Anyone record their own music for this sort of thing? Since posting, a collaborator and I made a lot of recordings for it, recorded directly to tape and then digitally converted. Works pretty well. Highly suggest it.
I do not use music in my games unless it is actually in the game. For example, I will soon use Gregorian Chants when they are sneaking inside of a yuan-ti temple. As well as This when they are in a tavern in Baldur's Gate, because why not?
It can go beyond music and being just atmospheric.
I saw a campaign with the use of ambient sound of a lively tavern (with a lot of random talking over generic-sounding, stereotypical medieval music) to make the characters shout IRL - which the recording had a quiet moment happening just as a player was shouting something nobody else should have been hearing - total chance but to great effect of starting a brawl encounter.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
When it comes to music in D&D, picking the right tunes for a lighthearted skirmish at the tavern, political discussion at the local farm, or intense chase at a deadly prison can really set a campaign's pace while molding the atmosphere of a scene. Where do you find your D&D music for any situation?
Personally, I am a huge fan of Battle Bards but also like to pull tracks out of Kings Quest, Monkey Island, and other games! (I find that music point and click adventures work well as they are easily looped)
- Krintor
There is great action music for free on Spotify! If you look up D&d action music you should find a bunch of stuff
It can go beyond music and being just atmospheric.
This is where I'm at these days. I'm going for an air of high verisimilitude in my next campaign, so I don't plan on using music, since real life doesn't seem to have a soundtrack ( or if it does, somehow I've got mine on mute ), but I really like the idea of atmospheric sounds.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I am also struggling with this, I have been listening some very nice and inspirational battle music while I design a game for example, but still wondering if I should play it to the players during an encounter. Makes me think about if players dont like it and it would ruin the encounter.
So usually I dont play music but surely would love to!
I have an Apple Music subscription so when I add songs to my library with I edit the Song Info and put a keyword in the Grouping field like 'Travel' or 'Intrigue'. I could enter multiple keywords for each song if I want (this happens a lot with the Suspense and Intrigue keywords haha). Then I create Smart Playlist and set the criteria to be 'Grouping contains the word: {keyword}'. I do this for each keyword and Apple Music then grabs all of the songs that have that keyword in the Grouping field. This means as I bring in new music and add keywords to the grouping field, they automatically get added to my thematic playlist.
Once we are in game I just shuffle whatever thematic playlist is appropriate: Combat, Travel, Peace, Festive, Intrigue, Sadness, Awe, etc.
As for music itself I tend to use game and movie soundtracks but I find many of them suitable even though they aren't specifically written for fantasy. I recommend checking out:
Thomas Newman: Road to Perdition OST, The Highwaymen OST (great for a Firefly style campaign), 1917 OST
Jeremy Soule: Anything he writes (He wrote ES music)
Justin Bell: Pillars of Eternity OST, The Outer Worlds OST
Sleeping At Last: Many Beautiful Things OST
Robyn Miller: Riven OST, Obduction OST
David Arkenstone: Music Inspired By Middle Earth
David Buckley: Mercy Street OST
Ari Posner & Amin Bhatia - Anne with an E OST (festive, happy times)
Hans Zimmer: The Pacific OST, Interstellar OST
Samuel Sim: Homefires OST, The Mill OST (good for domestic / city tension)
Happy playlisting!
P.S. I should add that I DM a group online because of COVID so I have begun using VoiceMeeter Banana, AudioRouter, iTunes, and Syrinscape to send my audio as a mix to CleanFeed (just the free account). I send my players a link before each game and they can get hi-fidelity audio this way through the browser. It takes a while to get used to setting this up but now that I remember how to setup VoiceMeeter and AudioRouter it all works great!
For my campaign, I have a lot of music from anime fighting games and remixes of other video game pieces that I love saved on my Google Drive. Just so we're clear, I would NEVER EVER EVER claim soundtracks as my own, but the DMCA doesn't care about one's intentions. "You use someone else's music, you're done!". I feel like if I was charged with unintentional copyright infringement, I couldn't go on in life as I would feel humilated and envious towards creativity in general (I have Asperger Syndrome so my emotions can escilate to high extremes).
One must understand that I have been working on the lore of my campaign for three years now, and my music choice helps me set the stage and get in the mood. It's one thing to use someone else's music to make profit off of, but it's another thing entirely to use someone else's music to make fun and memorable moments, which Dungeons & Dragons has been about since day one. Through D&D, I hope to the story my campaign takes place in, Purgatory, off the ground. I've been looking for a non-subscription map maker and was thinking about Roll20, but after looking through their "Terms of Service" I'm not so sure anymore.
