Mood Music... Yea, Or nay?

[Sabney]

This being my first post on this forum, I believe I shall introduce myself. I am currently a college student and I have been Roleplaying for about 4-5 years, only about 3 years seriously. I usually was elected the GM and I've grown fond of the position and GM'd most of the time. I started on the Silhouette system, then onto the D20 system. As it currently stands however, I'm pretty inexperienced with the position and I keep smashing into small snags here and there.

I read about mood music in numerous RPG books, and so without further thought about it I implemented it into my campaigns. But this proved to be difficult, I tended to avoid popular music because everyone has heard it, has an opinion on it and mainly because it woudn't fit my style. So I predominantly found free .mp3's on the (at the time, anyway.. Not much anymore) web at various sites and listened to them, figured out what mood or place they would work for then put them into a file and played (I always had a computer handy.) them when that time occurred in the campaign. It was a big success, and they enjoyed it.. At first.
Problem A, repetition. Once I had played a few campaigns, all the fun of the music had drained away, so I was always searching for 'new' music which ate up a massive amount of harddrive space and my time. Secondly, music presents problems.. whenever I used it, my players quickly knew what to expect, battle music, soft dramatic music, sad music etc. I always spaced, the music so that it would turn on after any surprises happened but it nevertheless really slowed down gameplay.. ("Hold, lemme find a good song for this place."), my players always wanted a new song for a new place, no matter how long I had to search for one.  And Lastly not everyone liked the music, while some wanted me to make copies.. Not exactly what Roleplaying is about.
The whole music idea, just seems like a novel idea, but it in my opinion it wears out quick, sucks out surprises and even limits the GM. I would find myself influenced by the music and things woudn't go in the best possible way. So now, I'm pretty deadset against its use in only but the most cinematic of moments.

But what does anyone think, has anyone had a roaring success with music that doesn't get old and keeps things rolling?

[ScottM]

Welcome to the Forge, Sabney.

I haven't ever succeeded with mood music-- probably because I'm unwilling to spend the time (or money) to track it down.  That, and I don't stop the session to swap music, so any match is coincidental-- which undermines the whole concept.

That said, in one game Wil had a "theme song" that he'd play when the focus switched to a character in a Settite mini-campaign.  It worked, but it was getting repetitive after only four or five sessions.

--Scott

[Vaxalon]

Oh, ABSOLUTELY.  Have a cassette of CD's for my changer that I put on whenever we play DnD.

It has the three LOTR soundtracks, an Apocalyptica album, and two Myst soundtrack albums.

I often find that if I'm stuck for what should happen, I can often take inspiration from the music.  I find that the players are influenced by what  music is on, as well.

It is my considered opinion that gaming music should be 99% instrumental music, with the exception of choral music in a language that most, if not all of the participants don't speak.

[ffilz]

It is my considered opinion that gaming music should be 99% instrumental music, with the exception of choral music in a language that most, if not all of the participants don't speak.

I'd second that. My friends playing Jethro Tull and singing along during game sessions instead of playing back in high school was definitely one of the factors of me pretty much not getting into music until I got a CD ROM drive for my PC (of course there was a benefit of starting a music collection in the digital age...of course I had to cut out a comic showing someone with a wall full of CDs and talking about how someone suggested they invest in CDs...).

Once I had the music collection, I did for a while put music on during the game sessions, but that hasn't happened in my recent gaming. A big problem is getting the CD player loaded up, and then reloading it (of course MP3s would help, but then I haven't started the chore of migrating 800+ CDs to MP3 yet).

Frank

[Eero Tuovinen]

Sabney: From your post I'm intuiting a certain way to play, and you're right, music is difficult to utilize in it. I'd like to note, however, that this is a function of your overall style, and has nothing to do with music per se.

Consider: I myself frequently "use music" in my GMing, which basicly means that a computer with a music library is running while we play. Anybody can play music if they want to, and it's a rule that any music gives a minor bonus (equal to +2 in D&D or one die in WW) to any action utilizing the spirit of the music, or an equal penalty to actions antithetical to the music. The method works great: for the most time nothing is played, but when the pressure comes on, players will go for the bonus. We have thus developed a kind of "musical language" within the group, wherein all kinds of tunes develop an intertext for the game. Like, Indiana Jones theme signifying action-packet adventure scenes, for example, or "Nemesis the Warlock" from the C64 game in nightbound sorcery.

