Kneecleaver
First Post
Most GM's play at least some music for setting the mood, if not craft a soundtrack for their games. This is a good thing, but I'm getting ready to diverge quite drastically from the tried and true for my group.
I've gamed with this same group of people (running around half the time) for 20+ years. There are songs that have been played ad nauseum over those years: Brothers in Arms, Black Wind-Fire and Steel, Lord of the Rings soundtrack, many songs off the Heavy Metal Soundtrack, countless Metallica and Iron Maiden songs, some Slayer, Conan the Barbarian soundtrack, etc. The previous examples are just to illustrate the kind of music we used. Prior to this I've always tried to choose music that lyrically (if it wasn't instrumental) was pretty much spot on for whatever situation.
The reason the songs worked in the past is that the group as a whole connected with them. We've had younger players join us and want to bring in newer music and we have tried it, but- to put it bluntly- we are gettting old. It's not that the newer music is necessarily bad, it's just that we don't connect.
I recently moved to LA and there is a radio station here called The Sound that I absolutely love. It goes beyond being the sterotypical classic rock station, they go far deeper into albums than what you would normally hear. They also go from the 60's through the present. In any given hour you might hear Johnny Cash, Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, The Beetles, Modern English, The Police or Green Day. What I've heard over the past months has heavily influenced what I'll be playing while we game.
What I'm doing with my new game is, on one hand, going backwards and, on the other hand, grabbing stuff we missed during our metal years. I'm also not being nearly as strict with the lyrical content, leaning more towards theme and mood. The group on whole is right around 40 years old. We spent our childhood in the 70's and early 80's. The songs of that era we all know and have a connection with but have never been played during our games save the cliche'd Sabbath, Zeppelin, early Metallica and Maiden. I'll be running War of the Burning Sky (I rarely run modules- I've run maybe 4 in all my years of GMing) and the songs that have popped into my head so far to put on the soundtrack are:
"Going Mobile" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who
"The Rising" and "The River" by Springsteen
"Run Like Hell" by Pink Floyd
"Zaar" and "Don't Give Up" by Peter Gabriel
I've got more on the list, but I've got to get to work now. Since I'll be shoutcasting this (I'm running the game in Fantasy Grounds), if my players don't like it (of which I think there will only be one) they can choose not to listen.
The reason for this post and the lengthy lead in is to poll people who use this style of music for their games for ideas or input. I want a breadth of MP3's to shoutcast and I'm open regardless of era and genre, just generally not Speed/Death Metal or well known movie soundtracks. I'm looking for mood and feel over specific lyrical content, though having both is a plus.
I've gamed with this same group of people (running around half the time) for 20+ years. There are songs that have been played ad nauseum over those years: Brothers in Arms, Black Wind-Fire and Steel, Lord of the Rings soundtrack, many songs off the Heavy Metal Soundtrack, countless Metallica and Iron Maiden songs, some Slayer, Conan the Barbarian soundtrack, etc. The previous examples are just to illustrate the kind of music we used. Prior to this I've always tried to choose music that lyrically (if it wasn't instrumental) was pretty much spot on for whatever situation.
The reason the songs worked in the past is that the group as a whole connected with them. We've had younger players join us and want to bring in newer music and we have tried it, but- to put it bluntly- we are gettting old. It's not that the newer music is necessarily bad, it's just that we don't connect.
I recently moved to LA and there is a radio station here called The Sound that I absolutely love. It goes beyond being the sterotypical classic rock station, they go far deeper into albums than what you would normally hear. They also go from the 60's through the present. In any given hour you might hear Johnny Cash, Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, The Beetles, Modern English, The Police or Green Day. What I've heard over the past months has heavily influenced what I'll be playing while we game.
What I'm doing with my new game is, on one hand, going backwards and, on the other hand, grabbing stuff we missed during our metal years. I'm also not being nearly as strict with the lyrical content, leaning more towards theme and mood. The group on whole is right around 40 years old. We spent our childhood in the 70's and early 80's. The songs of that era we all know and have a connection with but have never been played during our games save the cliche'd Sabbath, Zeppelin, early Metallica and Maiden. I'll be running War of the Burning Sky (I rarely run modules- I've run maybe 4 in all my years of GMing) and the songs that have popped into my head so far to put on the soundtrack are:
"Going Mobile" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who
"The Rising" and "The River" by Springsteen
"Run Like Hell" by Pink Floyd
"Zaar" and "Don't Give Up" by Peter Gabriel
I've got more on the list, but I've got to get to work now. Since I'll be shoutcasting this (I'm running the game in Fantasy Grounds), if my players don't like it (of which I think there will only be one) they can choose not to listen.
The reason for this post and the lengthy lead in is to poll people who use this style of music for their games for ideas or input. I want a breadth of MP3's to shoutcast and I'm open regardless of era and genre, just generally not Speed/Death Metal or well known movie soundtracks. I'm looking for mood and feel over specific lyrical content, though having both is a plus.
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