Can anybody offer me advice and/or recommend me a map making program?
I've been collecting battle music that I keep relatively low, but adds a background tenseness to the situation.
Though, I have Slayer ~ Angel of Death too. They don't listen to Slayer, but when that song came on. Lets just say, it made an impression! hah especially when he started screaming at the beginning! lol
I've found that a great go-to for any calm yet optimistic moments, such as exploring a small town, is the Sonic Unleashed Night Background Music, specifically the Apotos Night and Mazuri Night ones. Additionally, the more action-based soundtracks for nighttime in that game are great for any sneaky moments, such as Windmill Isle Night.
Put these in a compilation with other games like any Elder Scrolls, or anything of your choice, and you've got a great ambience to use for newer players.
In person at the table music can be a great thing to use, I tend to use computer game soundtracks, horizon zero dawn, final fantasy etc.
For remote play it has been proven by multiple studies that music is a distraction when the source of that music is the same as any talking (or headphones or a speaker) the human brain treats it as one distinct sound and locks onto the most consistent frequencies which will be the music. Multiple studies have been done of online meetings, teaching groups and social interactions during lockdown and in every one it has been determined that music underneath the talking makes it harder to recall information, stay focussed and engaged with the person speaking. I stopped using music for my remote sessions after reading about that and my players, who all love music at a table in a physical setting, suddenly needed to have things repeated less often remotely.
The main issue is the source, at the table the brain can split the music from the speaker and so focus where it’s needed. Remotely the brain can’t as it all comes from the same source.
In my games, music is essential- and I spend a fair amount of time before sessions planning out the music that accompanies my encounters. In point of fact, along with its excellent, if not exactly intuitive, dynamic lighting, its excellent jukebox is why I've stuck with Roll20 as my VTT of choice.
For those who don't know, the R20 juke allows you to upload your own music, which is great, but it has in-site access to three different catalogs: battlebards, which has good ambient sounds, a second one (whose name escapes me since I never use it) that has effects only, and then there's incompetech, which is the one I use the most. Incompetech is run by a maniac named Kevin MacLeod, who apparently, sick of licensing bullshit, composed hundreds if not thousands of different songs in different styles, arranged by keywords, and made it available to basically everyone. To be fair, getting your head around the sheer number of incompetech songs is daunting- over the last 1.5 years, I've compiled an 8 page google doc that has my go-to songs for tons different situations. At this point, I can't imagine either fighting a combat or narrating a scene without background music.
For those who pooh-pooh the need for music, let me provide the opposing view. As DM's, we tell our stories mainly, but not exclusively verbally. If you're using a VTT, there's also visual- not just maps and tokens, but handouts too, something else I use a lot. By adding music, you add an intuitive tone to your game. It's one thing to describe a dungeon; it's another to have the background effects of an echo of a drip, or tense background music playing. It can also set the pace of narration, like if there's a forlorn song in the background, going at a slow pace, I can slow my narration down to match it, emphasizing the mood.
If you play on 20, take a look at the juke. In my humble, it's very, very good.
In my games, music is essential- and I spend a fair amount of time before sessions planning out the music that accompanies my encounters. In point of fact, along with its excellent, if not exactly intuitive, dynamic lighting, its excellent jukebox is why I've stuck with Roll20 as my VTT of choice.
For those who don't know, the R20 juke allows you to upload your own music, which is great, but it has in-site access to three different catalogs: battlebards, which has good ambient sounds, a second one (whose name escapes me since I never use it) that has effects only, and then there's incompetech, which is the one I use the most. Incompetech is run by a maniac named Kevin MacLeod, who apparently, sick of licensing bullshit, composed hundreds if not thousands of different songs in different styles, arranged by keywords, and made it available to basically everyone. To be fair, getting your head around the sheer number of incompetech songs is daunting- over the last 1.5 years, I've compiled an 8 page google doc that has my go-to songs for tons different situations. At this point, I can't imagine either fighting a combat or narrating a scene without background music.