The way we use music, you can see that the problems you've encountered simply do not apply. Music is not a factor in surprising players, or repetitiveness, or about "finding the right song for the place" or anything like that; it's just an additional visualizing tool, like pictures or words from outside the game are. All intertext is one, and you can as well refer to "my guy acts like Indiana Jones" as just play the song. In a certain kind of play, there's no difference at all, when the signifier and significant become one.

If you still want to experiment with music, I suggest opening up the possibilities to all players and stopping any efforts to control the musical venue from any kind of hierarchical position. Rather, give minor rewards to get the players into the habit, and they'll choose the music. You'll find that repetition won't kill the music when you only use it for the places where it's spontaneous. Like, when you ask the player what he's going to do about the charging mastodont, let him himself spring from his chair and set up his "I'm so dead, but life is beautiful" theme song before answering. After that everyone understands that something is going on, and the player has something heavy to contribute. Music shouldn't try to replace dramatic effort, but rather should only pop up when the drama warrants it.

This doesn't of course mean that you should have no hand at all in the musical choices, but it does mean that you should not try to control the emotional reaction of the players. If you want to play a song in a scene, do it because you yourself want that song. And only do it if the scene makes you to want it, not because you've arbitrarily decided beforehand that this will be a sad love scene or something. How in the f*ck could you know that beforehand? Give yourself exactly the same rights and responsibilities in choosing and playing music you give the players, no more and no less.

And as for the music choices, go ahead and pick the most obvious ones. Roleplaying is not about musical interpretation per se, the music is there to support the real stuff. Thusly you'll do wise to use the strongest, most obvious tunes imaginable. Famous movie themes from Star Wars to James Bond, old Metallica classics, Bach, Beatles, even. The songs will sound fresh again when they're used as backgrounds to something completely different. And they will have instant meaning to everybody, unlike instrumental, unknown music. Such abstract music can of course have weight, too, but only rarely and with time will it develop a charge equivalent to what you'll get by starting the "Imperial march" before bringing in the cool dresses-in-black guy. Use music simply and reasonably, and with time you can develop and branch to more exotic choices. It's madness to demand unfamiliarity, when the familiar meaning of a song is it's greatest asset.

[Kaare Berg]

Hi Sabney,

I got to agree with Eero. It seems the big mistake you are making is trying to adopt the "a song for a scene" mentality. There in lies pain.

I've used music since Jean Michel Jarre released Waiting for Coustaeua(or something), running on a tape deck in the background. This session is still remembered because it was unbelivably cool.

So how to use music?

1. You are not a music director. they've got months to add music to 1,5 hours, you've got seconds to add music to 4 or 5 hours (approx).

2. Find a few soundtracks/songs and keep reusing them. unless it is a 30 second distinct little ditty on repeat, no one cares if you use "march of the empire" when narrating dark evil armies again and again. It also lets you know the soundtracks and letting you skip to proper songs. I've played a 4 to 5 hour session on the "LOTR:return of the King"  soundtrack alone.

Like Eero said, your group will develop its own musical language after a while. it even has:

my players quickly knew what to expect, battle music, soft dramatic music, sad music

This will further enhance your games, like they did my Vtm:New York game where the cellar from the Blair Witch soundtrack creeped my players out. Now I just need to put that in the Cd player and they start to shudder.

Our prefrence is fantasy themes for fantasy games and so forth, but I am convinced that some Ramnstein will do for any brutal combat no matter what genre the game.

sucks out surprises and even limits the GM

The strength of music lies in the mood it sets, and as long as there are no jarring opposites it can only add to the game. Try rasing your oice suddenly when the face-hugger jumps out to the theme from Aliens. The music dosen't jump, but your players will.

How it limits you I really can't see.


K

[clehrich]

One other possibility for the use of music is at the start of a session.

If you know in advance (this depends on your play style) what the shtick of the game session will be, you can put on theme music at the start and read an opening scene-setter speech, kind of the way Star Wars movies begin with the music and a text at the same time.  This probably works best for pulp of that kind, but there are other possibilities.

