Version 1.6  (2/19/2018)  

I’ve been playing for over 25 years now, mostly D&D. I’ve always been a big fan of having some type of background music while playing. Up till now I have not been able to find any larger articles, forums or blogs on the subject of D&D and background music. Most of what I found is, “what background music to you listen to for you’re gaming”, along with a bunch of people who reply back with suggestions. I wanted to create this and share it.

(Just a word of warning, I do not have a musical background, so I might be using the wrong terminology or descriptions. Beyond that, what I like is a personal choice. You may not agree with my choices or have your own opinions, so choose what works for your gaming enjoyment.)

Why ambient background music? It breaks the silence in the room and set the tone for your gaming. It can help set the pace and open up the imagination. It adds an extra element to the gaming experience that a DM cannot easily verbalize. So what makes for good RPG background music? What works and does not? There are obviously lots of different types, forms, personal taste, styles and factors involved depending on what you’re playing. This article will focus more towards D&D, but the basic elements can be applied to any RPG game or system.

So where did I start? Well back in the day I used a 6-Disk CD changer connected to my home stereo along with what CDs I could get my hands on (and could afford!) These days technology has changed. With MP3 audio and the internet it’s a bit easier to obtaining hard to find audio. As for audio hardware players/devices? There are tons of options: portable MP3 players, laptops, tablets, game consoles, smart phones, Bluetooth audio and streaming technologies.

What music fits your gaming?

The music you choose needs to be something low key, not over powering. Instrumentals are the prime choice.

Try to avoid music with lots of vocals. Players can become distracted and start to follow the song vs. what is happening in the game.

Music that is too quite or low leads to silence, it can break the mood leading to distractions, the silence can lead to players talking about things outside the game.

Avoid music that sounds like a video game. Your playing a table top RPG, not a Nintendo game. I’m not saying that video game music is bad. There is some great music from video games, I will cover those later. (Avoid the heavily sensitized or artificial sounding music.)

Avoid those movie scores that have very distinct elements or theme songs. You don’t want players to become distracted and talk about that song or discuss elements from that movie or show. While being said, some distinct elements work nicely. Example: When you hear the score from Conan the Barbarian, you think of a sword wielding barbarian slashing his enemies! That works! But when hearing the Imperial March from Star Wars, makes you just think of Darth Vader.

From here I’m going to break up the music into categories:
Movie Scores
TV Series
Video Games
Specialty audio
Composers and Artists

Movie Scores: By far the easiest choice with a wide degree of options. With the advent of modern music recording and production abilities, today’s scores sound much different from those in the past. Historically older films employed large music orchestras. Today with modern recording and software, producers can create powerful sounding movie scores. For you gaming experience using a blend of both old and newer scores meshed together can work for hours of background music.

If you starting your collection from scratch, can’t go wrong with these 3. (Sets of movies) If you had just these set on random play that would be 10+ hours of scores.

Lord of The Rings
The Hobbit
Pirates of the Caribbean

Beyond that, there are lots of great scores from fantasy movies to choose from:

