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Howdy doody folks! I was just listening to my youtube playlist, consisting of various power metal, symphonic/melodic metal, 80s rock, and random tidbits of other genres, most of which I listen to on my MP3 player. Then I thought back to one of my older groups, and got nostalgic.
One of my best DMs had a small laptop full of hundreds of MP3s, which would be played at certain points in the sessions. There was never a session where there wasn't SOMETHING playing. We had battle music, boss battle music, scenic travel and town music, and then good ol' fashioned 80s rock during break time. It really set the mood for the game, and honestly was one of the best times of my life. Pizza, soda, friends, music, an epic tale, and a chance to bash some skulls in! (Not literally!)
Never before, or since, have I found a group that has done such a thing. My last group had one guy with a smart phone who would constantly play various final fantasy battle musics during combat, but the same thing got teeth-gnashing after a while (I play enough of the games at home, thank you very much). It was, admittedly, something that I find lacking in every group I have joined since, since as one of my earliest groups it colored my perception of a fun session. I tend to take my Mp3 player and listen to my playlist in one ear while the game goes on these days, even if the pizza and epic tales are lacking.
So, as I put together my own campaign for my first foray into a levels 1-20+ story line, I now find myself trolling* around for some epic music to set the mood during game play. My current favorites: almost anything from Dragonforce (Through the Fire and the Flames, and Last Journey Home, make for excellent Pathfindering), Nightwish.... Well I haven't really looked around that much but yeah.... All I do know is Welcome to the Jungle is perfect for the big, corrupt, decaying socially sort of cities like Rome, perhaps usable for Taldor and it's cities in Pathfinder.
So, do you guys play music while you game, at any point in time? Have you, or anyone you know, used music to set the mood and done it WELL? Do you like it, or the idea of it? Or would you rather background be so silent you can hear a pin drop during games? If you've got any RPG-themed playlists that fit for one reason or another, be it a character theme song or a general feel of a portion of the story, feel free to post up your suggestions and favorites of music (and why, if you can)!
Seriously, no one has anything to say on this?
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I do actually!
I will say that youtube is the best darn place for music. Look up greatest battle music of all time, or 'immediate music' for some of the most epic tunes for battle at the very least.
Depending on the game, I have a few playlists to work with:
Fantasy:
Record of Lodoss War (Sea of Miracles is practically our theme song)
Avatar
Chrono Cross
a few choice, lesser known Final Fantasy tunes
Enya with the Talesin Orchestra
Dargaard has some great tunes
Serenata Immortale is a perfect tune for epic fights
Modern Age:
Die Hard
Godzilla soundtrack
Taproot
Adema
Metal Gear
and many more of course!
Woohoo a response! xD I LIKE that list.
I'd like to throw another option to the pot for consideration...
Character Theme Songs. Who does them, what are some you've used, and are they annoying or just when the person doesn't STOP playing it?
I tend to have music to assign to characters. Sometimes, a song inspires a character, or at least character fluff. Best examples would be the inquisitor I'm working on right now. Hammerfall's "Any Means Necessary" just screamed Inquisitor to me. Still don't know what alignment, but he's more an executioner than most Inquisitors. Having trouble finding a proper domain/inquisition, deity, and alignment for an Inquisitor that executes the guilty... The best example for inspiration though would be Amarant Edasseril, a potential character I'm chomping at the bit to play, and definite npc anti-hero/villain in my upcoming home brew campaign. Mechanics inspired by a two-week long obsession with poisons, diseases, and spells and effects of the like, fluff inspired by Amaranth by Nightwish.
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I have a leitmotif for one character of mine, "The Girl That Stole The Stars.", another does have one when she gets completely furious, since she's a powerful mage, I use "The Kraken" from PotC.
I also recommend some tunes from Homestuck! bandcamp.com has the entire series of songs for play for free, Flare, Cascade, Black, Skaian Skirmish, a plethora of lietmotifs and such. One should note that some songs are very 'videogamey' which fits the comic, but others are just hard rock.
I recently had this tune playing as the Dread Dormammu made the world about him a plaything.
I find music to be distracting during the game. When we do have music, it's usually a Pandora station and it's played at an extremely low level.
I absolutely MUST have music when I DM a game. I have various folders for different settings, kinds of games, etc. I have a separate playlist for Ravenloft, Greyhawk, and Star Wars games respectively. I am a musician, born to a family of musicians, and consider it part of my blood. For gaming it can help create all kinds of moods and atmosphere. I have a weird nervous tick about silence, and music just helps put me in the mood and get me revved up. Some examples;
Ravenloft:
Bram Stoker's Dracula score
Minibosses: various Castlevania songs
Various Castlevania game scores
An assortment of Black Metal/medieval Battle metal, such as Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth(yeah yeah I know), Emperor, Ensifirum, etc
Early Opeth albums
Generic Fantasy:
Scores: The Hulk, Gladiator, LotR, etc
Mastodon, Crack the Skye (score, no vocals)
Various European melodic thrash metal
Almost any decent progressive/experiemental rock/metal, such as Opeth, Mastodon, Yes, etc.
Star Wars:
Star Wars scores(obviously)
Alien/Aliens Scores
Unfortunately, I play under a DM on Mondays who hates using any kind of music. He has a hard enough time concentrating and doesn't multitask very well, me thinks.
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oh, here's another good set. The Flaming Lips album "Yoshimi versus the Pink Robots" it has a full instrumental variant, which works for modern age pretty well. I recommend "Are you a Hypnotist?" and "Test Fight" as good scene openers.
