Music and other effects during games?

[Kyusumu]

Hello fellow adventurers on the lead mountain 

I was on kickstarter today and saw this project:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1281758745/professional-mp3-background-loops-for-role-playing


It got me thinking about the small things that can be done to really add to the atmosphere when gaming.  Beyond what's on the actual table, there's lighting, sounds and I've even read about people using the sense of smell, with damp earth and other setting specific tones.

Here's a capture from the recent Dwarven Forge movie, showing lighting effect during play:




What do you guys use during your sessions?  Any cool experiences to share?

~Kyu

[Doomhippie]

Well, for RPGs I go for the god old movie scores. Absolutely no electric music for fantasy settings though. Dim lighting of course...

That said I am completely different with tabletop games. I don't really care if or what kind of music is playing and lights have to be bright enough to see things quickly. Though now that you mention it, I might try out a more atmospheric light if given the chance.

[Estarriol]

Deepwars by antimatter has music. I rather like it I stick it on when painting aquatic stuff.

[oldskoolrebel]

I've played RPGs by candle light once or twice. Worked reasonably well.


I've also heard of people using incense during play. Seems pretty gimmicky! But I don't know.

Cheers
Andy

[Hatemonger]

I have two opposite experiences I can relate.

1) We tried playing Cyberpunk 2020 with dim lighting (at the suggestion of the rulebook, mind you!), and all it did was make it difficult to read character sheets. So I would say, lighting is questionable.

2) When I ran my Star Wars RPG, I always - always - read a GM-introductory story background with one of the movie "crawl" tracks playing. I even rewrote one of the published adventures' intro texts so the timing would work better. Every one of the players commented on how awesome this was for getting in the mood of the story.

How this advice relates to miniatures, I'm not sure. I'd say any little bits you can use to make things more immersive is good, providing they do not hinder gameplay. This is why we play with miniatures in the first place, right? So maybe, the first tips would be:

a) use WYSIWYG, not proxies
b) use painted minis, not bare
c) use good terrain, not boxes and soda cans

Those are basics, but you're talking about "going the extra mile", aren't you? So,

d) Don't be afraid to put in the extra effort for that special scenario centerpiece terrain (the lair, the waterfall, the manor house)
e) Yes, dim the lights and put on a soundtrack to read the scenario intro for that "final battle"
f) Turn the lights back on so you don't ruin the rest of the game
g) Be liberal in making other fun bits - make special game tokens, parchment-printed rosters instead of boring excel sheets, get dice that match your army colors, etc.

Sorry if that went too far afield from what you wanted.

- H8

[Mason]

2) When I ran my Star Wars RPG, I always - always - read a GM-introductory story background with one of the movie "crawl" tracks playing.
Every one of the players commented on how awesome this was for getting in the mood of the story.

We used to do exactly the same!
It was great and HIGHLY recomended.

(We also used the line 'I have got a bad feeling about this' as often as possible, which was a good laugh).

When we played Cthulhu by Gaslight (in a British setting, of course), any time the words 'Her Majesty' cropped up every player had to say 'Gawd Bless 'Er'. The last one to say it would be penalised in some way for not being alert.
Penalties were also handed out for saying it at the wrong time, too.
 
THAT was fun! Silly, but fun.
 

[Mason]

I always found passing a few dutch ships on the left made RPG's much more fun. 

Is that not compulsory for RPGing?
 

[Elk101]

We played CoC several times using only the flickering light of an electric candle witg a yellow sodium bulb. The scenario involved tracking down werewolf type creatures on a manor estate. At one point we switched it off to plunge the room into total darkness to reflect the players being stuck in an old brick outhouse while a creature stalked outside.  Very slowly it turned back on again. We collectively 'shit ourselves' and ran out if the room. We later assumed the switch wasn't engaging properly, but at the time ut was clearly evil spirits. This is one if the games we still vividly remember over 20 years later!

[Maspalio]

amazing stories !! 

And what about simple sound effects like blaster, SMG shot or firing cannon ?
Where can it be found (MP3) ?

