The newest bardic college in the big city is an idol production agency

>Ruining my favorite class

Use the Immortals handbook: ascension event tables. They let you get fan-clubs and a following.

It’s pretty cool.

*Improving worst class fluff

This has the potential to be fuckin hillarious.

Bardic Gang fights

If you’re going to go full web, why not do something fun?

>Bitches about weebshit
>Link to Pathfindertrash

Like clockwork.

Killing monsters for their juicy/sharp/glowing bits and using horns to kill more for more bits?

That actually seems a bit metal.

At least the College of Idols is a step up from the College of Memes.

Cute, but I wouldn’t like it in a game.

Doesn't work unless you've got some inexpensive magical mass-media to promote them on, otherwise they can't be hyped sufficiently to a large enough population base to make the merchandising pay for the whole project.

Im sold.

I've been toying with the idea of a unit of idol-bards that are part of a villain's propaganda scheme in a campaign I'm planning.

We should have acted, but they're already here. There's nothing we can do now. How's a Gnomish jazz quartet supposed to compete with that?

Idols are controlled by organized crime. Like, in the real world as well as in fiction. I would feel honor-bound to figure out what they're a front for and bring everyone with a stake in this racket to justice.

>Idols are controlled by organized crime. Like, in the real world
I desire to know more.

The same way real troubadors worked - by focusing on power politics and attracting powerful hosts.

To make them more modern, have them focus less on flattering noble and royal patrons and have them be a trade guild, corporation, or crime family. If you're an idol, you don't work for yourself; you work for the company. Instead of busking in taverns or going out on adventures, your guild books all your appearances at expensive venues and sends you with large groups of fellow idols, often twelve or more. Whatever mass media exist are employed as propaganda for the company, anything from broadsheets to magical skywriting. Nepotism and the whims of the company's shareholders determine who rises and falls in the organization, and as soon as you stop being an asset to those in power, you're dropped from the company or worse.

thedailybeast.com/the-yakuza-are-running-japans-hollywood

The importance of perceived purity combined with the nature of bards has the potential to make for some pretty hilarious characters, I guess.

Yakuza basically have an iron grip on the idol and porn industries in Japan.

>tfw my 5e Bard was part of a troupe intended in part for children to watch in his backstory
>not "pure," just obsessed with his image to the point of self-repression even after leaving

Was I the idol all along?

They're generally not in fiction. In things like idolmaster they're idealistically nice.

5e has the College of Glamor coming up in XGTA as well. It's basically the pretty fey bard, with the special ability of mesmerizing people and turning them into adoring fans.

We all know what they're meant to be about. They're idols and rock stars.

The one actually interesting thing about idols and they don't use it?

They can't.
If they do, then they will find whatever project they're on quickly killed off by back-room dealing.
The Japanese media is as corrupt as the American media, in the same ways. The Yakuza are deep into politics and media, and they have no problem flexing their muscles to make things happen.

When the mob was at its height they could still make stuff like Sunset Boulevard and the original Scarface. Sounds like japan is way beyond anything America's ever known

kill yourself

>No Fun Allowed

>Players are idols of a single unit specializing in combat performances.
Huh, might work.

I like the idea, instead of having a standard combat campaign the players could have a rival NPC idol group they're competing for fame with.

There's an anime based on that precept.

How do you feel about yourself now?

I don't care about idols. I do care about big production companies.

The college will be destroyed. Its agents and the criminals it's run by will be impaled outside the castle walls.

>How would you feel about an influx of idol bards?
Pretty great dbh

The yakuza is more insidious and underhanded than the mafia (at least before Gotti had Castellano shot. Gotti was a fucking scumbag and everything bad that happens to anyone within three generations of him is well deserved).

>adding corporations to your setting
Why ruin the best part of fantasy?