On another forum a friend of mine posted about using a title song at the beginning of the session while recapping the events from the last session to the players. I rather like asking the players themselves what had happened before, to gain more insight what was memorable and what was not. In one group I game with, the host usually starts his rpg music playlist with the Conan the Destroyer title song.

Next sunday I will start a Warhammer fantasy campaign set in Mousillon, and I would like to use the same method. At the moment I am thinking of using Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, but am open to suggestions that are more powerful/energetic, and not necessarily classical.

What are your rituals of beginning a session?

Not tried it yet, but when I get around to running The One Ring I'm tempted to use the intro and outro music and narration from the 1977 BBC radio adaptation to put people in the mood.

The old Robin Hood series from the fifties/sixties had a title song sung by  a bard, telling what is going to happen in the episode.

We normally recap the last session and catch up with important things outside the game.

Quote from: soltakss;851315We normally recap the last session and catch up with important things outside the game.

That's what we do.
Based on past experiences I'm not a fan of trying to have a 'soundtrack' or musical cues... it's often too loud or distracting to the GM as he fidgets with finding the right track. Also, it can be offputting if the GM's idea of the perfect match for the game is something like the theme song from Xanadu.

I suppose I could see having some standard track that sets the general mood of the campaign that gets played at startup to say, 'let's play'... but for my own games I wouldn't bother.

We eat and catch up, followed by a recap and/or level up, and then get the show on the road.

My experience with background music in gaming, generally speaking, is a mixed bag. I love the idea of theme songs and introductions and background music, but from the GM's chair ir all too often becomes an additional chore, and sometimes a distracting one at that.

Anything but loud podcast bumper music.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;851370Anything but loud podcast bumper music.

Definitely... I wince every time I start up Save Or Die!

We talk.

A game is neither a movie nor a radio play.

I tried this with a couple of campaigns, but the players never seemed to really get into it.

It has worked great for me in a couple of campaigns, but I don't use it all the time.

For Star Wars, it was pretty much a no-brainer.  The SW theme to start off the game session, complete with 20th Century Fox fanfare.  Have a couple of the right tracks in a folder to be clicked on with no bit fuss at need - a couple of battle tracks, a couple of Imperial March tracks, that sort of thing.  Was usually not too terribly distracting.  Also - there used to be a GREAT soundboard for X-Wing/TIE/Millennium Falcon engine nosies, blasters and explosions.  A tool like that made battles feel really exciting due to the authentic Ben Burtt sound effects.  The same soundboard had some great droid and alien lines I could use, too - there's no Wookiee like a real Wookiee.

I had a Shadowrun campaign we opened each session with Cyndi Lauper's "Change of Heart" and speckled the sessions with 80s synthpop and stuff like Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" and Drowning Pool's "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor"  It was pretty awesome, too.

In the D&D campaign on Wednesdays in which I participate as a player, my DM lets me queue up appropriate fantasy music while he runs the game.  It means it's not a GM task, and it places a certain amount of trust in me not to start playing "Yakkety Sax" during  a battle scene.  Mostly, I do things like the Raiders of the Lost Ark "Map Room at Dawn" during mystery scenes, and "Bloody Tears" from Castlevania while fighting Strahd in Ravenloft.  Stuff like that.

The only setting that I use audio for is Star Wars (which is also what I run most often).

I have the theatrical sound tracks to all six movies on my iPhone, which is bluetoothed to the speakers. I play the certain songs in the background depending on what's going on (certain songs for when climactic-seeming battles start, the flute-y sounding song when someone dies in game, the Imperial march when appropriate, etc.)

And I have an app that makes a Star Wars-y crawl thing, and at the beginning of every session I show a crawl and use the iPhone/Bluetooth/Speaker set-up to play the intro music loud. "DAN dadada DAN..."

Star Wars is the only setting that gets me in the mood to go so all out in the  props department.

I also have a thick folder of Star Wars character art from the internet printed out, and EVERY NPC gets a picture.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;851380We talk.

A game is neither a movie nor a radio play.

There are more things in RPGs and gaming, Gronan,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
It's not a fashion show, an art exhibit, or an architectural display either. But that doesn't stop some folks from displaying costumes they made, art work they created, or buildings they constructed.

I've used music to great effect in games. Often it's only a theme tune played at the beginning and end of a games session:
'I Feel Alright' by Steve Earle for Firefly (It could have been written for Firefly games)
'Alexander Rag' by Elena Kats-Chernin (a ragtime piano piece) for Mycrofts' Minions - my Victorian spy game
'Come With Me' by Puff Daddy for my Torchwood spin-off game.

The only game where I use music during play is in Blue Star - a game of investigators working for the League of Nations in the 1930s. It does have a theme tune, but I also play popular 1930s song when the PCs are in nightclubs and seedy dives (which is a lot of the time).

Oh yeah, Sword and Sorcery music.

For our Barbarians of Lemuria game (in the game's default setting of Lemuria) I used the soundtrack for the Age of Conan computer game. Seemed to have all I needed for a theme tune and some spooky music for when evil sorcery was in the air.

I think something like that - less familiar music - works better than the Conan film soundtrack, or whatever. YMMV.

And I must say that I've never found handling music to disrupt any game I'm running or spoil the mood. On the few occasions when I've neglected to play a theme tune, my players have protested - so I suppose that means that they like it.

Quote from: Simlasa;851320That's what we do.
Based on past experiences I'm not a fan of trying to have a 'soundtrack' or musical cues... it's often too loud or distracting to the GM as he fidgets with finding the right track. Also, it can be offputting if the GM's idea of the perfect match for the game is something like the theme song from Xanadu.

I suppose I could see having some standard track that sets the general mood of the campaign that gets played at startup to say, 'let's play'... but for my own games I wouldn't bother.

All "Rainbow in the Dark," all the time.

With the *very occasional* occurrence of "Xanadu" for when the party is fighting Olivia Newton-John on roller skates.