Before Ragnarok happened, James' idea for the April Fools' release (or was it the Free RPG Day release?) was a book on Bards, made by me
I agreed to do it on one condition (well two conditions, the first was lots of money) --we'd do it in the exact format of the '80s Dragon Magazines, including comics, letters, and lots of real black and white ads from real OSR companies.
It was all edited and in layout...
Although the idea was originally a joke, so was Red & Pleasant Land (working title "Eat Me")--I was determined everything I wrote in there be not only playable but something I was actually planning to use.
It had a traveling troubadour class, a set of scheming entertainer NPCs, a Vornheim-style entertainer generator, an interconnected sandbox built around the circuit of taverns and festivals that an itinerant musician, juggler, etc would follow, a bunch of descriptions of plays that PCs might pull off the shelves of a random library that looked pointless at first but had hidden clues and adventure hooks worked into them, a few musical magic items including gongs and a more detailed version of Heward's Mystical Organ, an adventure that started with a poem the players had to examine for clues, another adventure featuring "The Malignant Hymnal of Occychorcys" and a guide to making music puzzles.
