Supporting your game with music

By GregorM1980, in Rogue Trader Gamemasters

For a while, I`m using music to support the flair of my RT group, especially music from soundtracks (not famous tracks like the PotC theme, that`s just a tad too obvious) and from composers like Two Steps From Hell and Immediate Music. We`ve got special tracks for lifting anchor and the call to battlestations prior to a void battle.

How do you keep it? Do you use music or other multimedia elements?

one of my players as an aversion for music during games and in another group one keeps playing music from is crappy laptop speakers... Heavy metal music, how best to massacre music genre fully saturated speakers!!

I was at a loss as to how to describe the Eldar's "lyrical voice" as described in Edge of the Abyss for Badb-Ra, so I played a youtube clip of Eldar dialogue from Dark Crusade. Or as I put it "All Eldar speak like they have autotune grafted in their vocal cords"

For space battle, Emperor knows why, I always get the Battle of Endor theme going in my head (

We go for dark electronica, except for battles. Going with the GW-theme, we thought that Boltthrower was appropriate (GW sanctioned Black Metal). Slayer is also nice =)

The players insist on music, and often bring new stuff.

I try to use music that can play as background. Metal, especially Bolt Thrower, is nothing that rests in the background.

Well, you're already using Two Steps from Hell, which is one of the major sources of music for our group. The other is classical music, especially for ship battles. This is a personal favorite of mine for ships clashing.

The Soundtrack to Eve Online evokes a 40K atmosphere very well and is perfect for just playing in the background.

Galaga: Content-based unavailable in my country. :(

Replicant: nice idea. Thanks a lot.

Boot up a skirmish in Dawn of War and pause the game.

I tracked down a copy of all the Dawn of War soundtracks, but they were a beast to find!

GregorM1980 said:

Galaga: Content-based unavailable in my country. :(

Really? Its just Dvorak 9th Symphony, From the New World, 4th movement. Try this one . Alternatively, you can try the show that inspired me to use classical (and especially this piece) in the first place.

You can always go with one of the most ripped off pieces of music in history. But then again it is so ripped off for a reason.

Holst: Mars Bringer of War

I mean seriously where would science fiction theme songs be without it?

llsoth said:

You can always go with one of the most ripped off pieces of music in history. But then again it is so ripped off for a reason.

Holst: Mars Bringer of War

I mean seriously where would science fiction theme songs be without it?

I think you mean: Where would John Williams be without Holst and Dvorak?

sketchesofpayne said:

I tracked down a copy of all the Dawn of War soundtracks, but they were a beast to find!

Dawn of War 2's are available for free. I imagine the other game soundtracks are on the OSTProject.

GregorM1980 said:

I try to use music that can play as background. Metal, especially Bolt Thrower, is nothing that rests in the background.

Well, it sort of rumbles away in the background. I've never been able to make out any words anyway. =)

Depends on the game, but most of the time I play horror music (free ones downloadable from internet from somewhere in Incomptech(?) website). A bit more like Dark Heresy though, but since none of my players know about the grim 40k universe, I opted for terror/creepy approaches; otherwise they will act like anime/manga style, or dnd-style, or monty pyton style..

Athmosphere: the Homeworld 1 & 2 soundtracks for the depths of space missions. Dawn of War will do nicely during ground combat and similar. Other them that, Immediate Music, Two Steps From Hell and X-Ray Dog, if you can find those things, work well. Any Sci-fi soundtracks suited to your mood will work nicely, too. I find that for the Expance the Chronicles of Riddick give me the right mood.

I mostly listen to music when writing rather than playing it, but I do have access to the rooms PA system at uni, which is a pretty good audio system, so may be looking at some sound tracks. Unfortunately my best idea for music so far is something I want to save for a Sunday session day long 'game changer' when the characters hit rank 6 (and possibly shake up the player roster)...

That being a climatic 'mutual destruction style' space battle between two flagship set to

We use this: www.stefanisberg.com/mutant/Mixer_eng.html for music and sounds, it can set a really dark and nice mood.

You should really check out Lustmord for music, especially the album "The Dark Places of the Earth" is really great if you want some dark, foreboding ambient/electronica.

Alternatively the Gears of War and Gears of War 2 soundtracks make good battle music, they're on Spotify. :)

We also use different naturesounds for setting, Spotify have some nice nature-ambient albums with everything from thunder and rain to birds in the forest. Works really nice too!

Before I even started Gming I have always bought soundtracks from movies and when possible video games. The Supreme commander 1 soundtrack, Homeworld 1 and 2, Dawn of war 1&2 sound tracks are good and Master and Commander: Far side of the World soundtrack is stupendous, another good one is the Neon Genesis Evangeluon "you are not alone" and Can not Advance Soundtracks have some great dark booding or downright olympic pieces on of my favourite being "Angel of Doom". Look that one up on Youtube, oh and the Star Trek (2009) soundtrack has a few good ones, Nailin the Kelvin, Narada Burns and I think Nero Fiddles. Anyway I suggest you buy them like I did, they are well worth it and cheap at this point.

Just about anything from immediate music is good too. They do a lot of theme songs and game sound tracks.

Look them up on Youtube things like lacrimosa and preliator, but they have a huge number of epic type songs.

I've been running for some time now and I've always used regular bands you'd hear on the radio. You can get a surprisingly good mood setting from radio bands. I use different songs for different people on the PC's crew and the Dawn of War soundtrack. Just to give you guys an example, I play their Astropath as a very broken man, not in spirit too much much but quite in body; i play Unkle - I'm a rabbit in your headlight , it gives that feel i'm going for with my table and my players tell me it really gives a sense of who the character is along with good RP'ing. I also use BWV 248 - Kantante I for their missionary and the on ship Temple Shrine.

Also, when you find a song on Youtube you want to put on repeat go to the url bar and add "repeater" after youtube. its the site I use and it's awesome, most people probably know about it but I wanted to share. the two links above are from Youtuberepeater.com.

One thing I've been thinking about using for a while now are NASAs recordings of electromagnetic noise near various planets and moons in our solar system. When converted to audio, they can be quite creepy. As an example, here is the recording taken near