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<blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5120683" data-attributes="member: 15470">We've got two games going. One DM has a &quot;basic ambient&quot; playlist, which I suspect the party are beginning to think of as &quot;our theme songs&quot; as they typically come out when we're resting, or moving the plot along through story rather than combat. Then he's got playlists set up for individual encounters, with music that fits the &quot;theme&quot; of the encounter to his mind. Random/shuffle.For my game, we do almost exactly what Wormwood describes here. I actually have one of my players &quot;writing the soundtrack&quot;. (Wik, she's the resident &quot;music geek&quot; in our game, so this was a fun way to get her engaged, invested, etc., plus it solves the 'distracted by the music' problem - she just gets a smile on her face that the rest of us don't get, sometimes.)She came up with about eight to ten categories: Tavern, City, Traveling, Resting, Tragic, Creepy, Tension, Standard Combat, Epic Combat, etc, as well as a &quot;party theme&quot; and individual &quot;character themes&quot; for each of the PC's. For specific villains, I give her, say, thematic descriptions of villains and trust her judgment in picking the &quot;score&quot; to match the theme I've given her. In general, for recurring villains especially, we try to give the villain a theme song which I play every time s/he appears, and then build a soundtrack around the way I imagine that going: e.g., it may be villain song plus tension, or for the final showdown with him it's likely to be villain song plus epic combat music. &nbsp;. . .Some discoveries:Never ever ever pick a playlist with just one song; even if its appropriately themed it will get repetitive far too quickly. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Music with lyrics distracts more players, and by a larger margin, than instrumental soundtracks.Volume is important: you're aiming for &quot;loud enough to hear, quiet enough to talk over even with the most boisterous combat sequence.&quot;Volume consistency is even more important: you don't want to have to futz with the volume repeatedly if songs are significantly off volume from each other. Its better to scrap the &quot;perfect&quot; piece of music if you can't get it equalized appropriately. (Combat pieces can be a smidge louder than non-combat pieces, as the group tends to raise their volumes during the excitement of a fight, but the difference is less in practice than it will be in your head.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Amaroq, post: 5120683, member: 15470"] We've got two games going. One DM has a "basic ambient" playlist, which I suspect the party are beginning to think of as "our theme songs" as they typically come out when we're resting, or moving the plot along through story rather than combat. Then he's got playlists set up for individual encounters, with music that fits the "theme" of the encounter to his mind. Random/shuffle. For my game, we do almost exactly what Wormwood describes here. I actually have one of my players "writing the soundtrack". ([I]Wik, she's the resident "music geek" in our game, so this was a fun way to get her engaged, invested, etc., [/I]plus[I] it solves the 'distracted by the music' problem - she just gets a smile on her face that the rest of us don't get, sometimes.[/I]) She came up with about eight to ten categories: Tavern, City, Traveling, Resting, Tragic, Creepy, Tension, Standard Combat, Epic Combat, etc, as well as a "party theme" and individual "character themes" for each of the PC's. For specific villains, I give her, say, thematic descriptions of villains and trust her judgment in picking the "score" to match the theme I've given her. In general, for recurring villains especially, we try to give the villain a theme song which I play [b]every[/b] time s/he appears, and then build a soundtrack around the way I imagine that going: e.g., it may be villain song plus tension, or for the final showdown with him it's likely to be villain song plus epic combat music. . . . Some discoveries: Never ever ever pick a playlist with just one song; even if its appropriately themed it will get repetitive far too quickly. :) Music with lyrics distracts more players, and by a larger margin, than instrumental soundtracks. Volume is important: you're aiming for "loud enough to hear, quiet enough to talk over even with the most boisterous combat sequence." Volume [b]consistency[/b] is even more important: you don't want to have to futz with the volume repeatedly if songs are significantly off volume from each other. Its better to scrap the "perfect" piece of music if you can't get it equalized appropriately. ([I]Combat pieces can be a smidge louder than non-combat pieces, as the group tends to raise their volumes during the excitement of a fight, but the difference is less in practice than it will be in your head.[/i]) [/QUOTE]

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