D&D General What music do you use for your games?

I love music in the background during a season. I like to play Basil Paledrus' score to Conan the Barbarian.

However, I find that there are at least a one or two players who don't like music at the table. And they will usually speak up about it.
 

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Everyone will differ to a great degree on this; there's a couple of posts above where players or table runner mention they find music distracting or just don't like it at all.

Other alternatives I've heard of: some will lean less on "music," and more mood soundtracks, things like soundscapes or various sound effects to reproduce the environment the party happens to be navigating through.

If I use music, I try to tie it as close as possible to the themes of the campaign if possible e.g. for classic fantasy, I use sound tracks from older video games or particular television series as a general base, then build off of that. Examples include BG 3, EQ, FFXI, FFIV, The Witcher 2 & 3, Child of Light, Dragon Age, etc.

Critically, I try to avoid games or tv shows that are recognizable by the table.

I segue way from that into battle music, typically from like sources when combat starts.

I also include a couple offbeat tracks for particular npc's the party have met. So for example, occasionally neo-folk groups like Danheim will pop up, because they're emblematic of the half-orc bard that's currently adventuring with the party.

There's also a song that functions as the anthem of the city they're based in. They recognize it when it plays now.
 

I generally play back episodes of the "Music from the Hearts of Space" radio program, typically keyed to the adventure at hand. So if the PCs will be fighting frost giants, I'll put in some winter-themed programs, and so on. Yesterday they fought a flesh colossus (a vaguely humanoid construct composed of hundreds of fused bodies), so I chose three programs with the word "fusion" in their titles ("Asian Fusion," "Parvaz (Persian Fusion)," and "Flamenco Fusion").

Johnathan
 


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