[Daeothar]

As our usual RPG group is on the large side (7), and attention deficiencies run deep in these ones, we've had to agree to a formalised ritual at the start of the session, as we would otherwise never get to the actual gaming, due to the side, side, side, sidetracking conversations in the time before the game, when people are still arriving and want to share their stories of the week.

So now, we have what we call a 'Lights, Music, Action' routine: at the appointed time, the DM will call the lights, at which point, the player closest to the lightswitch will dim the lights (slightly; charactersheets and handouts still need to be consulted of course).

When adjusted, the music will be cued. We have a very large selection of gaming and film music; fantasy, pulp and scifi themed, in different digital collections. The DM and one of the other players are in the process of dividing the music into seperate folders; ambient, tense, action, conversation, etc. The idea is that when this is done, the DM will have these on his Ipod (connected to the sound system), and will be able to select the right music for the scene being played. We have high hopes for this...

And finally, 'Action' means we actually go for it.

Of course, for my campaign, I'm in the habit of handing out, well, handouts, all in the style of the setting, which also helps to set the mood.

And we've adopted the use of miniatures for the action scenes. In the beginning, just to be clear about who was where, as there were very frequent misunderstandings, which lead to discussions and a general breaking of the atmosphere and suspense. But we started out proxying just about everything, as we did not have the right miniatures for the setting being played. So 40K Orks doing duty as spectres and Space Marines as henchmen was a very common sight on our table. All on the hand drawn white paper map the DM brought along.

Of course, being the detail obsessed git that I am, me, and he who is also known as The Voivod as well, are now slowly building a collection of generic henchmen, monsters, villagers, soldiers etc, which we can use in our campaigns. And dedicated miniatures for all the characters of course. But since there's only the two of us doing the actual collecting, building and painting of those, progress is relatively slow. I'm also working on a playing board of 90x90cm (undulating wilderness; can be grasslands, but also a village or forest with the right terrain added), which will also be a huge improvement over the plain paper sheets or even straight tabletop (no tablecloth!) we have to use now.

We did use my collection of Space Crusade board pieces (more than a little overcomplete ) last week, to represent the bar we brawled into pieces, in our current scifi campaign, which worked really well.

So yeah; lights, music, miniatures and terrain all help tremendously to both set the atmosphere and to keep the attention of everyone. Highly recommended!

[Delaney]

I wrote a sound fx generator and atmospheric looper and randomiser for my sci fi rpg using unity.  My players loved it.  It made a massive impact, especially once I added spinning batery powered alarm lights.  The tactical board was made from foamcore and instead of minis I used photos of actors.


 I am hooking up with a sound designer next week to develop it properly.

[HYPERPOWER!]

There's Longplayer -- a procedurally generated piece of music that's meant to keep broadcasting via the web until December 31, 2999. It's pretty good. Here's a link: http://longplayer.org/

I've had this running in the background every once in a while: http://www.rainymood.com/

http://naturesoundsfor.me/ also has some great loops. Here's a couple of examples:
http://naturesoundsfor.me/creeper_trail
http://naturesoundsfor.me/CreppyNight

-Michael

[Mason]

As our usual RPG group is on the large side (7), and attention deficiencies run deep in these ones, we've had to agree to a formalised ritual at the start of the session, as we would otherwise never get to the actual gaming, due to the side, side, side, sidetracking conversations in the time before the game, when people are still arriving and want to share their stories of the week.

 

So familiar.
Oh, yes!

[dijit]

As our usual RPG group is on the large side (7), and attention deficiencies run deep in these ones, we've had to agree to a formalised ritual at the start of the session, as we would otherwise never get to the actual gaming, due to the side, side, side, sidetracking conversations in the time before the game, when people are still arriving and want to share their stories of the week.

The reason I stopped joining our D20 Star Wars group was we'd meet late afternoon, and then not finished until gone 12 and nothing had happened because folk just wouldn't keep on track. So I cut after a year or so; the only pen and paper roleplaying I've ever done.