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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JustinAlexander" data-source="post: 6066860" data-attributes="member: 6700092">About a decade ago, I started prepping specific tracks cued to specific sequences. I would also take the playlists and burn copies of the adventure's "soundtrack" for the players (complete with CD cases and covers and the like). People generally liked it.Tip #1 - A Big Pitfall: "Wow, this 2 minute track sounds perfect for the fight with the cultists!" Then the fight takes 40 minutes to resolve and everyone is really, really sick of that 2 minute track by the end of it.Tip #2: If you're going to do this, it helps to have a music player with a remote control and a large display that you can see from across the room.Over time, I've moved away from this type of specificity and instead prepped generic playlists for my iPod. At the moment, for example, I have four primary playlists that I use for D&D:- D&D Generic Background- D&D Generic City- D&D Generic Combat- D&D Epic CombatWhenever I add a new CD or soundtrack to my collection, I go through it track by track and add songs to the appropriate playlists. At the moment, for example, there are 4.8 hours worth of music in the D&D Generic Combat playlist.And what I've found is that the result of this light theming is pretty much wholly equivalent in terms of effectiveness to the specific track-by-track prep I was doing before. Plus, it's prep-once-and-done instead of requiring a heavy prep load for every session.Of course, you can also move past the purely generic. For example, I've prepped a separate playlist for the two major Bad Guy Organizations in my regular campaign: So when they're fighting Group A it sounds different than when they're fighting Group B (and also sounds different than the Generic Combat playlist). It's a subtle distinction, but over time I think it's effective in building up musical associations.</blockquote>

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