#my myst folder has like 30 things already.. good

[monkiinart]

some mysties!!!

[dmsden]

Campaign Sorcery - Music

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Welcome to the first article in our Campaign Sorcery series. These articles are going to illustrate some tricks and tips to making a campaign just a tiny touch more epic and memorable for your players. This week, I’m using one that has become absolutely essential for my games - music.

I’ve been using music almost as long as I can remember to enhance my games. Back in my 1st and 2nd edition days, I had mix tapes that I created for themes like “Battle”, “Travel”, “Dungeon Delving” and so on. The frustrating bit was that you had to bring a large number of cassette tapes and a player with you if you wanted to play anywhere other than home.  As technology has advanced, however, I’ve been able to move on to playlists that I can access pretty much anywhere.

So how do you get music into your games? Well, that depends on how you’re playing. Roll20, for example, actually has a playlist feature built right into it, along with a decent little library of music that you could use to enhance your games. You can create a different playlist for each “room” that you create, or have them all draw from a central one. I’ve only recently begun experimenting with this, but I’ve found it very easy to use. I haven’t used other virtual tabletops, but I would be surprised if they didn’t offer some of this versatility as well.

If you’re playing on person, then your options expand quite a bit. Normally, I run my games with my iPad cued up to my Apple Music and plugged into my surround-sound speakers. I’ve created numerous playlists for various genres of games. If I’m running D&D, the soundtrack tends to lean into epic fantasy. If I’m running Tales from the Loop, then I move to my 1980s music. For Call of Cthulhu, I have a combination of 1920s and 30s popular music and horror themed lists. If I start a new game, I spend some prep time creating new playlists, and I find it fun to do so.

If you’re not an Apple Music subscriber, you could also use Amazon Music, iTunes, Spotify, or any number of other alternatives. If you *are* an Amazon Music subscriber, here’s a nice freebie for you. You can search for me (Andrew French/@Aethan) in the profiles section. You can then add the playlists I’ve already created to your library and use them for your own games. You’re welcome. :)

If you need to create your own playlists, you might ask yourself, “What should I use?” I think this depends more on taste than anything else. I have found that I prefer music without lyrics, except in very specific circumstances, so I use a lot of movie soundtracks, game soundtracks, and early instrumental music. For example, my playlists contain things like the game soundtracks to Dante’s Inferno, Dragon Age, and Myst, the movie soundtrack to Titus, The Lord of the Rings movies, and the Dungeons & Dragons movie (one of the only decent things about it), an album called Lute Music for Witches and Alchemists, and music by bands like Dronolan’s Tower and Nox Arcana that specifically make soundtrack-like music for atmospheres. 

As you make your playlist, I recommend listening to each track and thinking about the mood that it evokes. Is it too recognizable? I have left out a lot of music from, for example, Lord of the Rings or Pirates of the Caribbean, because a particular theme is too obvious and could be jarring to hear. Also, does the whole track evoke the mood you want? A lot of movie soundtrack tracks change mood mid-song because of a shift in the scene. You don’t want to have something light and idyllic suddenly turn to horror as you’re describing a country market...unless that’s exactly what you want, which brings me to my next point.

You can use specific tracks to set up specific scenes, characters, and monsters. For example, one of the PCs had a romantic relationship earlier in the campaign, so the NPC he was involved with got her own theme. Likewise, the Tarrasque, which is hugely important in my campaign, has its own theme. I have a separate playlist explicitly for themes that I only play once. When the PCs encounter that creature, NPC, etc, I simply put that track on loop until it’s time to move on. Likewise, the campaign itself has a theme. The piece of music called “Our Purpose” from the mini-series of Pillars of the Earth is the perfect length for me to get my players settled and do my recap of the session before. It has the right feeling of gravitas and growing menace, complete with ringing cathedral bells at the song’s climax. Sometimes I hear a piece of music and think, “That will make a good theme.” I add it to my Themes folder until I find the right use for it, and I make sure the PCs hear it when the situation that warrants it comes into play. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article. Next time, I intend to discuss a related topic - sound effects. Until then, may the dice fall ever in your favor.