Hi

I can't remember if this has been asked before, sorry if it has. Do any of you have music playing in the background when DHing?

If you do, does it tend to fall under "mood" music or just any old stuff you and your group like to listen to.

I ask this as I was thinking about bringing some to the table (so to speak) I have some little speakers (that don't actually sound too bad) that I can dock my well known brand mp3 player in to and was going to try out the playlist that I normally paint minis to, mainly movie soundtrack stuff (OST and scores) like Lord of the Rings trilogy, Transformers, The Crow, Serenity and Plunkett & Macleane (quality film BTW if you haven't seen it go watch it now, I can wait ) to name but a few, though there are a couple of tunes from videogame soundtracks and random stuff that I have found I like painting to for some reason or another, like Alestorm (Scottish Metal Pirates if you haven't heard them).

Which kinda leads to another question, do you guys & gals have any recommendations for albums or tracks that I can add to this playlist (particularly if there are any other mini painters out there as I've done a truck load of painting recently and could do with some fresh tunes to swing my brush to ) I'd prefer stuff that is either instrumental or where the vocals aren't the major focus point of the track.

Cheers

Occasionally, I have an appropriate movie playing in the other room. I.E. Saving Private Ryan or Rambo...just for the gunshots and explosions.

Seriously though, we prefer the TV off, no outside noise, wife gone, younger son visiting friend...etc.

On the other hand... If you have the time, means and gumption, AUDIO props have a VERY positive impact on the RPG experience.

I played with one guy who if the PC's were on a street, he had street noises on low volume playing in a loop. He didn't have a lot, but he had factory noises, party noises, nightime noises...etc. He got a bunch of his Drama friends to record some stuff he wrote and when possible every big scene had an audio "cutscene" to start it off.

It was really, really cool actually.

This was back before affordable home PC's too. Think what you could do just with a crappy laptop!

Well, I made a DVD with my computer. Don't have the time for anything more complex then that especially once a session ;-)

For my games I've always had mood music picked out for each game. For Dark Heresy, I rounded up all my Lustmord and tossed in the sound track to Chaos Gate for good measure. I then hunted up approximately 200 examples of 40k artwork or images that conveyed the feel of Dark Heresy. I put it all together in Nero, making a sideshow of the images and music with a thought For The Day (with Aquilla and all) cut in every 2-4 images. The end product is approximately two hours long so it doesn't get too repetitive. When I put in the DVD, that's pretty much a queue that the game is about to begin and it helps us all focus a bit. During the game, it plays behind me so the players are continuously inedited with appropriate inspirational imagery as well as timeless nuggets of Imperial wisdom.

For the kind of music you're looking for, hunt up some Lustmord.

I've made a personal hoby of finding musical compositions that fit a certain RPG. My main sources of music comes from video game soundtracks, movie soundtracks and instrumental artists. These are the songs I've picked out specifically for Dark Heresy comes primarily from games like: Resident Evil Remake, Fallout, Fallout 2, Devil May Cry/Devil May Cry 2/ Devil May Cry 3, Silent Hill and Unreal Tournament 2004.

Ive also included a song or two from the movies: Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Aliens.

The Resident Evil songs are great for horror parts of any adventure, and they also contain a few useful ambient parts (like a recording of haunting winds blowing through tree-leaves, with no music)

The Fallout songs contain both very tribal sounding music (good for adventures situated on Feral Worlds), and also a few decadent and dark/depressing bits (useful for Hive Cities and the like, Especially the song "New Reno" from Fallout 2 is excellent for usage when the PCs are in the underhive). It also contains a few ambient but creepy songs that can fit almost to any creepy and moody situation (like dead worlds for example).

The songs from the Devil May Cry games are mostly useless except for a few that contain very religious sounding choruses and Organ playing, that fits nicely within Cathedrals and on Shrine Worlds.

Silent Hill is perfect for ambient horror music, and some of the songs are just cleanly cut-out for usage when a daemon attack occurs (with lots of uncomfortable noises of metal slamming against metal, and the whining of siren horns). Perfect if you want to subject your players with a little psychological warfare that sets them on edge.

Unreal Tournament 2004 contains a lot of electric songs which I dont think fit the Dark Heresy setting very well, but it also contain lots of mighty orchestral songs. Perfect for those Epic moments of Awesomeness (during a war-scene when Titans stomp about, and millions of troops clash in battle)

As a rule of thumb, when assembling compositions to Dark Heresy I try to stay away from overtly electronic sounding music. Guitars (both acoustic and electric) are also a big no-no. Orchestral stuff, religious sounding stuff, and creepy horror movie/game stuff, and ambient sounds however work well.

I would like to use the soundtrack from an old WH40K PC-game called Warhammer 40.000: Chaos Gate, however the soundfiles I have from that game are of pretty low quality and just doesnt sound good when you turn up the volume for everyone to hear. However the music in CG is probably the best WH40K pieces you can find (really Orchestral Doomsday Choir-stuff).

the apocolyptica songs without singers are pretty good for 40K related music.

salcor

I've found Arcana to be a good source of background music for DH personaly, as well as soundtracks (the Silent Hill soundtracks are particuarly nice)

The Chaos Gate soundtrack is a regular listen for me, and I Varnias opinion of the Fallout ones; bleak background music that sets the tone without proving distracting. I've also been using the GUN soundtrack recently, but that went out the window as soon as the group blew out of town and went further downhive. Now I need to find something appropriately horrific to go with what they'll find down there.

