Jazz music (or even Hip-Hop) would be great for more contemporary city adventures.

Old celtic songs might be good for adventures through small farming villages.

House or Techno would be great for epic battles in space.

What if you found a nice long piece of background music and ran it on loop, cross-fading between scenes? That way, you could make sure it fit, and each scene could have a different feel. Plus, for a battle, you could skip the fade-in for an abrupt change of pace.

My idea here is based on video games; there are a number of games (Skies of Arcadia being a big one here) where I remember the locations involved based mostly on the music that played in them.

T

This whole thread inspired me to do a post of my own on the topic over on Nuketown; I won’t re-post it here ’cause it’s just too long.

To sum up, I think actively scoring a game is a worthwhile endeavor, but it can be a lot of work as well. With a relatively rules-light system like Cortex (which powers BSG), I had enough time left over to think about music. But given the amount of prep-time for my D&D games, I’m not sure I’d be able to swing it for more than special occasions.

I almost always play music in the background at my games.

I also like to have the players create mix disks or playlists for their characters. The tracks consist of songs that reflect the PC in some way – attitude, secrets, fears, losses, aspirations, heritage- anything they wish to include. Playing the music allows the group a different set of insights into each PC.

One of the PCs in the last campaign went through a major change in game. It was great when the player quietly and independently contributed a new playlist to reflect the PC post-change.

I have also designed entire story arcs based on music. One of the best came after listening to King Crimson’s Court of the Crimson King.

Shandar,

Check out RPG SoundMixer (http://www.rpgsoundmixer.com/). I downloaded the demo and it sold me on the program. I’m currently using it for the adventure I’m writing. The first part has the group going through some dark and creepy woods with a thunderstorm in the background and the background music for Duskwood from the World of Warcraft soundtrack. Very effective. I don’t know where I could post it, but if someone has a place to put a file I can post a short MP3 sample of what I’ve done.

The neat thing about RPG SoundMixer is that it lets you control both music and sound effects in a way that is not possible with traditional software. You can assign a hotkey to a series of random sounds. For example, I have several sounds of crows kawing and wings flapping that randomly play when I press the “C” key in a continous loop. Since everything is random it is never the same thing twice. I can even layer the sound effects. So I have another setup of the sound of a slow house trot and a creaking cart along with the sound of distant rolling thunder that all plays while playing the Duskwood BGM.

1) The Crow musical score (not the soundtrack)
2) Dune (1984) soundtrack. Track #1 is also my standard “Let’s sit down and get gaming” cue.
3) Celtic Oddysey
4) Celtic Legacy
5) Halloween II soundtrack
6) Brahm Stoker’s Dracula soundtrack
7) Interview with a Vampire soundtrack
Dead Can Dance – A Passage in Time
9 – 10 I usually shuffle around to add some variety, depending on the game genre.

Once I’ve got my 10 CDs, I slap the old boombox into Random – All Disks and forget about it.

Dave T., I thought that I was the only one with the Red Steel soundtrack! Good to know I wasn’t the only one who bought that boxed set.

I’m actually suprised that it hasn’t happened yet, but maybe WOTC doesn’t want to encourage people to play on a table when they could be playing on the internet.

Pitch session seems like a good enough word to me. Pilot session seems good to. Really a pilot of a TV show is like a pitch to an audience. The players are sort of like an audience. A pitch is usually done to a group of investors or producers. The players are investing in the game, and they are taking a hand in producing it. Because with out players there would be no game. So it is kind of hard to say pitch or pilot is completely accurate, but pitch seems to involve the players more.

On several occasions the players mentioned the creepiness of the soundtrack.

The only problem was that I’d accidentally left a tune from the stargate soundtrack in, one that was fairly distinctive and it played a little more often than I would have liked

bignose: I feel sort of committed to my so-so terminology, as it’s come up so often. In any case, the pitch session is over, and that aspect of it isn’t
likely to come up again any time soon.

Here’s the full soundtrack I used last night. I’d say it was a wash — I don’t think it was loud enough for my players to hear much of it, and I often didn’t notice it myself, but I was still glad it was on in the background.

1. Ripe [With Decay] – Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile (Right)
2. Discovery – Metal Gear Solid Soundtrack
3. Mosh – Fluke, Risotto
4. Gears of War – GoW Soundtrack
5. End Title – Metal Gear Solid Soundtrack
6. Truth and Reconciliation Suite – Halo Soundtrack
7. Intruder 1 – Metal Gear Solid Soundtrack
8. Music Fur Cats – cEvin Key, Music for Cats
9. Mantis’ Hymn – Metal Gear Solid Soundtrack
10. Repose – Tenchu Soundtrack
11. Opening Suite – Halo Soundtrack
12. Night Fall – Metal Gear Solid Snake
13. God of Manji-Kyo, Heretical Religion – Tenchu Soundtrack
14. Blast Furnace – Metal Gear Solid Soundtrack
15. What is Fight Club? – Fight Club Soundtrack
16. Add’ua – Tenchu Soundtrack
17. Exodus from the Underground Fortress – Akira Soundtrack
18. Punish the Wicked Merchant – Tenchu Soundtrack
19. Mausoleum Suite – Halo 2 Soundtrack, v. 2
20. Assets and Targets – The Bourne Ultimatum Soundtrack
21. Shohmyoh – Akira Soundtrack
22. Session – Meteora, Linkin Park
23. Requiem – Akira Soundtrack