WotBS WotBS Soundtrack

[Ragnar_Deerslayer]

I'm going to be starting the (3.5) War of the Burning Sky campaign soon, and I'm looking for help for music recommendations. I'm not really a big music buff, but some of my players are, and I'm hoping to help immersion.

I was thinking a good theme song for the campaign might be Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames" or "Soldiers of the Wasteland." Other recommendations (Dragonforce or otherwise?)

Once I get a good theme song for the campaign, I'm going to ask the players to be thinking about a theme song for each of the characters, and maybe set the theme song in the background whenever a character gets a crit or does something ultra-cool.

This is the first time I've done anything like this, but then again, I've never run anything as overwhelmingly EPIC as WotBS.

Any suggestions from DMs who regularly do stuff like this?

Thanks,

Ragnar

 

[Drazulfel]

There are a lot of fantasy-based bands out there, but too much constant speed metal can actually ruin the mood and make a D&D game cheesy. Dragonforce is cool and all, but careful of overkill!! Diversify your soundtrack.

Blind Guardian will offer you some nice options. Older stuff sounds like old school Metallica, but from mid-late nineties and forward, more melodic and orchestral.

Check out an a capella metal / rock band called Van Canto. They have a couple of cool medieval-ish ballads (Last Night of the Kings).

World of Warcraft soundtrack?

Epica will give you some great thematic music. Great mixture of classical and metal. Their live CD includes several classical scores played with a full metal twist.

You can hardly ever go wrong with movie soundtracks. Avatar is a recent favorite. Great theme music for a Ranger, or maybe a Druid or other primal character. Play around with other movies for different character types.

Very sleepy and my brain's not giving me any better suggestions, but this was an interesting topic and I wanted to throw my two cents in.

 

[EugeneZ]

Strongly agree with Drazulfel. Dragonforce is great when it comes to playing Guitar Hero, but it just doesn't suit a fantasy setting. Unless all your players are speed metal fans, they will most certainly be turned off by it.

If you can get your hands on some music from companies like Immediate Music, they provide dozens and dozens of tracks of "trailer music" and much of it is quite appropriate for fantasy settings. They are diverse, so your players can each pick a theme that represents their characters. And they are quite short, so you can play the theme to underline how a certain scene or battle is related to a certain character without getting all the players sick to death of the noise.

For general gameplay, Drazulfel had some great suggestions which I can add to: The Midnight Syndicate makes mostly darkish Halloween music (perfect for Ravenloft or undead adventures) but they have an albus literally called Dungeons & Dragons which is worth picking up. E.S. Posthumus has three CDs... one is heavy on vocals, but the other two have some great mood tracks, several of which would be great for WotBS style army battles. Nox Arcana is another band that releases mood-based music. I often find tracks from their CDs useful for specific situations. Lastly, Juno Reactor isn't exactly a fantasy-music band and you risk a bit of the same Dragonforce-ish issues, they have some tracks that are logical and make perfect sense for DnD. There are several tracks on Labyrinth which are amazing, especially Narvas, which has got to be the most epic boss-fight music ever.

I would be remiss to not mention one of my recent favorites, a company called Sonic Legends that makes these things called Soundscapes. They're amateur musicians so their musicianship is not up to the par of some of the bands up there, but they make up for it with several factors: 1) Their compositions are themed for specific settings, like "Forest Battle." You actually hear arrows whizzing by and feet running through dry leaves. Awesome. 2) They are long. Usually just under ten minutes, and are created to loop. Since they all have special effects like running feet and clashing metal, looping their music rarely becomes tedious. 3) They are very cheap! $3 apiece and you can listen to previews and buy as few as you need.

 

[RangerWickett]

For big beefy melee, Conan the Barbarian's score has two or three great tracks. The Homeworld games have a vaguely Middle Eastern feel on some of the tracks, if you want to give Ragesia a more 'Persian Empire' feel. Battlestar Galactica offers you an array of battle music.

I certainly listened to a lot of Led Zeppelin while working on the campaign saga, though unless you can find an instrumental version, I'd avoid that.

You can probably assemble a soundtrack from existing video games, though you want to be careful not to pick things people have played a ton of recently. If a player gets nostalgic when he hears Shadow of the Colossus playing during the colossus battle in adventure 9, great, but Dragon Age might be too recent.

 

[alms66]

I would think that playing something along the lines of the Lord of the Rings soundtracks and/or Braveheart soundtracks - plus hundreds of other such soundtracks would get greater effect than metal music. Of course, you'd want to try and time the pieces...
that can be achieved by looping one piece and then switching to another when necessary and looping that one.

 

[Jhaelen]

I would think that playing something along the lines of the Lord of the Rings soundtracks and/or Braveheart soundtracks - plus hundreds of other such soundtracks would get greater effect than metal music.

Meh. we once listened to the complete LotR soundtrack in one of our sessions and after a while it got really old. There's a couple of themes that are repeated all the time until they just get on your nerves.

Since that session I can no longer fully enjoy the movies because I cannot stand to hear the music for long.

I prefer post-rock or post-metal pieces that are (mostly) instrumental, YMMV.

 

[Ragnar_Deerslayer]

You can probably assemble a soundtrack from existing video games,

That's . . . that's BRILLIANT! Why didn't *I* think of that?!!

*digs furiously in his box of old video games until he comes up with the Baldur's Gate Soundtrack*

Yes! YES!

 

[Summer-Knight925]

Lord of the Rings soundtrack
Star Wars soundtrack
Indiana Jones soundtrack
if you have the Eberron soundtrack, double score

pretty much anything with few lyrics that the players wont totally rock out too, nothing ruins a game more than starting a moshpit whilst fighting the dragon, you need intense chase scene music when fighting a dragon

as for what songs are played when, play video games, lots of them and trust your gut

 

[jeffh]

"Burning Sky" by Porcupine Tree is a must-include . Besides the appropriateness of the title, it's a long, atmospheric instrumental, which is just what the doctor ordered for this sort of thing. Also, it'll appeal to the metal fans without actually being metal in any way, shape or form.

Actually, you could do a lot worse than assembling a collection of instrumentals and long instrumental passages from PT and other modern progressive-rock bands. I've long thought the long guitar solo from "Solomon" by Arena would be the perfect boss-monster music, for example.

 

[Morrus]

There is also the official WotBS theme, used in our trailer for the saga. I'll dig out a link for it - the composer has it for sale, I believe.