Personally, I think that's one of the greatest sequences I've ever seen on film, ranking right up there with the opening track shot in Orson Wells's Touch of Evil. But would it work with a score less awesome than Morricone's? I doubt it. And after experiencing the flatness of this early no-music preview for the original Star Wars I sometimes find it hard not to think of John Williams as the guy who saved George Lucas's career.
The problem is that film is a passive form of entertainment. Roleplaying games require the active use of totally different parts of the brain. John Williams or Ennio Morricone can work to draw us deeper into the enchantment film provides. Put the soundtrack for Star Wars on at a sci-fi session and inevitably I will stop playing at some point and just listen. Perhaps with my mouth agape like a slack-jawed yokel.
But good music clearly digs down to an ancient layer of meaning that I just can't reach with graph paper and twelve sided dice, so I'm not quite ready to give up on teaming them up. Here are some ideas on how to do that without accidentally turning your session into a meeting of a music appreciation society:
- Listen to appropriate music during game prep. Of course, this cuts the players out of the action.
- Put together a playlist for the players, maybe even burning CDs for everyone. Some players will doubtless look at you like you're crazy, but others will get it.
- Play an intro theme. Most sessions start out with a bit of light chitchat. Firing up a copy of Holst's Mars movement or whatever would serve as a signal to stop talking about comic books and get serious about playing.
- Perhaps music during the session is feasible, but one has to be smart about selection. No songs with words, perhaps. People will either sing along or simply pay too much attention to the lyrics. Nothing too strongly invocative of something irrelevant to the game at hand. To you, the sountrack to The Breakfast Club might strike just the right tone for your dungeon, but the players might have trouble connecting it to anything but the movie.
- I maintain a little email list of my player pool. Gmail makes that pretty dang easy. I can imagine a scenario where in one of my regular "reminder: game tonight" emails I included a link to a youtube clip of some music video. "Tonight we continue the hunt for the Werebeast of Labbershack Moor. And to set the mood, here's Ozzy Osbourne's "Bark at the Moon"."
Anybody else with any ideas on how to use music with gaming without it ending up a big ol' distraction?
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Many years ago I ran a dungeon inspired by Edvard Grieg's "Hall of the Mountain King," and I think I even played it at the beginning while we were rolling up characters.
ReplyDeleteDaveL
I do a lot of 'campaign mixes' to set the mood for both my prep and my players, but I don't think I could ever have music playing behind me during a game. I'd just get too distracted.
ReplyDeleteNow, music cues for a Play-by-Post game is a completely different story.
Hah! I've actually used The Ecstacy of Gold as the theme music for my campaign - playing it before each session to set the theme, as you mention.
ReplyDeleteTwo different methods work for me:
ReplyDelete-Just have whatever music in there, turned down low, but then use special music when it's a big deal and then you just get up, walk over to the CD player ("what's he doing?""I don't know""Oh, he's got a CD?" "Which CD?") and then fire it up and then whatever song you're playing takes on huge significance.
-Have a bunch of stuff cued up on a lap top on youtube and/or itunes and just play whatever works, but keep the laptop next to you so you can control the volume all the time.
I've never used music, but always wanted to pop in Poledouris' Conan during an anticipated blood-bath of a session, to see how it would go.
ReplyDeleteWhat about using music for recaps? That is, not only to set the tone for what will be done, but what has been done. This might help solidify a more cohesive view for what went on, and how everyone should feel about it.
ReplyDelete(The games I've played in should have recaps read while listening either to Requiem for a Dream or the theme song to Animaniacs.)
I use it quite a bit: http://digitalorc.blogspot.com/2010/10/effective-music-in-gaming.html
ReplyDeleteYour references were totally appropriate. May I add Morricone's music for Once Upon a Time in the West? The harmonica piece still sends chills down my spine.
In my long ago Runequest campaign, I made mix tapes to set the mood for big "scene changes", for what I hoped would be long, multi-session adventure arcs. The first was when the PCs decided to travel with a group of gypsies. I had a lot of gypsy-ish music: Kate Price, David Arkenstone, Loreena McKennitt. A former roommate had left me a small boombox. I brought it to the game session with the tape cued up and ready to go.
