Cool Uses of Music During Gaming

[Aaron L]

I've tried using music during games, but it always distracts me to the point that I can't concentrate on the game. This is probably because of my ADHD, however.

I do quite often have music playing in my head during games, however.

 

[RFisher]

One of the guys in my Monday night group runs a Saturday game. He came up with a cut-scene narration to go over a Corvus Corax track. He came over one day & we loaded the track up into Garage Band & recorded his narration over it. We did lots of moving bits around & a few punch-ins to get the narration to synch with the changes in the music just right. We even called one of the players & had her say a line so we could record it. Then burned it to CD.

Unfortunately, I can't make the Saturday games, but I heard it went over well.

 

[hexgrid]

Last session, I started running DCC #34: Cage of Delirium, which comes with a Midnight Syndicate CD and instructions to play certain tracks for certain encounters.

While the CD works great as general background music, trying to key the tracks to encounters turned out to be a huge hassle, and I abandoned it pretty quickly.

 

[Thad Enouf]

The Baldur's Gate soundtrack disk works well, although we're playing 3e. *chuckle*

 

[Shadowslayer]

On the "Bram Stoker's Dracula" soundtrack, there's a great tune called Vampire Hunters. I once played that when the PCs were making their way up to Castle Ravenloft. Set the tone quite nicely.

Also, decided one time to pull out all the stops in my Star Wars d6 game and tried to script it like the movies. When everyone was ready to play, I hit the Main Title (complete witht he 20th Century Fox trumpets right at the beginning) and handed out papers with the opening title and blurb written out in the same scrolling-away-from-the-screen style as the movies. And at the climactic battle played the Imperial March etc etc. Pure cheese, but pure fun.

But only did it once. As another poster mentioned, keying certain songs to a certain scenes is a little unweildy...for me anyway.

These days I just have some quiet background music playing that suits the mood of whatever we're doing that night. Sometimes the Indiana Jones music, sometime LOTR, sometimes Dracula (That whole sountrack is pretty awesome) Never anything with lyrics though.

Now that I think of it, I should look into a Pirates Of the Carribean one.

Some day, just for yuks, I'd like to pop in a copy of the old (original show) Star Trek hand-to-hand fight theme for when combat starts. Anyone know what that tune is called?

 

[deltadave]

I often use music to set the tone for a scene. the Imperial March works well for introducing the really bad enemies. Last of the Mohicans has got a good track for action, etc. Have about 20 different playlists with different moods - from ambient (Celtic) to Tension. Just have to flick to the right playlist and go from there...

 

[WampusCat43]

I don't play music much during our games, but when my Age of Worms players went into the arena for the first round of the Champions Games I cranked up "Beasts of the Wizard" from Midnight Syndicate's D&D album. It's basically a march that leads off with a lot of stomping feet and follows with big horns and whooshing crescendos. I described it as the noise the crowd was making as the gladiators entered. The whooshing sound was the Waterdeep griffon cavalry doing a flyby. Awesome stuff.