For those who pooh-pooh the need for music, let me provide the opposing view. As DM's, we tell our stories mainly, but not exclusively verbally. If you're using a VTT, there's also visual- not just maps and tokens, but handouts too, something else I use a lot. By adding music, you add an intuitive tone to your game. It's one thing to describe a dungeon; it's another to have the background effects of an echo of a drip, or tense background music playing. It can also set the pace of narration, like if there's a forlorn song in the background, going at a slow pace, I can slow my narration down to match it, emphasizing the mood.
If you play on 20, take a look at the juke. In my humble, it's very, very good.
I always use music for in person sessions and like you I have key music cued up for different situations, but I refuse to use it remotely for the reasons I have stated above (studies showing that music during remote meetings lowers concentration, reduces the absorption of information and increases the chances of listeners becoming distracted or missing key information). The moment I stopped using it our sessions became smoother with players being more alert and needing me to repeat things less, and yes if you had asked us all we would have said music is great and isn't impacting the game but the proof is in the eating and as soon as we removed it we realised what a distraction it was.
Different groups are different, of course and the only right answer is what's right for any one group. If you'll forgive the indulgence, I'll demonstrate how I use it.
The scene: the PC's have left the high fantasy world of Phandalin behind and have fought their way through the gothic Death House, which has, through use of music and handouts, gotten creepier and creepier the further in they go. They battle their way into the final room, where Strahd him/herself (I used a shadowy token on the board and gave every player a different handout picture of Strahd, some male, some female, without telling them I was doing it, giving each of them a very different impression of Strahd) gently monologues, explaining the history of the house and giving "thanks" for clearing it. After bestowing unasked-for dark gifts on each of them (made freakier by layering music on top of each other as he bestows gifts on each of the PC's - at the end there was an evil cacophony of 6 overlapping songs, which was incredible for setting this freaky, otherworldly mood), Strahd waves an arm and then - nothing. Blank screen. Total silence.
I waited a full thirty seconds into the song and slowly, in time with the music, narrated the following:
You eventually awaken, lying on the ground, outside - near a forest, somewhere. A single road, paved in faded cobblestones stretches vaguely- west? The weather is cold; the air chilly. Mists blow across the road, north to south, obscuring your vision in all directions. The overcast, clouded sky provides only dim light even at what you take to be mid-day. You look around and see confusion and dread in equal measure in your companions’ eyes as you brush yourself off, stand up shakily, and begin to take in your new surroundings.
And then- end of session. Chills.
Anyways, no universal, one right answer. Silence can be as effective as anything else, used properly. But to restate the point, this kind of movie soundtrack accompaniment is an essential part of my games and I'm happy to share and promote it in case other DM's find the technique useful.
I've created a playlists collection based on moods like action, emotional, beautiful, journey, etc. And made a user friendly browser app to easily switch between them:
The music was selected to create immersion but minimal distraction from the game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A software engineer from The Netherlands and the creator of Sfeer, a soundboard for tabletop roleplaying games. Get a free trial account on https://sfeer.app
The soundtracks from the Assassin’s Creed games are my go-to
I like some other playlists for D&D, but these are my mainly played in order of most liked. I hope this helped anyone in anyway whatsoever
Anyone record their own music for this sort of thing? Since posting, a collaborator and I made a lot of recordings for it, recorded directly to tape and then digitally converted. Works pretty well. Highly suggest it.
Great music for any pirate themed campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hS4duxPvyc
My current projects, One click download PDFs:
- Clam Island campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/By3s5Uqqf (Levels 1-4)
- Frostglade Tundra campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyZ_4eEyKE (Levels 1-4)
- Goldfish Archipelago campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/-3HajWXM (Sequel to Clam Island, Levels 5-8)
Jeremy Soules, Vangelis, Enya, and other composers are a great choice to start the Campaigns.
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
I do not use music in my games unless it is actually in the game. For example, I will soon use Gregorian Chants when they are sneaking inside of a yuan-ti temple. As well as This when they are in a tavern in Baldur's Gate, because why not?
Not all those who wander are lost.
Check out my Monsters, Magic Items, and Spells. (These are all links.)
It can go beyond music and being just atmospheric.
I saw a campaign with the use of ambient sound of a lively tavern (with a lot of random talking over generic-sounding, stereotypical medieval music) to make the characters shout IRL - which the recording had a quiet moment happening just as a player was shouting something nobody else should have been hearing - total chance but to great effect of starting a brawl encounter.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
There is great action music for free on Spotify! If you look up D&d action music you should find a bunch of stuff
This is where I'm at these days. I'm going for an air of high verisimilitude in my next campaign, so I don't plan on using music, since real life doesn't seem to have a soundtrack ( or if it does, somehow I've got mine on mute ), but I really like the idea of atmospheric sounds.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I am also struggling with this, I have been listening some very nice and inspirational battle music while I design a game for example, but still wondering if I should play it to the players during an encounter. Makes me think about if players dont like it and it would ruin the encounter.
