Fan Club “Blog” #3: Sharing My Playlists (Patreon)

(That is, perhaps, a misleading header image for a post that includes links to some of the more cursed songs you've ever heard.)

Let's talk about MUSIC DURING TTRPGS!

At this point I think I've established that, as Game Masters go, I'm a career try-hard. So you better believe that when my players and I are roleplaying, there's always a little bluetooth speaker nearby, pumping out atmospheric sounds.

Today I wanna talk a bit about how my friends and I pick music for RPGs, and share a few tricks I've learned and a handful of playlists.

You know what? Let's give you you the music first, in case you want to listen to it while reading this post. Here are some playlists that I used for The Wildsea, Lancer and Delta Green, as well as my friend's playlist for his Mork Borg game, which includes a lot of tracks he used during our Blades in the Dark campaign.

Wildsea

* ‎Wildsea - The Open Seas by Tim Anderson - Apple Music

* ⁠‎Wildsea mushrooms by Tim Anderson - Apple Music

* ⁠‎Wildsea mushroom fight by Tim Anderson - Apple Music

And while we're here, check out the official Wildsea soundtrack albums, Songs of the Lignin Tide and Songs of Ruined Shores.

Lancer

* ‎Lancer - Faith / Folk by Tim Anderson - Apple Music

* ⁠‎Lancer - Fight by Tim Anderson - Apple Music

* ⁠‎Fight URGENT by Tim Anderson - Apple Music

Mork Borg (some overlap with Blades in the Dark)

* ‎Mörk Borg - Peaceful by Tim Anderson - Apple Music

* ⁠‎Mörk Borg - General by Tim Anderson - Apple Music

* ⁠‎Mörk Borg - Fight by Tim Anderson - Apple Music 

Delta Green

DET - playlist by benklax | Spotify 

DET - COMBAT - playlist by benklax | Spotify

So, what makes these the playlists of a try-hard GM? Well, for one thing, I didn't make them! I got my friends who work in audio design and the streaming business to make them. 😅

An obvious thing you'll notice is that these playlists have no lyrics, because lyrics are super distracting during roleplay. A remark I see a lot in the TTRPG community is to just use movie soundtracks when you're playing RPGs, and I did that as a kid but as a hulking Adult Man I'm not happy with that at all. Movie soundtracks tend to be really dynamic, soaring and twisting to fit what's happening during the film, when what a TTRPG audio backdrop wants is consistency. It's not great to be doing a sedate scene and have the soundtrack suddenly decide this is VERY EXCITING, or vice versa.

Video game soundtracks are a better shout, but I don't think you can rely on them to fill an evening. Listening to 4 hours of video game music during a game night sounds tiring, to me? But like I say, they're great in certain situations. For my upcoming Stonetop game I decided that I'll be using music from Elden Ring during combat encounters, because (a) none of my Stonetop players played Elden Ring and (b) combat encounters in Stonetop are short, brutal, and epic, exactly how Elden Ring presents its boss fights.

Instead, what the big list of playlists above have in common is they're made of is a lot of experimental and ambient music that makes you feel like the game you're in is a movie that's being perfectly scored, but where that score can stretch onwards and onwards through time in case you're in a scene that's 45 minutes long, while still being varied.

You'll also notice that we've divided playlists into a few different "moods" depending on what we think we need. My favourite distinction here is that we have combat music for Lancer, but then urgent combat music, because y'all know what wargames are like! There are fights we're doing because this is a tactical combat game, and then there are times when players are fighting for their lives.

Ooh, and can I tell you one more thing you can do with music that's super-duper fun?

Consider giving a campaign you're playing an opening title song, or an end credits song, or both!

This just means picking a song (that can actually have lyrics! what a treat!!) that you play at the start of each session as people are settling in and doing a recap, or that you start playing out of the speakers the moment you've delivered the final twist of the night. A bit of a mic drop moment. And in no time you'll all have a Pavlovian response to this track. Plus, when you listen to it years after you've finished the campaign, the memories will come flooding back! 🥰

For example, the Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes campaign that I'm running at the moment almost always lets me end sessions on some chilling revelation. That's my cue to slap on Thom Yorke's Suspirium as all of my players go "AHHH". (In fact, last session I forgot to do it and one of my players even hungrily asked "Can we have our song please??")

That said, when it comes to the sound that my beloved 'lil Bluetooth is pumping out all evening, the best results come from not playing music all the time.

Whatever atmosphere you're trying to drum up at your table that the music is supposed to help with, you can't figuratively push that button all the time. Fear needs moments of safety where your audience can take a breath, so they can get nervous about going back into the horror. Surreality only pops when contrasted with mundanity. Action needs stillness, or it's not action at all, it's just endless motion.

As a GM I don't do a lot of DJing (I'll sometimes even give that whole responsibility to the player who made the playlist in the first place), I keep it very simple- I swap between maybe 3 playlists but then - this is the key bit - I also just stop the music entirely from time to time, because when you've been listening to music for 45 minutes, silence floods a scene with meaning. And then when you start the music back up, that playlist is recharged & sounds powerful again.

And you know what's better than flipping between music and silence? Flipping between, music, silence and locational sound. I'm talking the sound of rain on a car, a crackling fire, the rumble of a cruise ship's engine. This alone has justified my YouTube Premium subscription!

For example: in my Delta Green game, which is set in 1995, we've all had a ton of fun playing radio stations from 1995 during scenes in cars and restaurants, as well as all sorts of sounds relating to long drives or the hum of air conditioners. And then in my upcoming Stonetop campaign, which is all low fantasy that's about how unknowable and frightening nature was back in Iron Age times, I've made the decision that I'm going to use the sound of tall grasses, forests, rain and snow for almost the entire game. And then, as I say, occasionally chuck in a song like this when they stumble on something absolutely horrific. It should be mint. I can't wait.

I'm so, so here for you folks sharing your own backing track advice in the comments, folks! What sounds do you find work great at your table?

EDIT: Ahhh I knew there was something else I wanted to mention. If any of you liked/were creeped out by the Midsommar soundtrack, the composer records music that's perfect for tense RPGs under the name The Haxan Cloak.