I’ve already made my love for the Sonic Legends line of RPG soundscapes well known here on Icosahedrophilia and on DriveThruRPG. Six of Sonic Legends’ initial wave of offerings were inspired by and keyed to the FantasyCraft adventure The Cleansing of Black Spur. I’m not familiar with that adventure, as I don’t play FantasyCraft (nothing against it, but my gaming time runs low), so in the comments that follow I won’t have anything to say about the coherence between the music and the specific story presented in The Cleansing of Black Spur.

• “Achela’s Ritual” by Christy Carew. I’m not sure what ritual Achela is performing, but this music makes it sound like she’s in a hurry—or that the heroes are in a hurry to stop her. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• “Attack of the Wyvern” by Erika Lieberman. Some DMs and players might find the roars, screams, groans, clashing swords, whooshing arrows, and other sound effects in this track to be over the top, but I rather like them. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• “Goblin Encampment” by Mike Worth. Percussive sounds that I can best describe as tribal drumming predominate in the first couple of minutes of this track, followed by ominous strings and the sound of high-pitched chittering. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• “Pader Augustus’ Plea” by Christy Carew. Taking a cue from the title, I picture this track as the score for interaction with an important NPC, perhaps a potential patron or someone who hooks the characters into an adventure. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• “The Ruins of Black Spur Keep” by Erika Lieberman. Although the name seems to suggest exploration, this piece strikes me as more appropriate for a battle scene. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★

Each installment of the “Dungeons & DJs” series presents you with a new collection of music—usually, a single, complete album—that you might find useful at your gaming table. This installment focuses on four tracks from the wonderful Sonic Legends library, specifically composed as gaming soundscapes and published in July 2010.

• “Ancient Archives“by Christy Carew. As the name implies, this track—in which pleasant harps and strings dominate—would work well under a scene of research or exploration in an old library or scriptorium, or perhaps while shopping for magical components or alchemical reagents. Like all of Christy’s contributions to the Sonic Legends library, this piece loops flawlessly, essentially giving you a backing track of infinite length. (8:14) ★★★★★
• “City of the Dark Elves” by Jonn Ollsin. Somber tones, light bells, and vague whispers set a perfect atmosphere for the Underdark. I might be more inclined to use this track for exploring a deserted drow city than for a well-populated place like Erelhei-Cinlu. A “thinner” sound earlier in the track adds depth as the piece progresses; this works very well, but allows an attentive listener to detect where the piece ends and begins when looping. (8:07) ★★★★★
• “Modern Military Base” by Alex Kovacs. This track begins with reveille—which, honestly, would disrupt the looping significantly—and then moves into some ominous-sounding chords with occasional deep percussion. The tempo and tension pick up around five minutes in. That’s also when the sound effects—I hear the stamping of combat boots—come in, yielding finally to machine-gun fire around six and half minutes in. You also get some sounds of aircraft flyovers and bombs bursting (in air?), blending perfectly with the music. I could easily imagine this as the soundtrack to a short film. I won’t use this track often, since I rarely run modern-era games, but I like it very well. (9:12) ★★★★
• “The Reaper” by Joe Matzzie.

Defying Blue Öyster Cult, Joe Matzzie definitely wants you to fear the reaper, and he uses low-pitched strings, vague vocals, and sound effects resembling the whooshing of batwings, the stomping of heavy feet, and the roar of a dragon or demon to accomplish all this. I can easily imagine playing this piece while hapless PCs battle Orcus. Unfortunately, this track loops a little awkwardly, and this one respect lags a bit behind some of the other Sonic Legends offerings. ★★★★

During week of May 30–June 5, 2010, I reviewed the following products for DriveThruRPG:

