The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

Plus Limelight from Session One Studios

On the Goodman Games Discord server, the user mashtodon posted a link to music by the band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. I’m embarrassed to admit I wasn’t familiar with them. In case you are late to the party like me, here is how the band describes themselves on their website:

“The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets is a rock band that is dedicated to promoting the literature of H.P. Lovecraft, who wrote of lost cities, tainted genealogy, alien gods, and that fabled tome, The Necronomicon.”

“The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets have a reputation for entrancing and inciting their live audiences with their melodic blend of energetic punk and rock, while wearing graphic costumes that help bring their good-naturedly macabre songs to life.”

I’ve been especially enjoying their album The Dukes Of Alhazred. It’s very well written and produced with a diverse set of catchy songs. The melodic vocals at times remind me of Michale Graves-era Misfits.

The lead singer of the band is the illustrator/author/actor Toren Atkinson, who has done lots of work in the tabletop RPG industry. He collaborated with the band’s guitarist, Warren Banks, on Spaceship Zero. The project consisted of a concept album, video game, screensaver, and roleplaying game!

The band’s aesthetic and ambition are right up my alley, and I’m surprised they never got on my radar before. I’m looking forward to further digging into their music and RPG projects.

Limelight

By listening to an older episode of Craig Shipman’s terrific podcast Tabletop Talk, I learned about another TTRPG project with music themes called Limelight. The game is published by Session One Studios and was designed by Gregg Lauer and Deric Waite. Here’s a description of the game:

“Limelight is a game where you play high school students who started a band. You just need 3-5 players and someone to run the game.”

You can watch an actual play of the game with the creators that was hosted by Third Floor Wars:

I was excited to see Gregg describe about how he was influenced by the band Sonic Youth in a devlog post on their itch.io site:

“Known for their singular influence on the noise rock genre, Sonic Youth was a tremendous influence on me in the late 80s and early 90s, and their rise and fall is a blueprint for how a game of Limelight could go for a group of players. I listened to just about every Sonic Youth album (including EPs, live shows, compilations, and side projects) for two weeks straight in preparation.”

Lastly, Session One Studios offer a “two paged, standalone, deconstructed, and free” version of the game called Limelite, which seems to be a great way to try out the game.