Best bands/music for getting in the mood for campaigning

[Dredj]

My vote goes to the bands Bal-Sagoth and Man-O-War for fantasy campaigns.

[BTNewman]

Here's what's in my playlist:

Dead Can Dance
Trio Mediaeval
Corvus Corax
Gunnar Madsen (Fall of Troy)
Vangelis (El Greco, Mask)
Glass Hammer
St. George's Canzona
Mussorgsky (Pictures at an Exhibition)
Stephan Michael Sechi
Jocelyn Pook
Assorted Enya, Clannad, Brian Eno, etc.

Soundtracks from: Myst, Riven, Myst III, Uru, Myst IV, Myst V, Beyond Good and Evil, Eternal Darkness, Assassin's Creed, Xenosaga, Skies of Arcadia, Conan, Spirited Away, The Black Hole, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Alexander, Dragonheart, Gladiator, The LOTR series, The Navigator, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Princess Bride, Russia: Land of the Tsars, Vertigo

[CruelDespot]

I am always glad for threads like this where I can get ideas for new tracks to add to the mix.

My main criteria is: no lyrics. A lot of players and especially DMs complain about background music with words. They find it distracting. So my background music must be 100% instrumental.

It seems to me there are 4 categories of source material:

Movie soundtracks. This is the most obvious choice. It is designed to be background music, and you can tell if it is good if you saw the movie.

Videogame soundtracks. Also designed for background, but usually just not as good. There are a few exceptions with great music: The Total War series, Diablo... The other problem is that anyone who has played the game has already become sick of the music. Whenever the diablo town theme starts playing, one of the players in my group chimes in with "What can I do for you?" as the shopkeeper from the game.

Classical music: The quieter type of classical will put most groups to sleep, so you are most likely to use orchestral music, opera overtures, etc. This may be discouraging to find, because most people aren't that familiar with classical music. You are probably OK with anything that says "overture." Some of my favorites:
Borodin, Polovtsian Dance
Grieg: Hall of the Mt King
Mussorgsy: Night on Bald Mt
Prokofiev: The Alien God and the Dance of the Evil Spirits
Respighi: Circuses aka Feste Romane
Sibelius: Finlandia
Suppe: Light Cavalry Overture
Wagner: Siegfried's Funeral March, Parsival

Heavy Metal: A lot of gamers are metalheads, but it is tricky to find stuff without lyrics. Here are a few I know, and I would love to find more:

Faith No More: Woodpecker from Mars
Iron Maiden: Genghis Khan, Ides of March
Metallica: Call of Ktulu, Orion
The Police: Behind my Camel

Dredj, I don't know Bal-Sagoth or Man of War. Is any of their stuff instrumental?

[AikiGhost]

Hardcore acid techno, for all genres turned up so loud that nobody can speak and if you stand up theres a good chance that you'll shit yourself.


But seriously I hate music at games its just annoying and distracting plus most of what gamers tend to like played is boring generic rock and metal (or even worse unutterably bad death metal) which isn't something Ive been interested in since I fancied goth chicks back in the early 90's

[RosenMcStern]

Loreena McKennit. In fact I discovered celtic music by listening to it while gaming, many years ago.

[PK Games]

Iron Maiden
Apocalyptica
Manowar
Hammerfall
Demons and Wizards
Blind Guardian

For my Dark Heresy campaign I mix Harry Manfridinni's Friday the 13th Part VI soundtrack in as stingers and during those 20 or so seconds, the bad guys get +10 on combat skills and +1 damage.

Then if any of the Indiana Jones/Batman soundtrack stingers come up the players get the same benefits.

[Puck]

A Few to add to the List.

Movie music: The Mission, 1492 Conquest of Paradise, 300, Troy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Last of the Mohecans, Black Hawk Down, Robin Hood, Stargate, The Hulk (This soundtrack is much better than you would think), Braveheart, Rob Roy, Henry V. Starship Troopers Robocop, Dune,


Classical: Hanson’s: Lament for Beowulf, Holst: The Planets

For my Dark Heresy campaign....

There is free music almost made for this here:

Inquisition: Daemonhunt Music - FileFront.com

It was composed for the Inquisition mod for the game Dawn of War.

[Skunkape]

Whenever I use music for a fantasy campaign, which it seems is the genre I usually run, I mostly use movie soundtracks...

Lord of the Rings, all 3
Masters and Commanders
Conan, both movies

but you could also use...

Midnight Syndicate's Dungeons & Dragons cd or Loreena McKennitt's music.

Midnight Syndicate also has some good music for survival horror from what I understand, though I don't own any other cds except the DnD one.

Mostly I'd say try and use music that fits the genre!

[Aycorn]

I have a collection of ultra-spooky classical pieces I use for COC games. For Celtic, I'll use the Braveheart soundtrack and similar stuff.

Music that I like for my own pleasure doesn't necessarily make good background for games, generally. Classical, soundtracks, etc. I might use other things, depending on need or mood - there's a 2-CD set called "Crime Jazz" that's all noir-ish jazzy pieces that'd be good if you were doing a crime thriller type thing, say "Pulp Cthulhu." I've never used it, but have thought of it.

[sinisalo]

Chronicle of the Black Sword by Hawkwind - Prog rock album about Elric