• Dwarven City by Randin Graves for Sonic Legends. “Dwarven City” is another good offering from Randin Graves, who also contributed “Dark Ritual” to the Sonic Legends line. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★
• ICONS by Steve Kenson for Adamant Entertainment. I came late to the ICONS hype party, and missed out on the first wave of preorders. Therefore, I rushed to DriveThruRPG at 12:03 AM on June 1 to purchase the PDF edition. I’ve lost a few hours of sleep since then staying up late to read the rules, and I’m pleased to report that ICONS lives up to its advance billing. Aside from a few grammatical and typographical errors (for which I’d subtract half a star if the rating system allowed half-stars), ICONS is a wonderful product, with a solid rules set, entertaining prose, and artwork that produces a look and feel perfectly matching the game’s tone. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Palace of the Galactic Emperor by Christy Carew for Sonic Legends. “Palace of the Galactic Emperor” by Christy Carew does a great job of evoking a cinematic sense of epic power. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★

By purchasing any of these items through the links supplied here, you help to support the Icosahedrophilia blog and podcast.

During the week of April 4–10, 2010, I reviewed the following products for DriveThruRPG:

• Quartermaster Campaign Items by Louis Porter, Jr. Design. “Quartermaster Campaign Items” offers very fine illustrations of 21 objects that characters might encounter in any fantasy game. You can actually preview all of the artwork on the product page, so that you can see for yourself before you buy how good the artwork is and the range of items represented. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★
• Asian Dreams by Jack Walker for Sonic Legends. If you use background music at your gaming table and your game involves any type of calm oriental setting—from Rokugan to Chinatown—you’ll want to add “Asian Dreams” by Jack Walker to your soundscapes library. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Arabian Bazaar by Christy Carew and Erika Lieberman for Sonic Legends. Music, sound effects, and subtle lines of dialogue blend perfectly in this soundscape with music by Christy Carew and sound effects by Erika Lieberman. You can hear the shuffling of animals, the haggling of customers with merchants, the exchange of coins—all carried along beautifully by an exotic melody. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Country Village by Erika Lieberman for Sonic Legends. Lull your players into a false sense of security with this lush, gorgeous piece from Erika Lieberman. The music and sound effects evoke a beautiful meadow full of blooming flowers, chirping birds, and playing children. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Imperial City by Jack Walker for Sonic Legends. Exotic without necessarily suggesting a specific culture, this track could lend an air of mystery to any urban setting that’s outside the PCs’ norms. To me, the music seems to blend Middle Eastern and South Asian themes into a whole that transcends both. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Wild West Saloon by Jack Walker for Sonic Legends. This soundscape by Jack Walker delivers exactly what it promises: the ambience of a stereotypical Western saloon. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Big City by Matthew Steckler for Sonic Legends. This soundscape is very well executed and displays exceptional production values. However, it seems to me rather limited in its scope. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★
• Old Watermill by Lord Zsezse Works. The artwork for this product is wonderful, and it’s not too difficult to put together. The designers have added significant value by providing alternate versions of some components so that you can customize the model. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★
• Battlemap for the Old Watermill by Lord Zsezse Works. The artwork on these battlemaps is really superb, and the publisher has added significant value by providing day and night versions as well as 1″ and 1.5″ versions. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★
• Monsters of the Game Mat: Total Chaos by Cerberus Illustration. If you use printable miniatures, you can take your collection to a whole new level with this set of intricate designs by Cerberus. This set includes many D&D standards … (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★

I’ve previously touted (here and here) the fantasy soundscapes produced by Sonic Legends and sold through DriveThruRPG or the group’s own storefront. My own interest lies primarily in those fantasy soundscapes, but Sonic Legends offers some excellent modern and sci-fi soundscapes as well.

