When I run games I usually ask my players to provide me with five songs that represent their characters. It gives me a chance to learn and understand the characters. And I like to play songs when their character takes the stage.

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

Taking notes on this one

@GavinHohenheim

9 ай бұрын

Ouf. Five songs is a lot to come up with as a player, my friend. How is juggling up to 35 songs working out for you as a DM?

@patrickbairefoot2561

9 ай бұрын

@@GavinHohenheim I try to map out my story and incorporate a song or two or three for each character each game. Some songs become pure soundtracks. Others take center stage depending on how the game plays out. I also mix my own music in the game as well. Trying to remember that it’s important the song emphasizes the character it’s about or the event that is happening.

@Picklescape

9 ай бұрын

Love this! I always create playlists for my characters, as music is such a key point for me in finding and creating them.

@ragnheiurr4582

9 ай бұрын

i have sight/sound synesthesia and this plus some visual representation goes miles in understanding a character, your own or somebody else’s. even if you can’t draw or find a perfect character art or don’t want to commission an artist (PLEASE commission us we beg you) it can even be useful to provide some kind of visual reference to key features they have. This kind of scar, tattoos like this, armor in this vibe, eyes with this kind of hard/soft/cold/kind/insert adjective set to them when combined with music that helps describe your character it creates an abstractly complete picture for anyone regardless of how they perceive sound and sight, and attribute meaning to them! you dont need synesthesia to get a fuller more nuanced description from using music for a character. it’s why a lot of video game major characters have their own themes

Thank you for not including a jump scare. My nerves get kinda bad with sudden loud noises, so not getting pranked on the music video by one is appreciated

Running Lost Mine of Phandelver, I used the theme music from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for the Redbrands. The first time, one of the players responded, "They have theme music! We don't have theme music!"

"That horn" is one of the things that got me hooked on Critical Role in the first place so many years ago. It was a subtle thing but something that just stuck in my head and I loved how the players would react to hearing that particular combat song come up in Matt's playlist in both that campaign and when he brought it back in future campaigns.

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

Its amazing how such a small detail sticks in your head SO much

One of my current favorite moments wasn't with a song persay, but a sound. I was running strahd dies tonight, and every time strahd showed up to screw with my players, I'd play a meditation gong sound on a timer, and it screwed my players up. By the end of the oneshot, when the gong played, all the players would immediately go quiet, sit up, eyes wide, afraid of what the vampire had in store. The best moment it happened was when one of the players was leaning far over a railing trying to grab something. Good times.

I have 1 game OST that I always use for horror and suspense themed combat, that being the first Darkest Dungeon combat track. One of my players, after a year in the game one day noted that and his reaction was very funny because he just said "this fight will be disgusting and gory...", and it was.

"BWAAAAAAAAAAHHH!! We've heard this song too many times today"

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

Its an earworm, lets be real

Whenever my party is about to wrap up, a really intense fight, I sometimes play the closing song from the anime movie “ sword of a stranger”. the song works especially well with a final campaign ending fight

@iiiiitsmagreta1240

9 ай бұрын

Just listening to it now, and holy shit are you right!! 😃

@Blond_Wonder

9 ай бұрын

@@iiiiitsmagreta1240 hahaha. Ya it’s pretty legit!

Love this. I play in games with and without music, and while I love each game and group, the dramatic moments in the games with music always hit way more intensely.

I have carefully curated playlists that play during different moments and vibes of the game - it makes it to where when there are moments of silence they have gravitas. I have even used midi synthesizers to create my own soundscapes for certain kinds of moods I'm going for

Music is a powerful tool. So powerful in fact, that I simply refuse to DM a session without it. SO powerful, that for important story moments, I first choose a music, and only then prepare the description. SO powerful, that I'm actually creating a "cutscene" style description AROUND a cool song I chose for the story moment. (Be careful with these though, not all players like lengthy descriptions and cutscenese in their tabletop games. I simply know my players enough to be sure they'll like it) When done right, you can simply just say "you enter the cave", then play a music with ambient background noises and you're done.

