Music and gaming, setting the mood

First off I know that Dragon magazine has done a peice on this, I have the issue. I want to know if any of you are using music as part of your game? Do you que up "Bodies" From drowning pool for the big fight scene with the demon that the group has been chasing? How about "Danger Zone" by Loggins for that big aireal battle? (I simply could resist the last one )

I tried to do this once. We were laying Jovian Chronicals. It's a space mech game similar to Gundam and Mecha crusade. I bought a couple of import anime cds and copied burned a complitation disk. I got stuff that was reminisant of what we were playing.

One of my players said that "Real Folk Blues" didn't get him excited for mech combat. That wasn't the song playing for the battles but it was on the disk.

So are any of you doing this? Planning what is playing in the backround?

I recently used the music from the PSX game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for a site based adventure concerning a old 'abandoned' castle. And wow did it ever set the mood. And yes I had preselected numbers to go with particular moments and places within the castle.

But it's hard to find music which suits everything or everyone. Most of the time I don't use music because it has the tendency to either become repetetive or distract to much.

But still it was a blast seeing the players look up in horror when just when they thought they had escaped the main villian I again turned up his song

EDIT: darn keyboard learn to type

Absolutely I use music during the game! There are certainly parts where it can be left quiet, but for anything that you want to elicit emotion, you need music. With a wide assortment of cds at my disposal, I generally choose 3 to 4 soundtracks (or whatever) for each session. Each one is chosen because it will fit either a particular scene or just reflects the mood/background of the adventure in general.

Besides the article in Dragon, there was a music-using article in Issue #6 of Asgard magazines here on ENWorld. Link below.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/news...e=Downloads&file=index&req=viewdownload&cid=8

I'm thinking that if the players don't want to hear it i may just have my walkman headphones on around my neck and quietly play tunes. Hey I need motivation too.

I have some personal rules for music during games that I try not to break too often.

For one thing, I try not to use music with lyrics. There's always someone who wants to hear what is being sung and focuses on that and not the game, or is singing along, disrupting play. With instrumental-only music, it just sets mood, and there are no words for them to focus on except mine as the DM.

I try to keep the volume relatively low. Obviously I don't want to disturb anyone, but even so, the music shouldn't be overpowering. It's like the soundtrack in a movie, you should feel the effects of the music, but not consciously really be aware of when it starts and stops.

That said, I sometimes break these rules, especially the first one. I find that Drowning Pool's "Bodies" is indeed a great song for big combat scenes.

I use music mostly every time I run a game (It's been many years ince I last ran D&D, so this mostly refers to Cyberpunk and Heavy Gear).

I found that creating playlists ahead of time for specific parts of the scenario really does the trick. (Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine, The Bloodbath Dance from Blade (by Crystal Method) and so on... it was a rather aggressive game that).

It worked great though, as my players entered the warehouse I leaned over and doubleclicked the 'warehouse battle.pls' file on my desktop, and the battle raged for hours

At other times just having atmospheric music running in the background can be a great motivator (though it looses its appeal if your playlist isn't long enough and the tracks are repeated 4-5 times...)

I was actually just discussing this very same thing with some people on another board (http://www.minastirith.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=000097). and here's the list I posted over there of fantasy gaming session soundtracks (feel free to add):

Fellowship ST.
Two Towers ST. (These two are rather obvious [] .
Waterworld (Great adventure ST, which isn't known enough so as to make people go "Hey, isn't that 'movie-x'".
Parts of Mythodia by Vangelis (Very big, very epic. If you haven't heard this, but enjoy Shore's work for the movies, you should get it asap!).
El Greco by Vangelis (very slow, brooming feel! Almost as good as Mythodia.)
Voices by Vangelis (parts of it are very spiritual in feel, very dreamy.)
Parts from the 4 Adiemus records (Again, only parts are usable for various reasons. Most of it is simply too 'pop-y').
Parts of The Book of Secrets by Loreena McKennitt.
Bram Stoker's Dracula ST. (Though some is almost to recognizable, at least in my group)
A track or two from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Parts of Interview with the Vampire (Elliot Goldenthal is one of my favority ST. composers)
Parts of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Parts of The Last of the Mohicans
Though almost to recognizable, parts of Gladiator.
Lothlórien and Boadicea by Enya are quite good, as well as some of her other tracks, though their names escape at the moment.
Conan the Barbarian
Parts of Prince of Egypt
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
El Greco (The Greek) by Vangelis. GREAT RPG album.

While one of the guys over there mentioned Star Wars ST's, I never use those unless I'm actually playing SW (in which case they're obviously perfect).

That's one of the main reasons why the laptop is there and hooked up to speakers. I have tons of music loaded on to that thing. Much easier to cue it up using iTunes than it is when I used a CD player. I've always collected soundtracks and now I use a healthy chunk of them for mood music (for playing and planning).

I don't believe in actually cueing up music. I just play music that's appropriate for the campaign, and relatively quietly at that. I also don't believe in playing "modern" music for a fantasy game, unless it's a parody like Knight's Tale or something. I stick to orchestral movie soundtrack's almost exclusively.

If you're looking for some free music to use in a game, check this out:
http://remix.overclocked.org/index.php
It's a site of fan created MP3 remixes of video game music. I'd especially recommend the Castlevania mixes.

Joshua Dyal said:

I also don't believe in playing "modern" music for a fantasy game, unless it's a parody like Knight's Tale or something. I stick to orchestral movie soundtrack's almost exclusively.

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Back when I started playing, I would use some modern music (mostly heavy metal or classic rock) but it was usually soft and in the background in my D&D games. I could never do it these days. I try to not use music that contains lyrics as it is distracting and takes away from the mood. If I am running modern/future/scifi game I have a good chunk of techno/orchestral type stuff but for D&D I always stick to the music that suits it.