• Alien City Ruins by John Ollsin. This unobtrusive track plays perfectly under any role-playing scene where characters need to explore an unfamiliar or alien environment, with a sense of suspense but not necessarily immediate danger. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Degenerate Seaside Town by Matthew Steckler. I mentioned this track once before in the context of my own fantasy games, but it’s fully appropriate for pulp or modern games, too. Start this track going to make your players feel like they’re dockside in Innsmouth. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Police Precint by Joe Matzzie. The sound effects and background dialogue (some of it by the K-9 unit) in this track can really bring your gaming table alive if you have scenes that take place inside any modern (1920s and forward) police station. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★
• Post Apocalyptic City by Mike Trapp. Electric guitars and a driving drum beat tie the feel of this track to the modern era, and perhaps beyond. As I listened to this track, the images that came to mind were actually more of a stylish detective drama than of post-apocalyptic urbanism. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★
• Wonders of Space by Christy Carew. With airy vocals and xylophone accents (both synthesized, unless I miss my guess), this track could easily infiltrate any New Age music library. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Zombie Apocalypse by Mike Trapp. An eerie ethereal beginning soon gives way to a driving beat overlaid with sound effects like sirens, helicopter rotors, police announcements, groans, growls, and screams as the zombies overwhelm an urban center. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★

Any of these soundscapes will certainly enhance your modern or sci-fi game.

DriveThruRPG added several more Sonic Legends tracks to its catalog today, and my enthusiasm for this line made me jump at the chance to review them for DTRPG. I previously reviewed four tracks by Sonic Legends founder Erika Lieberman. The four I’ll highlight in this installment were composed by other Sonic Legends artists.

• Dungeon Prison by Jack Walker. When you see this track’s title, put the emphasis on “prison,” not on “dungeon.” The melancholy strains of Jack Walker’s music give you a feeling of despair, while moans, groans, and sobs evoke the prisoners’ desperation. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• Elven City at Night by Jack Walker. Peaceful. That’s the single word that best describes this lovely track by Jack Walker, with sound effects by Erika Lieberman. The sounds of crickets and nocturnal birds sit lightly atop soothing, ethereal music. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) Additional note: I didn’t mention this in the DTRPG review, but you can do much worse than to pair this track with Paizo’s GameMastery Map Pack: Elven City (the link takes you to FRP Games, which discounts Paizo products deeper than Paizo’s own store). ★★★★
• Degenerate Seaside Town by Matthew Steckler. My current (early 2010) D&D campaign has a seafaring theme, so this soundscape was an obvious draw. The melody feels irregular, evoking the rise and fall of the tide on the shore. The seagulls leave no question about where you are. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• The Otherworld by John Ollsin. Eerie music with no distinct melody and occasional sounds like the flapping of leathery wings characterize this track. The product description links the track to a place between worlds, a character’s first post-mortem destination, but the track could easily enough serve as background for any sort of spooky exploration. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★

Check out my full review of each track at DriveThruRPG, or learn more about Sonic Legends at the company’s own web site. As you can tell, I’ve become a big fan of Sonic Legends very quickly, and you can expect more news about and reviews of their work in days to come.

DriveThruRPG recently added four Sonic Legends tracks to its catalog gaming soundtrack MP3s. These four tracks, all by Erika Lieberman, do a great job of delivering what the names imply:

• Desert Battle. My favorite of the four (because it meets an immediate need in my campaign), this track moves from haunting winds and exotic melodies to the clash of steel and the shouts of combatants, then settles down again at the end.
• Prosperous Tavern. In this track, get the kind of background noise that might characterize a prosperous tavern. For about the first half or so of the track, you have music playing in the background, convincingly integrated into the crowd noises so that you feel there must be bards or musicians performing at the tavern itself.
• Forest Journey. Chirping birds and peaceful melodies characterize this audio track, which DMs could use play quite effectively under a period of rest, down time, or peaceful travel. This track would not work well as background music for a battle.
• Vampire Castle. Although it’s a wonderful track, “Vampire Castle” is the weakest entry in this group of four, if only because there are plenty of other spooky ambient tracks available at lower prices.

