Soundtracks for Tabletop RPG

A great RPG blog, Gnome Stew, has an article up today about using soundtracks for tabletop gaming. In the article, writer Martin Ralya suggests making three playlists according to ambience and mood. In an earlier article (referred to in this one), another Gnome Stew writer discusses using about the same number for generally the same purposes.

I use soundtracks for my tabletop roleplaying games and always have. I made three for the Chill Online game we've been playing, but they were keyed to ambience and actual locations, not action or emotion. We have only used those playlists one time, as we have only been in those locations one time so far. However, they are already set and available for whenever the characters wind-up back in those same locations. It should also be noted that both of these locations (again, the third list was for ambience) were clubs/bars where music would be playing.

The songs I chose reinforced location, and worked very well. One of the locations was a topless club and it was nice to switch between hip-hop and strip club music to heavy metal for another location, then into a mixture of genres for the ambient backdrop. The players really seemed to be aware of the change in musical style and how that best represented the location at which their characters were hanging-out. In fact, the music sometimes indicated more about the place than I could ever have told them - and I actually observed this myself because it was one of the things I intentionally angled for when putting this whole thing together.

Also, I chose popular music selections and made my playlists on YouTube. No one in our group seemed to find the vocals distracting, especially since the volume was so low. The only problem was having to countdown to start the playlists and the fact that we had no shuffle. I'm still learning the whole process, and I believe YouTube playlists have a shuffle feature that can be turned off and on, so I'll simply say that we did not know how to handle that at the time we used the playlists, and YouTube has updated its interface since then, so I don't know where to even begin looking for those things right this minute. I am going to use shuffle if it is available (and I can find it).

Anyway, I just wanted to throw-in on the discussion and what I had to ramble about was too long to leave as a comment on Gnome Stew directly. However, I have heard similar advice regarding soundtracks for tabletop RPG and wanted to add what I've learned from actual experience.

© C Harris Lynn, 2011