I make it a point to have my computer play a custom built soundtrack of sorts during play. (I make it a point to avoid songs with lyrics because they interfere with game play)
Do any of you do the same for your game? If so, and if you have a CD you really love, list it here, would you? :-)
Thanks,
- Warcry, (who meant to post it here, not in the Amazing section of the site...)
My Music list for campaign:
13th Warrior (good overall)
House of Flying Daggers (excellent for combat)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (good overall)
Hero (some good, some not so good)
Last of the Mohicans (an alltime fave)
Lord of the Rings 1-3 (good all around, but specific for theme)
Conan the Barbarian (alltime combat fave)
Xena, Warrior Princess (surprisingly good)
Immortal Memory, Lisa Gerrard (good temple tunes)
Aion, Lisa Gerrard (good temple tunes)
Master and Commander (ARR! Pirate tunes matey!)
Pirates of the Carribian (ARR! Pirate tunes matey!)
Alexander the Great (not bad overall)
Kodo, Traditional Japanese Drums (OMG! Combat Fave!)
The Village (overall quiet but good)
Lorenna Mckennit, various albums (good tavern tunes)
Enya, various albums (good tavern/vocals)
Dances with Wolves (good overall)
Kitaro, various albums (some songs not bad, some too loud)
Classical, various artists/albums (often too traditional)
Kaki King (excellent guitarist, almost no lyrics)
Jethro Tull
Rush
Blackmore's Night
Clannad
Loreena McKennitt
Lord of the Rings (all 3)
Last of the Mohicans
Conan the Barbarian
Braveheart
The Mists of Avalon
Warcry, we have similar musical tastes, especially McKennitt and Enya for vocalists and Last of the Mohicans and 13th Warrior for soundtracks.
I've found that portions of the soundtrack for Somersby work well, especially if the players are being thoughtful or mournful after the demise of a party member.
Also, my best Pirate music is a compilation of soundtracks done by the Chieftans. They did the soundtrack for the TV movie Treasure Island, and there are about 10 tracks from that movie on the compilation. The CD also uses the tracks used for the boxing montage in Far and Away and the theme for Rob Roy. Good stuff.
I really like The Last Samurai soundtrack for in game. I also like a few of the more battle specific songs on star wars episode 1 ssoundtrack. They work nicely for ym eberron games. Some of them ahve a very technologically clashing with magic type feel. I also use the soundtrack that came packaged with Sharn city of towers. I am so happy I bought that book right away. That sound track is awesome. Another good one is the danny elfman batman soundtrack, works great for sharn.
One thing I don't allow is too much anime music. My group is really into anime and although the music does work for certain game sessions, I find we spend more time talking about those Anime than playign the game.
I love Midnight Syndicate for dungeons and other creepy places.
Also many soundtracks work well in general
Lord of the Rings
Gladiator
Conan
13th Warrior
First Knight
Oh these are great suggestions! I'm definitely going to have to go out and get several of those you all have listed. Many I've never heard of too. Excellent. :-)
Thanks! - WC
I seem to remember a great soundtrack generator being around with all kinds of customizable sounds for events and traveling overland etc....anyone remember where thats from or know what I'm remembering?
I use a lot of game music. Its silly but The .hack, FFX-2, and Kingdom hearts OST are what I use. Its also silly but my campain has a lot of anime inspired stuff so it only seemed apropreit.
12 girls band for some interesting instrumental. I found an entire series of classical chinese instrumentals recently that has worked to add an exotic touch to my campaign.
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In the Nursery - Stormhorse
In the Nursery - Köda
Dead can Dance - Dead can Dance
Blade - The Score (NOT the Soundtrack), by Mark Isham
Tangerine Dream - Phaedra
Tangerine Dream - Zeit
The Blair Whitch Project - but only the last track (very cool for dungeons)
- I once used a song with lyrics (from Dead can Dance) for a funeral. Happened to be the only event where lyrics made the trick!
I have to have music in my games. The DM that taught me (my high school Creative Writing teacher!) used a particular track for battle, and I’ve almost always insisted on music ever since.
The rules I use for choosing music are as follows:
1) With rare exception, nothing overly or immediately recognizable. I’ve learned that nothing breaks the mood of an ancient dungeon, thick with atmosphere, dense with description, when a player looks up and says, “Hey, isn’t that from Braveheart?” You want your music to complement your game, not obliterate what you’re building by forcing images of a battle-painted Mel Gibson into your players’ mind’s eyes. This does make choosing your music a little more difficult in that it tends to eliminate some of the standard gamer movie score selections – ‘Star Wars,’ for example – but if you get creative, you can still use some old favorites. One of my favorite memories from a campaign I used to run was a climactic confrontation between the heroic PC paladin and the evil dark paladin, all set to The Phantom Menace’s ‘Duel of the Fates.’
