Playing music while playing a RPG

[BENINHB]

Music is a huge part of our games. Typical one of the players is DJ and takes ques from the DM as far and what to play.

Whenever i hear Thunderhorse by Dethklok I know the s is about to hit the fan

 

[kitsune9]

I used to have one player back in the 2e days who absolutely insisted on having music go with our D&D games. Now, I didn't mind what he picked, orchestra soundtracks for various movies.

However, these days, I can't handle having any music or TV going on in the background. I feel like I'm competing with them in order to get myself heard, so when it is up to me, we turn it off.

 

[Olli]

I always was fond of the Conan Soundtrack, nothing is bigger than a showdown with the BBEG while playing Conan!!!

 

[Haltherrion]

We play music fairly often. What works best for us are movie soundtracks. Since you can buy individual tracks these days it wouldn't be too hard to put your own compilation together without buying too many albums.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Yep, we started using music in our games about 9 months ago. I only use instrumentals as lyrics are too distracting and generally the sound level is low so that people can talk over it without needing to raise their voice.

I use my iPod and have playlists for Combat, Dungeon, Town, Background, Horror, Church, etc. This has made switching between music themes super quick and easy. Just press a couple of buttons and I can quickly switch the music to match the scene. I have slowly built my collection of movie soundtracks over the last year or two so I now have about 2 dozen albums worth of music to pick from. That means that I can just random shuffle the music for a particular theme and not have to worry about the music getting too repetitive during a fight, or even a session.

Overall I think it has definitely been a worthwhile addition to the game (otherwise I wouldn't use it still). The best use of it was for a Call of Cthulhu one-shot that I ran. I used the various Silent Hill original soundtracks as they are (unsurprisingly) just full of great horror tracks. I only put the horror music on when the PC's started getting closer to something bad happening and it had a great impact on the game. You could see the tension rise in my players as soon as I put the music on. It got to a point where one of my players looked quite scared at the table. The music well and truly set the mood that session.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Firebeetle]

I love playing with music.

For most of my campaigns, I've used ambient music. notably
Dead Can Dance
Gladiator soundtrack
Music of Myst
Steve Roach
Peter Gabriel's Passion (must have)
John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness soundtrack

I found all of these excellent. However, I decided to mix it up this last campaign, and switched to a rock-based soundtrack. I focus on instrumentals and guitar work and some vocal work. This has not been the big distraction I thought it would be. Some of my choices:

Evanesence
Nightwish
The Sword
A Band of Orcs
Tony MacAlpine
Ywngwe Malmsteen
Celtic Frost

Definitely peps up combat.

I'd like to spin it, and be an RPG DJ. I've never taken the time to, but it would be nice to be able to preplan and play music appropriate to different scenes. I've tried to approximate this with itunes, but I really need to take more time to catalog my music library to get a handle on this.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I keep Benny Hill on hand for those inevitable chase scenes.

Hamster Dance works well, too.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* ByronD on these forums turned me onto [ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0048NUUS2/]99 Darkest Pieces of Classical Music[/ame] for background music. Now available from Amazon for the low, low, low price of $2.49 (Hey, 99 pieces of really good music for less than three bucks? You really can't go wrong! )

I owe ByronD a big thanks for that.

 

[The Shaman]

For Traveller I'm fond of Seventies electronica as soundscape: Tomita, Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, et cetera. That's the only game for which I regularly choose to include music.

I came across Sonic Legends audio files. Some of them are pretty good, and I like the fact that they're long and looping, but they're also three time as expensive as most of the tracks I could pull off iTunes. Still, it's another option.

 

[Beginning of the End]

-Tenseness
-Repose
-Action

Good categories and similar to what I use. To that list I would also add:

- Epic Action
- Creepy

Epic Action is usually a code word for "Carmina Burana rip-offs" (Conan, Final Fantasy VIII, etc.). It's the stuff you throw on when this is no ordinary conflict.

Creepy is similar to tenseness, but meant to evoke a more unsettling or disturbing vibe. (I've recently been using the Dead Space OST to great effect.)

Video game music and movie soundtracks are good. Aiming for stuff that your players aren't familiar with is also a good idea (since it's less likely to distract them with inappropriate associations).

 

[khantroll]

I keep the Benny Hill song, the banana splits theme, and a "wah wah wah" sound on hand. The first two are for different types of chases, and the last one is for really dumb moves by PCs.

As for real music, though, we have tried a couple of times, and cannot do it. It distracts my group, but then again I have two people that HAVE to listen DIRECTLY to any music playing.