300
12 Monkeys
13th Warrior
1942 - Conquest of Paradise
310 To Yuma
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter
Alatriste (Roque Banos)
Alexander
Apocalypse - World War II
Army of Darkness (Has some distinct elements that are easy to pick out.)
Arn Knight Templar
Avatar
Ben-Hur (2016 version)
Beowulf
Black Death
Black Mirror
Black Robe
Braveheart (There is also an expanded version of this score.)
Bubba Ho-Tep
Carrie (2013)
Children Of Dune
Conan The Barbarian   (There is several versions of this score, I would recommend trying to find the Basil Poledouris extended version or special edition.)
Conan The Barbarian (2011)
Conan The Destroyer
Crimson Peak
Crimson Winter
Cutthroat Island (There is a 2 disk Limited Edition also)
Dances With Wolves (There is a 25th Anniversary Expanded Edition also.)
Dark Shadows  (The newer movie)
Darkness Falls
Dawn Of The Dragonslayer (Terrible movie, but the audio is not bad.)
Dead Space 1 & 2
Deep Blue Sea
Deep Water
Dracula Untold
Dragonheart  (There are several of these movies)
DragonSlayer
Dylan Dog Dead Of Night
Empire of the Sun
From Dusk Till Dawn
Gladiator
Gods Of Egypt
Hammer Of The Gods
Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters
Harry Potter (Surprising this scores can work, the later movie scores have a bit more darker over tone.)
Hellboy 1 & 2
Hellraiser - 30th Anniversary Edition (This is for the original, I have not heard the movie scores for the later movies. The movies are awful, I can’t imagine the scores are much better.)
I Am Legend
Indiana Jones (There are several different scores for the various movies. There is also a John Williams 5 disk set that covers all the movies.)
Into The Storm
Ironclad
Jonah Hex
King Arthur
King Solomon's Mines
Kingdom of Heaven
Last Of The Mohicans (Can be a bit over powering)
Legion
Mad Max Fury Road
Maleficent
Master and Commander
Masters of The Universe
Muppet Treasure Island
Music From The Hunger Games Saga
National Treasure - Book of Secrets
Nomad The Warrior
Northmen (A Viking Saga) (This has Johan Hegg in it from the band Amon Amarth, a true Viking!)
Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror
Outlander
Pacific Rim
Pathfinder - Legend of the Ghost Warrior
Percy Jackson & the Olympians The Lightning Thief
Percy Jackson Sea Of Monsters
Punisher - War Zone
Puppet Master
Quentin Tarantino's - The Hateful Eight
Red Sonja
Robin Hood (1991 & 2010)
Roque Banos Alatriste
Snow White & The Huntsman
StarGate  (This is for original movie. I have not heard the scores for the spin-off TV series.)
Starship Troopers (From Basil Poledouris, same guy who did the Conan score.)
Sundown The Vampire In Retreat
Terminator Genisys  
The Book Of Eli
The Brothers Grimm
The Chronicles of Narnia (Surprising this score can work, great for mixed into random play.)
The Chronicles Of Riddick
The Eagle
The Great Wall (Ramin Djawadi)
The Hallow
The Huntsman Winter's War
The Last Legion
The Lazarus Effect
The Legends of The Fall
The Mist
The Mummy (The whole series of movies)
The Ninth Gate
The Omen (Complete Score)
The Perfect Storm
The Princess Bride
The Relic

The Scorpion King
The Scorpion King 4 - Quest For Power
The Season Of The Witch
The Three Musketeers (1993)
There Be Dragons
Thor (The newer Marvel movies)
Underworld Awakening  (Be careful with the underworld movies scores, some are better than others for the proposes of D&D.)
Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust
Van Helsing
WaterWorld
Willow
Wishmaster 2 Evil Never Dies   
World of Warcraft
X-Files Fight the Future
X-Men Apocalypse

These are you older scores, they have a more large orchestra feel to them. Mixed into a longer play list they work well:

The Fall of the Roman Empire
The Sea Hawk  
Excalibur
Battle Royale
Ben-Hur 1959    (There is also an extended 5 disk set.)


These movies scores can be a bit little goofy, it’s not a bad idea to have something a bit more light weight mixed in to break the epic mood.)

The Haunted Mansion  
The Pirates! Band Of Misfits


These movies are more of your: darker evil, gothic, Ravenloft, horror types:

Bram Stoker's Dracula  
Chernobyl Diaries
Oculus
Thirteen Ghosts
The Woman In Black  
The Woman in Black 2 - Angel of death
Ghost Ship
Jeepers Creepers  (1 & 2)
Interview with a Vampire
Evil Dead 2
The Lazarus Project
The Horror of H.P. Lovecraft
The Woman In Black

Movie scores just don’t work well.

Some movie scores just don’t work well, there themes and overtones are so distinct that upon hearing them you just think of that movie. They are so custom fit for that movie. Examples: Star Wars, Robocop, Batman, Star Trek, Predator.

Some scores just sound dated, there are a lot of scores from the 80’s just sound too much an 80’s films. Example: most John Carpenter’s scores. 80’s horror films such as Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13’th, The Thing.

Movie scores I would suggest to avoid. Mostly because when players hear they might try to draw an association for what movie they go with. These are your big budget summer blockbuster files, those Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer/James Cameron types of movies: Transformers, The Rock, Armageddon, Bad Boys, Aliens, Terminator, Rambo, ect.