2) No lyrics. Using the human voice as an instrument (chanting, for example) is one thing, but if the players’ brains start to pick up on the words being sung, it might be distracting.
3) Start thinking about themes. If a particularly nasty NPC is haunting the characters, give him or her a particular piece of music to indicate the NPC’s presence in the game. For example, in the D&D campaign I’m running now, the world is being threatened by a race of evil being bent on stripping the PCs’ planet of all its resources and leaving it a dry, dead husk. The PCs haven’t had a lot of direct encounters with the creatures behind all of this (rather, they’ve been dealing with all the other “baddies” of the world that the invading creatures have rallied behind their cause), but the few times they have, I’ve made sure they have a distinct musical presence. In this case, I’m using Peter Gabriel’s score for Rabbit-Proof Fence.
4) Don’t restrict yourself to genre-specific movie scores. Nothing gets my blood flowing and ready for action like the opening them of Conan the Barbarian (this is what my high school Creative Writing teacher used in his games – he had it looped over and over again on an old cassette whenever we got into a fight), but there’s a lot of other good music out there you can use. About half of what I use these days is movie score material, and while something from Excalibur or Beastmaster might work its way into a session’s soundtrack, there are a lot of other movie scores that provide rich material as well. One of my favorites is Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Edge. The caveat to this, however, is trying to be careful about selecting music that uses too much non-genre instruments. Kull’s use of electric guitars border on inappropriate when it comes to my campaigns, but Graeme Revell’s score for Freddy vs. Jason has some nice guitar-laden cues that do seem to be working for us right now . . . when used sparingly.
5) Get music online. A lot of movie scores have a very short shelf-life, so unless you have access to a good used music shop, you might not be able to find what you’re looking for without going online to places like eBay or Amazon.com, and even then, you might end up spending more than you’d like for music that you might use once and never listen to again. I have picked up the score for the Conan television show from an Amazon seller for 2 cents (which is about how much that music is really worth), but I’m still trying to track down an affordable copy of W.G. Snuffy Walden’s score from Stephen King’s The Stand. So instead of blowing your wallet on a bunch of CDs, head online for some alternatives . . . some free and legal alternatives. Some composers have downloads available from their website; Bill Brown @ www.billbrownmusic.com has a great selection of his film, television and score work available for download at his site (his music for Clive Barker’s Undying is great for spooky mood music). You can also find loads of free music at music.download.com. While I still haven’t found this website to be as friendly as its predecessor www.mp3.com, it’s still a great online repository of free, mostly amateur and unsigned music from all genres. Just keep in mind that you may spend some time digging through some not-so-great music trying to find the right piece.
This seems a little long-winded and might feel a little overly-complicated, but I really enjoy the hunt, tracking down just the right piece of music for the various scenes I plan for the games I run. Taking a selection from John Carpenter’s The Thing added just the right vibe to an encounter with a giant, vampiric spider. As cheesy as it could have been, using the musical cue ‘The Death of Optimus Prime’ from Transformers: The Movie tugged at the heartstrings perfectly when the PCs found the hanged body of an important NPC ally. Using some bits from John Williams’ Far and Away livened up a bare-knuckled fist fight between characters in the last session. Mixing the right soundtrack does add some to a game’s prep-time, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I do much the same thing...as a matter of fact I put them on the computer as three playlists I've made three complilation CD's of MP3's specific to mood and tone.
CD 1) Battle soundtrack
-Heavy but mostly instrumental is good as are electronioc trancey but fast beats.
-Certain themes from movies like the Uruk-Hai theme from LOTR etc. Some harder rock is OK for mixing in so long as it does'nt detract.
CD 2) Ambient or Town soundtrack
-Standard period music is good as are many songs from soundtracks like The Princess Bride and Medieval Baebes and Delirium. Soundtracks like Orlando are also good for this.
Some soft rock mixed in keeps the other players from getting bored
CD 3) Alien or Suspense soundtrack
-Some wierd stuff like Enigma or movie soundtracks like Dracula etc. Freaky rock songs are OK too but have to be creepy (certain songs from The Cure) etc..
The only problem is after about three months people get "used" to the music and it all has to be done again or revised, it's a pain. I also ask players for input on what they want to hear (so long as it's not too disruptive)
I used the soundtracks for Jurassic Park and Medicine Man this weekend for a jungle adventure. Both worked pretty well.
We played yesterday, and I put on a classic complipation soundtrack... this air for a string quartet comes on, slow and sweet, just as we roll intiative for combat.
Everyone begant to describe their actions in slow motion...
"My mace sweeps outward in a sloooow graaaaacefuuul aaaarc."
"It connects. . . and the ettercap's face slowly impllloooodddesss.!"
"I moooooveee thaaaat waaay."
It was a funny moment.