I appreciate the non-inclusion of the jumpscare. Thank you!

been thinking about DJing for DMs/Campaigns for something like a year now, to get familiar with the scene in my new city but also because it'd be super cool. I think discovering this channel and this video was the sign for me to jump in

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

This is an insane idea and I cant get it out of my head now, a DJ for campaigns is amazing. I say go for it

@brandon-toddhutchinson3798

9 ай бұрын

@@PlayYourRole 🙏

Listening to music to include in my campaign literally helped me come up with events and set pieces to go with them. For my campaign music was EXTREMELY important and involved. Each PC had a theme, and important moments/places were highlighted by music specifically chosen for it. I even composed and produced an intro theme

@foxyseven609

9 ай бұрын

me too, i have a very important npc that's completely inspired from a piece of music! nothing i've composed has made it into my campaign yet though :p

I'm running a sci-fi campaign and I really enjoy using music -- my problem is that I always forget what song in my playlist sounds like what, and I'm not great at finding more 💀 I really like royalty free stuff, but I'm too picky and a lot of it just doesn't fit the vibe, lol

I’m running a Zelda-based campaign. When I make a game-based puzzle boss (usually take a D&D stat block and give it a tweak), I play the corresponding boss music and see 1) who recognizes it and 2) how they play based on that music. Two examples. Fraaz from Spirit Tracks was an Animated Breath, and he would swap elements at the start of each round. The party quickly realized that he was immune to everything but the two elements, and if you chose the wrong element he would heal instead. Helmaroc was a Roc, but with a starting AC of 23. After Crits or sufficient damage, a piece of its stone helmet would fall off, and the AC would lower by 2 until it reached 15. Everybody at the table (who played Wind Waker) recognized the music immediately, and knew to aim for the face; I gave the called shot a harder AC, but they wore down the helmet faster. I had plans for it to take a player alive but unconscious back to its roost for the babies, and the party side tracks to rescue said player; they killed it before that could happen.

This reminded me of that tumblr post about how the DM is setting up the heist, however, it's the players who choose whether the BGM will be The Pink Panther, Mission Impossible, or Benny Hill.

Man I was so ready for a jump scare lol. Great points!!

Two thoughts after listening: 1.) another benefit to video game soundtracks is that the songs are designed with looping in mind, so there’s no weird janky jumps if the situation provoking the music outlasts the song, and it likely doesn’t get grating if it plays multiple times. 2.) (this isn’t really in the scope of your video, but talking about music and TTRPGs always brings this to my mind b/c of how much it’s eased play for me) not just for at the table gameplay. When I’m making PCs or even significant NPCs, I’ll often throw together a playlist for my own use. This both serves the purpose of helping me get to know the character and of giving me something to listen to before session to get me in the right frame of mind to play said character.

I've been composing original music for mine. Once I can learn to use some better audio software I'm thinking of publishing it.

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

Do it!!! I tried to do the same thing but was never able to really put in the time

Not a DM (YET!), but, once I get the confidence and the knowhow to run Lancer, you KNOW I'm going to using the Armored Core and Daemon X Machina soundtracks to their full effect. And yes, I'll put Nineball Seraph into that campaign as a hidden boss, with the appropriate music, because even though I love my friends, they need a good challenge once in a while.

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

I have every bit of faith in you when you are ready, you've got this!

Music for me is really important to my games, I love to sift through albums looking for fitting tracks a slow afternoon and my players know i like to reuse specific music for certain scenes. There was one npc I used a very specific theme for from the Umineko Visual Novel that always played when she encountered the party. One time I accidentally turned on the theme and the players immediatly shouted "WHERE IS SHE!? WHERE IS SHE!?" The music asscoiation was that strong.

I'm getting ready to run Curse of Strahd, and I'm planning on using a lot of Bloodborne's soundtrack, and some other fromsoft stuff. But I'm sure the playlist will expand greatly.

