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With the evolution of tabletop RPGs comes new ways to enhance our session experiences. One of those is through tabletop RPG music.
Imagine for a moment you were watching a movie today in 2023 with no sound. That you were thrust back to the days of the silent movie with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. However, that moniker is a misnomer because even silent movies had sound. They just didn’t have vocal sound. If movies had no sound whatsoever — and there was a small time that was the case — the industry would not be as influential as it is today. It would be no more than a novelty.
There was a time back in the day where tabletop RPGs went through what I call the silent film phase. We played RPGs with what we had. If there was any sound, it was because the GM was trying to be as innovative as possible, but there was no one-size-fits-all. Most GMs, by and large, did not even think about adding sound elements to their campaigns. The best we could get was using our mouths.
Well, that time has passed.
The Importance of Audio
One of the most powerful tools for your tabletop RPG sessions arsenal is the utilization of audio. In the YouTube landscape, it is a well-known reality that viewers will excuse video that is bad if the content of the video is good. But what they will not excuse is if the sound is bad, let alone a video that just has subtitles with no one talking. The most successful YouTubers tell smaller YouTubers to invest in good audio before they invest in a bunch of expensive camera equipment. Audio matters more.
For your RPG sessions, a sure way to increase immersion and the overall experience is the addition of sound elements. We only live once, and we should want to make sure the things we spend our time doing are worth the effort. If we can raise the bar in the things we experience, we should expect our level of enjoyment to increase. This is not only in the thing we focus on at the moment, but it ties together our overall enjoyment of life. At the very least, that part of our lives is enhanced.
Today, with virtual tabletops and computing, adding audio to your tabletop RPG session is easy. If you’re a GM who hasn’t taken full advantage of adding audio to your campaigns, you need to get hip. If you’re a player and you don’t use audio in your RPG sessions, you need to put a bug in your GM’s ear and volunteer to help them add it to your campaign.
This is not only for virtual tabletops but live sessions as well. It can be as simple as having a Bluetooth speaker and your phone where you put together all of your sound for your particular scenes.
Generally, there are three basic types of audio you will look to add to your campaign — music, ambience, and sound effects. Today, we will look at the first of these three — music.
Why Add Music to Your TTRPG Session?
The main type of audio to add to a session is tabletop RPG music. Music sets the stage and the tone of particular scenes being played out in the session. The right tabletop RPG music added to a scene can invoke a positive transformation for everyone’s experience at the table. Having the right action music for your Absolute Power campaign, or creepy melodies for that Vaesen RPG adventure can pull players into a scene unlike anything else.
This goes beyond just putting music on in the background and letting it play. There is nothing wrong with that, but it really doesn’t bring out the best in every scene that’s being played out in a session. It’s just background noise without a particular purpose. To get the maximum impact, you need to craft playlists for a particular scenes that fit the tone and mood you’re looking to create.
A Common Problem and a Solution
One thing I hear from other GMs when adding tabletop RPG music to a session is that they forget the music is playing and the wrong music plays for the wrong scene. You can easily remedy this by making a particular playlist that auto plays and then stops. The only thing you have to do is press a button to start it.
Another way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to set a reminder in your notes for the scene.
For example, let’s say the name of a particular playlist is Happy Travel Music. You only want this to play once as the players travel to their destination. There are only three songs in this playlist and they may not play all the way through as the PCs travel. Nevertheless, you may write something in your notes like so:
Music: Happy Travel Music Playlist.
At this point, all you really need to do is find the playlist, hit the play button, and run the scene. There’s nothing extra that needs to be done once the play session begins.
Warning: This Means More Work
Any time you add additional elements to your campaign, you should prepare them so they can have maximum impact. The best way to do this is to put a system in place to handle these different elements so they are not intrusive to your facilitating the game, but will enhance the overall session experience for everyone at the table. This is no different when adding audio.
This means there will be some additional game prep beforehand. With tabletop RPG music, you have to take the time to create playlists. That entails sitting down and listening to music tracks to see if they fit a particular scene. It’s like being a music supervisor for a film.
In a virtual tabletop environment, this can be automated. Virtual tabletops like Foundry VTT can automatically load a playlist as soon as you activate a scene. That makes it even easier because in a live session, you have to actually remember to press the play button. It may not seem like a monumental difference. However, it’s just one less thing a GM needs to be concerned with that won’t clutter their minds as they facilitate a session.
3 Places to Find Tabletop RPG Music (plus a Bonus)
The good thing about adding tabletop RPG music to your sessions is there are many places you can find it.
The first one would be YouTube. There are channels that put together long mixes of different styles of music. One I use quite a bit is Michael Ghelfi Studios. He makes music specifically for tabletop RPG sessions. I consider them to be one of the best sources for tabletop RPG music out there.
Another is Epidemic Sound. This is a website for content creators, but you can also use it to grab some tracks for your tabletop RPG sessions. They have a free 30 day trial and you can download as many tracks as you want in that time if you don’t use them in any monetary sense. ES has some great music on there, so I highly encourage you to check it out.
Next is Tabletop Audio who has almost 400 tracks of tabletop RPG music you can use specifically for your sessions separated by genre. This is one of my personal faves.
Last on the list as a bonus is Ivan Duch. This is a new one for me, and he makes some decent tracks. He has a Patreon page where you can check out his work.
