Elevator Music: Soundscapes and RPGs

Creating a mood during a game session is often pivotal in making memorable moments.  Using background music, sound effects, and ambience is a high risk high reward way of amping up a scene or providing greater immersion.  However, it's something that can go very wrong as well.  The wrong sound or an add interrupting the scene or sound levels being out of whack can draw attention away from the game or even be downright disruptive.  Over the last several years, I've experimented with adding music, and have found several tips and tricks to make it work.

    First, though, how you get the music is important.  I, personally, use Spotify Premium and YouTube through either my phone and a Bluetooth speaker or my laptop.  Spotify Premium allows me to make playlists (and has no adds), and it has a wide variety of music from ambient to popular songs to use to punctuate cool moments. Every song I use in a campaign ends up on a singular playlist for my reference, but I'll often make specific playlists with small selections of songs for sessions. YouTube is mostly for sound effects that run for long periods of time like crackling fires or rain. I know there are soundboards online, iTunes, and several other options that people can use, and with a little software and know how, mixing your own sounds can be rewarding and amazing.  Years ago, I had the pleasure of playing with a musician friend who wrote and recorded original music for his campaign.  It was awesome, but very few people have the know how and amount of time necessary for that. 

    Soundscapes in a game can break down into 3 basic categories: Songs, Ambient Music, and Ambient Sounds.  In my opinion, Songs should be used the most sparingly.  Big orchestral scores, pop music, rock anthems, R&B, and even rap and country can all be useful for creating mood, but they are best used sparingly.  Ambient music is good to use often, but it can become distracting, especially if there is a catchy refrain or build that the players can start queueing onto.  Ambient sounds also are good to use often, but they tend to create white noise that can lull players to distraction.  Finding the best sound for the moment as well as how to use them can be difficult to juggle.

Using Songs

    Using songs can create big, cinematic moments. Using songs can also distract your player and be tonally dissonant. Generally, I tend not to use genres like rock, rap, or pop outside of games with a more modern setting (like Hunter: the Reckoning or Monsterhearts) or games that have futuristic or eclectic settings (D&D: Spelljammer, Apocalypse World, or Scum & Villainy).  I've used everything from folk music, bluegrass, country, and even electronica, industrial, and heavy metal in various games, but it requires specific moments and specific scenes built for a song that you think is thematically appropriate. 

    As an example, I used the song Desire by Meg Myers during a scene in my recent Hunter: the Reckoning game.  One of the characters had previously dated the vampire they were hunting before she knew he was a vampire, and I played the song during a dream sequence during which she and the vampire shared dreams in which she could feel his bloodlust and want to possess her. It lent to a short scene (the song and scene were both only a little over 4 minutes long), but the song made the scene cinematic, which lent itself to the horror TV show feel I've been going for with that game. 

    Earlier in the same campaign, I had Blow the Whistle by Too $hort playing when I introduced a character, saying the song was playing on her radio in the background as they entered her house.  A lot of my NPCs have unofficial theme songs (I often make soundtracks when I get to play to listen to before games to get into character), and Blow the Whistle had the kind of nonchalant swag that I saw that character carrying herself with.  These "theme songs" are songs I often queue up when I introduce characters or have them show back up (or on a few memorable occasions, I have the song play them out as they meet their demise). 

    In a long running D&D game, I often ended sessions with Songs narrating things happening elsewhere in the world as teasers for what was ahead.  God's Gonna Cut You Down by Marilyn Manson memorably was used when I described the intro of some bounty hunters coming to town as the camera panned up them, starting at their boots hitting the dust and ending the song and the scene before I got to their faces.  

    This category is by far the hardest to use, because lyrics can often overwhelm narration and back and forth roleplay.  I've found that songs work best when I have a specific scene I need to hit, and I can queue up my description based on the song, and we can move to other ambient music or sound after the song finishes.  Because Songs are usually part of my scene prep, I usually practice my narration while listening to the Song before the game.  There have been many drives to games where I have a Song on repeat, and I go over my narration over and over again.

Using Ambient Music

    Ambient music is usually orchestral, classical, or non-lyrical folk music.  Soundtracks from movies and TV shows are a great source of material, but there is a risk of players recognizing refrains from movies.  Duel of the Fates from Star Wars: the Phantom Menace or the guitar riff from No Man's Land from the Wonder Woman soundtrack are extremely recognizable, and depending on the group can take them out of the moment.  Ambient music can also be inconsistent tonally.  For example, many of the songs from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe soundtrack have moments I've long wanted to include in games, but most have long, quiet builds, or character themes mixed in that don't fully meet the tone I want.  

    Similar to Songs, I often queue up Ambient Music to specific scenes.  For example, I wanted the heavy drums and bass choral vibe of Battle for the Hill of Ash from Vikings for the opening action sequence of a D&D game I ran where undead were swarming over a town.  Invocation of the Duke by the daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra was used entering a floating sky casino later in the game and played softly in the background as they started exploring it. 

    Also like songs, sometimes Ambient Music can function as character themes.  In the same D&D game as above, In the Face of Evil by Magic Sword was the theme song of the Necromancer who was the big bad of the campaign, and I ended up playing that song frequently as they faced him, found out about his goals, and also when they faced him for the final showdown. 

    Ambient music and Ambient Sound also have a strange crossover space, especially when using horror soundtracks.  Horror soundtracks often use ambient noise coupled with sporadic music, straddling the line between the two.  Songs like The Basalt Massif by Gustaf Hildebrand and much of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre soundtrack are amazing ambience builders in horror games, but it's hard to fully classify them as songs or ambient noise.

Using Ambient Sounds

    Ambient sound is one of the safest things to use, but it by nature can drone on and lull players to sleepiness if used too long without change.  YouTube is my big source of Ambient Sounds.  Rain on a Tin Roof With Thunder and D&D Crowded Tavern With Music are great to have on in the background during scenes where specific songs don't really fit.  Having Campfire & River Night Ambience queued up while making players make perception checks while on watch can build tension as well. 

    Some of the best unexpected Ambient Sounds I've found are planetary sounds recorded by NASA such as Sounds of Saturn and Saturn's Rings.  Planetary noises are eerie and make for great background noise during tense or horror scenarios.  I use them a lot when I'm running games like Hunter: the Reckoning, Monster of the Week, or even Changeling: the Dreaming when I need to unsettle the players.  The above video of Sounds of Saturn was used to great effect when I had my D&D group's skyship get invaded by a monster that preyed on their nightmares, and I played it almost a full 6 hour session as I had the players go through nightmare scenarios and finally struggle to wake up and defeat the creature. 

    For inspiration, here are a few of the soundtracks I've made for past games I've run.  

• Changeling: the Dreaming, a campaign set mostly in Montana, hence the country songs
  
• D&D Airship Campaign, a fantasy world on floating continents with airships so I could blend Space Opera with classic D&D
  
• Hunter: the Reckoning, the current Hunter game I'm running
  
• Dark Root, a Root RPG one shot I ran (with the option to make a series) with Dark Souls vibes