Hello everyone,
Today we’re going to take a slight detour into something else for games other than the locations.
We’ve all tried to set the moods for our games. We paint the vistas in our mind’s eye, we put out the models and we tell epic tales together. And we try to put in the music. And that is where it often falls apart for me – I love listening to actual plays (Critical Role is an example that does this well) where they use music that fits the mood of the story being told at that time.
But, I’ll be honest, I suck at it. So recently I set out to try and figure out what I can do better for myself and my players. My first stop was to go back and redownload Syrinscape. If you don’t know SyrinScape, it’s a great app, where, for a subscription, get access to ALL the sound sets that they’ve released. And when you stop, you keep the ones that were released during your subscribed time. I was one of the first subscribers ever, and I stayed with it for a few years, so I have a number of sets on there.
It isn’t enough, at least not in my opinion, so next up was to try and see if I can scrounge up some music that fits my games. I had a huge CD collection back in the day, and I have always loved soundtracks, so I have a lot of my files ripped and ready (I’ve recently had to get rid of all of my CDs due to an upcoming move, so I’m glad I took the time). Things like the Star Wars soundtracks, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean work well, but other lesser-known songs work too. Things like the old soundtrack to Interview with the Vampire for horror games or The Crow soundtrack for something a bit more modern (a staple of my SLA Industries games in fact).
They all got stuck into Syrinscape, and I arranged a number of sound sets based on the genre or mood that I feel that they fit in. So “Duel of the Fates” for example ended up in one called “Boss Showdowns” while “Bridge at Khazad Dum” from the Fellowship of the Rings went into “Heroic Arrival/Rescue” and the “Mass Effect Theme” went into “Starting the World” – funnily enough, “Normandy” from the same soundtrack went into “Something’s wrong here.”
In this way, I can now easily find what I need of the sound sets and load them quickly – if you’re having trouble you can always find stuff on YouTube and bookmark it – just be wary of all the adverts.
Next up is the music coming out – it can’t be so loud that the players can’t hear you, but it can’t be so low that they can’t hear it either. Typically, this causes a problem with laptops and tablets at the table, because of the directional nature of the speakers. So far, my best solution has been two small Bluetooth speakers that I’ve placed under the gaming table and which can direct the music at the players. Setting up the sound levels has proven a bit tricky, due to the varying levels of sound in each track, but it’s manageable. I would advise if you can to run the music on a tablet instead of a laptop though. It’s easier from the laptop, but I find that the laptop is a giveaway when I use it, and it also distracts me with all the shiny bits.
I suspect that a better setup would involve wired speakers, but I don’t have that option, unfortunately, so the two Bluetooth speakers that are set underneath the table with Velcro will have to do.
And finally, I seem to have cracked using music in a better way as well: Preparing more. I don’t normally prepare much for each session: As we all know players can go off in any direction at any given moment, but you do need some preparation when using music. Knowing the track to the bosses, and even using them to “teach” your players that “X music means bad things” can cause you to give them a sense of foreboding – if all the minions they face, that try to kill them, have the “Imperial March” playing in the background, then they know that when you start that piece and an opponent shows up that “he’s the bad guy.” Obviously, the “Imperial March” is too well known to be used for this, but there are other pieces out there that work really well for it.
Anyway, that’s all for this time. Next time, we return to the lands of Magic. 🙂
Kim Frandsen
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