So usually I dont play music but surely would love to!
I have an Apple Music subscription so when I add songs to my library with I edit the Song Info and put a keyword in the Grouping field like 'Travel' or 'Intrigue'. I could enter multiple keywords for each song if I want (this happens a lot with the Suspense and Intrigue keywords haha). Then I create Smart Playlist and set the criteria to be 'Grouping contains the word: {keyword}'. I do this for each keyword and Apple Music then grabs all of the songs that have that keyword in the Grouping field. This means as I bring in new music and add keywords to the grouping field, they automatically get added to my thematic playlist.
Once we are in game I just shuffle whatever thematic playlist is appropriate: Combat, Travel, Peace, Festive, Intrigue, Sadness, Awe, etc.
As for music itself I tend to use game and movie soundtracks but I find many of them suitable even though they aren't specifically written for fantasy. I recommend checking out:
Happy playlisting!
P.S. I should add that I DM a group online because of COVID so I have begun using VoiceMeeter Banana, AudioRouter, iTunes, and Syrinscape to send my audio as a mix to CleanFeed (just the free account). I send my players a link before each game and they can get hi-fidelity audio this way through the browser. It takes a while to get used to setting this up but now that I remember how to setup VoiceMeeter and AudioRouter it all works great!
For my campaign, I have a lot of music from anime fighting games and remixes of other video game pieces that I love saved on my Google Drive. Just so we're clear, I would NEVER EVER EVER claim soundtracks as my own, but the DMCA doesn't care about one's intentions. "You use someone else's music, you're done!". I feel like if I was charged with unintentional copyright infringement, I couldn't go on in life as I would feel humilated and envious towards creativity in general (I have Asperger Syndrome so my emotions can escilate to high extremes).
One must understand that I have been working on the lore of my campaign for three years now, and my music choice helps me set the stage and get in the mood. It's one thing to use someone else's music to make profit off of, but it's another thing entirely to use someone else's music to make fun and memorable moments, which Dungeons & Dragons has been about since day one. Through D&D, I hope to the story my campaign takes place in, Purgatory, off the ground. I've been looking for a non-subscription map maker and was thinking about Roll20, but after looking through their "Terms of Service" I'm not so sure anymore.
Can anybody offer me advice and/or recommend me a map making program?
I've been collecting battle music that I keep relatively low, but adds a background tenseness to the situation.
Though, I have Slayer ~ Angel of Death too. They don't listen to Slayer, but when that song came on. Lets just say, it made an impression! hah especially when he started screaming at the beginning! lol
D&D is about experience and that is a fun one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7cWi41XGCM
Info, Inflow, Overload. Knowledge Black Hole Imminent!
I've found that a great go-to for any calm yet optimistic moments, such as exploring a small town, is the Sonic Unleashed Night Background Music, specifically the Apotos Night and Mazuri Night ones. Additionally, the more action-based soundtracks for nighttime in that game are great for any sneaky moments, such as Windmill Isle Night.
Put these in a compilation with other games like any Elder Scrolls, or anything of your choice, and you've got a great ambience to use for newer players.
In person at the table music can be a great thing to use, I tend to use computer game soundtracks, horizon zero dawn, final fantasy etc.
For remote play it has been proven by multiple studies that music is a distraction when the source of that music is the same as any talking (or headphones or a speaker) the human brain treats it as one distinct sound and locks onto the most consistent frequencies which will be the music. Multiple studies have been done of online meetings, teaching groups and social interactions during lockdown and in every one it has been determined that music underneath the talking makes it harder to recall information, stay focussed and engaged with the person speaking. I stopped using music for my remote sessions after reading about that and my players, who all love music at a table in a physical setting, suddenly needed to have things repeated less often remotely.
The main issue is the source, at the table the brain can split the music from the speaker and so focus where it’s needed. Remotely the brain can’t as it all comes from the same source.
I usually play medieval music quietly so players don't get distracted
https://musicgrab.me/record-music/download-medieval-music/
Holy crap, great topic.