A LOT of soundtracks work well for RP. Pretty much you can find your music just by looking for a similar film style, and getting the soundtrack.
Trust me on the Immediate Music on youtube though!
A big part of good gaming music is that it should have no vocals, or very few, other languages, etc. I've noticed that anything with lyrics tends to interrupt a lot of player's attention spans and they forget what is being said in game. Not that they are necessarily all that involved in the music, just that it's one more voice to contend with to get the player's attention. Scores and instrumentals work best.
One thing to be sure of, is make sure you have it very well organized. Plan out which songs you want in which situation and have a playlist or folder of songs set up for that. Nothing would kill the immersion faster then the players sitting there while you scroll through your mp3 player or itunes or whatever. Make sure everything is just a click or two away.
Picking the music is actually where I invest the largest bulk of my time when preparing to run a session. Some favorite sources for tunes in the past have been OC Remix, Muse, and the soundtracks for the Chronicles of Narnia movies (particularly Prince Caspian).
I also like to ask my players to find a theme song that kind of sums up their character then post a link to it on our group facebook wall. I've found that can really help narrow a player's focus on their character concept. I can still remember some of the other players' theme songs YEARS later. For instance, I wasn't the DM for this campaign, but one guy picked Three Days Grace's Animal I Have Become for his rogue. VERY fitting.
Some examples of music I've used:
The Sky was Never a Limit - OC Remix - used as the background music for the Elemental Plane of Air
River of Time - OC Remix - used as background for Elemental Plane of Water
Butterflies and Hurricanes - Muse - used as the background music for a HUGE battle (lasted more than 7 real-time hours and the music never got old)
Snowfall on Forbidden Lands - OC Remix - I use this pretty frequently as the music while I narratively recap the previous session's events
Basically, if you haven't been to OC Remix and you like having music in your games, you need to check it out.
I play music on my laptop while I run. I've taken MP3s from a number of CDs and video games I have, and arranged them into playlists (upbeat marches for adventuring, fast paced scary stuff for battles, creepy and dark for dungeon crawls, etc.) The music plays through the whole game, I just switch when the mood changes.
The music currently comes from (in no particular order) the following OSTs:
Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II
Icewind Dale
Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights II (favorites: the theme from Infinite Dungeons and the theme for Ammon Jerro's tower)
The Slayers TRY
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Glory at Sea
Xena: Warrior Princess (volume 6)(this is some of the best stuff I've got, Joe LoDuca is an amazing composer, for example...)
Pirates of the Caribbean
Suikoden V
Kamichu!
Arcanum
I've also got some tavern noises from some of the video games that I use sometimes too, but I generally find sound effects to be distracting as opposed to music.
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We pretty much always play music during games but it's always music from soundtracks. Movies mostly but a few TV shows as well. I have a pretty large collection of such soundtrack CDs - I went through them all a while back and pulled the best gaming pieces from them all. I put 'em into iTunes and then burned a 12 volume set of CDs filled with more than 200 great gaming tracks - over 14 hours, which we just play on random during games ... not to mention they are really fun to listen to LOUD in the car :)
Here are the main soundtracks that make up the 12 disc set. By main, I mean there was a LOT of great stuff on these and I ended up choosing a significant number of tracks from each one. There are assorted single songs from a number of other soundtracks as well to round the collection out, but these CDs served as my primary sources:
Conan the Barbarian
Braveheart
The Cell
300
Lord of the Rings (all three)
Gladiator
Lost (TV show)
The DaVinci Code
King Kong (new one)
The Last of the Mohicans
Pirates of the Caribbean (all three)
Last of the Mohicans
Alexander
Kingdom of Heaven
King Arthur
The 13th Warrior
Excalibur
Troy
Batman Begins
The Dark Knight
Clash of the Titans
Prince of Persia
Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (Kevin Cosner version)
Robin Hood (new one)
Star Trek (new one)
Water World
The Tudors
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
A LONG and involved project, but it was worth it!
Of course, I'll still continue to pick up sountracks, so I can't rule out a Vol. 13 and 14 at some point ... :)
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for me, music needs three requirements to be considered for a background tune
a) not too iconic, unless you're using that setting, star wars in particular
b) few vocals, the lyrics make it hard to hear other players if on anything but a whisper
c) not too 'video gamey', I love video game RPGs, but if something sounds too computer generated it falsifies the game I am envisioning, it actually makes it feel faker to me.
That said, Orphanage of Flames, Challenge, Crisis, Divinity 1 & 2 are all good tracks and on my playlist. I just LOVE Orphanage of Flames!
The right music can make a bland encounter memorable and a good encounter legendary. It's not necessary but makes it better.
Midnight syndicate is good for creepy BGM and for battles anything with a fast beat and guitars is good. I would use a particular set of songs for big boss battles that the players would all recognize and know that it was time to stop screwing around.
Back when we were all into pretty much the same music it was ok. No game in the late 80's/early 90's was complete withough Manowar playing in the background (or similar) however these days there seems to be a push for a bit of peace and quiet.
Maybe its just that some of us are turning into cranky old men, maybe its because the new group has differing tastes... dunno, but now its the dulcet tones of nothing.
I can still imagine though that a good soundtrack makes a beer and pretzels dungeon bash that little bit more fun.
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I really wish my group would play music. I even found Theme Music for my current character, linkified for use.
I am not really a person who prefers a single type of music, so when you mention most of the music above, I think it sounds too similar for one game. When I listen to music, I prefer a little variety.
Truly, I want to get together a group for a WWII campeign, with songs like this throughout the gameplay.
Man, that was a lot of Links!