Background music playlists

[Sword of Spirit]

I made a generic D&D campaign sound track with close to 200 tracks which I divided into Action, Scene, and Theme categories, gave a number for sorting purposes and an evocative name (like "SCENE 1020 - Eerie Dungeon"). When I was able to host a TeamSpeak server I used DJ software on the other computer to run a music bot with fine control, but now I've just got them uploaded to Roll20 to play from there.

The one thing I can't really do is just have a playlist going on in the background. I want the specific music to relate to the specific "scene", so I'm constantly changing what is playing.

 

[Li Shenron]

I have many playlists on Spotify for different phases of the game, every now and then I hear a new song and add it to the appropriate list. Ambient music (e.g. Brian Eno) is perfect for travelling and exploration. Historical movies soundtracks for battles. But the most interesting lists to make are those for more specific places such as a temple, a tavern or a crypt, in which case I have to cherrypick more careful. I've often found Enya to have something good for all those cases.

I also really like Tabletopaudio but haven't used it often.

OTOH I use epic rock music only BEFORE or AFTER the game, not while playing as it becomes distracting and annoying.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[reelo]

Dungeon Synth and Medieval Ambient. Some projects I like are
Fief
Mortiis (Era I)
Wongraven
Burzum (yeah, I know. The guys a racist naughty word)
Wolcensmen
Ulver
Myrkur
Ultima Online soundtrack (the old MIDI stuff)

 

[Michikawa]

Lots of wonderful options here, keep them coming! <3 Glad to hear people find the background music to be of use!

 

[Nytmare]

Every game or campaign has been different for me. Back in my E6/3.5 days it was RPG Soundmixer over video game (mostly TOEE) and movie scores when we were playing at my house. For one shot games, I usually try to cobble together more of a specific location by location playlist. Blades in the Dark games are almost always Hidden Citizens. My current Slack-based Torchbearer game has a channel set up where people post what youtube playlist/soundcloud they're listening to and people can pick and choose what they want. Most of that for me has been just googling some combination/version of the words epic-creepy-gothic-dark-crypt-rpg playlist and clicking around.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There’s a link in my sig to Mark CMG’s thread archiving a lot of music-themed threads here on ENWorld.

 

[Panfilo]

Zoe Keating, Jessica Curry, and Christopher Tin are a few of my standbys! If there's a video game you feel really immersed in, you should always look up the composer (even if the music isn't leaping out at you; that might even mean it's better ambience!)

 

[dragoner]

This one is pretty good, I have been listening to it while writing my sci-fi setting: