Atmospheric music?

Hey folks, I've been thinking of putting myself in the seat of a storyteller (which I have certain experience of being).
I intend on starting a new campaign with a bunch of my friends, Heroic level, and I have intentions on keeping music in the background.
Now, the question is: What fits Scion?
Other White Wolf games usually fit into the industrial-rock and gothic styles, but Scion is nowhere near as dark and grim.
Thoughts and ideas, please.

lets see

Now I tend to prefer, when gameing, music without lyrics, or if it does have lyrics, something more like Rave or Ambiant then someone singing to avoid distraction.

Gustav Holst: "The Planets"
This is obligingly. There is some strong movments here...remember Mars Bringer of War? Highly recommended if you can regulate the music.

Modest Mussorgsky "Pictures at an Exhibition"
The themes vary here, but you can get some good stuff. The Oxen and Hut With Fouls Legs especially.

Geinoh Yamashirogumi "Akira Motion Picture Soundtrack"
This ain't no J-Pop, but if you have seen Akira you know that. These tracks are intense and pulse pounding.  Even some who seem to get quiet speed up again.  Kenada, Battle Against the Clowns and Requiem are  very good, as is Exodus From the Underground Fortress

Apotheosis "O Fortuna"
Nothing starts a campaign off quite like this. A Rave version of the original, and a damn good one. I started several games with this track back in the day.

nine inch nails "Ghosts I-IV"
A bit creepy perhaps, but atmospheric music seemingly written to be used for gaming. Good for playing in the Underworld, Suko-no-Kumi, or Isle of Ghosts.

Juno Reactor "Zwara"
This is very good for if you have some voodoo goin' on. Fighting some voodoo baddies? Give it a shot.




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For Scion I think nothing like some good Power Metal to make that epic feeling kick in.

I'll be interested to read about how your experience of playing music while game goes.

Personally, while I've attempted it on several occasions, I've always found it cumbersome and distracting.  If it goes well for you, I'd love to hear about how you pulled it off.

I have a playlist of stuff I've used for Scion and for L5R. I generally leave it on low enough that its just background noise, but I can pull up something suitable if I feel a scene warrants it. I think it works ok.

firstedition:

Personally, while I've attempted it on several occasions, I've always found it cumbersome and distracting.  If it goes well for you, I'd love to hear about how you pulled it off.

did you generally do music with lyrics? Because that always distracts me.

In general, I like having music at the very beginning (like 1 song) and very end (ditto) but if its wordless music, it does not bother me much.

Silo51:

Hey folks, I've been thinking of putting myself in the seat of a storyteller (which I have certain experience of being).
I intend on starting a new campaign with a bunch of my friends, Heroic level, and I have intentions on keeping music in the background.
Now, the question is: What fits Scion?
Other White Wolf games usually fit into the industrial-rock and gothic styles, but Scion is nowhere near as dark and grim.
Thoughts and ideas, please.

HERO (I Need a Hero) = Dorinda Clark-Cole
Heroes are Hard to Find = Twisted Sister
Dive for You = Boom Boom Sattilites
Heroes = Wallflowers (David Bowie song)
Hero = Chad Kroeger
My Hero = Foo Fighters
Neodammerung = Don Davis
Navras = Juno Reactor & Don Davis
Control = Juno Reactor Instrumental
Bubblegum Crises 2040 Soundtrack (all of it)
Epic Battle = StarWars episode 3 soundtrack  (loop this one for long battles)
Shuttershark_Music = Mechwarrior 3 theme
Back to Shalla-BA = Joe Satriani
Surfing with an Alien = Joe Satriani
POWER = KMFDM
Ultra = KMFDM
Battlestar Galatica = The Starlight Orchestra  (great for the first time in the Overworld for an Epic Feeling)
To the South = Tan Dun  (croaching tiger, Hidden Dragon Soundtrack) (Chineese Flute)
Barbarian (Conan the Barbarian Theme) = Tom Donovan
Also Sprach Zarathustra {2001- A Space Odyssey} = The Starlight Orchestra

some of my choices are hokey, or downright retarded, but they get the job done.
The older Vampire PC game (redemption?) had a bunch of music mp3s that were built to be looped, as did the Red steel CD for D&D. They made them to be looped and those ehlp when i need ambience w/o DJing.

Audio by Blue Man Group is good, their later stuff tends to be more lyric required and should probably be skipped for purposes of gaming(still good music otherwise.)

Akira, Excellent soundtrack. Spot on recommendation IMO. Clown Battle is an excellent piece, as is the doll one.

O Fortuna is a great piece, but i caution you to use it with hesitancy. The fact it is so overused may have players thinkiing about audi commercials and tangential conversations rahter than gaming.

Mass Requiem by Mozart is good, because even though there are lyrics, the lyrics are in Iatalian or latin. My CD was recorded during a Mass so i have the Lord's prayer in latin, and everyone, loves to hear the spiritual "In Nomine patri..." if for no other reason than it being godly. Try to find albums that give you those kinds of hidden special features.

I found an album called "a beast I am" that was World of Darkness inspired music. The World of Darkness track has been used for many of my creepier moments.

the classic soundtrack moments are useable for hints of the feel. Example: Morgan Creek studios still uses the opening strains of Robin hood Princeof Theives during their studio stamp prior to movies. Smae thing can be done with your game. Use the common soundtracks, but use lesser used stuff from them.

the imperial march is pretty comon, but fewer people use Endor 3 from the ROTJ soundtrack. At 5:00, there is a long 2 minute piece with the emperor theme sung by a full male choir that sounds epic, but few people can tell you when in the movie it is from, so the music is hintful, without being obvious.(It is from the vader losing his hand  par tof the movie)

pulp fiction has some instrumentals that is good for paradisical locations like the Loa.

The map room from Indy Jones works well

One of my STs used the obvious music to inspire us, then would cut to the old HBO theme(And now, our feature presentation...) with the THX theme calling all of us from the kitchen and bathroom, to the 20th Century FOX trumpets blaring, and then our cycle's theme music would start us off.

Encourage your players to come up with their own theme music as well, for when they want to "own" a scene. Both personal and group, this will connect the players to their characters. I require that any theme music must be at least 10 years old. This keeps everyone from bringing me the latest pop40 music.

You will come up with others.

If you can tolerate metal, I strongly recommend Symphony X, which uses a lot of mythological references/atmospheres in their song, for the Dodekatheon ( a song clled Orion: the Hunter, a 24 mins epic on the Odyssey), the Pesedjet (a song simply called Egypt), the Amatsukami (Lady of the Snow, about the Yuki no Onna) and a full album about Atlantis (V: the New Mythology Suite).

O Fortuna is good.

This version has the lyrics though!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KaOV3dBlts

I don't typically use music when gaming (though for this one campaign I ran one of my players went out and found a theme song for us, since we were treating the game's format as a TV show).  That said, I have a few ideas for songs that could work:

Silo51:

Now, the question is: What fits Scion?

I no longer try to use music in-game. It was awkward and my players didn't care anyway. I like to listen to thematically-appropriate music when I write, though, so maybe you can find this useful.

For Scion, soundtracks to big budget fantasy and historical epics are an obvious choice. The Pirates of the Caribbean and LOTR scores are good if you want to "go big," though they might be overpowering in a game. Trevor Jones' scores for movies such as Merlin and The Dark Crystal offer a quieter sound, for "sensawunda" moments, though the Last of the Mohicans score he did with Randy Edelman had some battle-scene music that I played a lot while working on Ragnarok. See also Klaus Badelt's core to The Time Machine, Nino Rota's scores to Ben-Hur and a bunch of other Biblical or Roman epics, Joseph LoDuca's scores to Brotherhood of the Wolf and the Hercules and Xena series' (don't laugh, he did some serious work if you can avoid the too-familiar main show themes), and lots more.

Of course, classical composers were doing this long before Hollywood. There's lots of programmatic music in a variety of moods. For anything Aesir-centric, anything by Wagner is a "Duh,"  but "Ride of the Valkyries" is likely way too familiar. Also check out Edvard Grieg, esp. the Peer Gynt Suites - "Hall of the Mountain King" is a chestnut, but other movements express longing, grief, seduction and other moods. Jean Sibelius took his inspiration from Finnish mythology rather than any of the pantheons in the game, but hey, mythic is mythic. The introduction to his "Kullervo" Suite, inspired by the legend of an extremely doomed hero, is lush, tragic-heroic and very Scion. Ralph Vaughn Williams' Symphonia Antarctica, meanwhile, has the perfect eeriness for a visit to the Underworld as well as the South Pole or other icy places. And that's only scratching the surface.

Back to the present, there's Yngwie Malmsteen's Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra. Various moods but mostly lively, and the initial "Icarus Dream Fanfare" particularly captures the mood of Scion, I think: an epic, orchestral sound, but the guitar work brings it all into the modern world. It might make good introductory music before the game, to get players in the mood for Scion.

Dean Shomshak

Just note if you try using Smile DK, its time to get a rope.

Manowar's tenth studio album - Gods of War - is a concept album basically dedicated to Odin and Loki.  There's a lot of orchestral and choral stuff in between some of the tracks - not so much metal, but very atmospheric and chant-y.