So I have found that a bit of music during DnD can get people more immersed in the game or at least a little more focused. These days I usually just pop on an ambient soundtrack off of Youtube. Back in the day we didn't think too much about ambient soundtracks and they weren't at the forefront of our notice if they even had much of a market presence to be noticed. My girlfriend in high school owned a couple Midnight Syndicate albums which were good gothy halloween tracks, and later on they made a specific DnD album which was awesome at the time.

If I'm being honest, I think most ambient soundtracks are a little plain. But I also think that's the point. After all, the soundtrack should be enhancing the scene not taking it over. I don't do careful soundtrack management during games anymore, I just put on something generic to fill the void of silence that I feel when people start popping into my house.

There was a time though, before youtube or even ambient soundtracks where my RPG hostings were assisted by the fabulous playing of some amazing music that I would not even think about using today. Soundtracks that created the perfect games that could only be appreciated by the teenagers of the early 2000s that we were.

As I've mentioned on another post, Hammerfall's Glory to the Brave (1997)was the rallying cry of the first DnD game I ever ran. They're a power metal band from Sweden and my friend Corey brought them over 'cause they had an epic fantasy vibe to them. It starts off with a kick ass riff and crescendos into a cry of "WE RIIIIIIIIIIDE" and it was the perfect thing to start off our game with a sudden attack of monsters in an open field.

The album itself served my 16-year old self well, and Corey had a slough of metal albums I would get into from there on. It was through her that I discovered Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford, Def Leppard, and anything that just felt loud and right.

Glory to the Brave soundtracked battles with vampires, living walls, random insect people, all kinds of bizarre things I could think of in this kinda random haphazard world. I remember it was called Mordaria, and due to my poor understanding of how long distances were and how big the world was, it was generally months and months of walking between cities and hamlets across monster-infested plains. I had made a map with many far away places on it with only some names that were designed to elicit the wonder and imaginations of both my players and me so I could hopefully come up with something interesting to match.

The next world and soundtrack would be much more carefully managed.

So as I was getting into loud music, probably to the disappointment of my Dad who felt that music had peaked with prog rock and been killed by a double teaming of disco and synthpop and later burned with the advent of rap and grunge, my friend Ed decided to introduce me to even louder stuff than the 80s hair metal Corey loved to share: Rammstein.

It was the early 2000s so Rammstein was all the rage. In warm summer months I sat on the levy overlooking the canals and the farmlands just outside the city listening to Engel on repeat while my friends looked for weapons ditched in the rocks under the old unused swing bridge. It was so beautiful that day, one of those perfect days that feel like they'll never end.

But Rammstein only made it into a couple of my later high school games and not for anything particular memorable to me. I only bring it up 'cause my friend Ed could only loan me Rammstein for a couple days, but to make up for it he gave me what I have come to decide is one of the best metal albums of all time: Rob Zombie's Hellbilly Deluxe (1998).

So, to put things in perspective just a little bit: I was definitely not a metal kid. My musical tastes could be summarized by whatever was on the pop-alt station. I found myself naturally developing a taste for New Order, David Bowie, Prince, and a few other oldies, but also was pretty familiar with Foo Fighters, Lifehouse, Lit, and whatever else just came on the radio, played at a reasonable volume of course.

I myself had been instilled with a healthy fear of anything approaching "goth" by my Dad who just thought the whole thing was creepy. He had had some bad experiences with some Satanic temple folks while he was in the army and it had resulted in my Mom being kidnapped and a life-or-death brawl. It's a much more banal story than I am making it sound. Regardless, he just did not trust any subculture that thrived in "dark" things despite him coming off as particularly anti-Christian to folks like my brother (Though much more muddled in my own experience with him; Talk about it another time).

But seeing as how Rob Zombie had been featured in The Matrix (1999) and my Dad thought that was cool, I couldn't see anything wrong with it despite it scaring young Cob. It wasn't exactly what you'd call easy listening though, but I knew it would be perfect for DnD.

So in having studied some Ravenloft campaign adventures and having a little bit of an interest in macabre fiction (Though this is before I discovered Lovecraft), my next campaign ended up being tinged with horror. Well, horror in the vein of Blade (1998) at least.

The setting was a barren, haunted countryside inhabited by little igor-type folks that's probably a harmful ethnic stereotype that we're more aware of now. The party was a band of mercenaries hired by a cruel sorcerer to eliminate a former student of his who had taken up refuge in a graveyard of ships on the other side of the mountains.

The party faced many challenges on the way, discovering hidden catacombs full of mindflayers in the cliffs to Spookshow Baby, and eventually finding the wayward student and learning he was a vampire and the ensuing battle with Meet the Creeper.

Upon returning, the sorcerer enslaved the party and set them into his personal combat arena with What Lurks on Channel X blaring. From there on they would be purchased by a Rakshasa for some undecided shenanigans, but we all started a 3rd Edition DnD game right after and this campaign was abandoned.

It was full of teenage nonsense and was meandering and railroady but I still have fond memories of it. I sometimes take a few of the characters from it and pop 'em into one of my modern games, a habit that has followed me for decades now.

The last one that really stands out from this time for me is A Perfect Circle's eMOTIVe (2004). It was a little bit after high school, and my life had had some extreme changes in it that were causing me no end of angst. My friend Daniel and his brothers were big fans of A Perfect Circle and their music really spoke to me. It gave me a good outlet for a lot of that anger I had. Or maybe a way to just internalize it, I don't really know.

So this album soundtracked, of all the possible things, our Star Wars d20 game. The players were less a united band than a collection of miscreants who found every excuse to abuse each other in a way only teens can. The games were epic, with grand battles as Episode III had just come out and we were all so stoked for killing clones and dark jedi and what-have-you.

We all had a lot of character flaws that were becoming rather impossible to ignore at the time. Some of us like to start shit constantly for attention. Some of us liked to physically harm other people to fill the void. Some of us just cheated on each other constantly. But this game seemed to be the flimsy glue and duct tape that held us together, and A Perfect Circle was the moody tone that sang our rage. I guess it was better than drugs and alcohol, which none of us would get into until later.

At the time, it felt like the apotheosis of our adventures. Our games were intense, probably due to how emotionally wrapped up we were in our own group. The game was less my escape and more the only thing I wanted to experience. As the Galactic Republic burned, so too did my beloved Scooby Gang (long story).

But of course there was a lot to it. A long epic story with lives ruined and lovers split apart and broken pieces of the past that would never fit together again. I'm not much into A Perfect Circle anymore. Too moody for me. I try to run my games closer to the nonsense that the metal inspired than the darker and edgier tones of the mid-2000s pop-cultural landscape.

Maybe I'll put together a soundtrack for a short campaign sometime soon. Something horrifying but tongue-in-cheek like a bad MTV video. I think that might be something worth playing.