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Ok, so I did a bit of searching on these forums and didn't find a thread like this.
Do you use background music in your games? What kind of background music do you find that is good for inspiring creativity and setting a mood while not distracting the players?
If you are giving suggestions, here is what I would like to see:
1. Give us a link. Its the modern day and we have the interwebs. You can find a youtube link or something to provide as an example.
2. What type of scene would this music be appropriate for?
If you aren't able to follow that and still want to post something you think is good... well, go for it. We would rather have your suggestion whether you want to linkafy it or suggest what it would be good for.
I'll start.
Epica - Burn to a Cinder - Battle... preferably a boss fight involving fire
Nightwish - Ghost Love Score - Dungeon
Alestorm - Captain Morgan's Revenge Full Album - Water based, mostly battle music
Also, for your listening pleasure here are a bunch of songs from the Midnight Syndicate Official Roleplaying Soundtrack that is no longer available. Most of this soundtrack would be great for dungeons.
I will post more in the future. But I wanted to get this started and give others a chance to post some of their favorites first.
Thank you for starting something like this! I too use music for mood and am always looking for suggestions.
Not specific songs, but I use a lot of music from Nox Arcana, Apocalyptica, and various game soundtracks like Oblivion, Dark Souls, Castlevania and Dragon's Dogma. All of which I have been able to find on YouTube.
For the Carrion Crown folks, or those wanting music that fits that sort of genre - I want to point you toward the Carrion Crown Soundtrack thread. It's amazing.
Ok, so I did a bit of searching on these forums and didn't find a thread like this.
Do you use background music in your games? What kind of background music do you find that is good for inspiring creativity and setting a mood while not distracting the players?
If you are giving suggestions, here is what I would like to see:
1. Give us a link. Its the modern day and we have the interwebs. You can find a youtube link or something to provide as an example.
2. What type of scene would this music be appropriate for?If you aren't able to follow that and still want to post something you think is good... well, go for it. We would rather have your suggestion whether you want to linkafy it or suggest what it would be good for.
I'll start.
Epica - Burn to a Cinder - Battle... preferably a boss fight involving fire
Nightwish - Ghost Love Score - Dungeon
Alestorm - Captain Morgan's Revenge Full Album - Water based, mostly battle music
Also, for your listening pleasure here are a bunch of songs from the Midnight Syndicate Official Roleplaying Soundtrack that is no longer available. Most of this soundtrack would be great for dungeons.
I will post more in the future. But I wanted to get this started and give others a chance to post some of their favorites first.
Well, being a huge fan of Skyrim (800+ hours) my favorite song to get the players ready to go would be One They Fear. Bonus points if they're going dragon hunting.
Most of the stuff from Two Steps from Hell (they make trailer music) can work fantastically.
Nemesis (disk 2) is here.
There is also INVINCIBLE.
All Drums Go To Hell offers more background music, and since it is all drums it can be used for generic combat, high tension sequences, and whichever you like.
For non-combat just ambient tracks there is Lapfox Trax's Aurastys.
Idea(l(s)). The best part about Lapfox is that he eventually makes all of his stuff "name your own price" and openly puts it all on piracy sites so he gets his name out. He is as indie as it gets.
My current DM has choice songs that he likes to pull in, theme songs, if you will, that he likes to use every now and again.
He used Powerwolf's Night of the Werewolf for my werewolf Silastrix.
I've also been known to use anything from NegaRen, Mayhem, Renard, or Adraen as downtime music when we are not doing anything.
You can find most of it here.
Yeah, he is indie as aforementioned when I talked about Aurastys, but I'm a Pretentious English Major who freaks out my classmates when I come to class in October wearing a fursuit. XD
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I like Orff for anything building up to a climax.
In general anything Bond will suit the bill.
For background dungeon crawls, I like the various Final Fantasy soundtracks or Mozart's Requiem.
I like Brahms for urban madness moments.
I use background music all the time! Go music! The best music that's inspiring yet not distracting is video-game music. It's composed much differently than movies for sure. VG music generally stays at one tone, because the composer can't assume the players will do things here, here, and here. It's more tailored to delivering music for a general situation rather than a specific narrative. I also stay away from well-known tracks. If you play "Concerning Hobbits" for example, that track has previously been so associated with the Shire that players will only imagine the Shire. That's not good, unless you want them to think about the Shire. Because of this I generally don't play music from LOTR, Skyrim, and Zelda (with exceptions).