If you can find some really perfect theme music for the whole campaign, that can work well also, because once people associate the music with the game, they hear the music and get into the session.  For this purpose, you need music that is not extremely strongly associated with some other visual image; for example, you do not want John Williams film music because everyone knows it and associates it with a movie -- unless you're in effect running that movie as a game, the connection is very hard to break, which is what makes Williams so good at film music.

An extremely good example of this sort of thing is done by the BBC people who do music for their various mystery series, run in the US on PBS as "Mystery."  If you've seen it, consider the Poirot series, which had opening music strongly suggesting (1) mystery, (2) the thirties, and (3) France.  Just so, the opening music for the Sherlock Holmes series was mysterious, a little wild for the 1890s, and done on violin, with background noise of horses and so on.  These set the scene in music.

Unless you're a composer, in which case you wouldn't be writing this post!, what you want to do is go find something that fits the bill.

For my game Shadows in the Fog, I have tried a number of musical bits, but haven't been entirely happy with any of them.  What I want is dark, brooding mystery, but done in an 1880s-90s style, probably strong on violins.  At the same time, it needs to be not all that long, so a movement of a great violin concerto won't work.  My current thinking is that I need to comb through the vast literature of violin "virtuoso pieces," the stuff that people like Paganini and Heifetz used to play as encores.  Encores need to be short, since they're unscheduled, and they can afford to be insanely difficult because the performer doesn't have to continue afterward; that is, it doesn't matter if he blows every last ounce of energy he's got, because he can go home and sleep afterwards.  So I'm going to go through that repertoire and come up with a list of about 5 choices.

Then what I do is play one of these at the start of a session, fairly loud, and in the middle of it read a scene-setting speech.  If I do this every session, the music will come to be associated with the game, and will tell everyone, "Now we begin, prepare for a speech."  And then the piece ends, and the game is rolling, because the mood is set.

I find putting on music during a game distracting, but that's my own problem, not an intrinsic one.

Theoretically, you could also use session-ending music, which runs while you tally up experience or whatever, put your dice and notes away, and generally clear up.  I've never done it, but there's no reason it shouldn't work.

[Mike Holmes]

One other possibility for the use of music is at the start of a session.

Heh, Josh did this in his last HQ run. It was pretty cool.

To relate it to one of your favorite subjects, what playing such music does is to establish the ritual space. Just like an opening hymn in church.

Mike

[b_bankhead]

I found the use of music during a game too much of a problem to be worth it.  For one thing you have to talk loud enough to be heard above it which raises the noise level of the game something fierce.  Also it's hard to synchronize the right music with what happening in the game. (you can't have the 'lilting love theme' during the 'bullet opera' scene)  This adds playing disc jockey to the long list of things a GM must do.

My compromise was the concept of a 'Theme Song'.  This is of course a single piece of musice played at the start of every session.  Its always the same so you dont need to collect a lot different tunes. It creates mood and does all the other good stuff music does without intruding into the game proper.  And I have found it is a wonderful way of putting everyone into 'game mode' once they have learned to associate ithe music with the game (thanks Dr. Pavlov...).  Of course a change in theme music can be a great way to announce major changes in the campaign too.  Another possibility is each discrete scenario has it's own distinctive theme song (Like the James Bond movies).

You might also consider an 'End Title' song to signal the end of a session, to put people back into 'go home' mode as well.

[M. J. Young]

Oddly, I am a composer, but I never even thought to use music in games until a couple years ago when I read the suggestion on the Internet. I thought about it, but never used it after that, either.

Part of the problem is that I don't have equipment set up where we play. That means I'd either have to move a lot of stuff into the small area where I'm already trying to fit books, papers, dice, and such (and move it back a three in the morning when we're done and I'm beat) or have to leave the room periodically to operate the music.

I think if I were to do it, I would

[*]Create a batch of midis, with file names that genuinely reflected what they were;[*]Organize them in subdirectories in a manner that would enable quick location of any type of file;[*]Burn them all to a CD (you can put a lot of midis on a CD);[*]Run them at need from a computer at my seat.[/list:u]Even that seems like it's going to add to the chaos of running the game, though.

