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Hard to think of a good title for this. Basically, what songs do you find fit your groove when you're roleplaying? Everything from text based to WoW to DnD is fine.

Personally, I find the sound track of The Longest Journey excellent (and free), as well as Cream's "White Room" for travelling. I don't know why, it just feels right for the group.

A lot of Nightwish is good too.

Terranigma - best RPG soundtrack ever.

VNV Nation, any of it. At least for the style of games I like running/playing. Nice and atmospheric and can either be background music, or the main thing that gets the players' blood going. Plus their style ranges from soft enough to provide just that extra emotional touch to a tense scene, to hard enough to complement a run-down slugfest.

System Shock II soundtrack (has to be exported from the game data)... Very helpful for enemy encounters, or ambient "spooky" music.

I don't necessarily listen to music while roleplaying. However, I am often listening to music when developing a character concept. For example, there was a character I played in a Star Wars-based game who was a Jedi that had an affair with a Sith (who, before her fall, was a fellow Padawan and a close friend), and Nightwish's "Ghost Love Score" actually helped when I was fleshing out his personality.

Iron Maiden.

Because Dark Heresy and 40k are metal (see av).

Lambda 00 wrote:System Shock II soundtrack (has to be exported from the game data)... Very helpful for enemy encounters, or ambient "spooky" music.

There is an "original" soundtrack for SS2 floating around internet that was made by the original composer. Check the lookinglass forums or use google fu. As far I have been able to determine it's been released to the net as a legal download.

The complete list would be far too long to go through in detail. I tend to go for music without lyrics for the most part. I feel if there is actual singing it draws attention away from the game. Dark and moody for horror or just to build up tention. Quicker upbeat music for action sequences. Comical or light hearted for comical effect. Classical movie music for those awe inspiring scenes and for those must have "someone is going to get his ass kicked" parts. If it's medieval it's Conan ost. Accept no substitutes. Always, always heavy classical for space battles.
You just cannot go wrong with Dvorak when huge spaceships blast the shit out of each other.

If I'm feeling really creative, I've used certain songs as hints to the players of things to come. It's really effective if done right.

Here's a short list

Aliens
The Dig
System Shock 2
Thief: Deadly shadows
Hitman Bloodmoney
Star Wars
Stargate
Conan the Barbarian
The Good The Bad and the Ugly
Lord of the Rings
Predator 2
Indiana Jones

There's a lot more but I'm tired at the moment.
I do spend a lot of time selecting music for my games, and I also listen to music during planning to get myself in the right mood.

-Gunhead

I find Summoning (at least the newer albums, old ones can be a bit harsh) are a great background, a sort of ambient black metal. Might sound a bit harsh in terms of description, but excellent for mood setting. We also will throw on the Pirates of the Carribean sound track.

I do a similar thing to what Civil War Man does. The Longest Journey soundtrack is indeed really cool. I was listening to "Across the Stars" from the EpII soundtrack when coming up with a recent character concept.

Spin Echo wrote:I find Summoning (at least the newer albums, old ones can be a bit harsh) are a great background, a sort of ambient black metal. Might sound a bit harsh in terms of description, but excellent for mood setting.

Summoning are easily my favorite black metal band, their old material is solid and their new stuff is daring but not trem-picked snoozefests either. It helps sweeten the deal when Protector has spoken out against NS sentiment in metal. These guys deserve your listening time, with or without role playing music.

I used to have a playlist for mood-setting in WoW. Frankly, the people asking for "Heavy RP" guilds scared the shit out of me. But anyway, appropriate music:

My Dying Bride, Therion, Bal Sagoth, Cruachan, Autumn Tears, Ambeon, Arcturus, Artrosis, Graveworm, Cradle's "Damnation and a Day" album, Majesty, all the slow and instrumental Nile songs, Rotting Christ, Samael's "Eternal" album, and a buttload of classical and film score music.

Enya

When I played WoW, I listened to The Fellowship of the Ring Complete Recordings.

Come to think, I'm actually rather surprised that power metal hasn't been mentioned yet. Not that I necessarily endorse it, but given that more often than not it's about swords, steel, steel swords, burning steel swords, and swords burning through steel, one would think it would be pretty high on the list of RP soundtracks.

Power metal doesn't work a lot of the time, in my experience, though it does make for excellent fight music.

Really old power metal from back when the writers had balls and were only a stone's throw away from traditional metal is all you want, anyways. Fuck the sterile new shit that comes off the Nuclear Blast/$PV/Century Media assembly line.

actually like alot of song from the default WoW sound track (like the "lament of the highborne" (very fitting for the blood elves)) but other then that I don't got a definitive "playlist" I'd use.

LadyTevar wrote:Enya

Exactly and Loreena McKennitt.

Cpl Kendall wrote:

LadyTevar wrote:Enya

Exactly and Loreena McKennitt.

Secon-well, thirded, probably.
Also, Clannad.
Plus of course the DSA 1&2 soundtracks and the PoR:RoMD one.

Our starwars games, when I used to actually run it, primarily used the OSTs of all the movies.

it worked out brilliantly, too. The padawans (clone wars era) and their communal master were investigating a tibana gas mine, and found an ancient sith artifact with a shrine at the very bottom most chamber of the station. They go to investigate, and find the evil head honcho of the dungeon.

The moment I had finished describing him to the party, Duel of the Fates started blaring out of the 'random' playlist of starwars tracks.

Me:"...and a long, smooth, black handled saber."
Stero: "KOORAAAAAAAAAAH MATAAAAAAAAAH"
David: "I draw my lightsaber."

What proceeded was an epic lesson in how to run away. Their master burst into the scene to save their collective asses while the padawans pissbolted back up the stairways, catwalks, and elevators to make it back to their ship. The entire way up they see their master fighting a losing battle of attrition, and one of them tosses a thermal detonator, which explodes a catwalk which distracts and hurts the evil bad guy... thus enthused that they have an effect on the world, they continue their 'destroy the enviroment' shenanigans to help their master's fight while running away on their own. They make it to the ship before the master does, and she eventually catches up after trapping the evil dude in one of the rooms. They have just enough time to arm the concussion missiles when he bursts from the blast doors in a seething pool of darkside power... and promptly eats ship-to-ship artillary.

Second best part was the second song after Duel of the Fates. Battle of the Heros.

Princes of the Universe.

Hammerfall and E Nomine make great battle music. Randomizing the Soul Calibur soundtracks works well too.