What do you guys recommend for Table Top RPG background music?
 

The thought crossed my mind after a GM in my group came up with an interesting idea regarding music and D&D sessions, what sort of music do you usually have playing in the background? Do you usually just throw on the radio to whatever station, or do you have some sort of playlist? As of right now, our group doesn't even think about it, usually we just listen to the fans running.

On another note, what sort of music would one recommend for such situations? I'm looking for some stuff to add to the atmosphere, because I'm planning on GMing soon and want to add to it's epicness!

That's the entire purpose of Playing Games! :)

Classical, folk or movie soundtracks would do, I imagine. Nothing with obtrusive lyrics, and above all, keep the volume down. You'll want to hear it in the background, not have the Ride of the Valkyries blaring while you're playing out the romantic subplot.

I'll see if I can think of some specific artists.

Video game BGMs are a great choice.

The Guilty Gear series has some of my favorite BGMs to play during a battle. For a truly epic battle, the final boss theme of almost any game is a good idea... My favorite happens to be MGS3's final boss BGM.

Once I was running a d20 Modern campaign, and I hooked up my buddy's iPod to a set of el cheapo video game speakers. The result was awesome.

There's nothing quite like one of your players jumping a motorcycle onto the roof of a building to blast a T-Rex in the face with a sawed-off shotgun... while listening to Holy Diver by Dio!

If you want some kind of epic classical BGM for battles & such, I recommend Immediate Music / E.S. Posthumus. That's the best classical epic music I've heard in a while; some of the songs also have choirs in them, which add to the whole epic clash feeling.

Alot of classical is good.

You should also check out a couple of game soundtracks. Some of my favorites:
Shadow of the Colossus
Chrono Cross
Prince of Persia Trilogy
Transformers: Armada (PS2)

There's also some great Zelda orchestrated OSTs like the Hyrule Symphony that you can track down that make great DND music. And Overclocked Remix is a good choice too.

And if you can get over the fact that you recognize it, the Lord of the Rings OSTs are good for it too.

I usually have some stuff by the Black Mages going on in the background of battles. Anything from the FFI battle theme to Dancing Mad usually works really well, and there's enough that you can pick and choose the songs to fit the scope of what the battle is like.

poke around the internets for a thing called the Chrono Symphonic Project.

Basically anything with little to no lyrics are best. Most of the stuff we listen to are orchestra or classical sounding music. Video game music works well too. During big fights though we'll break out with some heavy stuff like the Jecht song from FFX. Of course it helps if you have an iPod or can easily switch the music depending on whats going on in the game. Too many times have we noticed half-way through a fight we were listening to something soft and mellow.

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I'll have to look alot of these up, but thanks for all of the advice!

Was planning on setting up a laptop for that, but I guess I have to dig around for some decent speakers for that, hate the sound of the built in speakers. Imagine I'll be spending a fair amount of time shuffling through and building playlists for general parts of the story. (Infiltration, Everyday walking around, canteena/bar ambiance, fighting, etc...)

Any and all advice regarding artists is greatly appreciated!

Also, I'd have to say I havn't experianced a wide variety of games, so if anyone has any recommendations as to which songs on OCR work well, I'm all ears. I'll likely sift through the Torrent sometime soon, but anything to make my search easier would be helpful.

Lots of the RPG maker series, (Rpg Maker Postiality Knights Edition in specific) have music for exactly those things... It'll have some nice music with the tinker of glasses for a cantina/bar, some average battle music, and the suchlike. It's definately worth a try, if you are looking for it, send me a PM and ill try to find the game... IF you can't that is.