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Music

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 31
Watch a movie sometime with subtitles instead of sound, and you’ll quickly realize just how much emotional weight the music carries. The acting, images, and words are important, but the music pulls at your heartstrings, and gives you cues about how the filmmaker wants you to feel during a certain sequence.

Sometimes you want that extra emotional impact for a game. And for those special occasions, it’s worth digging around your music collection to build a playlist. It may seem a little trite, but most fantasy movie soundtracks work well as background music for a fantasy game, so long as you stay away from overly recognizable themes that will jar your players out of the moment. Most of the time, it’s best to use fairly subtle soundtracks (though there’s nothing wrong with some heavy metal beats to keep the momentum, if that’s what you group loves, so long as there aren’t a lot of words to distract people). But if you really want to knock a game out of the park (say, when doing a special “send-off ” game for a player leaving town), then it might be worth it to ascribe themes to particular characters or, better yet, choose songs to go with specific encounters, such as heavy industrial noises for a fight in the dwarven smithy, soft mandolins and violins for the visit to the elven queen, a dirge for a dead NPC, or a bombastic, brassy symphonic charge for the final battle against the villain. The important thing to remember is that the music should support the scene subtly, without taking center stage— for this reason it’s often best to avoid popular music or things with comprehensible lyrics, and it’s important to have the songs cued up and ready so you don’t waste valuable game time and dramatic tension by searching for the proper track.

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Music