Rock Music / Fantasy RPG Team-ups
Dice throwers and rock ’n’ rollers
In the mighty marvel manner, let’s explore some some team-ups of rock music and fantasy RPGs I came across this week …
Heavy Metal / Dungeons & Dragons
Metal Hammer published an article on “why heavy metal loves Dungeons & Dragons.” In addition to covering some of the usual suspects (Satanic Panic, Stranger Things, Tom Morello, etc.), the article included some other tidbits I found of interest:
Luke Gygax said that the second generation game designers who came after his dad were likely influenced by Black Sabbath, Yes, Rush, and Iron Maiden.
According to Luke, the late great Cliff Burton introduced D&D to his Metallica bandmates while on tour in their early days. Cliff’s mom, Jan, talked about Cliff playing D&D with his best friends (including future Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin) in this Trash Metal interview.
Luke also said Scott Ian from Anthrax is a D&D player. That might be one of the reasons he was so excited to get made up as a White Walker from Game of Thrones.
Travis Miller posted a thoughtful response to the Metal Hammer article on his Grumpy Wizard blog. He makes an important clarification that heavy metal music was not particularly influential on the D&D products themselves; instead the “confluence of heavy metal and D&D was in the young people who happened to like both.”
Tom Morello / D&D Movie
Speaking of Tom Morello, the Rage Against the Machine guitarist has a cameo in the new D&D movie as his dwarf character Kimathi Stormhollow. I haven’t seen the movie, but you can read about Morello’s appearance in this Looper article.
The Beatles / Lord of the Rings
According to this Mental Floss article, movie director Peter Jackson says the Fab Four wanted to star in a Lord of the Rings movie. Jackson got the scoop from Paul McCartney while working on his Get Back documentary series. Apparently, J.R.R. Tolkien wasn’t keen on a pop band doing his story. So, we did not get Saruman the White Album. In any case, Get Back is an absolute much watch for any music fans (or anyone interested in the creative process).
Dice Throwers / Rock ‘n’ Rollers
Let’s wrap up with a concluding quote from the Metal Hammer article mentioned above.
“No wonder the Venn diagram intersection of dice-throwers and rock’n’rollers gets bigger every day.”
Critical Hit Parader sits right in the middle of this Venn diagram intersection. Please share this newsletter with anyone else who shares our passion for rock music and TTRPGs.