes from…) This is simultaneously totally banal and utterly fantastic, which is perfect for D&D.

Overall takeaways:

The emergence of the Zauberflöte, just as Alexis is working on a metric to measurehappiness is perfectly timed. Once he gets to a conclusion, I will adapt it to my world/rules and have a brand-new artifact.

I need to spend a lot of time thinking about how bells are fundamentally magical objects (and how that ripples through everything)

A reminder that NPC motivations are often simple, personal things that can explode into huge issues. We don't learn that the "evil sorcerer" and the Queen of the Night were married and had a daughter (Pamina) until late in Act I at the earliest - there is no reason for the PCs to know that the reason they've been asked to burgle the townhouse is because that's where the cheating spouse likes to go with their special friends. Or that the reason there are two teahouses on the same block that conduct nightly raids of the other is that the owner of a business, a retired adventurer, promised his vast wealth to whichever kid could operate the best teahouse and then died before specifying how the teahouse was to be judged, but left the clause in the will, and through the generations the cause of the endless rivalry has vanished into memory but the feud remains virulent as ever. It's a reminder that when things happen to affect our players, they do not need to be only one level deep or exceedingly complex - seemingly-"ordinary" relationship dynamics can spawn something vast and sweeping, inviting the players to investigate and find out the small thing that has generated the larger issue.

Tabletop Soundscapes

The required materials for a tabletop roleplaying game are: paper, pencils, and dice. That's a common formulation. Except, of course, you need a surface upon which one can write. You also need a physical space (that will include that writing surface) in which the game's actors assemble and partake (I'm not going to address online games, like the one I'm in right now). Food is often a part of the rpg experience, as are character miniatures, battlemats, terrain things, beer, computers, books, outlets for those computers, etc.

Having access to a "good" space for tabletop rpgs is a question of privilege - a table in the cafeteria will suffice, but there are a number of factors that are desired, including physical isolation (allowing you to play without casual interruptions by passers-by) and sonic isolation (insulation from non-game-related sounds). The first is fairly straight-forward - everyone understands that playing a tabletop rpg does not work well in an environment full of distractions and interruptions, which leads to us playing in dorm rooms, basements, classrooms late at night, or (most desirably) within the comfort of our own home.

Sound is a fundamental part of the experience - having a sonically static environment facilitates communication as everyone is able to speak at the same volume and be equally heard. The shuffling of character sheets, scratching of graphite, clacking of keys, and clattering of dice underscore the conversational interaction that is the heart of the rpg experience.

This sonic underscore or soundscape interacts our behavior, as we associate specific habits with a specific sonic environment. Imagine the differences between the background sounds of an ER, coffee shop, and office - our impressions of that space, the feelings these spaces trigger in us can be summoned by listening to an audio recording of that place.

Some DMs like to use music's ability to evoke a sense of place consciously, by playing music appropriate to whatever game situation is at-hand. A cursory search for "rpg music" yields a number of sites offering themed tracks (medieval tavern, graveyard, battle music, and so on) to aid the musically-inclined DM in choosing appropriate music.

There are some structural problems with the repertoire given - each track, rather than being the soundscape of whatever environment is referenced, gives a musical representation of that soundscape. If you listen to the "Lost Mine" track, you'll see what I mean. There's very little that's 'mine'-specific, and a whole lot of chromatic brass descents - it sounds like a film score, not the sounds of an actual place. Now, film music is awesome, but it necessarily works to drive tension in the foregrounded activity, building towards a particular moment. In a movie, you can tailor the music to work alongside the events displayed. In a live rpg, though, that kind of synchronization is impossible, and what we're left is an awkward tension build-up communicated by the music that is totally separate from the actual game-playing itself. At best, the players don't notice it. But what usually happens is the music distracts from the experience of playing - it pulls focus from the character's actions (out of the game world) into the real one, a concrete [albeit sonic] reminder that we are engaged in the act of playing the game. This decreases immersion, breaks dramatic tension, and so on. And then, of course, there is the question of what to do when the track ends. Does it loop? Is there a playlist that seamlessly plays a bunch of 'similar' music in a row, at least until the scene changes and we need a new playlist for the new game environment?