Here are some soundtracks I play a lot:
Gears of War 1 -- combat or war music
God of War Trilogy -- Boss music
The Witcher -- town/city music
The Legend of Zelda series -- Dungeon music (I usually use the ZREO versions)
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Xenogears, Chrono Chross, and a crapton of stuff from ocremix.org.
This is going well. :)
It seems we have a lot of everything except town and shop type music. Like social stuffs. Anyone got good things to use for that?
The Avatar soundtrack has great songs for wilderness travel.
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I have a tendency to blast One Shot at Glory by Judas Priest during boss battles
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Hmmm... speaking of sound tracks:
Conan: The Barbarian is pretty good for just background music of many types. I'd say overall it is good for battle but has some rather peaceful bits as well.
Two Steps from Hell is just so good for epic fights. I recommend Blackblade, Archangel, and To Glory.
I have a bunch of Midnight Syndicate stuff and I'm probably going to go looking for Dragon's Dogma music now since I loved that game. Good suggestion!
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I like to use 80's metal: Savatage: hall of the mountain king, Manowar: louder than hell, and Metallica: master of puppets are favorites.
Also Savatage's more popular incarnation as Trans-Siberian Railroad has some pretty sweet cinematic instrumental stuff. My son has a ton of video game themes on his 3DS (mostly from final fantasy/kingdom hearts) & we use those sometimes for "background elevator music" when in town.
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In times of great drama or during epic battles I sometimes like to play music. Just the other week, during a showdown with the BBEG I played this and let me say, it really set the scene.
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I also remembered that I borrowed heavily from the several Assassin's Creed soundtracks too. They have a wide variety of moods for use.
Investigations This makes good background music for investigations, or maybe a watery area too.
My group has also on occasion used Michael Jackson's Thriller for our more light hearted undead fights. Each campaign features it at least once.
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I have a list of 30 or so but I won't jam up the thread like that. However, my top 2 are soundtracks:
The Last Temptation of Christ
&
Kingdom of Heaven
Also, a second vote for Two Steps from Hell. For battle music they CANNOT be topped.
Basically anything from Audiomachine is perfect for DnD.
We are using Erdenstern. They have different albums with different themes.
Into the Green,White,Blue,Gold and so on
I used the Dracula OST while the group was in a cloister which was run by a "dark magic cult"
While we are on the worldmap (my group is playing with a projector) we are using the Terranigma overworld theme .
Then several FF Soundtracks,Vagrant Story OST,Ocarina of Time,Gothic 2 and so on and so on.
But we still haven't found our "perfect" Magnimar theme yet. Usually we use the same themes for the same places, and change them if something in the area changes as well.
And we use different layers of sound, for example there is the typical city theme and then the PCs go on a market, then there is a new layer with something like this as well .
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4L4Vac0HBJ8-f3LBFllMsg
Pretty much anything on this channel can work.
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I have a list of 30 or so but I won't jam up the thread like that.I would not at all mind seeing them.
I'm at work, so off the top of my head.
Braveheart
Dune (so good as it was the first soundtrack we ever used)
All 5 discs of Battlestar Galactica
All 3 seasons of Game of Thrones
The 3 Lord of the Rings
Gladiator
Inception
Lawrence of Arabia
Beowulf
The 13th Warrior
300
Kingdom of Heaven
The Last Temptation of Christ
Any Two Steps from Hell
And....don't laugh....Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Don't hold Kevin Costner against this great score.
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- For a court scene - 'Valse from Coppelia' by Delibes
- For a big battle - 'Overture from Tannhauser' by Wagner
- For stuff in the Katapeshi deserts - Oud music by Salim Al Nur, 'Classical Arabic Music' retrospective especially.
- For evil Chaos Magic from the Abyss! - 'Spit Tastes Like Metal' by AIDS Wolf
- For scary undead like Lichs - 'Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary' by Henry Purcell
- For bardic lute music - all John Dowland's stuff
- For snooty Wizards in towers - mathematical or minimalist composers from Bach to Steve Reich and Philip Glass
- For Barbarians being barbaric - 'F**king Hostile' by Pantera
- For dungeon exploration where you want atmospherically spooky rather than distracting - dark, gloomy and ominous Dubstep like Ekaros, Cloaks and Vex'd
- For my stupid Aasimar Paladin who charges in and doesn't bother with Perception checks - 'Archangel Thunderbird' by Amon Dull II
People in this thread saying Judas Priest and Manowar are old school and I love it.
Amazing thread is amazing.
Warning: I have a lot of suggestions and I don't know how to spoiler tag them!
I said this in another topic, but I like using music from the Castlevania games when dealing with Vampires or Succubi.
Also, I tend to use the Soul Calibur 2 soundtrack when I'm setting up encounters or constructing the adventure in between sessions. For example, while reading the Inner Sea Setting book I listened to this song on youtuberepeat.com:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca6s0E6u2II&noredirect=1
That one especially helped while glancing over at the map that came with the book and all the dozens of countries on it. I swear, Quest For Glory really makes looking at maps feel BAWS. (Makes sense, because that was essentially its purpose in SCII.)
Though in time I plan on using this song if the PCs ever get forced to be gladiators. It will be playing as they enter the arena.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxVj2Gxv_bk&noredirect=1
Sure that one is repetitive, but I feel like it would be perfect for setting the scene of a huge crowd cheering before the big gladiatorial event. And in any case I would stop the song after the announcer finishes describing all the combatants.
And of course, this is always played near the beginning of a campaign. Right after the PCs' first successful adventure, where they set out from Village 1 to begin their real quest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvMVi65XVAQ&noredirect=1
You can't not play it at that point, you can't.
Also, after nearly every difficult battle a player pulls a version of the Final Fantasy victory fanfare on us.
And being a fan of the Fire Emblem series myself, I tend to pull this up half the times we level up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw-CaOiuMco&noredirect=1
And this is played whenever a new player/PC joins the group:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAMXghDyr1I&noredirect=1
Of course, my players also bring up two steps from hell music all the time during combat. Can't blame them, those songs rock.
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We've used Gustav Holst The Planets for some background music.
Another thing we have used is Pandora and set it to Film Scores. The App is free and you don't have to worry about providing your own specific music.
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This thread is great. I'm taking the tracks and ideas and organizing them into categories here. It will take me a couple of days to go through them all, but they'll slowly make their way on here.
Categories are:
Normal Fight/Skirmish: Boarding a ship, a fight with trolls, skirmishes, meant for increasing energy.
Epic Fight/Boss Fight: The epic conclusion, last hope of humanity, facing the god of death, meant for really increasing energy!
Mystical: Abandoned ruins, ancient cities, strange artifacts, cliff top temples, meant for evoking wonder.
Mysterious: Dark places, unknown horrors, strange events, creepy dungeons, meant for evoking tension.
Dungeon Crawling/Dark Set Up: Enemy armies marching, dragons far the the east, exploring dangerous places, lost in dangerous tombs, meant for evoking fear.
Normal Travel/General Ambience: Overland travel, movement, arrivals, meant for evoking ambience.
Epic Travel: Cresting the Mountain Ridge, first time on the road, last time on the road, setting sail, meant for evoking inspiration.
Town/Inn: Relaxed evening at home, sitting around the campfire, sleepy little town, relaxed city square, meant for evoking calm and reflection.
Lively Tavern/Bustling City: Crowded market, drinking songs, arrival in an exotic city, banners streaming from towers, meant for evoking interest and excitement.
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Long time ago we used to put braveheart soundtrack on...
More recently, I had done papercraft to create an entire undead dungeon, and I played this song as they looked for a horn that was causing the undead. Very similar to the thief level.
They did not enjoy being in there, so mission accomplished! :P
A lot of the thief games have good non-vocals music that can be used for creepy/tense situations.
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Zenith, have some more stuff that isn't video game music or soundtracks.
Some people like me do not own anything from those genres.
And it seems awfully restrictive when there are millions of tracks of Romantic, Jazz, Rock, Baroque, Sacred, Folk, Avant-Garde, Electronic, Minimalist, Metal, Soul, Prog, Roots, Tribal, Urban, etc. etc. I could go on. Hundreds of years of stuff from all over the world.
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Back in the mid-90's we were big on Enigma and Delerium as casual background music for travelling, down-time, mystical times. A few tracks would be good for action, but most of it was pretty mellow and trance.
I seldom crank the music unless its is an epic, big-boss fight.
I will post some links on Friday as we can't access YouTube at my work....
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Zenith, have some more stuff that isn't video game music or soundtracks.
Some people like me do not own anything from those genres.
And it seems awfully restrictive when there are millions of tracks of Romantic, Jazz, Rock, Baroque, Sacred, Folk, Avant-Garde, Electronic, Minimalist, Metal, Soul, Prog, Roots, Tribal, Urban, etc. etc. I could go on. Hundreds of years of stuff from all over the world.
Haha, I just started this a couple of hours ago, it's going to take some time. And I'm mostly going to do songs without lyrics that maintain a steady mood the whole way through - that's going to be primarily video games, sound tracks, and bands who specifically do mood music. So, for most of the music you want, there is a whole wide world of youtube and pandora out there.
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Wait, you want me to put millions of tracks on there?
Zenith, have some more stuff that isn't video game music or soundtracks.
Some people like me do not own anything from those genres.
And it seems awfully restrictive when there are millions of tracks of Romantic, Jazz, Rock, Baroque, Sacred, Folk, Avant-Garde, Electronic, Minimalist, Metal, Soul, Prog, Roots, Tribal, Urban, etc. etc. I could go on. Hundreds of years of stuff from all over the world.
Haha, I just started this a couple of hours ago, it's going to take some time. And I'm mostly going to do songs without lyrics that maintain a steady mood the whole way through - that's going to be primarily video games, sound tracks, and bands who specifically do mood music. So, for most of the music you want, there is a whole wide world of youtube and pandora out there.
...
Wait, you want me to put millions of tracks on there?
Yeah Lyrics tend to distract from the game I find.
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I use a few tunes from Castlevania, Chrono Cross, Deus Ex, Metal Gear, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill, Two Steps from Hell, and Vampire Hunter D.
I give kudos to players who can guess what music is playing at the table. (:
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Zenith, have some more stuff that isn't video game music or soundtracks.
Some people like me do not own anything from those genres.
And it seems awfully restrictive when there are millions of tracks of Romantic, Jazz, Rock, Baroque, Sacred, Folk, Avant-Garde, Electronic, Minimalist, Metal, Soul, Prog, Roots, Tribal, Urban, etc. etc. I could go on. Hundreds of years of stuff from all over the world.
Haha, I just started this a couple of hours ago, it's going to take some time. And I'm mostly going to do songs without lyrics that maintain a steady mood the whole way through - that's going to be primarily video games, sound tracks, and bands who specifically do mood music. So, for most of the music you want, there is a whole wide world of youtube and pandora out there.
...
Wait, you want me to put millions of tracks on there?
Yes. I want MILLIONS of tracks. Get to it!
There is listening to lyrics and there is singing. Say you have something set in Varisia. I would play Romanian or Bulgarian folk dances, maybe some Bela Bartok. Now, there is sometimes singing, but I haven't got a clue what they are saying, so I won't strain my ears trying to decipher them.
Similarly, the scenario is some doom and gloom and dark heroics. Wagner's Götterdamerung is ideal, and yes they are singing, but it is opera, and nobody has a clue what the words are.
I just think that we are playing an adventure game which requires imagination. Having a soundtrack which is entirely 'epic' - faux-Latin chanting, muffled drums, rousing strings - stuff that is common in film soundtrack battle scenes does not always support this imagination and can be rather undynamic.
As you say though, sometimes you just want music which washes over atmospherically that isn't there to be listened to as such, more a vibe.
Gregorian Plainchant, for instance is great when the party is exploring the Wight's crypt, it is a bit gloomy to sit at home and listen to.
Great work though, excellent project, hats off to you, Zenith.
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We do not play music when playing, as we like to concentrate on the game. However we all start humming 'Charge of the Valkyrie' when an epic battle is coming. And as we never know when that is actually happening we do that a lot (Or when we start executing a charge).
Quotes from the charge of the light brigade are often used as well.
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I'm not at home now and wont be for the weekend as I'm taking the family on vacation. However, when I get back I will post a link to a great tool that I found that converts youtube videos into audio files and you can download it for free. It is all completely legal to use as far as I can tell. It is also very handy as you can find pretty much anything on youtube.
