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Man_Over_Game
2019-03-27, 04:54 PM
What do you guys use for background music during battles, traveling, towns and such?

I used to use Town music from the more modern Final Fantasy stuff, as it ages well enough to get that busy, homely feeling.

For combat, I've been really addicted to anything that's made by Dance with the Dead lately. Their stuff is on-point for some bada** boss music that gets my players pumped.

I haven't found much that I enjoy for traveling stuff, but I'm open to suggestions.

What do you guys use?

JoeJ
2019-03-27, 05:01 PM
I don't use anything because I find it extremely distracting. You might want to check with your players (if you haven't done it already) and make sure that they're not like me in that regard before deciding to have music.

Spellbreaker26
2019-03-27, 06:40 PM
For town music there's a very good track from Bravely Default called Land of Eternity that is probably my favourite town music ever.

One of my DMs uses music from Hollow Knight (the starting town) which is also really good for towns.

RedMage125
2019-04-01, 09:39 AM
Midnight Syndicate does a lot of music that is appropriate for background music for a TTRPG. They even did a Dungeons & Dragons Soundtrack during the 3.x era.

One Tin Soldier
2019-04-01, 06:10 PM
I'm currently running a Doom game in 5e where I use the 2016 Doom soundtrack. In fact, listening to the soundtrack was the reason I even came up with the idea in the first place.

Aside from setting-specific things like that, I am fond of the resources in this reddit post. (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/9l0x15/another_update_my_curated_spotify_playlists_i_use/) It's a variety of playlists (mostly videogame and movie scores) that cover everything from cathedrals to the underdark.

Cygnia
2019-04-01, 06:16 PM
When the [MEEP] hit the oscillating blades and Armageddon fell upon my campaign after 5+ years of playing?

"ALEXA! Play 'O Fortuna'!"

Delta
2019-04-01, 06:24 PM
There's a german RPG music project called "Erdenstern" which has put out quite a few albums of themed music with their "Into the.." series (Into the Green - general "adventuring" music, Into the Red - combat/warfare focused, Into the Dark - horror, and so on), I like using lots of that, designed background music always has the advantage of not being too intrusive, like for example movie soundtracks tend to be.

I also like using themes for certain characters, places or even situations, Two Steps From Hell is a true goldmine for this, they make music for movie trailers so their stuff is short and very memorable most of the time (just check them out on Youtube), definitely not something I'd run all the time but it can really help set the mood. For example, having an "intro theme" can really help if you (like me) have a group of players who usually sit around and rant just about anything but the game that's about to start, just having a short, 30-60 second piece of music you can run as a "Okay, let's go!" moment can help people get focused (in one of my longer running campaigns, it was a fun exercise for some people to then later argue what an actual intro would look like if their campaign as a tv series, what scenes they'd show, how their characters would appear in the title screen and so on, even trying to determine how it would change through the "seasons" of the campaign, it was loads of fun)

And then there's certain themes that would hit when something really big and bad enters the battlefield, always nice to just watch them react to the first few seconds of a certain piece of music and their faces going "Oh-oh..." when they realize stuff's about to get real.

Themes, in my experience, can really help, much moreso than regular background music, because if your players start connecting a certain piece of music to something, playing that triggers their memories much better and easier than words ever could, it's just how our brain works. That of course also means not just looking up your favorite movie soundtracks, because those themes are already linked to other memories, if you hit the Imperial March when your BBEG enters the scene, your players will thinkVader, not your NPC, and that will only lead to some player making some Vader breathing noses and going "I am your father, Luke!", followed by another player pointing out that's not actually how he says it... and there goes your dramatic mood.