Musician Archive

As an artisan, I can craft a widget, and instead of making a prototype, I can make a schematic which allows me to use a factory and make a lot of widgets.

How about musicians can make recordings? A recording would be a physical item, perhaps looking like a music CD, which could then be sold to someone to be listened to at a later time. It would be crafted, using a crafting tool, probably using a polymer resource (for the CD itself), and maybe wood or more polymer (for the packaging). The crafting time would vary, depending on the complexity of the song and instrument chosen.

There could be CD's for battle fatigue (would still need a cantina or residence to use it), and wound healing or buffs (cantina, residence or camp). It would be very similar to a stimpak or woundpak, in that it would be portable. They could only be used once. The amount of healing that you get from the CD is completely dependent on the skill of the musician, and would be listed as a stat on the recording.

It could also be sold for an incredible amount of money, depending on the skill of the musician making the recording. You'd have to be at least novice musician to be able to start making CD's.

Oh, and musicians also would have the ability to craft the CD player that you play the CD on. Which could also be sold for an incredible amount of money. You'd probably have to be master musician to be able to craft CD players.

I was given a swift smack upside the head for daring to suggest such a thing about a week and a half ago. 'Real' performers don't want to become a crafting class, apparently. I went so far as to suggest resource types, and other things involved in the mechanics of it, since I've done a lot of crafting.

Me, I like helping people. I think the idea would help both performers and patrons. But I don't think it's in the cards for us to do anything but *edit* ourselves out in our Red Light District dives. (I will never forgetthat phenomenally disrespectful term applied to a performing-oriented player city. I think the fact that it was ever used,on the official site no less,points up the general developers' view of the performing arts in the Galaxies. Changing it after the fact doesn't excuse it having been an offical term in the first place.)

I enjoy performing. I'll be doing it for a long ol' while. I'm simply not going to have any starry-eyed ideas about what we might be able to accomplish, because the disappointment of having my hopes *edit*-slapped across the Hotel/Theater/Cantina is more than I'm willing to let happen (anymore).

I get the feeling that musicians want the profession to be a dead-end, just to limit how many people go into it. So they constantly shoot themselves in the foot, and then complain about how much it hurts.

Musicians do not make money by playing gigs. Musicians make money by having a name, supplying a service, and getting known through sales. However, we have nothing to sell. Oh, yeah, there are the musical instruments. The ones that only musicians can play and craft. Wow.

We need two things. 1) A way to allow casual players to participate in the game when they cannot be on for long amounts of time, and 2) A way to allow the serious musicians to make some serious money, especially after devoting the long hours to developing their craft.

Record sales would accomplish both of those ends. The casual players who want to work up to master musician would get a few XP for crafting CD's, plus a little money. The serious musicians could get known for making really good CD's, and have a nice stream of money coming in. And they could use that money to travel to various exotic locations, in order to get the immediate gratification of performing in front of others. This would also give meaning to the musical crafting skill points, which could be used to enhance how good the CD's are.

Thanks for your suggestion.Peoplehave made such proposals before, and the devs have never shown much interest, no doubt because they're worried about undermining the function of cantinas.

I thinkyour proposal ismore likely to be adopted if the recording conferred some benefit other than healing BF and mind wounds -- specifically, if it were to heal mind *damage*. The devs *have* shown a little interest in giving entertainers a mind heal, and a craftable holostim wouldIMHO be a great way to implement it.

And a holo could contain a Dancer's performance, too.

But again, don't hope for things that will let us be anything other than barefoot, fleshwrapped and in the Cantina. (That's a sarcastic play on another phrase, if you have no imagination like those who responded to that comment the first time I made it.)

Actually, I at first thought in terms of a tradition CD, with music. But why not make it a holo, an actual image of the musician performing? Then you need a holo-player to play the holo. Or maybe you could make the D2 units be the ones to play the holos? Like R2D2 in the original movie. Gee, we could make both musician and droid engineer into really practical professions.

[In that case, never mind. Why would they want to give real content to professions that are the poor stepchildren of the starwars world?]

Come on DEV's, give us a Christmas present. People complain about things not being star-warsy enough. Put in holos, and give droids something to do!

Actually this idea has been hinted to before using the term "stims".. but I do like the idea of "CD" or "holo" depending if you are a musician or dancer.. I don't want to see our class being turned into a crafting class, but honestly I don't think that would happen if it's implimented right.. Why burn a good CD to heal your mind wounds when there is a live performer on stage.. I think the cost of it would outway from people doing so..

I do agree that each CD or Holo should be a ONE use disposable item, just like foraged food.. Question is, at what level do you allow CD's to be made.. I don't think novice is wise.. I would make it more like Stim B's atleast put it on the 2 or 3 level in entertainer, and make it so that the strength of the charge is better the higher you advance.. HOWEVER.. I would remind everyone the same thing here applies, as it does with crafting in general with experimental points.. Musicians will get a LOCK on lower level items as they have more experimental points to play with that a novice wouldn't..

In conclusion I do like the idea in general and it would greatly help out those remote community locations that entertainers are rare and master elites even rarer..

My thought was that it doesn't even belong in the entertainer class. It would have to be someone who is at least novice musician or dancer. It would be the equivalent of a doctor class of healing, as opposed to the medic class of healing. There are a lot of people that put a few points into entertainer so they can play a slitherhorn around the campfire and do some small healing. This is for the serious musicians and dancers, who have already devoted a lot of time to getting their novice musician or dancer points.

And give the surveyors something out of this, too. Make the packaging so that you need Rorian fiberplast, or some such horrible thing. That would be something that would always be an available resource, but would involve some work to harvest. Maybe the add-on module to a droid for playing the CD or holo could include some rare gemstone (for the laser that would be needed).

Something else that would be neat, would be a collaboration between master dancers and musicians, where a holo could be cut that would include both the dancing and some music, with both contributing towards stats. Would have to have both the dancer and musician cut CD and holo, and then have a way to merge them together, or have a special droid function that could play both at the same time.

A nice little side-note to all of this could be, if there were some way of applying a buff with these, then the dancer or musician could make their own CD or holo for getting the buff. Which then brings up the idea of having CD's or holo's for applying a buff to a group. That would definitely be a master musician or dancer attribute. The problem now, is that once a buff is applied, you have to get to the area where you are doing combat. This would enable the fighters to apply the buff just before going to battle. Can you imagine how much you could charge for something that could buff a group out in the field? You wouldn't have to play for tips anymore, you could play just for the fun of playing.

Gee, maybe we wouldn't need AFK musicians and dancers anymore, if this were implemented, or at least not in the numbers that exist right now.

Musicians and Dancers together on one disc - music videos!

I want my MTV!

Consider a different direction... how about a Terrain Negotiation buff while playing a CD?

Like jogging with headphones on?

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LadyGrey wrote:
Like jogging with headphones on?

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Yup

OK, got another thought. How about you have to use a specially-built droid to record the CD or holo? The droid would be a specialty crafting station (portable sound studio) and would have to be used in the same environment that you would normally be in for your music to be effective (cantina or house).

Something else, too. How about being able to do group recordings. One musician would pay a group of musicians to come in and do a recording together, or the group would play enough times to do a recording for each one of them to have a copy. The resultant CD's would have even greater and faster effects for those listening. Like the difference between the stim A's, B's, C's and D's. Novice musicians could maybe do an A-CD, but it would take a minimum of 6 master musicians to do a D-CD.

And then we would have a great excuse for getting together once or twice a week to put on live performances, too.

You know, it's really great and noble to be a starving entertainer, but it's even greater and nobler to be a well-off entertainer, and still be going out to play for the masses.