In my games, music is essential- and I spend a fair amount of time before sessions planning out the music that accompanies my encounters. In point of fact, along with its excellent, if not exactly intuitive, dynamic lighting, its excellent jukebox is why I've stuck with Roll20 as my VTT of choice.
For those who don't know, the R20 juke allows you to upload your own music, which is great, but it has in-site access to three different catalogs: battlebards, which has good ambient sounds, a second one (whose name escapes me since I never use it) that has effects only, and then there's incompetech, which is the one I use the most. Incompetech is run by a maniac named Kevin MacLeod, who apparently, sick of licensing bullshit, composed hundreds if not thousands of different songs in different styles, arranged by keywords, and made it available to basically everyone. To be fair, getting your head around the sheer number of incompetech songs is daunting- over the last 1.5 years, I've compiled an 8 page google doc that has my go-to songs for tons different situations. At this point, I can't imagine either fighting a combat or narrating a scene without background music.
For those who pooh-pooh the need for music, let me provide the opposing view. As DM's, we tell our stories mainly, but not exclusively verbally. If you're using a VTT, there's also visual- not just maps and tokens, but handouts too, something else I use a lot. By adding music, you add an intuitive tone to your game. It's one thing to describe a dungeon; it's another to have the background effects of an echo of a drip, or tense background music playing. It can also set the pace of narration, like if there's a forlorn song in the background, going at a slow pace, I can slow my narration down to match it, emphasizing the mood.
If you play on 20, take a look at the juke. In my humble, it's very, very good.
I always use music for in person sessions and like you I have key music cued up for different situations, but I refuse to use it remotely for the reasons I have stated above (studies showing that music during remote meetings lowers concentration, reduces the absorption of information and increases the chances of listeners becoming distracted or missing key information). The moment I stopped using it our sessions became smoother with players being more alert and needing me to repeat things less, and yes if you had asked us all we would have said music is great and isn't impacting the game but the proof is in the eating and as soon as we removed it we realised what a distraction it was.
Huh.
Different groups are different, of course and the only right answer is what's right for any one group. If you'll forgive the indulgence, I'll demonstrate how I use it.
The scene: the PC's have left the high fantasy world of Phandalin behind and have fought their way through the gothic Death House, which has, through use of music and handouts, gotten creepier and creepier the further in they go. They battle their way into the final room, where Strahd him/herself (I used a shadowy token on the board and gave every player a different handout picture of Strahd, some male, some female, without telling them I was doing it, giving each of them a very different impression of Strahd) gently monologues, explaining the history of the house and giving "thanks" for clearing it. After bestowing unasked-for dark gifts on each of them (made freakier by layering music on top of each other as he bestows gifts on each of the PC's - at the end there was an evil cacophony of 6 overlapping songs, which was incredible for setting this freaky, otherworldly mood), Strahd waves an arm and then - nothing. Blank screen. Total silence.
Cue Incompetech Lithium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5XrlGe8aD4
I waited a full thirty seconds into the song and slowly, in time with the music, narrated the following:
You eventually awaken, lying on the ground, outside - near a forest, somewhere. A single road, paved in faded cobblestones stretches vaguely- west? The weather is cold; the air chilly. Mists blow across the road, north to south, obscuring your vision in all directions. The overcast, clouded sky provides only dim light even at what you take to be mid-day. You look around and see confusion and dread in equal measure in your companions’ eyes as you brush yourself off, stand up shakily, and begin to take in your new surroundings.
And then- end of session. Chills.
Anyways, no universal, one right answer. Silence can be as effective as anything else, used properly. But to restate the point, this kind of movie soundtrack accompaniment is an essential part of my games and I'm happy to share and promote it in case other DM's find the technique useful.
I've created a playlists collection based on moods like action, emotional, beautiful, journey, etc. And made a user friendly browser app to easily switch between them:
https://sfeer.app
The music was selected to create immersion but minimal distraction from the game.
A software engineer from The Netherlands and the creator of Sfeer, a soundboard for tabletop roleplaying games. Get a free trial account on https://sfeer.app
I've crafted a unique D&D playlist for you. Check it out here: D&D Music Playlist. The music is chosen to add depth to your experience without taking away from the game. Enjoy! You also can find this playlist on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2svbc5CtJH5jvDvFmaxn6E
And dnd playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrHS37Rzn5o&list=PLnGB55jn3kBNC1FhuEnIHoq_emOtYma71&index=1