Video Games
Over the years video games have really improved on their music. From the old 8-bit Nintendo audio today’s full surround sound abilities. I’m not a huge gamer. Most of these games are series based, obviously the newer titles will sound better than older ones.

Alone In the Dark
Assassins Creed  (Some of these work better than others.)
Bioshock 2 (Careful on some of these Bioshock games, some work better than others.)
Bloodborne
Castlevania - Lords of Shadow   (Warning: there has been a lot of Castlevania games over the years, the older games clearly sound like old school video games, yuck!)
Crusader Kings
Crusader Kings II
Dark Souls
Dark Souls II - Scholar Of The First Sin
Dead Space 3
Diablo  (Even the original doesn’t sound that bad, the later games are much better.)
Dungeon Defenders 2
Dragon Age
Dragon Age Inquisition - The Descent - Trespasser
Empire - Total War
Fable
Fallout 4 Featured Music Selections
Gears Of War Judgment
God of War  (The music from this whole series of games is awesome!)
Heroes of Might and Magic V
Mafia
Medieval II - Total War
Might & Magic Heroes VII
Myst  
Napoleon Total War
Necropolis
Prince Of Persia  (There are a lot of these to choose from!)
Red Dead Redemption
Resident Evil (There are a lot of these games, you will have to preview the scores heavily.)
Risen
Shogun  
Silent Hill (There is an 8 disk set out there, preview it first for your gaming.)
Stronghold Crusader
The Tales from Borderlands
The Witcher
Tomb Raider  (The newer games.)
Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines & Redemption
Viking (2017)
War of the Roses
Warcraft III  (There are some later expansions that are good also.)
Warhammer - Mark of Chaos
Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine
Warlock Master of the Arcane - Warlock 2 The Exiled
Wizardry 8

These also work great, but if your players have played a lot of these the music might stand out.

World of Warcraft  (There are plenty to choose from with all the game expansions.)
The Elder Scrolls
Guild Wars
Fallout 4 (The the darker instrumental game music, the music from the DLC is good: Far Harbor, Nuka World)
Might and Magic (The later games)
Lord of The Rings Online
Conan (The MMO)

These are official licensed D&D games, finding the music from these could be a challenge:

Icewind Dale  
Baldurs Gate
NeverWinter Nights
Temple of Elemental Evil
Dungeons and Dragons Online

(There has been a lot of D&D games made over the years, but so many older ones just sound like old video games.)

TV Series
A lot of these have 1 set of music per season. Some are complied all together.

Ash vs. Evil Dead
Beowulf - Return to the Shieldlands
Black Sails (Great pirate music!)
Breaking Bad (The  Score)
Castlevania (Music from the Netflix Original Series)
Daredevil
Dexter (Has some interesting overtones, you’ll need to pick through it and pull out those extra songs thrown in.)
Doctor Who (This is a later series! I was surprised when hearing these how well they can work.)
Fringe
Game of Thrones (Each season has the intro music on it, Make sure to delete any of the intro themes.)
Hell On Wheels
Hemlock Grove
Highlander (Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition)
Merlin
Orphan Black
Outlander
Poldark
Ripper Street
Robin Hood
Rome (HBO)  
Sherlock
Spartacus (There are a whole series of these, all are good!)
Star Wars - The Clone Wars (the animated series)
The Punisher (From the NetFlix series)
The Walking Dead (Make sure to delete any of the intro themes, there way too noticeable.)
they sound a lot the same. They also sound a little dated but still.)
Tut
Vikings (From History.com, great show! And so is the score!!!)
Xena Warrior Princess/ Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (Both of these were done by the same guy)


Specialty audio
This is a category all by itself. This would be audio especially created for the gaming experience. Most of this comes from the Internet from specialty groups or even individuals. Some are online sound loops or mixes these are also known as “SoundScapes”. You could create your own if you had your own source audio loops along with the proper audio software.

Some of these sites have online tools to create or manipulate audio loops, but they do charge to export out the finished product to MP3.

mynoise.net
tabletopaudio.com
soundimage.org
https://store.syrinscape.com   (This is a pay product for doing online audio)
//www.ambient-mixer.com

There is also:
Official DND Soundtrack – By: Midnight Syndicate  (It would have been nice if there were more of them)

Plate Mail Games makes a product called: Pro RPG Audio: Fantasy audio. These downloads started off as a Kickstart project. They sound great!


