What are some of the best uses of music you've experienced in RPGs?
What are some of the best uses of music you've experienced in RPGs?
Leo Long
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Robert Reyes
NOT having music at all.
If I've learned something for past 12 years of playing, it's how music NEVER works and never helps building anything. It's already an achievement if the music doesn't distract players
Jackson Russell
Dropping a nuclear barrage to the 1812 overture was hype as fuck.
Nathan Roberts
I tend to prefer ambient music more than anything else, though in a Modern game I had some appropriate music playing (Techno Ska mix) for a music festival the PC's were attending, and once the players asked who was on stage, wherein I pointed to the speakers, they got much more into it, discussing the music with each other and some of the NPCs, going to dance (in character), being confused because it didn't sound like music to them, etc.
Juan Carter
as a DM who uses it: use it sparingly. Have a playlist play -- quietly -- during encounters, which uses only instrumental music. You'll want to keep it quiet in general.
Parker Nelson
So, we were in a Delta Green game that involved OH SHIT TIME IS FUCKED HERE only it wasn't like super obvious the first time we entered a place where local time was going weird.
The way the DM keyed us into the fact that we'd unknowingly entered somewhere that it was 1983 was by keying up a playlist of the radio that was playing in the building we were in - it was all hits from that year. When we realise that the cultists we killed were in fact cultists not a new version of an old defunct cult, but rather the original cult that had become defunct when WE FUCKING KILLED THEM, he grinned like a fucking cat.
Ryan Bennett
This.
I've experimented with music in games for a looong time. But ultimately, the most overt you can get it without it being kinda shitty is for it to be a general "this is literally the background noise of where you are" kind of thing. Maybe its the late 80's and there's a lot of car radios blaring a particular song with some signature characteristics of the times.
But playing something like an actual soundtrack is awful every time, no matter how hard I want it to be a thing.
Bentley Morris
I've been working on a side setting that heavily incorporates the arts. There are three major groups of art: Visual, Performing, and Musical.
I've tried trimming the musics down into 8 major categories but I'm not sure I like what I have. Any thoughts? Any other outlying or unique enough musical genres would be smaller sects, but these 8 are just the most prolific
>Blues
>Classical
>Country
>Electronic
>Folk
>Jazz
>New Age
>Reggae
>Rock
To stay mostly on topic though ambient or instrumental musics are what work the best. Video game music is a nice treasure trove of music like this.
Landon Collins
Running part of the Curse of Strahd adventure for D&D 5e, so skip this post to avoid Death House spoilers.
Now, the Death House is an old sentient mansion that, long ago, was used by cultists to Strahd to do lots of terrible shit. At one point, as the owners fell into total madness, they left their kids padlocked in their own room to keep them safe from "the monster in the basement" where they died together. When the players approach the house, it creates duplicates of these kids begging for help to save their baby brother Walter, still upstairs. Things quickly dilapidate as players realize the sinister situation in the house, and eventually happen upon the kids' bedroom. When they pry the door open, I pause the ambient spook music I had playing and describe them knocking a music box off a toy box before I describe the room. I wind up and play an actual music box I looted from something from Goodwill, held to the wooden table as an amplifier. I play this creepy twinkling music for the whole encounter as I describe the rotted childrens' play/bedroom and the two corpses with familiar clothes, as well as their actual ghosts appearing and interacting with them. If they had helped the ghosts find rest instead of locking them in and running, I'd have later had them inexplicably receive help from nowhere when they needed it most, and have them find the music box wherever they were on the ground, wound and playing for them.
The players are now paranoid of music boxes IRL.
Henry Diaz
Hip Hop is pretty fundamental. New age seems hard to define, and could probably be covered by the other categories. I agree with the decision to leave out pop. (it draws from a lot of different styles.)
Aaron Jones
Ambient, both as music (really builds up atmosphere when you need to get something scary) and just ambient sounds, work pretty well.
I also tend to use short music cues when players are first time in some location. For example they've enter an inn, so the short cue of people being in an in or maybe someone playing on a lute for few seconds. This helps more with atmosphere than contionus music playing in the background, but requires you always have one hand on a remote and remember the tracklist or have a list handy.
Nolan Howard
As everybody's said, Ambience is number one.
Otherwise, I like to follow video game rules. NPCs might have character themes, combat might have different music depending on how intense it's supposed to be or is associated with a particular villain, Cities/Factions might have a style of music associated with them.
And all of that operates under two, unbreakable rules:
>1) Absolutely no lyrics
Sole exception is stuff like latin chanting or whatever, as long as nobody understand the language
>2) Must always be quiet enough that everybody can be heard
It's there to augment, not replace. Although I've personally only ever found battle music to distract players.
Carson Clark
Does playing a recording of the Tidus laugh whenever someone makes an awful joke count as using music?
Jack Torres
>Absolutely no lyrics
There is another exception, but it requires some extra effort to pull it right. Namely - when you have performers in your story doing their shit. It takes some work to get the right playlist, but is doable
>Must always be quiet enough that everybody can be heard
I've got a GM once, he was running games in a arbour in the allotment garden of his grandmother. Since he didn't have to deal with noise complains, he set up bunch of speakers and was often creating intentional situations where we had to "outscream" the gathered crowd or stuff like that. The guy is a sound technician, so I'm treating it as an exception rather than a rule, but still worth mentioning.
Asher Davis
Alestorm for some lighthearted battles against some pirates
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Cooper Lewis
Anything from Atrium Carceri makes a GREAT background music, especially when you are running horror/thriller games. Most people get spooked by dark ambient, and this is 95% of his output.
Nicholas Long
You suggest dropping New Age for Hip Hop then?
Ian Moore
One of the first games I played with my old gaming group was a Cyberpunk v3-ish game, and our team of Freelance Police constantly got into skirmishes with the Bozos of Cybperunk 2020 fame. Every encounter, he'd have the song "Waltzinblack" by The Stranglers playing, and it fit the mood perfectly. Plus, you'd hear that song, you knew custard was about to hit the fan.
Ash was the most magnificent crazy bastard of a GM and a player. One of my biggest regrets in life was losing contact with him when we both moved.
Eli Hughes
Played a Symphogear themed game where your theme song was one of the top parts of your character sheet
I was playing a deep south farmer who used Golden Fiddle as a relic, with Devil Went Down to Georgia as my theme song
Isaac Clark
I agree that music can be distracting if used improperly, so I try to either use ambient noise or very atmospheric music for the most part. The only time I kick up the octane is for certain fights, as well as if I say that there is a musician performing somewhere nearby. I'll post some of the stuff I use in different situations.
Dungeon/Subterranean Ambience:
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>This next one reserved for special occasions, eg., eldritch/otherworldly shenanigans going on.
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Towns and Outdoors:
>For colder or very isolated moods.
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>For brighter, slightly more civilized terrain such as farmland, gentle forests, or some towns.
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>A slightly more intrepid, determined theme.
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>Some generic outdoor sounds that I play when music wouldn't be appropriate/on top of music.
>Stormy ambience.
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>Campsite ambience.
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>Winter ambience.
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Musicians Playing:
>Folksy/rustic.
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>More exotic.
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>Noble.
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Combat or Other High Energy Encounter:
>Fighting people or run of the mill monsters.
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>Fighting something big and terrifying.
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>More heroic themes.
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Juan Ward
Not that well organized, but I gave it a shot.
This actually has me thinking, maybe Veeky Forums should try to put together some sort of compendium of ambience. I mean, folders of thematically sorted inspo images with accompanying music/ambience. Maybe I'll try to do something like that when I'm done all of my papers.