I'm extremely picky about music, though, and my tastes do not generally match those of those with whom I play games, so it's probably better that I don't use music. I would not want to play in a game where someone was playing music I didn't like or want to hear, and I would hesitate to inflict my personal musical preferences on people who probably don't want to hear my choices.

So I am disinclined to use music, even given some of the excellent ideas in this thread; but I might consider it, particularly if I find myself with enough time on my hands to write a few hundred appropriate midis.

--M. J. Young

[Silmenume]

Hey Sabney,

Welcome to the Forge!  I didn't see this thread until late, and by all rights I suppose I should leave it lie, but as music is absolutely critical to the game I am playing in, I thought I would chance it and add my two cents.

Everyone has given some great advice.  The most important is use music only if it suits you goals.  I am going to assume that you are interested in reading about how others implement music in their games and hope that you don't think of this as preachy.  It is not intended to be so on any level.  It's just one example of how its done, nothing more.

First of all we have a collection of over a thousand CD's, the vast, overwhelming majority are motion picture sound tracks.  This is important for a number of reasons already indicated in previous posts.

Most are all instruments.

[*]They tend to be very emotional/evocative by their nature.[*]They are intended to convey a relatively simple and identifiable melody that makes them "easy to understand" emotionally.[*]They are written specifically to support something else that is going on.[*]Many tend to have a "fuller" or more orchestral feel or sound (obviously this is open to much interpretation – but the gist is there)[/list:u]This does not mean that one's selection should be limited to this genre, but these are some of the more compelling reasons I have found to use this music.

The game style I play is Sim, theatrical style, set in Middle Earth – so much I what I what have to say will have to be measured against that.

As was said earlier, use the music as an aid to your efforts – not dominate them.

The interesting thing someone brought up earlier is that certain tracks can be associated with certain moods and this is a great advantage in economizing effort as just a few notes can do more than thirty minutes of trying to set mood verbally.

Music can be used to heighten moods.  We use Last of the Mohicans tracks 2 and 8 for many of our combat sequences.  Its gotten to the point where when we hear track 2 come up we all jump out of chairs and start prepping for battle.  Track 8 is an indication that the shit has really hit the fan and unless something changes soon we are all pooched.  Phrases like, "We've been breached!" "You'd best get hot," or "The Captain's down!" are all frequently heard while this track is playing.

We frequently hear the first 2:28 of the track entitled "To Think of a Story" off of the soundtrack to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, or "Vampire Hunters" off of the Bram Stoker's Dracula sound track, or "Danger From the Lake" from the Mighty for undead/supernatural evil.

For a noble death (not the death of a nobleman – but someone who has perished in truly mighty way) Tracks 9, 10 and 11 (Elysium, Honor Him, Now We Are Free) from Gladiator, "Time to Say Goodbye" by Andre Bocelli, "The Parting Glass" from Waking Ned Devine, "Prince's Day" from Blown Away, "Suo Gan" from Empire of the Sun.  Or if the character was a barbarian/berserker "Ride of the Valkyrie" by Vagner is fun!

For the starting of a game some awesome uplifting-swelling pieces include the first 2:42 of "Overture and Prison of the Crusades" from Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, or "World of the Heart (Main Title)" from Dragon Heart.

Some sentimental stuff might include "Your No Different" from the Forest Gump soundtrack, "Convening the Coven" from the Practical Magic soundtrack, "Bruce and Linda" from the Dragon soundtrack, "October Sky" for the October Sky soundtrack, "The Ludlows" from the soundtrack Legends of the Fall.
   
It goes on and on.  One thing you might be noticing is that we group the tracks by whatever useful groupings we can think of.  This can be from emotional intent, to race (Elves, Dwarves, Dunedain) to location (Harrad, Lothlorien, etc.), etc.  Fifteen categories (CD's) with 20 tracks a piece adds up to 300 pieces of music!  It doesn't have to take a whole lot of space to have a lot of variety.  Add a CD player with track repeat and you are on your way.

