Saturday, January 25, 2025

Geeky SKAturdays begin for 2025, and I'm shaking things up a bit!

So, I don't want to rock your reality too hard with a headline like that, especially during a week when we're already experiencing some...changes...here in the U.S. of A., but I'm going to try a slightly different approach to the Geeky SKAturday feature in 2025.  I still plan to post songs I like, along with some nerd content that fits a bizarre assumption I insist on maintaining, that people are out there playing a ska-themed RPG.  However, this year I'm also trying to do a better job of staying up on new music in the realm of ska and ska-adjacent genres (made easier by the efforts of those who make easily searchable Spotify playlists and regularly post updates on Reddit), so I'm going to focus each week on a new (or fairly new) release.

And the RPG content...for that, I'm going to try to take some themes from the music that I share and connect them to lore and mechanics from a specific ska-themed RPG campaign I'm building.  In this setting, many ska bands are also time-traveling protectors of multiversal order.  Please...just roll with it.  The hope is that by some number of weeks into this "project," there will be something kinda-sorta-playable put together.  (And, I will be continuing the trend of adding new sounds to the toolbox of the upbeat spellcasters known as Rudies...)

The Gamblers, from their Facebook page.  (Facebook is still okay to use, right?  I can't keep up anymore...)

SO...for the first installment, I want to look at the UK band known as The Gamblers, an early reggae/trad ska outfit started by Mark RSK from the Oi! band Booze & Glory (who have also done some reggae stuff, I believe).  Earlier this month, they released a fun ode to classic reggae called "Boom! Boom!"  Enjoy...!


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So, how does this tie into rolling dice around a table and playing out a "ska story?"  I'm glad you let me ask!

I think the best place to look is in this song's unabashed faith in the power of reggae.  Here's the chorus:

And we don’t need here any noisy riffs
No screaming voices, push 'em off the cliff
We just want Laurel, Desmond and Toots
Heavy beat and the bovver boots
So shake your hips to this reggae tunes
Walkin' bass and the bam bam booms

I am, in general, a fan of the sentiment that there is a specific sort of power to be found in a genre of music.  And we see this for all sorts of styles...the idea of harnessing the power of funk, or of metal, or maybe most classically, of rawk.  It's silly but it's fun.  And that's something that would be nice to capture in a tabletop game...a hopeful (and arguably naïve, but I'm good with that) belief that a style of music can be a force for good in the world.  For our heroes, the dropbeat and the skank, and all of the history and hope they carry with them, power the "magic" they harness.

Oh, and maybe even their time travel capabilities...!  I'm still working that out, but I think the organization that protects the timestream will be called the Soundsystem Khrononaut All-Stars, maybe with a logo looking something like this...


I'm not completely sold on Soundsystem in the name yet; I like the sound (heh) of it and the nod to ska culture, but I'm trying to figure out how much it feels like cultural appropriation to be used in a silly RPG setting like this.  If not that, they'll probably be something like the Sentinel Khrononaut All-Stars, since they are the multiverse's protectors.

And then maybe smaller patches can be worn by each agent of SKA, with an icon indicating their department/specialty.  Like for Communications, it could look like this...


And the possibilities are pretty much endless.  I could see these being something like R&D, Intelligence, and Security.


And that's all for this SKAturday...have a great weekend, all!

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