I don't use music anymore. DM'ing for 5-8 people makes my head hurt as it is, and I do not need music to add to that ;)
But if I did, I would have used:
Dead Can Dance
Kalenda Maya
Basil Polidoris soundtracks (Conan, Starship Troopers)
Mediæval Babes (catchy tavern tunes)
Diamanda Galas (great vampire music!)
Zbigniew Preisner soundtracks
City of Sharn soundtrack
Elizabeth soundtrack
I usually have a compilation playing softly in the background from my computer - Conan, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter soundrtracks, and various Midnight Syndicate stuff.
I'd add the following to the various above lists (along with some personal notes):
- The Name of the Rose (great for caves or crypts)
- Aliens (Yeah, it's SF but the "Atmosphere Station" track is just great for claustrophobic and spooky genres)
- Gladiator (large scale battles)
- The Sixth Sense (no one ever recognizes this one)
- The Last Samourai (sweet piece of music)
- Pearl Harbor (get rid of the first track)
- Willow (pecks!)
- Backdraft (get rid of the first and last tracks, great for fast paced action)
- From Hell (Skip the first track. Excellent for city slums or dark alleys)
- Legends of the Fall
- Legend
- Excalibur
- Schindler's list
- Band of Brothers ("Nixon's walk" track is a must)
- Devil's Advocate (starting at, by memory, "5th Avenue" track and onwards, great for the usual monologue of the evil genius who cannot refrain from exposing his entire plan to the party of PCs who are at his mercy)
- Barry Lindon (a duelist's must)
And, well...
Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, Lineage II, EverQuest, Morrowind, ... soundtracks (check your games music/sound subfolder for MP3s, guys)
I noticed a lot of people like the same sound and the same type of music.
If you do not listen to Echoes on NPR or Hearts of Space on NPR - you should check it out. These weekly radio programs will turn you on to a ton of fresh music perfect for role-playing. You can catch both of these programs on the web also.
Here is a fresh list of some artists you may or may not have heard of:
Ah-Nee-Mah - The Grand Circle - Native Americanish Music
David Arkenstone and/or Diane Arkenstone - David Arkenstone is a big fan of the Lord of Rings - He even did his own soundtrack. The Palintir is an excellent track for when your group finds that rare relic or artificact.
Steve Roach / Robert Rich I couple these artist together, their music is very ambient - perfect for a lot of dungeon scenarios. I believe they have 20 or 30 albums between them. Excellent stuff.
Peter Gabriel - The Last Temptation of Christ Soundtrack
Neil Young - Deadman Soundtrack - all instrumental
Friday the 13th the Series - Soundtrack
Azami Ali - Portals of Grace
Cirque du Soliel - Various Soundtrack with interesting tracks
Star Wars - Shadows of the Empire
Rasa - California Duo performing Indian music in Hindi?
Sevara Nazarkhan - Yal Bolsin
Holst - The Planets
Clannad - Enya's Sister and Uncles - better than Enya
What an awesome thread this is....I just kept rotating the Conan soundtracks and threw in LOTR when it came out, but I got so many ideas here--very cool....Mr. Bose--welcome to the World of Greyhawk, ha ha.
I like listening to early Rush when I'm working on stuff for my game, but Geddy Lee's lyrical style (screeching) back then doesn't do much for actual in-game play. However, "The Necromancer" from Caress of Steel always gets my creative juices flowing when I'm having writer's block.
What an awesome thread this is....I just kept rotating the Conan soundtracks and threw in LOTR when it came out, but I got so many ideas here--very cool....Mr. Bose--welcome to the World of Greyhawk, ha ha.
I like listening to early Rush when I'm working on stuff for my game, but Geddy Lee's lyrical style (screeching) back then doesn't do much for actual in-game play. However, "The Necromancer" from Caress of Steel always gets my creative juices flowing when I'm having writer's block.
Yes the necromancer and Bythor and all that really works...as does Rivendell another great Rush track!
Oh, I just got the Kingdom of Heaven soundtrack, a must have!
All of the suggestions on this thread have been great, I'm going to pick up the Reign of Fire Soundtrack and check out that NPR station next. ;-)
- WC
How does that one really creepy sounding song go? something like, "On candy striped legs, the spider man comes." Anyone here know what i'm talking about? I have heard that song in great for a dungeon crawl.
the song is called "Lullaby" and it's from the Fascination Street Album by the Cure
I have found music to be distracting and tend to avoid it when gaming.
ASEO out
I think the best CD we have used so far is Bram Stoker's Dracula.
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I always like to play the soundtrack to Riven, because it's sort of vaguely mysterious and not really bombastic like a lot of movie soundtracks can be. The CD that came with the Sharn: City of Towers book is pretty good, too. I don't care much for the Midnight Syndicate stuff, really.
I'll definitely try out some of the others mentioned here. Usually I just load an iTunes playlist and play them all on random.