Adapting DEVO’s “Freedom of Choice” as an RPG scenario

Every week I take a random album and use it as inspiration for Power Ballad, my Feng Shui tabletop RPG campaign. This week’s adaptation was DEVO’s “Freedom of Choice.”

Power Ballad is a post-apocalyptic game set in a monster haunted world so dangerous that only the Doomed – tragic individuals cursed with dark power that will eventually consume them – can safely travel the wilderness.

DEVO – Freedom of Choice

Freedom of Choice was the third album from DEVO, containing amongst other bangers their most famous hit “Whip It.” It peaked at 22 on the Billboard pop album chart. While I’ve always been fond of the band, this was from radio play and the odd music video – I’d never listened to the whole album before. I was able to find it on YouTube.

Adapting an album to an RPG scenario

My process for adapting albums into tabletop role-playing game scenarios is pretty simple. I listen to each song, take some notes, and then use said notes to come up with elements to weave together into a gameable scenario.

Track by Track:

• Girl U Want: A song I knew from the movie Tank Girl. The subject represents an unobtainable desire, or the idealization of same. Lyric: “Sings from somewhere you can’t see, sits in the top of the greenest tree.”
• It’s Not Right: Can’t sleep, betrayed by someone, trying to find a cheater.
• Whip it: Seeking to use a single tool (violence) as the solution to all problems. The video was western themed. Lyric “Crack that whip.”
• Snowball: A snowball rolls down, getting too big to control. Trying again, more carefully, but it gets out of control again.
• Ton o Luv: Losing love because you get caught up with life. Visual: A girl with the face of a clock. Lyric: “Don’t get low, crush that doubt with love.“
• Freedom of choice: People abnegating their freedom of choice, they want to have those choices made for them. Video: Skateboarders having a pool joust? Two groups smashing into each other?
• Gates of Steel: Behind the gates are a secret voice, ancient noise. Lyric: “A man is real, not made of steel.”
• Cold War: Someone thinks you owe them, and you don’t. Fight your way to happiness. Lyric: “All’s fair in love and war, so what’s life for?”
• Don’t you Know: Someone breaking the rules, searching for you. Lyric: “I got a rocket in my pocket, like a plug without a socket.”
• That’s Pep!: Lyrics “Vigor, vim, vitality, and Punch” “Meet each thundering blow and come back with a smile”
• Mr. B’s Ballroom: A fight breaks out, the cops show up.
• Planet Earth: Lyrics: “A girl in a dress, her face is a mess” “Pleasure follows pain, people go insane.”

The De-Evolved

This gives me a lot to work with. I’m going to start with the band itself, using visuals not only from the videos from “Whip it” and “Girl U Want” but the earlier “Jocko Homo.” The De-Evolved – mutants with pyramid hats who don’t understand humans well, chock full of comic misunderstandings. I’ll tie in the themes from Freedom of Choice; they have little individual agency, maybe “devolved” into a servitor race. They have featureless faces, big helpless eyes, little in the way of noses. I use Midjourney to generate a spot of art to show my players.

Mr. B’s Ballroom

This gives me a location, the eponymous ballroom – really more of a wilderness roadhouse frequented by the Doomed. We’ll put our opening scene here, in medias res – first thing in the session will be asking the PCs to roll initiative, before explaining them that they’re in the middle of a barfight.

Girl U Want and Ton O Luv

These songs (and maybe Snowball as well) come together into the reappearance of a PC’s old flame. They were together for good period of time, but she stepped out on him for neglecting her. I’ll let the players decide which one of them had this relationship, and what the nasty details are.

It’s Not Right, Don’t You Know and That’s Pep!

Another player gets a rival. The Sabertooth to their Wolverine. Someone they’ve been going at it with for as long as the prior relationship. Again, I let them handle the backstory details.

Gates of Steel

Another location. Literal gates of steel.

Putting it all together

The De-Evolved are a hitherto unknown species of mutant – until their discovery, each mutant had been more or less unique, but the De-Evolved are a genetically modified servitor race created by the De-Evolutionary. They’re hidden behind the Gates of Steel, massive pre-fall structures that nobody knows how to bypass. Somehow, a work crew of De-Evolved got out and went missing, and the De-Evolutionary hires a disposible mercenary crew to recover them.

The Merc Crew is headed up by the Rival – an unpleasant swordsman named Sturgeon. He trained alongside our Swordsman PC, Ransom, and murdered their master – Ransom’s father. They’ve been hunting each other off and on ever since – and Ransom has a mini rocket launcher concealed in the hilt of his sword.

