Need background music!

[rpewin01]

I am DM'ing my first campaign and we are running RoTR in one week. I want to incorporate background music, but have no idea how to assemble a good playlist. Can anyone make some suggestions?

I havent read through the entire thing yet, but for the first week (an 8 hour session), I think I will need:

1. Background music for the general festival;
2. Music for the goblin fight;
3. Music for Glassworks exploration;
4. Music for Thistledown;
5. Perhaps music for general RP in between those events.

[zimmerwald1915]

Sandpoint theme: Aaron Copland's Appalachian Symphony naturally suggests itself. Varisia's Lost Coast is supposedly similar to the Pacific Northwest, and Sandpoint's a pretty small town. For small town Americana (yes, yes, Vancouver and BC exist :P), Copland's your guy. Make sure the Simple Gifts section plays as Zantus releases the swallowtails - and then take that nice melody away from your players when the goblins attack!

Goblin theme: here's a thread on this. There are probably others.

Glassworks theme: for some reason I really like the Agni Kai theme from Avatar for this one (the one that plays when Aang and Zuko meet Ran and Shaw; the name's a bit confusing). There's a sense of urgency that I think really goes with the nature of the PCs' mission in the Glassworks.

Thistletop theme: the Immolation/finale from Wagner's Gotterdammerung might fit well here, for thematic associations alone. Ezakien's no Siegfried, but that's a fairly small matter since your players will have encountered neither (unless one of your PCs is a transparent expy of Siegfried). You might want to find a recording without Brunhilde's aria if you don't really feel like trying to GM over a powerful soprano.

[HangarFlying]

Here are a couple of threads on the topic:

Music for Rise of the Runelords
Skinsaw Murders - Mood Music
Suggestions on mood music for FotSG
Music Suggestions for Hook Mtn Massacre

Hope this helps!

[Haladir]

You can check out my Skinsaw Murders playlist on Spotify:

http://open.spotify.com/user/1215796770/playlist/1dr3muLEydltKNLcX62k7J

You need to have a free Spotify account to access the above link.

[HangarFlying]

Haladir wrote:

You can check out my Skinsaw Murders playlist on Spotify:

http://open.spotify.com/user/1215796770/playlist/1dr3muLEydltKNLcX62k7J

You need to have a free Spotify account to access the above link.

Awesome music, how did your players react? Did you play certain songs at certain times, or did you just let it play through?

[Haladir]

The players in the room really liked it. The two remote players who connect via Skype and MapTool-- not so much. The music tended to eat the audio bandwidth and was hard to hear. Consequently, I didn't use mood music outside of Misgivings.

I just ran the playlist straight, on "repeat" but I would start it at different points.

If I didn't have remote players, I'd probably run a playlist in the background for every session.

[Twigs]

Hey, awesome, Haladir. You mentioned this aaages ago, I'm glad you finally have a way to share it! Definately gonna use this.

[GeraintElberion]

I used Kocani Orkestar for the festival, then turned it off when the goblins attacked: like the piano player stopping in a Western.

It gets that party vibe and is folky and non-electric. You can just say that the language is Varisian, rather than common.

More broadly, I find that the Lord of the Rings film music works well for fantasy RPG background music.