Punk, Post-Punk, & Yacht Rock TTRPG Inspirations

Young Gun Silver Fox, Poison Ruin, & Mach Tiver

In a recent Honest Broker newsletter, Ted Gioia recommended some new musicians who honor the “time-honored yacht rock vibe.” I am unapologetically a fan of many artists who are typically lumped into the yacht rock category, but with rare exceptions, they have not been a source of TTRPG inspiration for me.

The video for “Stevie & Sly” by Young Gun Silver Fox, however, delivers a fantastic twist on some fantasy tropes. It features a curio shop run by a white-haired & bearded sage/wizard who offers a magic item I would love to have. And the song is killer. Check it out here:

All of Ted’s suggestions were on point, so be sure to read the whole article and listen to the other artists:

Yacht Rock Sails Again!

Poison Ruin

A thread on Bluesky started by Perplexing Ruins surfaced recommendations for punk/post punk tabletop roleplaying game music, rather than the more common heavy metal genre:

I’m thankful to Zach Hazard Vaupen, who suggested the new-to-me band Poison Ruin. I spun a couple of their albums from the Poison Ruin Bandcamp page and was immediately hooked by the way they blend punk, post-punk, and dungeon synth in their music. I ordered some physical product so I could fill the halls of Critical Hit Parader headquarters with tunes from Poison Ruin.

The following description from the press materials for their 2023 album Harvest illustrates the ambition and thoughtfulness of Poison Ruin:

Philadelphia Punks POISON RUIN make their Relapse Records debut with their new album, Harvest!

Evoking a rich tapestry of ice-caked forests, peasant revolts, and silent knights, POISON RUIN stab at the pulsing heart of what it means to live under the permanent midnight of contemporary life. With Harvest, the band aligns their sonic palette to their godless, medieval-inflected aesthetic symbolism, creating a record which strikes with an assured sense of blackened harmony.

“I’ve always found fantasy tropes to be incredibly evocative,” vocalist Mac Kennedy notes, “that said, even though they are a set of symbols that seem to speak to most people of our generation, they are often either apolitical or co-opted for incredibly backwards politics.”

Kennedy reworks fantasy imagery as a series of totems for the downtrodden, stripping it of its escapist tendencies and retooling it as a rich metaphor for the collective struggle over our shared reality: “Instead of knights in shining armor and dragons, it’s a peasant revolt,” Kennedy explains, “I’m all for protest songs, but with this band I’ve found that sometimes your message can reach a greater audience if you imbue it with a certain interactive, almost magical realist element.”

The title track invokes images of feudal peasants, tithes, and money-hungry lords, sounding the horn of labor with the rallying cry, “Isn’t this our harvest? Isn’t this our feast to share?” Tales of the undead rising to take revenge upon those who have unknowingly wronged them spin out like pleasantly cathartic folktales (“Resurrection II”), while other tracks address the profound beauty and spirit of those making ends meet in the forsaken ends of POISON RUIN’s hometown of Philadelphia (“Blighted Quarter”). The band stares into the abyss of modern living with a sober and empathetic outlook, portraying our cracked reality as a complex and difficult to parse miasma of competing desires.

With Harvest, POISON RUIN have constructed a richly chilling fable out of modern living. Their tale is as lurid as it is seductive, as much a promising fantasy as it is a dreary portrait of reality itself.

Check out the videos for their songs “Harvest” and “Confrere” below:

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I’m also thankful for another new-to-me suggestion that was made by ktrey for “Dungeons and Dragons Ruined My Life” by Mach Tiver from their 2003 album The Means of Escape. I couldn’t find out much about this band except for the following from Discogs:

Mach Tiver was an emo-hardcore brother-and-sister duo from Brighton, Ontario (Canada). They formed in 1995 after the breakup of their previous band Zero, and played their last show on August 28th, 2004. Throughout those nine years, they released a solo 7", a split 7" with The Creature, a demo CDr, two full-length albums, and a track on The Canadian Independent Box Set.

Members:
Adam Goodwin - Bass, vocals
Shannon Goodwin - Drums, vocals

I dig the song, although I have a hard time catching all the lyrics. You can listen for yourself starting at 12:56 of the following video:

Lastly, if you want more punk-adjacent TTRPG inspiration, I strongly recommend you check out Fight Dice. I covered the band in a previous newsletter, in which I discussed their very strong debut album Total Party Kill: