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I use quick, rapid, thundering music from movie soundtracks for combat encounters. I have a wide range of tracks, organized by how "fast-paced" I want the encounter to feel. Songs for battles with the boss of an adventure are be pulled from a different, more epic-sounding track list than, say, yet another encounter with kobolds and goblins. Similarly, combat songs for encounters with undead have a different sound/feel than encounters with other kinds of monsters.
Anyhoo, lately I've been playing with introducing contemporary rock tracks -- mostly as "themes" for certain characters when they do something amazing or awesome in combat. Alternatively, if the fight is going bad for the players, I've been known to play Drowning Pools' "Bodies."
Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the FLOOOOOOOOOOOOR!!!11!111twelve
Following is a list of songs I've started to use. Anyone have any ideas of other, well known rock/industrial/alternative songs that would be a good addition?
AC/DC, "Back In Black"
AC/DC, "Hells Bells"
AC/DC, "The Four Horsemen"
Blur, "Song 2"
Drowning Pools, "Bodies"
Joe Esposito, "You're the Best"
Led Zeppelin, "Immigrant Song"
Metallica, "Enter Sandman"
Metallica, "The Unforgiven"
Metallica, "The Unforgiven II"
Metallica, "Until It Sleeps"
Nine Inch Nails, "Dead Souls"
Nine Inch Nails, "Head Like a Hole"
N.R.G., "Instruments Of Destruction"
The Smashing Pumpkings, "The End Is the Beginning Is the End"
Stan Bush, "The Touch"
Type O Negative, "Blood & Fire"
Last edited by DM Magic; 24th September 2008 at 01:59 AM..
Reason: Spelling; Grammar
I use fast-paced, thundering music from movie soundtracks for combat encounters. I have a wide range of tracks, organized by how "fast-paced" I want the encounter to feel. Fights with the boss of an adventure will be pulled from a different, more epic track list than yet another encounter with kobolds and goblins; similarly, combat with undead has a different "sound" than fights with other kinds of monsters.
Anyhoo, lately I've been playing with introducing contemporary rock tracks -- mostly as "themes" for certain characters when they do something amazing or awesome in combat. Altertanivly, if the fight is going bad for the players, I've been known to play Drowning Pools' "Bodies."
Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the FLOOOOOOOOOOOOR!!!11!111twelve
Following is a list of songs I've started to use. Anyone have any ideas of other, well known rock/industrial/alternative songs that would be a good addition?
AC/DC, "Back In Black"
AC/DC, "Hells Bells"
AC/DC, "The Four Horsemen"
Blur, "Song 2"
Drowning Pools, "Bodies"
Joe Esposito, "You're the Best"
Led Zeppelin, "Immigrant Song"
Metallica, "Enter Sandman"
Metallica, "The Unforgiven"
Metallica, "The Unforgiven II"
Metallica, "Until It Sleeps"
Nine Inch Nails, "Dead Souls"
Nine Inch Nails, "Head Like a Hole"
N.R.G., "Instruments Of Destruction"
The Smashing Pumpkings, "The End Is the Beginning Is the End"
Stan Bush, "The Touch"
Type O Negative, "Blood & Fire"
"Coming Down (Drug Tongue)" - The Cult
"Smooth Criminal" - covered by Alien Ant Farm
"Slither" - Velvet Revolver
"The Burden" - Dropkick Murphys
"Generation Genocide" - Jersey
"Street Fighting Man" - The Rolling Stones
"Panama" - Van Halen
"Me Wise Magic" - Van Halen
"Toxicity" - System of a Down (really, anything by these guys)
"Dancin' in the Ruins" - Blue Oyster Cult
"The Game" - Disturbed
"I'm Destroying the World" - Guttermouth
"Bombshell" - Powerman 5000
"Easily" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
"What God Wants, Part II" - Roger Waters
"We All Fall Down" - The Explosions
"Here and Now" - The Ernies
"C'mon C'mon" - The Von Bondies
"Somthing's Gotta Give" - Aerosmith
"Stop The Rock" - Apollo Four Forty
"Thunderstruck" - AC/DC
"Rods and Cones" - The Blue Man Group
"Dive For You" - Boom Boom Satellites
"You Know My Name" - Chris Cornell
"This Moment" - Disturbed
"The Pretender" - Foo Fighters
"Land of Confusion" - Genesis
"Gasoline" - Kicking Harold
"Are You Gonna GO My Way" - Lenny Kravitz
"Voodoo Child" - Rogue Traders
"Inner Universe" - Yoko Kanno
"Rise" - Yoko Kanno
Tastes may vary but these are the ones I go with.
JoS.
__________________ GoSeeBananafish
"Apparently, getting our ass kicked is now part of this complete breakfast" - OotS #214
Yes, I'm single and yes, I'm a geek. But that just means I'm smart and available.
Early Delerium cds were industrial -- Spiritual Archives, Spheres, Spheres II, etc... They also have Delerium Archives (a vol. I and II) containing some songs fromeach of the cds, since some are difficult to find today. Not really any vocals, though, if that's important. My favorite of these songs is probably Drama from Spiritual Archives. Sounds like something out of a horror movie.
Rock isn't my interest so I don't have much to offer, but the opening theme to Outlaw Star is pretty good, Through the Night.
My online gaming group, Torch of Spirit (Contains all information for the current game I'm co-DMing as well as lots of houserules I'm using or considering for the future. Feel free to check it out.)
Best combat song ever, just the drum is enough to pump you up:
"You Could Be Mine", Guns'n'Roses
This was the song of choice for our Shadowrun combats. And since you put in "The Touch", you'd be remiss not to include:
"Dare", Stan Bush
I'll also throw in:
"Seven Nation Army", live cover by Audioslave
"Powerslave", Iron Maiden
"Aces High", Iron Maiden
"Manowar", Manowar
"Higher Power", Boston
"Hair of the Dog", Nazareth
I always wanted to get a copy of the NIN songs through most of the movie Man on Fire. They're instrumental portions of popular NIN songs which are great without lyrics. Unfortunately, they are not available commercially.
I would also have to say the orchestral soundtrack to HALO is good
__________________ "I don't want to kill you and you don't want to be dead." -Malachi 'Mal' Johnson
I find video game music works well too. Try something by Inon Zur for example.
__________________ Currently running: Sufficiently Advanced over Maptool. Soon to change. If you'd like to join in a short 3-8 session campaign for various systems, drop by our forums.
I double-dog-dare you to make your game sound super cool without comparing it to other editions. - paraphrased from Umbran.
Personally, I won't use rock or rap in my D&D sountracks. I don't want anything that's got English lyrics, or that the players are going to associate with the modern world; I find it distracting.
Pieces from movie soundtracks, however, are a whole different story. I've got a "combat disc," as well as a "D&D themes disc" that I use to create other sorts of moods or to give major villains their own themes, all of which are pieces taken from orchestral movie soundtracks.
__________________ Ari Marmell
aka
Mouseferatu
--Rodent of the Dark
King Crimson:
"THRAK"
"Discipline"
"Indicipline"
"Thela Hun Gingeet"
"BBoom"
Buckethead:
Uhhh, almost everything he does, including "Goro vs Art" Mortal Kombat (with George Clinton) and the Giant Robot album.
Praxis:
"Rivet"
"Giant Robot / Machines In The Modern City / Godzilla"
"Warcraft (Bruce Lee's Black Hour of Chaos)"
Chaos Face: Doom Ride album.
Helios Creed: Lactating Purple album.
Kodo:
"The Hunted" main theme.
Dr Octagon: The Instrumentalyst album. (This one is kinda different- Dr Octagon is the rapper AKA Kool Keith, and this is album is an instrumental version of his album, Dr. Octagonecologyst.- IOW, a rap album with absolutely no rapping on it. I've only seen one other album like it...bringing us to)
Del Tha Funky Homosapien: Deltron 3030 Instrumental Version ...the other rap album sans vox. Both are fairly cinematic in feel.
You might also check out works by turntableists DJ Shadow and DJ Spooky: That Subliminal Kid.
The roars and stuff are being played by the program in my Signature...
You can chuck any mp3s you like in the right directory and Syrinscape will play them randomly... as well as roars and crashes and wot not...
For some of the music I like to use, try here...
A fabulous source of just about every peice of computer game music under the sun... http://gh.ffshrine.org/
Also fab music soundtrack sounding music that a guy has written... you can download and use for free under the creative commons licence... Royalty Free Music
I'll keep trying to think of more...
Love your work...!
Ben
*************************************************
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soundscapes for your gaming table? Go to: www.syrinscape.com Download for free!
See a program demo, and listen to mp3s
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There are a lot of good suggestion from other people too is the comments.
Here was my playlist
I am amazed at how similar our playlists are. Sleep, Sabbath, Conan and Gladiator soundtracks, Kyuss, Zeppelin.
You are obviously a man of impeccable musical taste.
I also like to use:
The Sun City Girls, 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond the Rig Veda, Disc 2
Celtic Frost, The Emperor's Return/To Mega Therion
Old Time Relijun, Witchcraft Rebellion and 2012
Fantomas, self-titled
The Boredoms, Ichi the Killer Soundtrack and select others
GZA, anything instrumental (Kill Bill Soundtrack in particular)
Wagner, Ring of Nibelungen
Pink Floyd, Ummagumma
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, East Hastings
I've also been using more European Black Metal cuz it's spooky. My current project is building gaming playlists on Last.fm, my new favorite web-site.
__________________ After the battle is over
And the sands drunken the blood
All what there remains
Is the bitterness of delusion
The immortality of the gods
Sits at their side
As they leave the walls behind
To reach the jewels gleam
Thor - "Knock Them Down", "Thunder on the Tundra", various others
Omen - just about anything
Dio - "Sacred Heart", lots of other wizards-and-rainbows stuff
Rainbow - "Temple and the King", "Stargazer", some others
For the mellower, not yet suggested:
One place to find lots of what has been mentioned, or just good background music for a game, is Radio Rivendell - The Fantasy Station - it plays a steady stream of movie soundtrack bits, game soundtrack bits, and other things that just plain fit in.
Personally, I won't use rock or rap in my D&D sountracks. I don't want anything that's got English lyrics, or that the players are going to associate with the modern world; I find it distracting.
Pieces from movie soundtracks, however, are a whole different story. I've got a "combat disc," as well as a "D&D themes disc" that I use to create other sorts of moods or to give major villains their own themes, all of which are pieces taken from orchestral movie soundtracks.
I'm like that too. If you don't want english lyrics have you tried Dead Can Dance? They're pretty good.
__________________ The surest sign that there is intelligent life in the Universe is that none have visited Earth.
I'm like that too. If you don't want english lyrics have you tried Dead Can Dance? They're pretty good.
I used one of their CDs for a while, but it was a long time ago. (Not for combat, but for other stuff.) I really ought to check out some of their other albums.
__________________ Ari Marmell
aka
Mouseferatu
--Rodent of the Dark
I would also put in a recommendation for Rammstein. For an idea of how well this works can be seen in the video for Moskau by Rammstein and Tatu that was put together with Hell's Gate London footage.
The video really kicks in after the 1:00 intro portion.
__________________ Brain: Come Pinky! We must prepare for tomorrow night.
Pinky: Why? What are we going to do tomorrow night?
Brain: The same thing we do every night....TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
Like Ari, I tend to avoid modern music in my D&D games (though the other DMs in the group do use rock/metal when they run), but I also don't have a generic soundtrack or playlist I use. I create my playlist explicitly for the campaign I've got planned, and I make sure it's appropriate to the mood I want to create. For a long-running dark fantasy game, I used the Dracula Soundtrack (from the 1992 movie), which helped keep my players on edge for the entire campaign (to the extent that one player started mumbling and pointing behind another and everyone freaked out and demanded we take a break).
Currently, for my upcoming Expedition to Castle Ravenloft campaign, I have put together a soundtrack using ambient sound from WoW and a clip from NWN2.
Svalich Woods - Ambient: Duskwood ambience; Music: Felwood
Ivlis Marsh - Ambient: Black Morass ambience; Music: Swamp of Sorrows
Lysaga Hill - Ambient: Howling Fjord ambience; Music: Deadwind Pass
Village of Barovia - Ambient: NWN2 Town ambience; Music: Ghostlands/Eversong (Dark Walk)
Tser Pool Encampment - Ambient: Duskwood ambience; Music: Undead Tavern
Castle Ravenloft - Ambient: Wailing Caverns ambient; Music: Karazhan
For the three Fanes of the Land (in the Forest, Swamp, and Mountain), I added the ghost whispering sound from when you are a ghost in WoW. All in all, I'm really satisfied with the mood it provides and look forward to putting it into action. I use Syrinscape for my mixer, currently.
__________________ If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him... and take his stuff.
We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are.
I'm surprised anyone has yet to mention any bands like Dragonforce, Finntroll or Amon Amarth. I don't use modern music in my games, but if I did I think those are some of the ones I would use. I do listen to a lot of "death metal" or "viking metal" when I'm thinking up stuff for my games, though. And I did consider running an Iron Heroes game with a soundtrack of nothing but power metal. I wanted to get a real sense of over the tope, hyper-glorious battle with men with no shirts tearing things apart in raging fits of unrestrained destructive masculinity or some nonsense.
For my normal D&D I have three playlists on my iPod. One for general atmosphere music (if the party is wandering around town or a non-threatening forest or whatnot), then I have dungeon music (which is more ominous, so that there's a feeling of possible or even imminent threat), and the last playlist is battle music which is self explanatory. Mostly it's just music from video games -- Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Arcanum, Oblivion and the like. I also have some Lord of the Rings music, but a lot of that is pretty recognizable if you've seen the movies. It's always kind of goofy to have the one ring's theme start playing when the party is getting drunk off mead in the tavern.
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