Contra-Mundi said:

Please forgive my ignorance, is Arcana a band?

Bolt Thrower makes perfect background music. Especially if you're fighting Chaos.

Lupinorc said:

Yes http://www.erebusodora.net/arcana/

Varnias Tybalt said:

Just found some of the Silent Hill stuff. Fantastic. Thanks for the recommendation.

And though I may get crap for this, I use music from Gladiator, LotR, and Dune soundtracks for background.

I've used stuff from Dune as well. Also- Planescape Torment, the Halo soundtracks, a little bit of Korn, Nox Arcana , Midnight Syndicate , and a number of versions of the Requiem (predominantly Mozart's, but I'll use the Dies Irae from Verdi's). Rondellus' Sabbatum is a good bet as well, as is pretty much anything from Corvus Corax

Where are you getting the game music from? Is there a handy website offering downloads or are you using some sort of tech heresy mumbo jumbo to "rip" it from the dataslate (disc)?

Varnias Tybalt said:

I'd love to see a list of the tracks you ended up with for your Dark Heresy soundtrack. I've been working on putting something together myself, but havn't had much success in finding anything that sounds particular 40k-ish (while I liked the Damnatus soundtrack, it doesn't really sound like 40k to me).

I tend to stick to soundtracks for background music. They are ment to be 'mood' music anyhow!

A few of my top choices are: The Chronicles of Riddick (fits very well with the theme), Galdiator, Serenity, & Kingdom of Heaven.

Lupinorc said:

Generally I download game OSTs from torrent sites like Pirate Bay, but sometimes you can get lucky- if you look in the game's installed folders you can sometimes grab the music files from there in a format readable by most media players. Chaos Gate is like that. Some games even include the OST on a separate disk with the game, or otherwise release it

Ambient only as I find that actual music tends to let players's minds wander off. There's a song called Wind from the Depths on the TES: Oblivion soundtrack that is really good as it's more ambient than music and ass a really creepy atmosphere. Especially well known soundtracks are evil for my group as they'll focus more on listening to the music than playing. I usually play some atmospheric music before playing the game which gets them in the right mood.

I guess it all depends on your players but I've got one hyperactive guy who gets distracted when so much as a leaf falls outside...

Generally....old soundtracks from computer rpgs. Less vocal pieces , a lot of ambient stuff. Planescape is a good example.

Imho not so good: Everything with lyrics and vocal. It distracts a lot.

An Audio DVD is kinda nice idea. Preferrably with ambient noises.

Tips:

Rip the sound of the street shootout from "Heat": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDR_3UmBJQ0 for action sequences. Loop it.

Get the Soundtrack from "Homeworld". These pieces match if you have space based aventures, with an deserted feeling and squeaky hull plates.

Avoid Bolt Thrower and similar Pieces. Chaos isn´t about bad metal.

The 28 Weeks later Soundtrack. Rather sad undertones, some action.

Serenity OST. If your players know the series you can literally force the setting for backwater planets.

Resident Evil, Silent Hill are also good stuff.

Get the Stalker - Shadow of Chernobyl Soundtrack...ambient, windy...good hive background stuff you can play and forget about to concentrate on mastering.

Additionally the Stalker Guitar Pieces, which are short, but a nice addition, http://www.garrysmod.org/downloads/?a=view&id=51210

Chaos Gate was already mentioned. I dislike the titles because of the vocals. They may have a place though. Like meeting space marines or sororitas armies.

Ikkaan said:

I couldn't agree more. I went and listened to some after people had praised it for being definitively 40k and was distinctly unimpressed. Relevant subject matter not, it's just plain bad.

There's also the 'unofficial soundtrack' for 40k- John Bergin's "Warhammer: Music for Hammering". Originally a free handout at an old GamesDay (I believe), then available on Konversions, now up here .

I always play Marty Simon's compositions from Tales From A Parallel Universe and LeXX, and the soundtrack for Silent Hill Homecoming. I will often mix it up with the soundtrack from Robot Carnival or something by The Darkest of The Hillside Thickets.

Alasseo said:

Just FYI I got a VBS:Malware-gen alert from my AV when I went there. Could be a false but take care.

Ah. Somehow, that doesn't surprise me- it is Pirate Bay. My anti-malware software cleared it, but yeah, take care if/when you check it out.

That said, John Bergin also did a conceptual soundtrack for the Abnett novel 'Traitor General', which was officially only available with the first 500 collector's editions sold. However, it is now up for free download on his site, grindertool.com , in the music archive. Traitor General is a far better album than Music for Hammering , IMHO, but they're both not bad

I tried recording sounds from a few youtube videos I found, if the players are in a hive, I'd open up a recording (using my webcam mike, bad quality :/) of traffic and a large crowd. It worked kinda

I have to highly recommend both the Gears of War soundtracks. The game is simular(ish) setting to Dark Heresy and I find the music fits perfectly.