Of Bards & History

This first blog post is in response to a great series of posts put up by Alexis over at the Tao Of D&D blog. While I didn't ever really have any intention to blog I intend to be rather wordy when I speak so, out of respect for Alexis' blog-space, I figured it would be much easier and more polite for me to just be able to post a linked reply. Plus maybe I can put up some of my own thoughts here when I am inspired. Whatever.

Here is the link to the bard post being replied to.

http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2013/03/tuned-to-urban-bards.html

(I also really suggest reading the other two posts on rogues and assassins in this series. They're all quite good...then again, just read the whole blog!)

Anyway, onto my response...

Alexis, you're quite right in that I haven't offered any hard facts. I will rectify.

I'll start off by answering your challenge regarding musical schools or colleges. Directorship. The study of film, though relatively new as far as topics go, is firmly within the purview of the bard just as much as music and is not a giant fustercluck. Just as bards of old held audiences attention with epic poems and such, our epics today are films. And directors are masterfully adept (if they're high enough level) at influencing their audience. Their art comes from passion (hopefully) but when well done it is just as much calculation and precision as it is passion and inspiration. Every angle, every bit of lighting, every chosen take...they are all tools of a good director...and each one is aimed to create a response in the audience. Each one is done to evoke from the observer. Heck, even Michael Bay is about playing to his audience, not about pouring out his heart and soul (unless the man is literally made of explosions and crap)...and he's quite good at exploiting his audiences (he has the millions to back up that claim). Hitchcock? That guy's a bard...and he is precisely a bard because he understood people so well and how to make them feel the way he wanted them to feel. He was not "all about the art"...he was about what the art could make people feel and what it could communicate. After all, bards are tellers of stories and poems and linked more to that than just music. That association came later and is less accurate.

Additionally, bards have their true roots (going back to their introduction to the game) as irish bards. And these guys were traditionalists...not fops prancing about singing a song for a coin. They were intellectuals practicing a tradition and were schooled. They held official positions in many cases. And again their job was to chronicle, praise and insult. Their existence depended on understanding who they were working with. This is all verifiable. Heck these guys were a caste unto themselves, not the sons of farmers that fell in love with music and started dancing on corners when hit by their muse. Even moving past the realm of actual-factual reality, the first Arch-Druid or Chief Bard of Ireland was (mythologically) Amergin Gluingel and he was a maker of law. So clearly, people trusted bards to run stuff.

This all ties into the original bard of D&D which was most closely related to those Irish druids or Norse skalds. Again, with research, we find that skalds were not of the musician sort described in the post. Instead, these guys were poets, intellectuals and court officials. In their tradition, I don't think they even really used music. Their art was quite different. This merges with Irish druids/bards (specifically mythological ones like Amergin) who DID use music as Amergin quelled a storm with song to give us the first D&D bard that is composed of equal parts fighter, thief and druid (in that order).

Cut to AD&D 2nd ed, and you have a bard that is a bit removed from it's roots (historicalyl, mythologically and as they appeared previously in-game) with a more minstrel-like figure with in-book references to Alan-a-dale and Will Scarlet. However, even those figures were men of action and were dependable in the extreme, not the flighty musician type. The book does, however, also cite Amergin himself and he is definitely of the old school original bard sort. AD&D also kept the restriction where bards had to be Neutral (at least partially)..which means that, invariably, the bard is the class that will be the LEAST distant from any other character or creatures alignment, again reinforcing that the bard can mingle with almost anyone and making them similar to their druidic roots (though druids are usually more stringently neutral).

Of course, then we get into 3rd edition where bards get even FURTHER from their roots and now can't be lawful. In fact, this is where the influence for "wandering minstrel" bard is the clearest as they are refered to as non-lawful wanderers. However, that is easily just added to the long list of "Things 3rd edition completely missed the mark on" I would say. After all, it wouldn't be the first or last time something in 3rd edition completely misunderstood something from a previous edition. In fact here is a great quote from wikipedia (god bless it...sometimes) <i>"The rules also state that a bard's powers are incompatible with law and tradition, although authentic historical bards were in fact keepers of traditions and knowledge; this portrayal of the bard might be a misinterpretation, creative or unintended, of the laws which put a bard above a common free man due to their erudition and place as sacred speakers of rote and history."</i> I don't imagine anyone making a member of Metallica (regardless of what level bard they might be) a sacred speaker of history.

Let us not even delve into 4th edition.

What we then get, is a timeline where the term "bard" in D&D is slowly but surely mutated in the same way the word has mutated in common usage. "Bard" becomes mistakenly synonymous with "minstrel" when really "minstrels" were a sub-class of European bards that were replaced by troubadours and became the wandering, play-for-a-penny sort. That is, however, a change that has occured across editions and not something that started with the bards introduction where it was very much in keeping with the original usage of the term in real life. I, as a player and DM, look to the original usage in D&D as well as the original usage in cultural history because the wandering musician doesn't seem much like someone you'd want in an adventuring party unless you need someone to sing "Brave Brave Sir Robin".

After all, as outlined in the above post, you can't rely on a musician right? Certainly not to be organized at least because the Brave Brave Sir Robin bard (minstrel) couldn't even do his job well enough to make Robin feel courageous! I wouldn't want that guy in my adventuring party at all. However, if you tell me I can have a learned scholar able to use poem or song to influence others, to woo kings or turn public opinion against a tyrant, that can also wield a blade with a keen hand? Yeah I'll take him.

So I will agree that I did not necessarily state any facts in my series of posts because I was working from my personal understanding...but it was not "all conjecture" either. And again sorry to be long-winded. I love bards.