298: The DM Is a DJ

[NeoShinGundam]

My old roommate back n college would use the huge song library he collected on his laptop during his RP-sessions. One time he even put on the FFVII battle theme and yelled out "Random Battle!" as the party had just been ambushed.

 

[whindmarch]

Thanks for weighing in, everyone! I've been wanting to write this piece for a long time, and I'm glad to discover that I'm not alone in my fandom for tabletop-RPG music.

Crimson Dragoon, if you're looking for music for your Serenity campaign, you could do a lot worse than to dig up the actual Firefly soundtrack by Greg Edmonson (who also wrote the scores for the Uncharted games). Alan Silvestri has done some great Western film music for movies like Back to the Future III and The Quick and the Dead and even his score for Gore Verbinski's The Mexican is awfully entertaining. Classic Ennio Morricone scores from the classic spaghetti Westerns might even suit you.

Thanks for all the suggestions in this thread for new soundtracks and battle music and so forth, everyone! I've got a lot of new music to seek out, I think.

Cheers,
Will

 

[Dastardly]

The DM Is a DJ

Movies and videogames both use soundtracks to help tell stories, and with just a little planning, your pen-and-paper RPG can, too.

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As a musician myself, I whole-heartedly support the notion that music is a critical addition to atmosphere. Nothing in the history of mankind stirs emotion in the same way as music, which is why you'll find it on every corner of the planet. Some places don't have video games, or even electricity and running water, but you can bet your ass they've got music.

I do have a question for you, though, about this approach, particularly when you're using music that intimately ties to your narration. Have you found that this can sometimes limit the choices your players can make, or that some of the spontaneity has gone?

The reason I ask is I've done tabletop gaming with many different crowds. Some were straight-up dice-based combat simulation groups, and others were all about the spontaneous narrative, and still others were about the GM telling a story while the players followed what essentially amounted to a loose script.

I've found that the more moving parts a game has, the more important it can seem for the GM to "keep things on track." Have you encountered groups for whom this approach doesn't work, or have you been able to successfully adapt it to them?

 

[Straz]

I'll be honest, as soon as you gave the hypothetical example of the marine promising that they'd drink the PC under the table, I immediately thought of Mass Effect 2.
Jacob very literally say something which is almost word for word to that.

 

[The.Bard]

One of my first DMs put us in a canyon in the middle of an unnatural windstorm, and he put on a recording of Flight of the Valkyries at an insaaaane volume. It worked tremendously well; we had to raise our voices to even talk, and even then, we were barely able to hold a conversation. Of course, it also meant we couldn't communicate with the DM, but it still helped set the scene very effectively.