There are no hard and fast rules.  Sometimes we play music as a counter point to the emotional value of scene – something slow and melodic during a high-energy tragedy)

Actually there might be one rule – don't stop the game to search for music!  The music is subordinate to the game, not the other way around.  Having said that, music can pull scenes in different directions than what they would have otherwise gone in.  This is fine too.  We allow music to influence play, much like music effects the emotions of the movie watchers viewing a scene in progress.

However, from a DM's point of view, handling music in a game is really tough – but done right well worth the effort.  We won't play without it!  The key, I have found when I do DM, is to be come familiar with the music before I run.  We have compiled tracks into groupings and burned them down to CD's.  The category is clearly labeled on the CD and hand written notes are next to track names to aide in selection.  It's a skill like anything else, and if you wish to make the effort to develop it, it can have a profound effect on your game.  The fit between music track and in game events don't have to be perfect.  Ultimately the employment of music will be of benefit if the game play style is flexible enough to take advantage of what the music has to offer.  If your game play is such that it cannot take advantage or "interact" with the music in a meaningful way, then don't try and pound a round peg into a square hole!

Music is tool.  It may help, but it is not mandatory to every game.

Good luck!  I'm excited!  I love the stuff!  (We play games where men are commonly brought to tears of rage or sadness and music plays no small part in that effort!)

[Callan S.]

Hmmm, I don't get the fuss.

We usually have a CD on in the background, turned down and just on loop. Usually a LOTR track or something like that weve found. Perhaps after two hours we get bored of it and put another track on.

It's like the chips in the bowl or the beer in our hands...adds to the occasion. But we don't change beers or chips for a particular scene or such. If we did, it might put us off beer and chips during the game. Same with music.

[Angaros]

We've used music in various ways when we've gamed. Mostly it's been a backdrop without much thought going into what we played. When the music was seriously out of place for the current mood we changed it, but mostly we used music we liked.

I did play with a GM who on occation used music in a more planned fashion. He played "In the hall of the mountain king" as we entered... the hall of the mountain king for example and coordinated his description of the events with the music -- you know, doors opening at dramatic points in the music and so on.

An odd combination that I really liked was playing Pendragon listening to really heavy metal (Suicidal Tendencies, Bathory, At the Gates etc.). It worked great!! :D Since then I always think of the Perilous Forest when listening to Baptised in Fire and Ice.

There is an app for those using computers at the gaming table (or at least nearby) at //www.rpgsoundmixer.com. I also flew by a site with music from Neverwinter Nights somewhere. Might be worth googling for.

[M. J. Young]

Hmmm, I don't get the fuss.

We usually have a CD on in the background, turned down and just on loop. Usually a LOTR track or something like that weve found. Perhaps after two hours we get bored of it and put another track on.

I know where you're coming from, and I've probably had music playing from time to time, too. The point of this isn't whether you've got music playing, but whether you are making an effort to use it like a film score to emphasize what's happening in the game. That requires a lot of effort to be able to shift from one song to another in anticipation of what's happening.

Part of the complication, of course, is that it would be relatively easy to do as a movie score if you knew what was going to happen when; but that would only really apply in illusionist or participationist play--even in trailblazing, if they got off the path you would have to have some alternative music ready or else shut it off, and either way you'd be announcing that they were off the path. To do trailblazing or bass playing you would need a tremendous amount of flexibility in the availability of music and the speed with which you could access what you need.

--M. J. Young

[SlurpeeMoney]

Rather than focus on particular tracks, my group has found it stimulating to listen to an album of thematically cued music. For fantasy, I've found Bond and Apocalyptica to fit in perfectly; for my modern games, I like the A Perfect Circle discology. The key to both is that, while they do illicit mood, they are mostly background bits. No one pays attention to them specifically. Really, that's the power of A Perfect Circle; it's coffee-house music.

Were I running a game set in Italy, I would camp up the background italian music. A France-inspired alternate-history a la Kushiel's Dart? Pump up the French romance tunes.

Because I tend to play very fast and loose, with very little planning and a lot of improvisation, if the music fits a particular event, I can add it right away. I don't need to worry about it all fitting with the Greater Plan because my games never really have one. I guess I kind of go the opposite from the rest of you, then, in that I don't force my music to fit the scene; I sometimes make my scene fit the music.

Kris
"Chicks with cellos... Can there be anything hotter?"