Composers and Groups

These are individual composers who make some awesome music. Their music is used in all sorts of background music for commercials, movie trailers, ect.  A lot of their stuff is available on youtube.com. A common search term for finding this music is “epic music”.

Peter Crowley
Ronnie Minder
Peter Gundry
Robert Russell
Jeff Beal
Mattia Turzo
Trevor Morris
Murray Gold (He did all the newer Doctor Who music)
Sebastian Komor
Thomas Bergersen
Jacob Isenhower
Antti Martikainen
BrunuhVille (This guy has a lot of great stuff!)

Artists Recordings  

Nox Arcana  (Lots of great CDs here!)
Midnight Syndicate
Wardruna (Viking music)
Two Steps From Hell (These guys have put out a LOT of CD’s over the years.)
Jo Blankenburg
Adrian von Ziegler  (This guy has made a lot of music! Preview it before using to make sure it works for
you.)
Glenn Danzig - Black Aria  (This is very short, only 23min!)
Celestial Aeon Project
Legends of St. Nicholas - Medieval Chant and Polyphony
Sub Pub Music (Music production company, they produce a lot of scores for movies, games, TV.)

These fall under what is called “Dark Ambient”. This is some really dark creepy stuff!
Atrium Carceri
Musica Cthulhiana
Desiderii Marginis - Hypnosis

Other factors to consider?

A little can go a long way. Don’t go overboard with the following, a lot of this sounds the same. In small amounts mixed into a long random playlist it can work.
Chanting monks (AKA Gregorian Monks)
Celtic Harp and Traditional Irish Music
Traditional classical music
Tribal dumb music
   Nature sounds such as:
Sounds of the forest
      Sounds of the sea crashing into the rocks
      Rain or storms
      Outdoors sounds, frogs, crickets, birds ect.
   


I would suggest putting your gaming music into a playlists and putting that on random play. You want to avoid getting burned out on one score or theme. You could go as far as creating individual play list for those special times while adventuring. Just be careful and not let the music get in the way.

What is your audio source and speakers? You want the music to flow thought the room, you don’t need huge house speakers with 15” woofers and monster subwoofer. In fact you might turn off your subwoofer if you have one. The low rumble could become distracting. You need for everyone gaming to clearly hear each other.

Other things to consider:
Battery powered speakers, as they might die or need to be recharged before the session is done.
Where do you place the audio source and the controls for it? You might need to stop the music or skip a song. Technologies such as Bluetooth makes this a snap.
Are your speakers in good placement for everyone in the room? Are they in the way? Any wiring or cabling issues to deal with? No one wants to trip over a power cable or get tangled in speaker wire.

(I borrowed this from a different site, it explains soundtracks vs. scores.) Careful when purchasing movie audio: The term soundtrack can refer to several things, depending on use. In the broadest sense it simply means everything you hear in the movie - sound effects, dialog, music. This meaning is usually applied in a more technical setting, in reference to the sound as opposed to the visuals. Soundtrack can also refer to the entirety of the music in the film, encompassing score AND songs that were either licensed or written for the film. Confusingly enough, oftentimes record companies will release a soundtrack from a movie which does not include any of the score. Generally that's because people are more interested in listening to songs from the movie that were written to stand alone, as opposed to score which was written to be part of the whole of the film. So the term soundtrack can also refer to only the songs in a movie, excluding the score. (Source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-film-score-and-a-soundtrack )

Man that was a long post.  I couldn't get through all of it.

Shadow Run:  Queensryche (Empire and before), Quake II and various types of metal for combat sequences.

Call of Cthulhu - when going to another dimension, many of the music tracks off of the Half-life video game series.  Older Chicago blues is good too.

Rush is always good for most games

Man this is an awesome thread.  Great job!  Is there a monster sound soundboard?  After watching the early D&DMonsterMan vids on Youtube, that seems like something that would be most useful in a game.  

If not, what games have enough monster sounds to make it worthwhile and if they could not be licensed, DIY ones own monster sound board?

Cheers

A D&D Monster soundboard would be interesting. I've never run across those sound bites or loops. I would venture to say if you were going to DIY on your own, would be to dive into various games and start with those monster sounds.

