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February is always the busiest month of the year for me, and this February has been even busier than usual. My Dad - fellow CT contributor Rick Higginson - convinced me to join him at his writing class. Since I grew up in a home-school environment, this is my first experience with a real classroom and with... homework. Oh, and on top of that, I have 3 games a week right now. For the first time in my life, I actually feel like I'm gaming too much.
With that said, I hope you'll all forgive me for this brief article.
This month, I'd like to talk about great music to play during your game. The right music can do a lot for setting the mood for your game. Even though our main game is hosted in the back of a gaming shop, our GM still occasionally loads up a song on his laptop that is evocative of what's going on. Of course, half the time we can't hear it over the noise of the people in the next room, but it's the thought that counts.
Although I'm going to mostly recommend fantasy-sounding music for fantasy games, you should feel free to experiment with whatever music flips your cookie. During our 4-person EarthDawn game, my husband usually just has his playlist going, and we'll skip any songs that are too distracting (Richard Cheese is not conducive to serious roleplay). When combat rolls around, though, he'll almost always switch over to Rob Zombie. It really fits the pace and viciousness of our combats.
Some of these bands may be a bit hard to find, but most of them have CDs up for purchase on Amazon.com A few of them can also be found on iTunes and/or AOL MusicNet. More and more of the bands that I listen to are becoming easily available; I can only hope that this will be a continuing trend.
Great RP Bands
- Dead Can Dance - when I first started really getting into this band, I was playing in a great on-line EarthDawn game. As such, the two will forever be entwined in my mind. Dead Can Dance is THE EarthDawn band. The tribal feeling of a lot of their music really suits the setting of the game. Dead Can Dance inspired many of the other bands that I listen to, and they are considered one of the founding bands of the style of Goth music that I enjoy. Because of their popularity and influence, you can usually find them at CD stores and sometimes even at Borders or Barnes and Noble.
- Lisa Gerrard - Dead Can Dance split up before I even started listening to them, but vocalist Lisa Gerrard has had a successful career since then. You may have even heard her without realizing it - she's provided vocals for many movie soundtracks. If you saw a lot of movies in 2005, you probably saw the trailer for The New World - that was Lisa Gerrard singing. Her music has a similar ambience to that of Dead Can Dance, and there is no denying the power of her voice.
- Corvus Corax - I love this band so much. Bagpipes, shawms, more drums than you can shake a stick at, some cool vocals in assorted languages, adaptations of folk songs... what's not to love? Their music is perfect for sword-and-sorcery style games. Some of it has a distinct European feel, a lot of it has a more Middle Eastern sound (thanks to the shawm). Also check out Tanzwut, which is the same band, but playing folk metal. Their music seriously rocks.
- Medieval Babes - great ambient music. This band is a chorus of female singers, and their body of work is mainly medieval folk songs and poems, in an assortment of languages. Most of their songs have minimal instrumental accompaniment, and quite a few of them are a capella. Another one of my very favorite bands. I highly recommend "The Rose" as a good introduction to their work.
- Apocalyptica - Metal music played on 4 cellos. Seriously. Many of their songs are covers of famous bands like Metallica, MegaDeath and Pantera... and some of their songs are original compositions. All of it is awesome. I think this is great combat music for when you want something less distracting than Rob Zombie. It is very high energy, and simply amazing to listen to.
- Hagalaz Runedance - This band has some very nice Nordic music, with great vocals and occasional use of an amazingly deep war drum. Unfortunately, there's also some bitter, anti-Christian sentiments in the music that I can't agree with 100%. Still, great music.
- Midnight Syndicate - Any band that has a D&D soundtrack album deserves a shout-out in this column. Their music is pretty good, only hampered by the fact that it's also 100% synthesized. However, you can even purchase the album in some game stores, so it's pretty easy to find.
This is really only a small selection of bands that set the right mood for RP. There are a lot of New Age and Celtic bands that have a good ambient sound. I recommend picking up cheap sampler CDs - the Projekt compilations usually have a few gems, and we found some cool songs on a Nordic Roots sampler. A lot of labels offer these compilations for really cheap, hoping that you'll get hooked on some of the bands enough to buy full-price CDs.
And of course, different types of games will demand different music. The music that I listened to when I was playing my Euthanatos in Mage is a lot different than what I want to listen to during a D&D or EarthDawn game. There's tons of music out there - experiment and see what works best for your game and your group.
Until next month... happy gaming!
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