How Do You Use Music In Your Game?

[Olaf the Stout]

I just got an iPod dock for my birthday and I'm looking at introducing music in to my D&D sessions. I've looked up the numerous threads around the place on what soundtracks and other music have found useful. What I didn't really find though was how people actually go about using it in their games.

Do you have music playing in the background all of the time?

Do you only use it for certain scenes or moments in a game?

Do you use a particular song(s) for certain NPC's, events or locations or do you just have a big list of songs and pick them out at random?

How do you organise your songs?

At the moment my plan is to have the music playing the whole time during the session. I am only going to use instrumental songs or songs in another language or with unintelligble chanting. I think songs with english lyrics would be too distracting.

I'll also keep the sound low so that it is defintely a background thing. I don't want the players having to yell to hear each other over the music. There may be certain times where I'll play the music a little louder if I think it will really help to set the tone of the scene, but in general it won't be too loud.

I'm running a pretty traditional D&D campaign at the moment. We're playing through the Shackled City AP. I plan to divide the music up into a few different categories and just play the tracks in those categories randomly when required.

So far the categories I have are:

Combat (self explanatory)
Town (safe, relaxing music, giving the impression that nothing bad is going to happen)
Dungeon (tense and foreboding music, like danger could be just around the next corner)
Heroes (uplifting music, played after the heroes succeed at something - the type of music played in a movie when the bad guys are defeated)
General Background Music (not sure what music to put in here)
Travel (not sure what music to put in here)
Wilderness (not sure what music to put in here)

I've also found some music that will fit some locations/scenes. For example, there are a couple of songs I have found that "feel" relatively safe and relaxing that have a fair amount of chanting in them. I plan on using them whenever the party visits the St Cuthbert church to see Jenya (good NPC helping the party).

So any thoughts or ideas on how you actually use music in your games?

Olaf the Stout

 

[Chainsaw]

We don't use music at all, much to my dismay. I'm not the DM or host though, so it's not really my call. Recently found Ahab, a great 'nautic funeral doom metal' group, which I think would be perfect background music. The songs are all very slow and ominous and the singing is really unintelligble (sort of like Ents sining at about 5% normal Ent speech speed), so I think it would set the mood without being intrusive.

Also, I know there's a guy on here who has a great website and program that can be used for creating situation specific ambiant/background noises as well - birds chirping, wind, for day forest, owls for night forest, people talking for cities, whatever you can imagine. I can't recall his handle at the moment though.

 

[Wolf1066]

I've used music from time to time, generally just running in the background. I've wanted to custom fit it to the action at the time - or at least the location - but generally it's just been a matter of putting on a tape or queuing up some MP3s and letting it run.

As I run Cyberpunk, I've tried to aim for music and songs that evoke aspects of it - goth, metal, punk, techno etc along with ones that protest against issues that are still likely to be ongoing in a cyberpunk/corporate dystopia.

Would love to have things set up to quickly switch between soundtracks for different in-game venues without breaking the flow of the game.

 

[Mark]

Here are some collected thoughts -

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/174448-game-related-music-threads-links.html

 

[Wormwood]

Our current Gm has a number of playlists for our game. "Town", "Ambient", "Combat" and the like.

It's actually pretty cool if you can swap 'em out quickly and smoothly.

 

[Dykstrav]

I have several scores and soundtracks on my laptop, and I key up something when the mood strikes me. Lately, I've been using a lot of the stuff from Age of Conan for combat and wilderness scenes. I don't really use the old Basil Pouledoris standbys simply because they have really been done to death in gaming. I may use the soundtracks from the Lord of the Rings from time to time, but I generally prefer ambient music from games and films. Diablo and Diablo II always seem to be a big hit for dungeon exploration.

I've tried leitmotifs as a game element before, but honestly, I don't think any of my players have ever caught on to it.

If I have the time, I'll actually make a playlist directly in the folder where I'm saving my game-related files. I typically play music when I'm doing my prep anyway, so something usually suggests itself. Then when I get to the table, I've got the exact music I need.

 

[Wolf1066]

I typically play music when I'm doing my prep anyway, so something usually suggests itself.

Ditto - gets me in a suitable mood and sometimes a song will suggest ideas - not necessarily the lyrics but where my mood takes me while listening to it.

 

[Squig of Darkness]

Creating playlists is part of my normal session prep. I look for suitable music for a location or situation, but I also have general playlists prepared for when the party inevitably goes where I don't expect. A few good soundtracks:

Princess Mononoke (or any OST from a Miyazaki film)
Conan the Barbarian
Indiana Jones (good dungeon music and heroic stuff)
Gladiator
Pirates of the Caribbean
The Dark Knight (perfect for putting your players on edge)
Braveheart
Last of the Mohicans
Bram Stoker's Dracula
WoW (surprisingly good ambient music)
Fable
Vagrant Story (great combat music and some creepy dungeon stuff)
Not to mention the dozens of Final Fantasy soundtracks out there (careful though, some of it is pretty cheesy)

-Squig

 

[Wik]

I don't use music in my games, and I'm not really keen on having it present at games I play at, either. It's not that I dislike music - actually, it's the exact opposite. Music is too much of a distraction.

If I'm making the playlist and a new song comes on, I'll often stop and mention the song, or where it's from. Or draw attention to it, or some random fact about it... such as "Howard Shore wrote this for one of the LotR movies, but it wasn't included in the film's score, but you'll hear it at hockey games and on tv commercials all the time". and so on, and so forth. Plus, I have a hard time divorcing the music from the original intent - if I'm playing the battle theme from Gladiator, then I won't feel right unless the current scene involves a large-scale battle of some sort (a fight against a few lizardfolk doesn't count).

I'm even worse if someone else put the list on. If I identify the music, I'm fine (and I'm actually pretty good at divorcing it, as a player - I won't act more battle-like in an RPG scene simply because the original music was set to a fight scene). But if I don't know the music, I'll have to interrupt the game and ask "hey, what music is this?" If I don't, I spend all my attention on the music, and not the game.

Now imagine if it's a mixed set of tunes, and I'm unfamiliar with, say, half the songs.

For what it's worth, I do this outside of gaming, too. In fact, just last night on a first date, I'd stop everytime a new song came on in the coffee shop. The music was really quiet, so I'd perk my head up, catch a line or two... and if I knew the song, I was back in date mode. If I didn't... I kept listening until I identified it or realized I didn't know it.

Luckily, the date thought this made me interesting for some reason. Poor broad.

Moral of the story: Music can totally enhance your games. But it can be a distracting influence for weirdos such as myself.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

I use music all the time in my game sessions. I have an iPod with a couple playlists--combat and scary. I also make sure to have a piece of music to use as a theme for the game, much like a TV show might have a theme.

Each playlist is deep--2-3 hours each, so that there isn't a lot of repetition if a combat goes long.

I'm working on a background music playlist as well, so that there's something underscoring the quieter parts of the game.

I started a game music community on the WOTC site if you're interested. I don't update it frequently enough.

Game Music