When I ran a campaign, I frequently used stardew valley music during rp and resting moments to great effect

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

That sound track is sooooooo relaxing, great vibes

in the last session of a game im running, the party heard about a war breaking out between the towns they are heading towards, which i'm planning to have escalate throughout the campaign if they don't do anything about it. I started playing an ominous track very quietly as they approached the gathering crowd, then slowly upped the volume as they heard snippets of conversations until bumping it all the way up to my normal music volume as they finally heard outright about a town being under siege. I think it worked really well!

@foxyseven609

9 ай бұрын

also, there's very small indie game called HESPERUS which i've been using the soundtrack of for some of the fights, it's great and i'd recommend you check it out :p

Giving all of the bad guys in my campaign theme music was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Thank you for not including a jump scare. I would have been genuinely upset.

Yeah i agree i never really liked when they did sound effects in d20. It really took me out of how i was imagining events and effects, overall it felt like it was cheapening the experience for the sake of audio stingers.

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

Yeah, they kind of stopped doing it so much in later seasons and I like it much more!

The armored core 6 soundtrack will completely overhaul your combats, I promise. It’s perfect. Do it. I ran a boss fight against an artificer and his young dragon companion who he built wings for using one of the boss themes. It was wild.

@vuklind_9301

9 ай бұрын

AC6 has a great OST, especially when it comes to ambiance, I'll definitely be using a lot of the soundtrack for my Lancer campaign. And just out of curiosity, what theme did you used for your boss fight?

Yes I love Bardify's sound track and ambience

wanto to see your characters start to panic...introduce a boss and play megalovania. BOOM. instant panic.

Yesss

That intro was adorable 😂 "You're cringe" "No YOU'RE cringe"

I love setting the mood with music so much... but the game I dm runs via discord, and the music bots that can play off spotify or youtube have been dropping like flies.

I make an OST for every single campaign i run, i even pick themes for each PC just because i know how hype itll be for them when the time comes.

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

I absolutely LOVE this

The Witcher games, Darkest Dungeon and Dragon's Dogma are my jam for my mostly low fantasy and dark fantasy games.

I refuse to run games without music, and treat them like a video game OST when assembling a playlist for a game. That means a theme for every location, combat, PC or key NPC, and more. Mixing music with ambience, like a pleasant song with a crowd talking and cups and plates clacking makes for an amazing tavern scene, for example. Music and ambience is too good of a tool not to use!

Jay's wife: "You're _cringe."_ Me: _w h e e z e_

The link to Bardify in the description seems to be broken

yo jay, do u remember me. Scoobis, this is my new acc so. I took a break from Ur channel. I was that guy on your Undertale stream.

So this is unrelated to the video but one of the most terrifying moments in Terraria for me is when I killed a butterfly and it spawned a boss... I was so confused & terrified at the same time

Cryo Chamber... Not Soundtracks, but the best way to show your players, shit is getting dark. Soundtrack I always use: Divinity 2

I usually use soundtracks from different Pokemon games, they have theme and musics for many occassions My players also now believe that Accumula Town theme is their theme song lmao

I am surprised that anyone thinks that a GM who uses music in their game is lazy! If nothing else, it means a whole nother box full of equipment to set up and keep track of. Doesn’t sound lazy to me. 😉

I really was expecting a jump scare that first description. Disappointed! 😂

I try to avoid music from games people have played actually as it's too closely tied to that particular game whereas I want to evoke a more unique feeling in my games

having watched over a hundred cr episodes, i have no idea what horn youre talking about o.0

Sounds like you have a pavlovian response to the phrase "pavlovian response".

I produce massive amounts of music for my games

I used to play youtube music with discord bots, using playlists that I painstakingly curated... If anyone has a suggestion of how to use music on discord now I will be grateful

Heyy

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

ayyyy

Let me just say, thank you for not jump scaring us. I hate those so much and I think they're a really lazy way to get a reaction.

@PlayYourRole

9 ай бұрын

I hate them too! It just felt like there SHOULD be one there, so I figured I'd put something at the very least

@pyrosniper6431

9 ай бұрын

@@PlayYourRole Well, I definitely enjoyed what you chose XD

I can't play music at my games. Because no matter what the song is, my girlfriend will always fall asleep. Or get lethargic. It's her kryptonite.