gaaran
Hey all, I was just curious if anyone uses music for their games, and if so, if they had any suggestions for music to use. I'm working on putting together my own playlists for the game, but if there are any particular songs that you think are awesome fir a battle, a temple, a town, or whatever, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Comments
The Donnie Darko Soundtrack is good for exploring caves.
I use the LOTR soundtracks as sort of standbys if I can't think of anything better.
The biggest sticky points I find about using music in game are that:
# if your playlist is not long enough, your players might complain about it repeating.
# battle music can heighten the mood at the start of a fight, but can make your players feel exhausted more quickly if the fight gets long. While exhausted characters may be realistic, exhausted players slow down their turns and get distracted more easily.
# Finding an appropriate volume level can be tough.
I've found music works best to underscore narration, rather than during combat... or perhaps to punctuate a certain moment. (e.g. two sessions ago, my players fought a kobold mariachi band... I started the scene with the first track from the Mask of Zorro soundtrack, which was good to set the mood, and get a bit of a laugh. But then I let it fade so we could focus on fighting.
Soundtracks from the Conan movies, the soundtracks from Lord of the Rings Online, all the music from the Baldur's Gate series by Michael Hoenig, Ars Arcana's Savage Tongue, the soundtrack from Gladiator, the television show Rome, and the Myth games.
Other fantasy music I can recommend is stuff like Thistle and Shamrock, Some Enigma, Deep Forest, Enya, etc.
For cyberpunk themes, Carpenter scores, (Especially Escape From LA/NY soundtracks) Cannibal Whore Feast, emo stuff actually works, anything techno/dance and acid.
Steampunk themes need jazz fusion, and mellowed industrial beats, especially with a Victorian bent. Throbbing Gristle, a couple Kraftwerk songs, Tobacco, KMFDM, etc.
All of your guys' ideas are really good too. I think I'll be looking into those for other games (Especially the Apocalyptica idea).
It's pretty obvious, but try to avoid using music with lyrics, it will distract everyone. Instead, focus on background music you've heard in movies, games, etc.
*From movies/TV:*
* Braveheart
* Conan
* DOOM
* Interview with the Vampire
* Lord of the Rings
* Pirates Of The Caribbean
* The Last of the Mohicans
* The Tudors
*From videogames:*
* Diablo
* Dragon Age
* Baldur's Gate
* Icewind Dale
* Heroes of Might and Magic V
* Neverwinter Nights
* Vampire: The Masquerade
* Vampire: Bloodlines
* Willow
*From music groups (these are purely instrumental):*
* Dronolan's Tower
* Minight Syndicate
* Nox Arcana
As a side note, in case you are playing a _Vampire_ game, you should try to get this:
* "Music from the Succubus Club":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_from_the_Succubus_Club
Hope that helps.
I'll be keeping an eye on this thread for other ideas :)
Some bands/artists that haven't been mentioned:
Globus
Epica
Michiru Oshima (the ICO soundtrack)
Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Cross)
Delerium
David Nevue
Immediate Music (stock music for different genres)
I also have a music quiz before i start my games - each one worth an action point... usually three songs and i vary - it may be guess the band, album, singer, player, etc.
EDIT: Also, gnunn, I might have to borrow that idea of a kobold mariachi band, cause that's fantastic!
I've had mixed success using music, but I'm still trying!
For basic background music, such as town or exploration - any of the above music posted is great. This week however I'm going to try using Pandora online radio and see if it can work with my sessions.
I've also had some luck with using music as queues, especially with getting my party to know when I'm interested in seeing a few skill checks. I just picked a single song and let them know if they heard it come up it probably meant there's a possible skill challenge to be found.
You can expand on the idea above to create 'theme' songs for particular events or organizations. Part of using music is to evoke a response; with a small bit of time and an audio file editor you could take a single song and make several clipped versions to use every time that event or person shows up. Maybe the Jaws theme gets chopped into several smaller .wav files which match how your party is handling a trap or skill challenge. Or Carmine Burana is your epic boss song, so you use a few mid-song clips every now and then when the villain's cronies arrive, then the full version for big boss man.
I agree with Gnunn regarding music and combat, and that Mariachi encounter sounds awesome!
We just use spotify (it's an internet radio thingy) and all my pc's are signed up to one playlist on it, which we just bundle any old song we like onto the list.
Granted Prince or Lady Gaga never really fit any setting but since background music never fit it in the first place we were not bothered.
If all else fails we just stick soft rock on like Toto-Africa or some Fleetwood mac.
I've tried to sync up certain music for certain moments in the game, but find that I lose focus as a GM if I'm thinking about a music cue too much. I've also found that too much singing is distracting.
But I think music can be very effective if it's not too loud or jarring.
Battle
Epic Battle
Crypts/Tombs
Evil Lairs
Fanfares
Loss/Sad
Suspenseful
Temples/Holy Ground
The Far Realms
Theme Songs (Each PC has one, along with a couple of recurring NPCs)
Village/Town
Tranquil/Soothing
Victory
Wilderness
Villains
Specific Events (I put songs that I want to use for specific cues in here)
Are there any sort of events that might come up that I've forgotten about? I'm up to 150 songs total, and adding more all the time (when I come across them), so for any particular scene, the music won't repeat much. Thanks for all the great suggestions here, they've been pretty helpful, and I'm using a lot of them.
* An evil laugh
* A "level-up" sound
* Something funny for critical fumbles
* Something cool for critical successes
That, and he *always* kicked it off with "Bad Moon Rising" because, well, that's funny. It also became a sort of Pavlovian signal that we needed to transition from eating and socializing into the game itself.
I use a fair amount of music in my campaign, mostly as background. I like a lot of medieval music (Medieval Babes, Cadfael soundtrack, Benedictian Monks Chant, ...) and use it fairly regularly.
I've only played in one other gaming group that used music. He was far more organized with his music. While I use music as a fire-and-forget mechanism; he preferred to find music to best match the scene type we were in. I really enjoyed it.
Signs & Portends, Dwarves of Lost Koldukar, In a certain realm
It allows you to introduce music or background noise AND individual clips. You can use these clips manually (like when you really need that thunder at that precise moment) or tell the software to randomize the clips and their frequency. The webpage itself has a lot of clips and soundtracks, but you can use anything you can get your hands on.
Sadly it only works under Windows...I need to fix that silly laptop.
And thanks to Ketherian for some more mood music ideas, I can never have enough, as I like to be able to just pick a situational playlist and let it run.
Ah! Found another one (ignoring those that seem dead projects or pay products) RPG Deck ( http://rpgdeck.peppermill-marketing.com/ ) allows you to have several lists of music/sounds and a separate list of spot sounds, but no control over repetition or the nice features of SceneSound, on the other hand it runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.
Does anyone know of a web page dedicated to game music? Of course most of what we use is movie/game soundtracks that can't be shared, but even just lists of recommended music and personal lists would be a huge asset, specially when you don't have time to compile music or dozens of sounds.
If I could just get my party to go into that one fanciful crystalline cave..
Ditto. Thx!