All four tracks provide excellent atmosphere, and the titles fit the contents perfectly. However, I must also mention two drawbacks that affect all four tracks. First, the ID3 tags were nonexistent when the products were delivered to me from DriveThruRPG. I don’t know if this is because of problems with DTRPG’s “watermarking” or because of problems with the original files themselves. If DTRPG’s automated process emptied the original ID3 tags, that’s on the vendor, but if the originals had no ID3 tags, that’s on the publisher. Second, these tracks are priced at $2.99 each, which is really rather high for such a product. Compare “Prosperous Tavern” at $2.99 to V Shane’s “Rumors Inn” at $0.50, or “Vampire Castle” to individual tracks off Nox Arcana’s Transylvania at $1.00 each.

Check out my full review of each track at DriveThruRPG, or learn more about Sonic Legends at the company’s own web site.

Back in 2004, sci-fi and fantasy illustrator V Shane—well known to RPGNow customers for his Artifacts of the Arcane series—released a series of five ambient music tracks intended for use during role-playing sessions. The tracks originally appeared one a time (follow the links given for each individual track), but you can now purchase them in a bundle (all come in MP3 format). Here’s a quick review of the five tracks.

The name “Lost Map” suggests a party wandering aimlessly in the wild, and so does the music. The sounds of wind and bird noises above the music bind this track to outdoor exploration—but I’m not sure that all of the nature noises cohere with one another. I can hear woodland birds and sea birds, as well as ocean surf. Very odd. At several points in this track, some of the layers don’t seem to synchronize with each other; they seem to be running at two different tempos. I don’t consider this one of the stronger entries on the album.

For another exploration track, look to the slow, peaceful, and introspective “Journey’s Thoughts.” It sounds a lot like 1990s New Age music that might be billed as a massage soundtrack. You could play this track behind a role-playing or exploration scene if you want the PCs to feel a calm, peaceful sense of wonder—upon entering the Feywild for the first time, perhaps.

Without question, I like and have used “Rumors Inn” more than any other track from Enigmatic Quest. The music perfectly evokes a busy tavern or inn in a fantasy medieval setting. You can practically see the serving wenches and smell the roasting meat—and you can literally hear the performers in the background, the applause of delighted patrons, and nearby conversations.

If you want a creepier exploration track, “Hidden Places” fits the bill. Because of its birdcalls and surf sounds, “Lost Map” would not work well to score a dungeon or cavern exploration scene, but “Hidden Places” certainly would.

Both the artwork and the music for “War Party” suggest a semi-primitive tribe of goblins or orcs on the march. Incomprehensible sounds of growling and howling accompany airy pipes, rattles, and lots of drums to suggest a threatening presence approaching. However cool the track sounds, though, you may find limited applicability at the gaming table. If the PCs are sneaking through a goblin or orc encampment, you might want to use this track. I don’t really think it’s good fight music, though, so you’d want to switch to something more exciting if a battle broke out.

Strange reverb effects, virtually incomprehensible vocals, and dripping rainwater introduce the faster-paced final track, “Foreshadow.” Frankly, I do not foresee myself using this track at the gaming table. I don’t think this track meshes musically with the other five tracks in the collection, either. The track is just odd, and I cannot picture what sort of storyline should go along with it.

Find more suggestions in the other installments of Dungeons & DJs.

Okay, so the soundtrack from a fantasy action movie like Beowulf is pretty much a no-brainer place to look for D&D game table music. I don’t claim any great genius there! Not all fantasy film music necessarily makes great game table music, though. For example, I probably wouldn’t recommend using any of the score from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, because that music is so recognizable that it might actually distract from rather than enhance play. I don’t think Beowulf has that problem, though, and you can pull several good tracks from Alan Silvestri’s score to enhance your D&D game.

The “Beowulf Main Title” moves along at a steady, medium pace, and it’s rich with chant-style vocals that enhance the feeling of being in the middle of a fantasy battle without distracting you with too many recognizable words. In this respect it’s comparable to “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff or “Duel of the Fates” by John Williams (from Star Wars I). I’m a little put off by the electronic intrusions at the beginning of this track, though.