Other members of the crew are Whipcrack – a guy with a whip who uses it for almost everything – and Snowball – a mutant with frost powers.

Brawl at Mr. B’s

We open with the players in a barfight inadvertently caused by the lost De-Evolved spilling someone’s drink. This place is crawling with unarmed combatants – we’re not going to put a number on it, but the fight goes until the players have taken out a half dozen. It’s only then that the players notice the De-Evolved and their curious similarity, lack of direction, and general awkwardness.

• Questioning the brawlers or bartender about the mutants will turn up only that someone’s seen bounty posters resembling them in the backwater town of Bongwater.
• Examination of the mutants will reveal their odd features, and inspire the PC Chas to recall that Nico (his ex) had shacked up with an expert on mutations after they broke up, at a tower known as the Helix.
• If they leave or don’t investigate, the Desert Rangers (members of a paramilitary organization and self appointed protectors of the wilderness) will show up and provide the Bongwater clue.

The Helix

It’s a couple days uneventful travel to the Helix, a double-spiraled tower on the edge of a cliff. Here they’ll find Nico – not shacked up with a scientist as Chas had misremembered, but had left to pursue her education and make something of herself. That is SO like him.

Nico will be interested in the De-Evolved on a professional level. She’s never encountered them before, but has heard annecdotes of similar mutants being found near the Steel Gates of D. She will offer to make a study of the hapless De-Evolved to try and learn more – but it’ll take a few days to get any real information on them.

The players can opt to remain, or head to the Steel Gates (or Bongwater if they picked up that clue.)

Should they choose to wait: If they haven’t encountered Sturgeon and crew yet, he’ll show up after a day or so, following sightings of the De-Evolved. If the PCs are staying in the tower itself, they’ll hear the fighting and can intervene – otherwise they can trail the posse to Bongwater.

Once rescued (or if the PCs deal with Bongwater and return), Nico will report her findings:

• They aren’t clones. Their genetics aren’t identical.
• They’re not properly mutants either – their DNA is undamaged.
• They’re not even human, but a new offshoot, a new race…
  • But, oddly, not an evolutionary leap forward… rather, a leap back.
  • Their bodies and minds are simpler. They’re healthy, hearty, resilient, but motor skills and sensory organs rudimentary.
• It would take years of study to really get a clear picture.

Bongwater

Bongwater is everything the name makes it out to be – a one horse podunk town in the middle of nowhere. The post-office sports a bounty poster of poorly drawn De-Evolved, pointing those with information to the saloon.

Sturgeon’s waiting at the saloon, along with his posse – Whipcrack, Snowball, and seven unnamed roughnecks. Unless, of course, the PCs have already dealt with them, in which case it’s any survivng members of the posse or just a bunch more unnamed bounty hunters.

Sturgeon will be vaguely threatening to Ransom, trying to goad him into attacking, or to provide him with an excuse to let loose – while he hates Ransom, he is a professional, and this is a job. He just really wants that excuse.

If told about the De-Evolved, he’ll demand they be turned over, and use that as an excuse to fight.

If asked about the De-Evolved, he’ll simply say it’s a commission hes’ taken. He doesn’t know, or care, what their deal is – it’s just a job. Some kind of mutant, that’s all he knows. (Pointing back to The Helix and Nico if the PCs haven’t been there yet.)

If defeated and questioned, Whipcrack, Snowball, or the Goons will only know that their client – masked and cloaked – met them near the Steel Gates of D.

The Steel Gates of D

The Steel Gates of D are a local mystery – massive gates set into the wall of a cliffside emblazoned with a giant D. The locals avoid it. Academics, researchers, and treasure-hunters have been trying to find a way in for decades.

Rumor has it that it was an apocalypse bunker created by an old world plutocrat filled with treasure, but there’s no visible controls or opening mechanism, and all attempts at breaching entry have failed with the breaching party vanishing.

For our purposes, we have a showdown here – the bounty hunters vs the PCs. Any surviving Posse members, along with a device that will cause any De-Evolved present to bulk up into monstrous and aggressive forms.

Once they’ve been dealt with, if the D-Evolved are present, the great doors begin to open. A small number of D-Evolved emerge to greet their lost bretheren, who amble back inside with a final look to the PCs. If the De-Evolved are back at the Helix, this of course does not happen until they return them.

One of the D-Evolved hands the PCs a large nugget of gold as thanks.

And that’s all there is to it.