Many of the songs I have been getting I even go out and search for an instrumental only version as I don't like a lot of loud distracting words in my background music. This can be found in large supply due to the number of people who use youtube for karaoke.
I also haven't clicked on Broken Zenith's link and can't get to it here from work right now to check out what it is. Knowing him it is something that makes all the work that I have already done on my home PC moot and pointless. Obviously I am taking full credit for his work as I am the one who started the thread and came up with the idea to share this kinda thing. Go me!
@Lune Youtube to MP3 converter . I guess that's what you are using (sorry that it's German Website you can just Google it)
Does anyone have some nice suggestions for magnimar themes ?
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I chart tunes for every scene in my game and use my laptop to bluetooth them to the stereo system.
My top soundtracks for standard Fantasy games:
Conan the Barbarian
Rob Roy
13th Warrior
Gladiator
For pub music I usually just use an album of Irish Music(tm).
For that old-school feel there is nothing like orchestral soundtrack music.
Some people like to play rock, modern, or other "hard" music for battle. But I find it damages immersion.
I often make specific playlists for background music for my games.
For example, when I ran The Skinsaw Murders for my now-defunct Rise of the Runelords campaign, I made a playlist very similar to this one:
Hal's Skinsaw Murders Playlist
(My actual playlist was slightly different, because not all of my originals were on Spotify)
And for the Skull and Shackles campaign I'm playing in, I put together this playlist:
Hal's Skull & Shackles Playlist
Note that you'll need a Spotify account to access, and I can't guarantee any of the tracks will play outside of the United States.
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We had this thread going a little while ago. The GrooveShark user Ultimate_RPG is still up -- I'd recommend subscribing to its playlists.
This is the tool that I had been using to convert the youtube videos to audio files.
Great suggestions though, all. Keep them coming!
Oh, Broken Zenith: You are welcome. Your collection is good but the one thing that it doesn't do is make it so you can have a playlist going that you dont have to constantly switch between songs for. My plan is to take these songs and put them into individual folders for like "Dungeon", "Fight", etc. and then use Winamp to play each folder as a play list for those locations.
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Oh, Broken Zenith: You are welcome. Your collection is good but the one thing that it doesn't do is make it so you can have a playlist going that you dont have to constantly switch between songs for. My plan is to take these songs and put them into individual folders for like "Dungeon", "Fight", etc. and then use Winamp to play each folder as a play list for those locations.
Yeah, that's a next step. If I can figure out how to host something like (from both a legal and practical standpoint) then I may try it. alternatively, I may make youtube playlists (though they will be interrupted by ads).
At the moment, all of the songs link to "listenonreapeat.com" meaning they will continue playing indefinitely. It's a pretty good alternative, and may be less distracting.
Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull are so well known that linking to them seems kind of pointless, but there’s a band called Blood Ceremony which sometimes resembles a hybrid of those two tinged with Fairport Convention.
Blood Ceremony - Good as general background music, especially for darker campaigns
The Rare Lord
Goodbye Gemini (sorry about the ad)
Lord Summerisle (duet with a little Moody Blues feel in the intro)
Fairport Convention - Town, tavern, noble feast hall - NPC bards might play these songs
Tam Lin
Matty Groves
Traffic - #1 Tavern Song! The "hidden" meaning should be fairly obvious
John Barleycorn
I also have to second Conan the Barbarian. That’s a really great soundtrack by Basil Poledouris. Speaking of soundtracks, stuff by Ennio Morricone such as The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly could be great for the right game.
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I agree with incredilee. There's a lot of great video game music. My favorite, and I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet, is Baldur's Gate. There's something for every situation! A few of my favorites:
Baldur's Gate II Main Title (good for getting psyched up)
City Gates (as you enter a grand kingdom for the first time)
Taverns (need I say more?)
Exploring The Plains (also pretty self-explanatory)
The music from both the original game and the sequel is amazing.
I also second Petty Alchemy's Falconer recommendations. One of my favorite bands, period. I listen to their music on the way to my weekly game to get stoked. A few favorites:
This is an awesome thread!
Oh jeez. Now the Falconer have another fan in me.
I'm a huge fan of the The Sword.
I throw it on for the really big fights but not for bosses. Those guys get only Two Steps from Hell from me.