The reason for these problems is how the DM conceives of music in their game. While music can evoke a time and place, the players are already doing that in their heads. Those of them who can see mental images have built some visual representation of the described space, those of us who can't have figured something else out. The music does not need to do this work for us. Instead, the function of music during a running is to discipline the rpg soundscape - to maintain a constant sonic environment (changing enough that the static-ness is not a noticeable feature), a series of sounds that underscores every game interaction. Having music (quietly) playing in the background, covering the silences, helps keep players focused because there is now no silence to fill with awkward jokes or tangents that pull players out of the game world.

If the bulk of the music touted as being "for rpgs" is schlock for this kind of work, what can we use? I like to use music that falls into the "ambient" genre - Alva Noto and Brian Eno right now, and more as I acquire it. The tracks are usually sonically-similar (facilitating a more seamless ending of one track and beginning of the next) and don't often feature the kind of volume or rhythm intensification found in most of rpg tracks (which reduces the music/tension conflicts). The downside is that they are entirely electronic music, which can unnerve some people (it can have a strong association with horror films) and can trouble people with expectations that "music" should mirror or reflect the game environment rather than reflect the fact that the game is playing.

But, music can be a valuable DM tool, just as battlemats, custom miniatures, and game props  (they can also be terrible - it depends upon the quality of the product). It's important to know that we have more choices than Yes music and No music.

The Book of Hours

It's time for a brief history lesson.

Monasteries and cathedrals, i.e. large religious centers, celebrated a series of prayers every day in a sequence called the Divine Office.  The Mass (which I'm sure you've heard of) was the highlight of the day's worship, but the Office exists as a companion, with events throughout the day.  The highlights of the Office include Vespers, just before dark, Matins, in the dark of night, and Lauds at dawn.  Life in these places was centered around practicing the Divine Office.

Now, they did not use the same texts or music day-to-day, year-to-year.  Some texts were constant, but most was recited only once each year.  A number of different kinds of books facilitated remembering these rare events, but that's not the focus of what I want to talk about.

As you might know, Catholicism has a number of saints and has assigned a calendar day to each of them.  While every religious location honored these saints on their day, most areas had regional or local saints that they held especially dear (for example, Saint Martin was revered by all of France).  To especially celebrate these people, monks wrote Offices specifically for them - a collection of unique texts and music sung only for that saint.  Some of these Offices were quite elaborate and long, and (at least before the Council of Trent) multiplied until each location had their own, unique tradition and way of practicing Catholicism (and often did not follow the Pope's commands on that subject).  In fact, nearby liturgical communities would compete over who's Offices were better, and better celebrated a saint both places held in high esteem.  There's an adventure in there.  Or three.

Some really special Offices were added onto the end of every part of the Office - Notre Dame was significant in that it had at least two smaller Hours (each segment of the Office was called an Hour) following each regular one - the Hours of the Virgin and the Hours of the Dead.

What I wanted to talk about specifically, though, is the book of hours, the most important book of the late Middle Ages (15th-16th c.).  The book was a contained the Hours of the Virgin and the Hours of the Dead with a whole bunch of personalized stuff thrown in the mix.  Everyone who could read had a book of hours by the 16th c., as the printing press dramatically reduced the cost of these books.  Wealthy aristocrats commissioned beautiful books with unique illuminations on nearly every page, while poorer craftsmen made do with stock images.

The basic idea was that a person at home could read along with each of these so-called Little Hours while the monks or priests or whatever were doing them in the actual religious center, bringing sanctity into the home. Those who couldn't read Latin could meditate upon the images and get the same result.

Here's where they get really cool.  People customized these things like crazy, adding in prayers they'd heard once or twice, using special family prayers, venerating saints particular to their family, and all of these required distinct, unique texts designed by the individual or the individual's family (if it was an inherited book of hours).  By that, I mean that a book of hours functions like a religious spellbook.  The texts are completely mundane, but they have a special relationship with their rightful owner and serve as a channel for that person's faith to manifest.