Surprisingly, “First Grendel Attack” turns out to be a very slow and almost peaceful track; I suppose it’s meant to be suspenseful, but I don’t find it very useful for gaming because it’s too tied to the actual moment in the film. This, of course, is a common problem when using film scores at the gaming table. A similar problem haunts “I’m Here to Kill Your Monster” and “I Did Not Win the Race.” Both start out very promisingly for game-table battle music, especially “I Did Not Win the Race,” but both get slow and quiet in the middle. If you have the capability of looping just the first 1:18 or so of “I Did Not Win the Race,” it could be a good, faster-paced battle score for your D&D game.

“Second Grendel Attack” has plenty of energy, and would be fine under a battle, especially an ambush. As the name suggests, “Beowulf Slays the Beast” provides pretty good fight music all the way through (with a few “pauses” or “theatrical flourishes”), and could be a good score for your adventure’s climactic fight against the “big bad guy.”

The songs featuring vocals by Robin Wright-Penn (“Gently As She Goes” and “A Hero Comes Home”) and Idina Menzel (“A Hero Comes Home [End Credits Version]“) are pretty, but have relatively limited RPG application. Either version of “A Hero Comes Home” might serve nicely (non-looped) as a kind of “bumper” into a break when the PCs return to the safety of a village from a day of exploration. “The Final Seduction” surprised me a little; it’s slow, engaging, distinctive, and pretty in a spooky sort of way. This would be a good track to play behind a party’s incursion into the Feywild or even the Shadowfell. You could use some of the other, slower tracks as background for general exploration through a dungeon, cavern, or wilderness, but there’s better stuff out there—which, of course, you can read about in future installments of Dungeons & DJs!

I’m one of those DMs who likes to use props like miniatures, dungeon tiles, item cards, and background music. I’ve spent a lot of time searching through the soundtrack, new age, and ambient sections of the Rhapsody, iTunes, and eMusic catalogs in search of more and different tracks to play under various kinds of role-playing encounters and interludes. In this “Dungeons & DJs” series, I’ll review some of the music I’ve found useful at the gaming table.

In this first installment, though, I’ll describe my basic audio toolbox for you. Maybe you’ll find some useful ideas here; if not, you’ll at least know some of my fundamental assumptions as I prepare to score (in the sense of “lay down music under”) a gaming session.

Obviously, to use music in your gaming session, you’ll need some kind of playback device. You could, of course, just pop a CD into the stereo; to be more sophisticated, use your iPod or other MP3 player. However, I personally carry my MacBook Pro with me to the gaming table, and run my music from iTunes. Using iTunes from my laptop allows me to take a few litle shortcuts that aren’t available with a CD or even an iPod, though a few of these tricks do work on iPods as well:

• If you’re using iTunes or an iPod (or similar software and/or hardware), you can organize your gaming music by creating individual playlist for each scenario, or perhaps even for each encounter. iTunes (I don’t know about other packages) also provides you with a “comments” field where you could write notes to yourself like “Play when fighting goblins” or “Play under encounter 1.” The drawback to using iTunes’s comments field in this way is that the comments field is global, attached to particular tracks throughout your library, rather than local, attached only to the instance or alias of that track in a particular playlist. Thus, if you annotate “We Will Rock You” with the comment “Play while the stone giants throw rocks,” that comment will show up everywhere you have that track (and the comments column enabled) in your iTunes library.

• If you let a whole series of tracks run in sequence without your intervention, you might end up with some inappropriate music at certain spots; for example, your player might reach the “Burly Brawl” at the moment when your PCs are engaged in quiet diplomacy or are trying to sneak through a sensitive area. You can gain more control by setting your player to loop a single track until you intervene to send it to another track. This strategy does require more of your attention—but really no more than looking up a creature in the Monster Manual, if you’ve planned ahead well. If you do this, you can play exactly the right music at exactly the right time.

