Games and music

I have a hard time getting into the spirit of a game without music playing.

 Maybe it's just my adult ADHD rearing its head, because I pretty much always need to have some constant level of background noise or else the voices in my own head start making up the difference. But the background noise for my games is usually a matter of conscious choice, instead of whatever happens to be on NPR.

When we play 40k over at my buddy Scott's place, it's almost universally some kind of metal. It works for us, because he's got a very extensive collection of various bands like Nile, Amon Amarth, and the like. Metal is the loud, aggressive side of geek fandom, and for all the tough-guy Viking warrior imagery that these guys like to project, you know that they play D&D on the tour bus.

For roleplaying games, it's a bit more of a conscious choice than an iTunes playlist on shuffle. Since I'm usually the one running the game, I get to pick, and I find that I put almost as much thought into the music as I do actually writing scenes. It's difficult for me sometimes, because I wonder how much of what I feel through the music is being accurately conveyed to the players, and how much is just me getting lost in my own internal landscape.

I have a piece from earlier in the blog, referencing the music I used in Orpheus. I put more thought into that game's soundtrack than any other I've ever done, developing different playlists for each night, and compiling a list of specific music for specific scenes. We started each night with what was essentially the theme music for the opening credits, which coincided with whichever book in the series we were currently working our way through.

 The game I'm running right now is a 4E home campaign through the Roll20 app. Music presents its own challenges here, because the onboard jukebox feature is frankly difficult to use. Its search feature is somewhat inscrutable, often finding some pretty incongruous results (I don't know how many awful homemade dubstep remixes I've listened to in the past month). It lacks any kind of playlist, pretty much enabling you to loop tracks and that's it. For now, I've made it work, and I'm thinking that I may have to just feed my players links on YouTube in order to play the tracks I want them to hear. Shared playlists on Spotify also have some promise, although I have yet to really develop that idea.

What role does music play in your games?