D&D Worldbuilding: Fictional Song and Things a Bard Does
Salutations, nerds! What are the bards in your fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons world singing about? That’s what we’re going to be talking about today.
The songs of a fictional D&D world are a really big deal in terms of how the world breathes and the general feel of it as a setting. Remember, once upon a time before we had easy access to the printed word, news was spread through story and song and spake in rhyme so the layfolk would more easily remember it. And if a few things got embellished along the way, well. That’s just the nature of the music made to sooth the beast, isn’t it?
Story behind the bard song
Story behind the bard songIf you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re not a minstrel yourself. If you are, more power to you – I bet your tabletop group adores you. If not, don’t despair. You’d be amazed what an impact you can make with only a title and a description of the general vibe of the song in question.
What’s more important than the actual words, are the story the song is telling and the social implications of it.
For instance (and let me get this one out of the way early, we all know it’s coming), in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, “The Rains of Castamere” is set up as a reminder that Tywin Lannister is not to be messed with. It’s about how thoroughly he crushed the family that dared rebel against him, and when played, tends to sound vaguely threatening. There’s also at least one instance where people play that song specifically to kiss Tywin’s butt. The social impact is real.
It should also be no surprise that Patrick Rothfuss does this stunningly in the Kingkiller Chronicles. After all, the main character in those books is a bard. The songs in those books run the whole spectrum between dramatic and complex (The Lay of Sir Savien Traliard), and light and amusing (Tinker, Tanner). Not all of them have actual words, and some that do only have a few verses actually written out for the reader, but you start to recognize the titles.
You would be amazed what you can do for your players with only a title and a description of the contents of the song. Start off early. If your adventure starts in a tavern (fully valid choice), mention that the player characters know the song being played, that they’ve heard it before. Tell them a cliffnotes version of the story the ballad is about. Use it to foreshadow something you’re going to do with the plot later.
The bard is skilled in song and verse. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]
And what better way to delight your players than to have them get to around 10th level and suddenly realize the bard in the back of the tavern they’ve decided to rest in is now singing about them and something impressive they did earlier on in the campaign?
Minstrels tend to wax poetic, friends, and oftentimes when you get people carrying around sobriquets like “The North Wind” or “The Rage of the River Stygia”, it’s a bard that coined that nickname.
And PCs in D&D games? Man, they do impressive crap like slaying dragons and cutting down hordes of undead all the time.
Share the D&D lore through song
Don’t forget, though, that not all of the songs in your world have to be poetic ballads about heroism.
Sometimes, people write songs as a method for remembering things like the symptoms and cures of dangerous diseases (“Ring around the rosey, pocket full of posies”—people believed disease was spread through scent back then, keep the smell off and you keep the disease out right?).
Bawdy drinking songs exist. Little satirical numbers making fun of something that might have just happened to the king exist, though often times the minstrels who sing them want them done so quietly so they don’t end up losing a hand for it.
A bard as seen in the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]
Keep in mind what people are going to be talking about, the things they’ll remember. Bards aren’t as likely to pick up on something that happened far away in the mountains nobody saw and that wasn’t flashy, or something people were careful not to let them see.
But if it happened in town or just outside of town, if the party has its own bard to spread the news, or if the happening in question is something people are likely to speculate about (someone stole the crown jewels for instance), there might just end up being a song about it.
So please, tell me in the comments below; what does a bard in your D&D world sing about? Who are the heroes praised and immortalized in song and rhyme? What are the names they give to your party members? What do the layfolk whisper at night when the wind blows and brings with it the chill of terror?
[amazon_link asins=’B01MTYQMC9,B005MUAUVC,1938146050′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’nerdarchy-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’722eec3c-b686-11e7-b46a-bf36699f9132′]
Related articles
Grant Brown
February 14, 2018 at 3:14 amMy group’s gaming world is actually one I home-brewed and then opened up for everybody to expand and add onto as we take turns DMing. Right now we are in the “Far East” portion of the world created by my friend, so I am not yet privy to the lore of the area (if he has developed any) so my Half-elf Gypsy-bard (we’re playing 2E), Bar Beng, does not have a whole lot to work with. We just started this campaign. However, Beng’s backstory provides some material:
“Phen Esmerelda was a Gypsy. She danced, she sang. She read fortunes and played her tambourine. Esmeralda inflamed the hearts of many Men, but she took never one to her bed. There was one alone, no Man, and of him she would not speak. An Elf he had been, it was evident, but never more would she tell to any, not even to the son that she bore of that secret tryst. And so Beng grew up, dancing and singing with his mother among the Gypsies. They traveled down the roads of the world in their little family band of wagons, brightening the lives of the people they met with entertainment and mystery. Little Beng grew to outshine even his beautiful mother with the instruments of the Gypsies: the violin, the mandolin, and especially the tambourine. His velveteen voice would rise above all the others in lilting ballads and lays that would charm the coins from the crowds like a silver rain.
Indeed, Bar Beng’s life was almost idyllic. Idyllic, except for one little nagging barb that Beng perceived in he and Esmerelda’s happiness. At times his mother would grow wan and sad, and sing not. If he asked why, she would beg that he leave the matter be. If he asked if it was about his father, she would grow angry with him, the only times that she ever did. Beng came to hate the idea of his father, blaming the Elf he’d never met for the long shadow that he had nonetheless left on their lives. He also distrusted Elves, the few that they met, seeing in them the father who would allow a son to grow up without ever knowing him. But he mostly hid these feelings deep, and to all he was the sweetest-voiced and most outgoing Gypsy-Bard that anyone could remember having the fortune to meet. Animals, like people, were drawn to Beng and his songs, and he could tame the very birds and squirrels out of the trees to dance along beside him. He could stand atop a galloping horse while playing his violin and leap off to balance on the tip of a sea-lion’s nose, without ever missing a note. In short, there was nothing it seemed that Beng could not do. Nothing, except cure his mother of her lingering grief.
One day, along the ever-unwinding road that all Gypsies travel, Beng heard a whisper, a rumor. It spoke to him of an Elf that had lain with the famous Phen Esmerelda, an Elf that had done what most of his kind thought most improper: sire a half-breed human child. Despite the dubious source of this rumor, Beng could not help himself and dashed off to where he thought he could confront this long-sought-for ghost that haunted his identity. But the rumor was nothing more than that: a rumor. A disappointed Beng returned to where his family’s encampment should still have been. He found only wagon ruts in the grass, trampled earth where his people had been reveling in their lively arts but hours before. Yet there were no tracks leading away, no sign whatsoever that the wagons or the people had left at all. Just an empty glade. Frantically Beng asked all in the vicinity if they had seen which way the Gypsies went, or how. But none could say, it seemed to the people around that Esmerelda, the Gypsies, and all of Beng’s world, had simply vanished into thin air.
Brother Beng was bewildered, but not defeated. Armed with the knowledge that his family loved him and would never willingly leave him, and filled with the belief that they were still alive, somewhere, Beng decided to simply continue on his road. If he were meant to find them again (and in his heart he felt he was) then he would find them. Otherwise, his only row to hoe was what it ever had been: to play his songs, entertain, and find adventure and delight on the journey of life.”
Right now I am working on a song about Esmerelda, and I want it to be both happy and hopeful, and sad and melancholy. This is quite difficult, but the end result, I hope, will be worth it. I wonder if there is not some tradition that I could turn to, of the Roma people, or other nomadic group of “Gypsies” to add flavor? In all honesty, I know little about the culture, hence my clumsy Hunchback of Notre Dame reference.