The Sound of Music: How You Can Use Music To Explain Your Campaigns

Today I get to talk about two things that I like in one post: gaming and music. Campaigns all have a tone and a feel to them, sometimes no matter how hard you try to describe the feel of a campaign to a prospective player the words just escape you. That's where music can come in. Sometimes music and songs can describe things that your words fail. For example, do you have a Cyberpunk game coming up? Try using Susie van der Meer's Somebody Has to Pay from the great Run Lola Run soundtrack. One thing to keep in mind...I hate movie scores and I think that they're abysmal for trying to set the tone for your own campaign. For me the connotations from the source movie are just too high. Yeah, you could say that I have a double standard, since I just linked to a movie from a soundtrack, but for me that is something different.

Digging through a box the other night, I found a bunch of old mix CDs that I had made for some old campaigns. Most of them had never moved past the planning stages but I saved them anyway. The CD in question was labelled "Santeria" and I am going to assume that it was for one of my many modern horror/conspiracy/magic games. From the choice of songs, I am going to date this CD at about 2005.

I listen to this now and a couple of the songs are clunkers, and I could have probably demonstrated the tones that I wanted in the campaign a bit less heavy handed. One of these songs I hate to admit that I listen to, like would be too strong of a term but there are some personal resonances to the song. It's amazing what history and relationships will do to a song.

I know that I was being cutesy with following Sublime's "Santeria" with Amy Winhouse's "Rehad" because I have always felt that Bradley Nowell would have had a much greater impact on American Popular music if he hadn't died of a drug overdose. I don't think the irony of Amy Winehouse's death was lost on anyone.

What I am going to do with these nineteen songs (provided I can find all of them on YouTube) is trace a pathway through them and show how they can be used to demonstrate the themes of a campaign. Now, this isn't an actual building tool. These songs didn't inform the actual campaign, instead they were intended to be used to explain the campaigns to others.

Be warned that some of these songs are not safe for work. Some of them might just get you odd looks from co-workers if you're listening to them at work. It also may be that some of these videos are not available in all countries. There's not a whole lot that I can do about that but wish you luck on finding them for yourselves.

After the jump, the songs from the long lost mix CD and a bit of explanation on how they can help to explain the tone and feel of a game.

The Meat Puppets - Lake of Fire

I see this as a song of vengeance and retribution. It also has a feel of "Gentlemen (and ladies), we're fighting against the forces of Hell here. Get yourself together." Magic, for me, has to be about paying a price sometimes. Like Heinlein always used to say "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore wrote about magic having a price in their various DC Comics (Books of Magic and Swamp Thing mostly), and sometimes that price is damnation...even if you're trying to fight the good fight.

Nirvana - Come As You Are

Deceit can mean survival in a world of magic. No, I don't have a gun...oh, wait...

L7- Pretend We're Dead

Sort of like the contemporary equivalent of Bob Dylan's quote that informed The Watchmen (among other things): "But to live outside the law, you must be honest." Most of what you see in a modern campaign takes place outside of the norm, and sometimes you have to "kill yourself off" in the old culture to be born in the new one. You can't see us if we aren't a part of your world.

These next few songs are all on the theme of obsession. Noting fuels magic quite like obsession does, and nothing is as obsessive for people as sex. In a way this continues the theme of "Pretend We're Dead" because sometimes when you leave the old culture behind you leave the old mores behind as well. This is also were we get to the NSFW part of our program.

Peaches - Fuck The Pain Away

Peaches - Lovertits

Nickleback - Favorite Damn Disease

Sometimes you do things that you're not proud of, when you look back at them in the light of day. If you've ever read the Hellblazer comic you know what that feeling can be like in a world of magic. Sometimes a person marks you without using magic, and it changes you and your world forever. Yes, this is the song that I said I don't like but I listen to it anyway. It reminds me of someone in my past.

Pretty Girls Make Graves - Liquid Courage

When you live outside the law, outside of the culture...you have to have some courage to keep you going. Particularly when you've made the mistakes that you've made.

Nirvana - Lithium

...And sometimes you just go crazy. This could be the Call of Cthulhu reaction. With all the magic and weirdness and horror, sometimes things just go bad and something has to break. Sometimes it is a body that breaks, and sometimes it is a mind. "I'm so happy 'cause today I've found my friends ...They're in my head." Of course in a world of magic and weirdness, just because you have voices in your head, it might not mean that you're crazy.