• If you’re using a Macintosh, you can use AppleScript to control your music very cleanly. After using the iTunes comments field method described above and finding it workable but a little slow, I realized that I could actually write a small AppleScript and give it a game-related name that could provide a smoother workflow at the table. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Create a playlist in iTunes to hold all your gaming music. I call mine “RPG.”

  2. Navigate to your home directory; it’s the one with the house icon that shares your user name. Inside that directory you should find a folder called “Library.” Make sure that you’re inside your user library, not the system library. On my system, my user library is found along the path Macintosh HD/Users/cheard/Library and the system library is found along the path Macintosh HD/Library. You need your own user library for this operation. Inside your user library folder, find the Scripts folder. If you don’t have one, create one, and be sure you call it exactly “Scripts.” Now, inside that folder, create a folder with a name of your choosing. Mine is called “D&D.” So now I have a folder on the path Macintosh HD/Users/cheard/Library/Scripts/D&D, and I’m going to use this folder to store the scripts I write in just a moment.

  3. Open up the Script Editor for AppleScript; it should be in the AppleScript folder inside your Applications folder.

  4. Copy or type the following into your Script Editor:

     tell application "iTunes"
     set song repeat of playlist "RPG" to one
     play track "Song" of playlist "List"
end tell

     Of course, you should replace Song and List with the particular values you want, such as:

     tell application "iTunes"
     set song repeat of playlist "RPG" to one
     play track "Into the Dungeon" of playlist "RPG"
end tell

     If you don’t want the track to loop, you can leave out the “set song repeat …” line—but if you do, iTunes will go on to the next track in the list unless you’ve manually set your RPG playlist to repeat individual tracks.

  5. Save your script in the folder created in step 2. Give your script a meaningful name that tells you what it’s for; you might call it “Goblin fight” even if the track is “Clash with the Lord of Blades.” The file name should tell you when you want to play the song. You can even create subfolders with your main RPG script folder if you wish. For example, my Macintosh HD/Users/cheard/Library/Scripts/D&D folder has several folders inside, one of which is Banewarrens 10 Dread One’s Path. Inside that, I have scripts entitled “DP5 The Path,” “DP6 The Wyvern Roost,” and “DP8 Maleficite.” Each of these scripts invokes a different track from my iTunes playlist “RPG.”

  6. One more step to slick-ify your control over your iTunes library while running a game. Find your Applications/Applescript folder again and open up the AppleScript Utility. Make sure that “Show Script menu in menu bar” is checked. If you don’t want to be bothered with a bunch of other scripts, uncheck “Show Computer scripts.” You should now see a small AppleScript icon (like a piece of paper in a stylized S shape) in your menu bar. From there you can instantly choose any of the scripts you’ve placed in your Users/username/Library/Scripts folder! At the gaming table, it’s much easier to pull down a menu and choose the KotS > A1 Kobold Ambush item than it is to sort through your iTunes library, even if it’s well-organized.

Of course, if you’re going to score a gaming session, you’ll need good music to use. You may already have an extensive music library on which you plan to draw. If not, though—or if you do, but want to keep expanding—consider using or subscribing to some of the many online sources of music-by-the-track, such as the iTunes and Amazon music stores, or one of the subscription services such as Rhapsody, Zune, or eMusic. Personally, I get most of my RPG music from the iTunes music store or Rhapsody, though I occasionally use the Amazon store; I would use Amazon more often if its client were more Mac-friendly.

Finally, you need to consider what genres of music you will play at the gaming table. I personally prefer distinctive but noninvasive mood music, entirely instrumental tracks or tracks with “chant”-style vocals (as in the “Duel of the Fates” from Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace—that track was the best part of the film). Thus I draw a lot on film soundtracks, video game soundtracks, and music usually classified as ambient or new age. If you’d like a deeper look into my ever-growing RPG soundtrack library, return here frequently to follow this dungeons & DJs series! From this point forward, every installment in dungeons & DJs will consist of music reviews with gaming in mind.