[RPG Music] Fantasy Ambient

Music for roleplaying games in my opinion should be setting moods but be as unobtrusive as possible. Everything that breaks the concentration of the players instead of enhancing the mood is bad. This means: No vocal tracks except for some sinister chanting because vocals distract too much, no famous or easily recognizable tracks because they  distract as well (if you don’t play Star Wars it will so break the players’ concentration if they hear the Imperial March, instead of the game they’ll think of the movies), no soundtracks with too many changes of mood.

Most film soundtracks are geared to exactly the film they were written for, they often have a wide variety of moods, which also will become distracting if played in the background.

One easy way of getting good roleplaying music are computer games, especially computer roleplaying games, because  most of them are easily loopable so one can key one single track to a special scene or location and just have it repeat over and over again. My favourite example for this is the soundtrack for Diablo I. I played this game for days and never noticed the background music that much, but it definitely was there, setting different moods for different parts of the game (Crypt, Cavern, Hell…). Lately I got around looking at the game soundtrack again and lo! there only were 5 tracks in the whole game! One can get a lot out of 5 tracks.

For my next game I am still undecided how to use this music: Do I just loop one track appropriate to location and mood? Or do I just use different playlists instead?

Film  Soundtracks

• Conan the Barbarian/Conan the Destroyer by Basil Poledouris, if you get one get the first, it is THE best soundtrack for RPG I have ever found and covers a wide area of stuff, on the other hand it will make your players slay the high priest of the next temple
• Red Sonja by Ennio Morricone

General Music

• The Planets by Gustav von Holst, 7 tracks of distinctively different character [Mars, the bringer of war]
• Lustmord has two perfect albums for dark and brooding ambience: Heresy and Purifying Fire
• Shinjuku Thief
• Godspeed! You Black Emperor

Roleplaying Music

• Erdenstern, free tracks on the page
• Midnight Syndicate, a bit too generic, but they do have the Dungeons and Dragons Soundtrack

Computer Games

• Diablo II, wonderfully loopable, atmospheric tracks, covering a whole lot of ground [example]

Free Computer Game Soundtracks

• Soundtrack for the MMORPG Ryzom
• Soundtrack of the old PC game The Dig
• Soundtrack of the game Galleon, the game spent ages in development hell, and the the composer was not paid for his efforts. Which is why he released this under a GNU license

Other Free Music

• Celestial Aeon Project
• Project Divinity
• Axial Ensemble
• Epic Soul Factory
• Soundtrack of Leuenklinge, a series of Das Schwarze Auge amateur films (and a few other tracks)
• Fairy  Tale 2, seems to be the soundtrack of a Civilization V mod, slightly artificial, but appropriate for background purpose

Related Articles

• RPG Writer Teaches Tabletop Soundtrack Selection (escapistmagazine.com)
• Looking for some creepy music for your Cthulhu or horror campaign? Pelgrane Press delivers with the Eternal Lies Suite from Troll in the Corner ” Role Playing Games (trollitc.com)

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