To use music in your BTS game or not to use?

[mrloucifer]

Lord Z and I briefly went over this topic a week or so back and I thought it deserved to get its own topic. When it comes to music, the Gm’s I speak to seem pretty split up about using music or not in their game. Some find it distractive while other GM’s dig it.

I’m the type of BTS GM who’s all for using music and in fact play music all the time. The trick in my opinion is to be selective about what music you’re using in your game.

For example, I NEVER just let the radio play as noise in the background. Now THAT is distracting, especially when a catchy song comes on the air. As a player I’ve attended games where the session grinded to a halt when a favored tune came on and we all started singing along!

What I do use however are Soundtracks and musical scores in my BTS games. Keep your music wordless and plan ahead what music you’d like to use in your adventure and music can REALLY add to the ambience and atmosphere of your game.

I’ll be happy to post more examples when I’m in front of my extensive soundtrack collection, but music I can think of off the top of my head I’ve used recently includes the following;

- Anything by Nox Arcanum, Sirenia or Midnight Syndicate
- Hostel 1 and 2 Soundtrack
- Doom (the Movie) soundtrack
- Angel (TV series) soundtrack
- “Boadicea” by Enya
- Hellboy Soundtracks, the main theme track is my starting music most nights.
- Black Aria by Danzig

I’ve even use Halloween track bits (like swamp full of frogs croaking at night or crows cawing in a corn field), they may sound cheesy, but when used in the middle of a game they can be priceless.

I also encourage that you keep the music low so that you don’t have to shout for the game to hear you. It’s supposed to be ambience so keep it that way.

So tell me GM’s… do you use music and if so how?

[mrloucifer]

I think music would be useful for especially big moments...I think a low haunting classical or chamber piece would be useful.

For big fights and chases though, I'd really invoke Bond, Vanessa Mae, or Yoko Kanno, or whatever pianist I'm listening to (I love piano music).

For designing NPCs though, I listen to a lot of Taylor Dayne, Roxette, Vanessa Carlton, Michelle Branch (weird, I never realized how I rarely listen to male artists), Sarah McLaughlin, Dido, and Annie Lennox.

Using music for specific villians or antagonists can work wonders as well. Playing the intro to a peice the group recegizes as an enemy's "theme song" can really make them stand out as a villain.

[Lord Z]

Mephisto, it's funny that you should mention Yoko Kanno. The last time I tried atmospheric music at the game table, it was an all Yoko audio experience. The last big campaign I ran was a SenZar game which lasted about nine months. The climax was originally supposed to take place in a derelict alien spaceship near the south which the PCs were trying to recover. They had been aided by an artificial intelligence along the way which even took on the party's spellsinger (bard) as an apprentice and taught her some new songs. I was planning for the A.I. to doublecross the PCs and take control of the alien ship from the beginning of the campaign. This betrayal was supposed to be the climax, but the PCs went to the south pole way too early and when they weren't nearly ready for it. Nonetheless, I rolled with it. Anyway, the A.I. was a complete rip-off of the character Sharon Apple from the anime Macross Plus, complete with a secret crush on one of the PCs and a secret murderous rage against another for breaking the heart of the first PC. So the players get to the alien ship, fighting local monsters every inch of the way, and they trigger a huge three-way fight between themselves, the frenzying shark-mentality trolls outside, and the alien ship's computer with control over some weapon systems and an army of robots drones. The PCs manage to defeat the alien computer by installing Sharon Lemon (my spellsinger NPC) into ship and purging the older A.I. Well, that is exactly what I wanted. Now the much tactically smarter A.I., Sharon Lemon, turns on the PCs and hits them with everything she has at her disposal including that army of robots and spell attacks which she can transmit as songs through the comm system. I played a loop of six or seven high-energy Yoko Kanno songs, but the players were shouting over each other, and the music was completely lost. The PCs did win the day but only by randomly breaking stuff until they found the right equipment to sever her control of the ship. For the purpose of helping develop the style of a villain character, the experiment worked okay but for atmosphere, it was a complete failure.

I'm glad the atmospheric approach is working for you, Mr. L. Maybe the type of players is a critical difference. I run games for a much younger, high school crowd.

[mrloucifer]

I'm glad the atmospheric approach is working for you, Mr. L. Maybe the type of players is a critical difference. I run games for a much younger, high school crowd.

You know, I forget to count my blessings sometimes. This is probrably worthy of its own thread, but yes I do have an EXCELLENT group of 4 right now... I would say its the best bunch I've ever had.

That being said I started Gm'ing in High shcool so my first gang was a bunch of mouthy over excitable players. over the years I began to see what makes good players and who doesnt, so in the last several years I started vetting my players to the point that I give all my players a "6 month" trial and if they dont synch well with my game or the other players I let them go.

Before I go on I think I'll get a new topic on this going soon, something like a "Whaty makes good BTS players and GM's" or something like that.

[mrloucifer]

For this weekend I am planning a ghost story adventure, and my choice of music for the occasion is the Soundtrack for "The Fog" by Graeme Revell. The music is a peice of crap, but the music is excellent (anything by Graeme ususally is and is worthy of RPG ambience).

It has a good mixture of low moody music, a chasing/running/flee track and several good creepy ambience tracks. there is even a good "ending of the adventure" peice with track # 18- "The Fog Recedes".

[Vidynn]

my favorite music for horror-games is the instrumental part of the soundtrack to Blue Velvet.

[mrloucifer]

my favorite music for horror-games is the instrumental part of the soundtrack to Blue Velvet.

I may have to look into these tunes... I'm not familiar with them.

[Vidynn]

the music is by Angelo Badalementi who wrote a lot of scores for David Lynch, among them the magical music for Twin Peaks.

what I like about using the Blue Velvet-Soundtrack in horror-RPGs is that the music is very subtle, but outright scary at the same time. it doesnt hit you with a hammer, it just creeps up your spine. also, it sounds old-fashioned, sometimes luring, and is an excellent backdrop - you can play and talk dialogues, but in the back of your mind there is always this hypnotic music, which suddenly takes a turn and sounds scary again. I like that a lot better than hitting the players with, say, Heavy Metal, for fightscenes or scary scenes. It also has some good themes to use for (human) major villians.

so, go check it out.