Especially when you start thinking about those monk-scholars I mentioned a little while ago,journeying for new chants and new prayers, this gets very exciting very quickly.

Each (Catholic) cleric begins play with their book of hours.  The book contains a bunch of stock prayers in it, standard in all books - these would be used for all of the common clerical abilities, like healing, blessing, and so on.  Then we'd have a range of unique spells/chants/prayers, from which the character would have a couple (through some sort of random table) and the rest obtainable not through level advancement but through exploration, asking people about their faith and transcribing their prayers into your book.  Looting a book of hours wouldn't work - learning the story behind why this saint was important to this family or what makes this chant special is what gives the magic its power.

This is a very different take on the cleric.  Rather than trying to shoehorn the cleric into this, or make this some sort of weird optional subclass thing, this seems like a core mechanic for the cantor.  As I procrastinate and stay up late working on my world instead of sleeping or doing 'real' work, I'll keep developing this idea.

Speaking of Sacred (Catholic) Music...

Reading for a class and I come across a section from Chris Page's book, The Christian West:

"Some time before 1123, Peter the abbot of Cava in Campania found that the local seigneur was sporadically emerging from his castrum of San Severino and harassing the workers on the rural estates of the monastery.  He even drove them from one of the fields as they were in the midst of sowing.  The lord's motives are unlikely to have been very complex; the archives of the abbey of Cava are extensive and they leave no doubt that the monastery owned a considerable amount of land.  Lord Roger of San Severino had every reason to enlarge the scope of his tenantry by threatening its rural serfs as a prelude to appropriating its good arable land, and it would not have taken much for his group of armed and mounted men, the garrison of the castellum, to see off the abbey's peasants in the field.  Instead of raising a militia or appealing to a diocesan, however, Abbot Peter decided to defend the furrows with plainsong.  He went out to the field with the serfs and a few monks and 'instantly began to sing chant'.  Lord Roger appeared with his men, but at the sound of the plainsong his mood was softened to the point where he became penitent, even lacrimose, and prostrated himself at the abbot's feet. 'Thus', says Peter's biographer, 'we know that psalmody softens the ferocity of evil spirits and puts them to flight.' (394)

Furthermore, we also get these gems:

"plainsong was a means of healing... it was also, as the miraculous appearance of saints during worship occasionally revealed, a form of conjuration." (394).

Some things to think about when considering how music might play a role in your worlds, especially your sacred music.

The Musical Bard

And now we come to the musical bard, the 'traditional' version of the class.  With every other form of art, I've looked to other games, myths, and fiction for inspiration, and this was no exception.  However, I found a whole lot of junk and very little that was salvageable.  Yes, that was a list of sound-based Pokemon moves that I just referenced.

Before I get to the list, I want to clear up a common misunderstandings about music: it is not a 'universal language'.  That myth was perpetuated by old white European musicologists and music theorists who had almost no experience with non-Western musical traditions (and, for that matter, little experience with European folk ones, either).  Music is only effective when speaking to someone raised in the culture that produced that music.  For example, Franz Schubert, the master of Lieder, was essentially the Mariah Carey or Beyonce of his day.  Take a listen to some of his songs (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is a particular favorite singer of mine).  That probably won't evoke the same resonance as it's contemporary counterpart.  Styles and tastes have changed since the early 19th century.

I break down here how the musical bard would function in the 17th century, but these categories (with the exception of opera) work throughout European history from the Medieval period to the Long 19th Century.  Summarizing, there are three (really four) genres of music found in the 17th century: folk or local music, court music, and liturgical (church) music.  Court music in the 17th century is then broken down into instrumental music and opera, which had just swept the entire continent, reigning supreme over every other type of music until the modern era (even Beethoven spent his entire career trying to write an opera).  Each tradition will have its own sphere of influence: folk or local music will be effective among all common folk of a similar geographic region, but it will be most effective for the specific region of origin of the bard.  An Irish fiddle tune does not have the same effect on the Chinese Imperial Court as it does at a ceilidh.  Court music, of both types, will be effective among the nobility of that region and ineffective among the common folk or nobility of other regions (imagine the Chinese guqin played for Louis XIV).  Liturgical music will have the broadest cross-class reach, as it will affect all who adhere to a particular faith: Catholic music, Lutheran music, Episcopalian music, etc.