ReplyDeleteFor a river journey, I used Smettana's "The Moldau", and for a sea journey, lots of nautical music. I would agree, no lyrics, only instrumentals. One player in particular had a deep and abiding hatred for sea chanteys. It was ugly.
I make multiple disc mixes for every campaign - all instrumentals. We have a campaign theme, music for fights, deaths, romance, problem solving, major NPCs, each PC, etc. It adds a lot and no one has ever said it was distracting. Quite the opposite.
ReplyDeleteI can't stand music while gaming; I think my hearing's starting to go, and I find it really hard to understand what people are saying if there's music playing.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that I'm as distractable as a weasel on speed I can't play music while running a game. I have put together "soundtracks" to give players the vibe of how a setting feels. They all seem to use tracks from the Black Hawk Down soundtrack.
ReplyDeleteI've run Star Wars with the CDs playing at random in the next room. It wasn't a distraction, just a reminder of what we were playing. We didn't try to have it match scenes, and occasionally if it did it was just fun and not really a problem.
ReplyDeleteI think the Star Wars universe is heavily defined by the music and visuals and like to use them if possible when we play that game. But it is the exception, as it is actually based on films... I don't run music when we play D&D or other games.
Although music plays a part in our D&D games, as events in game remind people of songs, sometimes prompting parody versions of the songs to be sung, followed by laughs and groans and pleas to shut up. But it's all in good fun.
Rather than leave a comment of epic length, I just posted my thoughts over here...
ReplyDeletehttp://quibish.blogspot.com/2011/05/gaming-with-music.html
I never really used music during my games before, but I'm hoping it will be less of a distraction when included as part of the campaign.
The best way to weave music into a campaign is through .mp3 playlists of mostly instrumental music, to kind of bring together a few different ideas from the post and the comments. My Cthulhu campaign has playlists for "general investigation/social interaction," "something creepy is going on," "something creepy is going on and it needs to be illustrated through dramatic orchestral music," and "combat."
ReplyDeleteI can totally understand people who get distracted by anything going on beyond the game, though. I am just not one of those people.
When I was younger, I had a stereo right up on the counter behind the bar. We played whatever new music we'd picked up (new being a relative term, we were buying up old albums of bands we'd recently discovered in the early 80's, such as Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin) as well as newer bands like Metallica and Dio.
ReplyDeletePlaying to a rock soundtrack just seemed to be our thing. We tried soundtrack music and such, but it just seemed jarring.
Nowadays, I have found a use for fantasy music and gaming -- there's a game on my phone that's open source and has no music. I play Radio Rivendell (http://www.radiorivendell.com/)over a Shoutcast app on my phone to give it some "oomph" while I'm playing.
We don't usually use music in our games. I don't object to it, but I feel like it only works if it's appropriate to the game and it's not distracting to anybody at the table. No lyrics, please - or at least no lyrics in a language I know. (I can tune out lyrics I don't understand.) I find movie soundtracks jarring if I know the
ReplyDeletemovie too well. I did have a "soundtrack" of assorted metal for a cyberpunk game I ran back in the mid-'90s, but I'd just play a song or two before each session to set the mood.
On the other hand, one of the best fight scenes I've ever played had a musical score - Apocalyptica's Inquisition Symphony. It was a high-powered anime-style game, and the GM did a masterful job keeping everything smooth and exciting. Our opponents were very tough, and very colorful, and there was a lot of history built up between them and us. My character was desperately trying to stop her opponent without hurting him too badly, because he was her true love possessed by an evil force. He had no such compunctions, of course, and would have been a tough opponent for her even if she wasn't holding back. We won in the end, but it felt like a very, very near thing. The music really contributed to the feeling of drama and tension.
I prefer music while I'm gaming, but it really depends upon the game environment. Though I'm pretty partial to industrial and hardcore electronic, DnB, etc.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, when Quake, Hexen, Half-life and Starcraft first came out there was always a lot of Diselboy and the like playing at 3am on Saturday morning after working an 80 hour week.