How important is Music in your games?

[sniffles]

As a player, I like anything that can help get me "in the mood" for whatever we're playing. I like to experience a roleplaying game like a movie, with dramatic accompaniment.

Unfortunately that can be a lot of work. One of my GMs likes to leave CDs playing in the background, but he just plays the same selection of CDs over and over and they're never on the appropriate track at the right time. Another GM keeps the radio on during games, and it's constantly playing annoying pop music. My third GM has only two soundtracks that he likes to play during our sessions: it's always either Conan or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

We play music all the time when we game. It has nothing to do with the chracters, story or game.
Someone bought a new CD we pop it in. Someone feels like a particular band, we throw them on. It's just background stuff, nothing important.

 

[Dragonbait]

Since my players are almost all from the video-game RPG age, music is almost always a necessity. Some players don't seem to know what to do without the music in the background. Personally, I think music is nice, but better when used to punctuate dramatic scenes rather than constant noise in the background.

 

[Nebulous]

As a player, I like anything that can help get me "in the mood" for whatever we're playing. I like to experience a roleplaying game like a movie, with dramatic accompaniment.

Unfortunately that can be a lot of work. One of my GMs likes to leave CDs playing in the background, but he just plays the same selection of CDs over and over and they're never on the appropriate track at the right time. Another GM keeps the radio on during games, and it's constantly playing annoying pop music. My third GM has only two soundtracks that he likes to play during our sessions: it's always either Conan or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

We have compatible music philosophy, sniffles. And it IS a lot of work. I like the music to blend easily into the background, or to suddenly punctuate encounters. Yesterday i was prepping a campaign with soundmixer (some with Conan!) and had a travel track with music, snorting horses, a few birds and a wagon. Later on, there is a hobgoblin ambush with archers, so i added random arrow twangs, grunts, and cries of pain. Much later on there's a hydra attack with music from Aliens, splashing, and multiple wet growls. Time consuming, yes, but i REALLY enjoy doing it and my players have always appreciated the extra effort.

 

[Gold Roger]

I occasionally use music, with mixed effects. We've had sessions with ongoing ""gaming" music (the CD in the Sharn book-players found it more distracting), ongoing non-athmosphere background music (no player feedback) and occasional theme-music, for example when a certain villain appears (great if music is appropiate).

If I had a laptop and a vast selection of appropiate instrumentals I'd use it frequently, but has is it's to much work.

 

[Kid Socrates]

Music! Hoo. I have:

Player Character themes, chosen by the players.
NPC themes, both for villains and major recurring NPCs.
Dungeon music.
Mood music.
Music for the major cities.
About 10 different "standard" battle themes.
Special "boss battle" music for when the party fights a major villain.

In addition, I've gotten into remixing, so I've started taking existing themes that the players recognize and modifying them, letting it segue into another track or shift mid-theme into a different style. I'm not very good at it yet, but I'm getting there.

The last one I did was for a recording the party stumbled onto between one player's father, two major NPCs, and the lead villain, recorded 15 years prior to the game. I got some outside help on that from two other players, wrote a script, had them record their lines separately, recorded my own for the other two, and then mixed all that together with background music, Civilization IV and Rise of Legends sound effects, and then spent six hours mixing together seven different Final Fantasy tracks for one stream-of-consciousness recording.

About six hours of work for a five-minute file, but MAN was it fun.

At last count, over the last year and a half of this game, I've collected and used 135 separate tracks and made about 10 of my own from other pre-existing files. I've used music from Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross, Pirates of the Caribbean, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Riverdance, .hack//sign, a Nike commercial, the World Wrestling Federation (or World Wrestling Entertainment, now), Dragon Ball Z, Linkin Park, Civilization IV, the Matrix, Kingdom Hearts, Ayumi Hamasaki, es posthumus, Gladiator, the Fifth Element, and others that I can't recall right now.

It's to the point now where when a villain is approaching or about to make an appearance, I don't even describe it -- I just play the music for that villain and speak a line. The lead villain's music (Legato's theme from Trigun) starts with a rough blast of static that makes my players jump -every- time. It works perfectly.

So in short, I, uh, use a lot of music.

 

[Arnwyn]

What does anyone else prefer?

We use music all the time. We have a rather significant selection of soundtracks to choose from, so we always have the right music for the right time.

Kid Socrates, above, pretty much lists the situations in which we use music, as well.

 

[Lorion]

It depends largely on the genre of the game. In horror games like Cthulhu music is essential to evoke the right atmosphere IMHO. In other genres... we use music every time but could do without if we needed to.

 

[Terwox]

Music -- sure, although I don't like having to mess with it while I dm... so I just made a CD for the game and turn it down.

Sound effects -- no. I'd much rather just have sounds described to me, or describe sounds as a DM -- using sound effects feels cheap and tinny to me.

 

[Oryan77]

I've always been interested in using music. I always asked my players what they thought of me using music and they always seem open to it. So when I got my first laptop a few months ago, I started playing music whenever I remembered to turn it on.

The reaction I got was surprising. They REALLY seem to like it. I'm not sure what the long term affects will be...they may get tired of hearing the same tunes once it's ran it's course. I do have a lot of mood music but I may need to get a lot more!