Teddybears - Punkrocker

I have to admit, in hind sight I am a bit puzzled as to why I included this song. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool song but I'm not entirely sure why I chose to include it back then. I'm going to bet that it was a continuation of the outsider theme that I was bringing up in some of the earlier songs. Plus, Iggy Pop.

Siouxsie & The Banshees - The Passenger

This song would have been there for a couple of reasons. First, I consider the Punkrocker song to be Iggy doing a "response" to his earlier The Passenger, which makes those two songs a sort of Alpha/Omega for each other. However, I greatly prefer the version of the song by Siouxsie & The Banshees. Why? Well, first off Siouxsie is cool. Secondly, I like the madcap psychedelic energy of their version of the song. I think we can attribute that to Robert Smith's involvement with The Banshees while he was taking a break from The Cure.

Journeys are important in game campaigns. Campaigns, for me, are about taking the characters on the journey from here to there, from their past into their future. Nothing helps to symbolize those journeys as well as the above two songs.

The Sisters of Mercy - Detonation Blvd.

Like anything in a horror world, sometimes the journey becomes twisted and you end up in places that you might not want to be. When you're the hero, that means you have to rise above all of that.

Soundgarden - Blackhole Sun

Its an evocative song about looking at the world through different eyes.

The Jam - Town Called Malice

Once you get there, you might find that your destination isn't the place that you expected it to be. This song is good, and included here, for a couple of reasons. First, it's one of the best Pop Songs ever, bar none. Second, this is the song that Kevin Matchstick and Joe Phat are singing in the first couple of pages of Mage: The Hero Defined. That alone makes it pretty cool.

The Kinks - I'm Not Like Everybody Else

This is the outsider theme, once again. In case you hadn't noticed yet, the characters will be playing outsiders.

Tragically Hip - At The 100th Meridian

I don't think that any one song has informed as many of my campaigns as this one. It's brooding, lush and timeless.

Me debunk an american myth?
And take my life in my hands?
Where the great plains begin
At the hundredth meridian
At the hundredth meridian
Where the great plains begin

Driving down a corduroy road
Weeds standing shoulder high
Ferris wheel is rusting
Off in the distance

At the hundredth meridian
At the hundredth meridian
At the hundredth meridian
Where the great plains begin

Left alone to get gigantic
Hard, huge and haunted
A generation so much dumber than it's parents
Came crashing through the window

A raven strains along the line of the road
carrying muddy old skull
The wires whistle their approval
Off down the distance

At the hundredth meridian (hundredth meridian)
At the hundredth meridian (you're going to miss me)
At the hundredth meridian (trust me)
Where the great plains begin (at the hundredth meridian)
At the hundredth meridian (at the hundredth meridian)
At the hundredth meridian (you're going to miss me)
At the hundredth meridian (trust me)
Where the great plains begin

I remember, I remember Buffalo
And I remember Hengelo
It would seem to me
I remember every single fucking thing I know

If I die of vanity, promise me, promise me
If they bury me some place I don't want to be
You'll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously
Away from the swollen city breeze, garbage bag trees
Whispers of disease and the acts of enormity
And lower me slowly and sadly and properly
Get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy

At the hundredth meridian (hundredth meridian)
At the hundredth meridian (you're going to miss me)
At the hundredth meridian (trust me)
Where the great plains begin (at the hundredth meridian)
At the hundredth meridian (at the hundredth meridian)
At the hundredth meridian (baby, you're going to miss me)
At the hundredth meridian (trust me)
Where the great plains begin

Alice In Chains - The Rooster

Ain't found a way to kill me yet
Eyes burn with stingin' sweat
Seems every path leads me to nowhere
Wife and kids, household pet
Army green was no safe bet
The bullets scream to me from somewhere

 Stone Temple Pilots - Wicked Garden

Much like with "Town Called Malice" above, sometimes when you get to the place you find out that it isn't a good place to be. The "Wicked Garden" is where the sexual obsessions of earlier on sometimes take you.

Sublime - Santeria

Sometimes your ghost comes back to do the things that you couldn't finish in your life. You may say that you don't practice magic, but the universe knows better.

Amy Winehouse - Rehab

I'll just chalk this up to irony and move on.

So, sometimes when you can't explain that new campaign that you want to run, grab some MP3s and make a CD that your players can listen to and get in on your mindset. Sometimes the subconscious choices of the music that you pick will end up explaining things better than you thought it would.

Discussion is welcome. Talk about your own campaign soundtracks too, if you like. I'm not really one for music during a game session (partial deafness FTW), so I don't really have to much to say about that.