Soundtrack Your Game – Music as a GM’s Tool

As we’ve discussed during the Dorkadia podcast, music can be a powerful force when used during a session of tabletop gaming. Music can build a scene, set a mood and convey danger or action. Music is a great GM’s tool, fitting in helpfully with minis, the grid map, and silly NPC voices. But with a world of music that could fit with any game, how do you decide what YOUR game’s soundtrack is?

Puts a new spin on your cackling and yelling for the party to ‘DANCE, PUPPETS, DANCE!’

When I started running my 13th Age game, I decided to write a rough outline for every session I run, detailing possible events and encounters during the adventure. While I’m doing this, for each area or event in the outline, I line up a fitting song. So for instance, if the players are in big cities, I’ll pick a song for each area of the city (the castle? How about “Figaro Castle?” The crazy market? ‘”Bizarre Bazaar!”). Battles absolutely get their own tracks and usually important NPCs will have their own themes. After a few scenes are lined up to soundtrack, the big thing I like to think about is what tone I want this scene to convey. This can be emotional; an epic boss battle with the dracolich deserves a sweeping, orchestral theme. Or maybe it’s not so epic and as a GM, you want to convey something about the environment; the PC’s walk through the deep forest right before the gnoll ambush might have some pleasant traveling tune.

For me, a pretty decent knowledge of JRPG soundtracks has been incredibly useful. A good deal of the songs I grab are from Final Fantasy games – if you can think of a RPG situation, some FF game has probably had something similar and had somebody brilliant score it. I pull from a lot of other JRPGs, but I don’t stop there. I’ve used tracks from Neverwinter Nights, Devil May Cry, the Touhou games and in one memorable example, The Decemberists (I rarely break a personal ‘no lyrics’ rule, but they were fighting a giant evil whale with tentacles, so I felt “The Mariner’s Revenge” was fitting). Movie soundtracks are a great place to pull from as well, especially for fights.

When I use music from a recognizable source like a video game, I’m careful not to use any theme that’s too well known. Game themes are sometimes instantly recognizable – when I say ‘Mario Bros. theme,’ those notes probably ran right through your mind before you could even register it. Go ahead and hum it, it’s okay.

This, though, is exactly why I’m careful: as much as I love “One Winged Angel,” it is arguably the most well-known boss theme in all of gaming. I’ll never use “One-Winged Angel” for a fight, because as soon as it starts up my players are going to think of Sephiroth and nothing else (they’ll also probably start chanting JINGLE BELLS, MAGIC CHEESE, SEPHIROTH, SEPHIROTH).

Their songs are the musical embodiment of their album covers more than any other band I know.

If you don’t have an encyclopedic memory of JRPG soundtracks like I do (and I wish I didn’t, I think all those scores erased other important info like my Social Security number and grandparents’ anniversary), YouTube is your new best friend. Searches like ‘epic fight music’ will turn up reams of results, many from artists like Two Steps From Hell who specialize in music suitable for soundtracking nerdom. Some of my favorite uses of music have just come from surfing YouTube and constantly adding tracks to a private list I keep for possible game music. This list has also massively helped make the soundtrack-selection process quick and easy when crafting my outlines.

Since most of the music I use during my game is culled from YouTube, I just toss the link into a third-party looping site (alternatively, you can use a Chrome extension) and let the music play quietly in the background. The trick is for the music to be loud enough to hear but not to overpower any talking but be loud enough to be heard. It doesn’t take long for music to blend in and subconsciously add a great atmosphere to whatever scene you’re trying to run.

Finding and using music in your games is really fun and really rewarding. I really encourage other GMs to work it into games for that added level of immersion at the table.