Have a look in the sound effect CDs; there's all sorts of this kind of 'monster noise' in them, and quite often it's where they came from in the first place.

You might also want to look further back, to the Techicolor epics that Dave and Gary loved. Big, lush soundtracks that modern players are likely to have never heard, and very suitable for our own epic adventures.

The game room has a cart player, and I load up 'theme' music for adventures; if we're going to be at sea, for example, it's "The Sea Hawk" and similar albums. I keep the carts handy for a quick change, as the music really should suit the action - I get the funniest looks from players as they do something epic, and the music swells along with the derring-do.

Timing. It's all about timing.

Have some nice links:

• Ambient Mixer
  
• Endless SF loops
  
• Horrorli
  
• NoiseMachines
  
• Tabletop Audio
  

Also:

• Toxicbag
  

Good post - I've myself used music in my games so extensively, I can't even imagine running a game without it anymore.

Music from NWN is definitely easy to find, as it was very easy to rip it from the game files, due to modal nature of NWN. I have complete soundtracks from all the old Black Isle/NWN games.

I'd disagree about film scores - I use them to great effect. Especially when I was having my (sadly way too brief) love affair with Aces & Eights, I routinely used both Classic and Spaghetti Western themes. Can there be any moment more priceless for the players than hearing Ecstasy of Gold as they fire the first shot in an ambush against bandits troubling nearby gold camp?

I myself use mostly foobar or even simple VLC player, but I do remember an interesting tool for music playing. I'll ask the friend who recommended it to me to link it.

My own forte lies in horror games, so here are the soundtracks I myself highly recommend for them, in no particular order:

Lustmord
Stendhal Syndrome
Silent Hill (all games)
9th Gate
True Detective (both seasons)
Bioshock (all games, bonus - good jazz for Cthulhu)
System Shock 2
The Last Door

I will literally dry heave if I have to endure another rpg session with Two Steps from Hell in the background.

But then I'd rather slap on some Dee-lite as my table sci-fi romps through the "5th Element" setting. Otherwise, thanks for the post!

Pro-tip: Kidz Bop on low, dropped down tempo, when running Call of Cthulhu. Scariest fucking thing ever.

In my Amber Diceless games, I've been using Howard Shore's fantastic "Looking for Richard" score as the main soundtrack - and, more recently, Ramin Djawadi's exceptional "Game of Thrones" music (not the main title, though, because it's too iconic).

The official "13th Age" soundtrack also comprises some surprisingly good stuff (even though (or perhaps because) it's deliberately inspired by other movie soundtracks.

I've only used music for pen and paper Star Wars (d20 Revised) some years back. We had the music from both trilogies plus MP3s I had ripped from both KOTOR games as well as Republic Commando. That was a long enough playlist that you wouldn't repeat anything for several sessions.

I used the instrumental music from various Robotech soundtracks while playing the Robotech RPG.

I've also played the soundtrack from Superman: The Movie prior to various super-hero gaming sessions to set the mood.

If I'm hosting I simply play music I like in the background. If I am going make my place available, clean up afterwards and possibly even cook for everyone, at the very least I am going to be playing to music of my choosing.

I keep it low enough so that it doesn't distract anyone but it's enough for me tune in to and enjoy.

The music doesn't have to fit with the genre though cyberpunk does seem to bring out the jazz whereas post-apocalypse the folk-rock, proggy tracks. The point is, this is sort of music I've be playing anyway, game no-game.

I don't like to use recognizable stuff. I'm more of a fan of looping, atmospheric stuff that I can control easily.

This website is used a lot now: http://tabletopaudio.com/ I recommend the shit out of it to all of you.

Great post! Thank you and welcome Punish101!!

I have failed to make music work because I find that being both DJ and DM is too much for me simultaneously. The problem FOR ME happens when trying to segue the music between scenes and trying to fit the music to the encounter as it ebbs and flows. The music has its own ebb and flow, but then so does the encounter, and they don't always match.

The best I've seen this work at a RPG table was when there were co-DMs and one handled the minis, dice, maps, lighting and DJing.

I've never actually used music in game myself but I have come up with soundtrack playlists for my campaigns just for fun.