Additionally. liturgical music also includes the setting of sacred texts to vocal polyphony - a liturgical bard would be either an organist or singer, although they would need at least one other and preferably two other singers for polyphony to have full effect.

Roll	Folk Traditions	Court Traditions (Instrumental)	Court Traditions (Operatic)	Liturgical Traditions
1	With virtuosic melodic figurations and expressive rhythms, the melody can enthrall an audience.	The piece's unusual arrangment of topics communicates a message decipherable only by the musical elite.	With virtuosic melodic figurations and expressive rhythms, the melody can enthrall an audience.	The composition violates many of the rules of the liturgical tradition, inviting unholy creatures to hear the music.
2	The steady dance meter and spirited melody invites those listening to get up and dance.	The steady dance meter and spirited melody invites those listening to get up and dance.	The melody is innately beguiling, drawing a targeted creature towards the singer.	The holy music consecrates the area in which it is played, for as long as the piece lasts.
3	The tune is somber and mournful.  Those listening are stricken with grief.	The musical themes conjure cantrips, which manifest while the work is played.	The tune is somber and mournful.  Those listening are stricken with grief.	The music is sufficiently angelic that divine spirits appear.
4	The skill required to play the tune conjures local spirits - divine, unholy, or of the wild.	The piece plays with musical conventions, amusing listeners and attracting Sidh/Fey.	The song is intimate and touching, fostering trust between the singer and audience.	All who sing the melody together find increased loyalty and camraderie.
5	The song is fast and free, inspiring revolution in those who hear it.  Those under compulsions or curses may make an extra saving throw.	The work provides an elegant atmosphere, lulling listeners into a false sense of security.  Lessened chance to notice non-obvious things.	The singer portrays extreme naivete; those acting against the singer feel guilty and shamed, decreasing their morale by 2.	The work is a requiem.  If sung over a dead creature, the creature's soul will find peace and never return to this plane.
6	The music touches on long-forgotten religious rites; all who sing or tap along are blessed with a +1 bonus on all checks for the next 24 hours.	By playing a work of anti-music, something that violates musical convention, those within hearing range are disoriented and sickened by the aesthetic shock.	The song is loud and bombastic, intimidating those who hear it and granting Sanctuary to the bard.	The music evokes a feeling of profound serenity.  Aggressive action cannot be taken while the music plays without a saving throw.
7	The tune is sufficiently catchy that the bones of the dead begin to tap along.  As long as the bard plays, bones in the area will do nothing but rattle along.	The piece is tightly rhythmic, helping coordinate movement.  Creatures fighting in formation without training take no penalty as long as the music plays.	The song is so depressing that those who listen must save or commit suicide.	The ceaseless repetition of the cantus firmus is inspiring; when performing the same action twice in a row, receive a +2 bonus to the roll.
8	The melody captivates those who listen, and they will follow the bard until they cease playing.	By employing harmonic frequencies, glass and similarly-breakable things shatter within 60'.	By employing harmonic frequencies, glass and similarly-breakable things shatter within 60'.	The abundant use of perfect consonances are repellent to unholy creatures, forcing them to save or flee.
9	The music is silly, full of whimsy and musical tomfoolery.  While the music plays, morale is improved by 2 and things that might cause offense are taken as jokes instead.	The music is silly, full of whimsy and musical tomfoolery.  While the music plays, morale is improved by 2 and things that might cause offense are taken as jokes instead.	The melody can lull those listening to deep sleep.	The work uses an older liturgical melody, reminding those who recognize it of their faith. If acting within their faith's guidelines, morale is improved by 2.  Else, morale decreased by 2.
10	The tune is sweet and gentle, attracting and enthralling animals.	The order and clarity of the piece are supernally soothing, aiding recovery.  Decrease the time required to heal severe injuries by 20%.	The tune is sweet and gentle, attracting and enthralling animals.	The music is great and terrible.  All who hear it stop.  Those who have dismissed faith must save or repent.