Game Wish 9: Changing the World

This week's WISH from Turn of a Friendly Die

What's the most fun you ever had creating something in a game that changed the game-world?

I think this has be the goth/doom-metal band Ümläüt, which has been a feature of not one, but two games. The first game was an on-line modern-day Call of Cthulhu adventure set in London, running on the late lamented CompuServe RPGAMES forum. My PC was Karl Tolhurst, guitarist of the band. The back-story in my character submission was that the band had split after lead singer Steve Leywood had run out of sanity and murdered another band member (who was also Karl's lover), before killing himself.

The GM skillfully wove all this into her game background; NPC Steve Leywood's occult obsessions had turned him to incorporate forbidden Cthuloud rituals into song lyrics and getting audiences to chant them. He was later to turn up as an undead thing, to murder another band member who the GM was using as an NPC in front of another PC in a different game thread. The Cthuloid rituals themselves may or may not have been responsible for the earthquake in Docklands that did terrible damage to the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch's News International.

Ümläüt have their own spoof web page, which more than one person has mistaken for the web site of a real band - the fictitious murdered keyboard player turned up on the dead rock star site. There is also a recording of Ümläüt's music, made by my brother. The GM refuses to listen to it.

The band has now resurfaced in another on-line game, Edge of Hell running on Dreamlyrics, touring the US slightly earlier in their own timeline. They're currently stranded in California following several dates falling through due to incompetent management. This time four out of the five members are player characters, including Steve Leywood and one of his murder victims. Time will tell if history will repeat itself; this time the crowd chant of "Iä! Cthulhu F'Tagn!" resulted in a severe thunderstorm and a power failure that terminated the show.