Saturday, July 21, 2012

Musical Cues

Its amazing how certain songs can really enter a player's consciousness. I've always had difficulty finding good songs for Action scenes so in my first Demon: the Fallen campaign I would keep falling back on 'Bodies' by Drowning Pool. I only used it when there was about to be a lot of violence and devastation so the players immediately started getting worried when they said they were opening a door and I'd go pop it on.

In the Troupe Vampire LARP I ran there was a mad Ventrue doctor who liked to perform his experiments to the song 'We'll Meet Again'. They came across the song a couple times, once when I kept making the song skip on YouTube (basically by clicking on a slightly earlier point on the track), and later when it was played in full. It cropped up when he was alive, er, a vampire, and later at a couple points when he was a corrupted ghost and later as a fully-fledged demon. I only played it about 3 - 4 times during a campaign that lasted well over a year but it is certainly remember as Dr. Taylor's song.

In the Shaitan campaign I'm currently playing in, Shaitan gave up his host to Belphigor believing that the 17-year-old optimist that had salved his own psychological wounds might heal Belphigor's broken mind. As Shaitan sped off to find itself a new host, it landed in the body of burgeoning new metal star, Nick Sanderson, only to find the host currently being experimented on by a thrall of Shaitan's old nemesis and now Malefactor Earthbound. The song 'Change' by the Deftones was playing in the background.

In the game world, the Deftones songs were what my character invented (makes it easier to play a singer when you can just put on real songs and claim them as your own) so I've learned to associate Deftones with that game. Having recently just listened to it, I'm totally keen to play some Shaitain. Funny how things work, huh? Do you guys have any similar songs that linger close to heart?

5 comments:

  1. The music of David Bowie plays a major part in my play-by-post [url=http://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/viewforum.php?f=146]Space Oddity[/url]. Aside from the title song itself, which is very relevant to the PC from 2009 who suddenly finds himself in 1969, every IC thread in the game has its title taken from a David Bowie song that is also relevant in some way to what goes on in the thread. I embedded a YouTube link to a video of Space Oddity at one point when the song was playing in the game. The whole thing was inspired by Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, British shows with a similar premise that also draw their names from David Bowie songs.

    Music plays a significant role in Space Oddity in a few ways (one of the PCs is even a musician), and I've used other music in that game too. For instance, early on I had "Jailhouse Rock" playing during Brian Anderson's brief scuffle with the police and subsequent arrest.

    I've also used music occasionally in Zombie Apocalypse. Helicopter pilot Erica Spears played "Don't Fear the Reaper" as she flew her passengers away from the truck stop towards Omaha, and I linked to a YouTube animation with "Behind Blue Eyes" as the background music as a memorial to one of your characters, Corporal Anthony Gardner, when he met his end.

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  2. Can you give me the link to that Youtube again? I loved that guy! He was so irrevocably evil. If you ever need me to run a villain again in Zombie Apocalypse, just let me know!

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  3. I found the link in the Chapter 3 Death Toll thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCI5Z43MJ0w

    Yeah, Gardner was such an awesome villain, and he was even better when you got your hands on him. I was sad to see him go. :( There are a small number of secretly villainous playable characters in Zombie Apocalypse right now, as well as some NPCs in the Sword section (though since you're playing Katarina there, that could be tricky). You're at four characters right now, but if something happens to one of them, I can have you take over one of the bad guys.

    I'll try my best to get Zombie Apocalypse moving again this weekend. I didn't have much sleep last night, so it looks like it'll have to be tomorrow.

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  4. Aww, I tried to bring up the YouTube video, and it's been removed by the user. :(

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  5. In an old DnD 3.0 campaign which was hyped up to ultra fantasy we played the FF7 battle music whenever in combat, and the Nibelheim or Costa Del Sol theme music when wondering around towns. It brings back mixed memories whenever I hear those tracks now (mixture of FF7, so many hours spent... and the DnD campaign.)

    I remember in an oWod Demon game (for further details on this game see here: http://stwildonroleplaying.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/old-from-salt-to-sand-demon-fallen.html
    There was a lot of era music played. For myself, it really helped portray the era we were playing in, that mixed with air raid sirens and gun fire made for a very atmospheric game. I believe it wouldn't have been the same, or nearly as memorable without them.

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