A Role Playing Games Blog
Music
Roleplaying music: Elyrion Soundtrack
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Elyrion is an upcoming german steampunk fantasy roleplaying game. It will be released in the coming days, probably on SPIEL ’08 in Essen. There will also be an official soundtrack composed by Erdenstern. Erdenstern is known for their five “Into the…” albums that contain hours of instrumental music perfectly suited for your roleplaying sessions (Check out my post about them). The music was in fact composed with fantasy roleplaying designed. I will review the soundtrack as soon as it’s out. Until then you can listen to a medley released at the official Erdenstern site.
Roleplaying music: “Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures”
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When I posted my first “Roleplaying music” article, fellow blogger Crom recommended the soundtrack of “Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures” to me. So, I ordered the 2-CD set over the internet and yesterday I could finally listen to the first time to this great soundtrack.
The 2-CD set comes with an “Original Soundtrack” CD and a “Bonus” CD. The first disc contains 25 tracks from the games’ soundtrack, the second features three songs from the band Turbonegro, a death punk group from Norway, and 8 additional tracks from the game soundtrack. I would have preferred when they’ve put the band’s songs at the end of the CD, but since I usually use my iPod to play the background music for my gaming sessions, that’s no big problem. I will just create a playlist withouth those three songs.
The CD set also comes with a booklet containing a letter from the composer, Knut Avenstroup Haugen, the lyrics to some tracks like “Combat Reborn, III. Aquilonia” which is sung in Latin. There are also songs with lyrics in some Hyborian language (I didn’t know that they were any) and Norse. The music itself is what you expect from a soundtrack to a MMORPG that is set into the “Age of Conan”. You get a lot of pieces that are obviously inspired by the great “Conan – The Barbarian” soundtrack from Basil Poledouris, melodical pieces inspired by many different cultures and a lot of use of choirs.
I haven’t used the music in roleplaying sessions yet, but I believe it could work great in any fantasy setting. If you agreed with my other music recommendations you will surely love the music to “Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures”.
If you want to know more about the making of the soundtrack and it’s composer, there’s a video interview with Knut Avenstroup Hagen at Ten Ton Hammer.
Roleplaying music – “The Witcher”
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Recently CDProjekt has released the Enhanced Edition of its roleplaying game “The Witcher”. The game uses a heavily modified Neverwinter Nights engine and it’s based on the novels by Andzrej Sapkowski. One part of the games re-release was the soundtrack that you can now get for free!
The download consists of a ZIP file (approx. 191 MBytes in size) that contains the official score and “Music inspired by The Witcher”.
The official score was composed by Adam Skorupa and Paweł Błaszczak. Instead of some of the other soundtracks I recommended for roleplaying purposes the music from The Witcher is not atmospheric but more melodical, making heavy use of choirs (or samples sounding like choirs) and there are pieces that sound like medieval tavern music.
“Music inspired by The Witcher” is a compilation of songs that were inspired by the computer game. It contains songs from different genres and most of the tracks weren’t exactly my cup of tea. But your mileage may vary.
If you are interested to learn more about the Witcher check out the great Witcher Wiki. By the way, there’s also a Polish roleplaying game set into the world of the Witcher novels called Wiedźmin: Gra Wyobraźni. But as far as I know this game was never translated to English.
Roleplaying music – “Thief – Deadly Shadows”
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When “Thief – Deadly Shadows” (aka Thief III) was released, Ion Storm also made the games’ soundtrack available for download. The games’ score consist of 16 atmospheric tracks that were composed by Eric Brosius.
The soundtrack has some tracks that work good when you try to create an eerie mood, but it also works great when running a dungeon adventure.
The complete soundtrack can be downloaded here.
“Thief – Deadly Shadows” - Pavelock Prison
UPDATE: The download link should work now.
Roleplaying music – Bioshock
4September 15, 2008
The award-winning computer game Bioshock takes place in an underwater city called Rapture, where the dream of scientists and artists turned into nightmare. The soundtrack of Bioshock not only featured songs form the 40s and 50s but twelve original orchestrated pieces composed by Garry Schyman. The score (without the licensed songs) has been released for free shortly after the game came out.
In my opinion the Bioshock score is perfectly suited for horror campaigns set in the first half of the 20th century. I think I will make use of it the next time we play Call of Cthulhu.
You can download the Bioshock soundtrack here (ZIP file; 21.7 MByte).
There’s also a review of the score and an interview with the composer at Tracksounds.com!
Roleplaying music – Five essential soundtrack albums
20In my column “Roleplaying music” I want to write about the usage of music in tabletop roleplaying. If you start using music in your gaming sessions, there are five albums you should consider buying (if you don’t own them already).
Conan the Barbarian (composed by Basil Poledouris)
Conan the Barbarian is one of my favorite fantasy movies and this is partly because of the great soundtrack. The music is very epic sometimes even bombastic, but there are also quiet, melodic parts. It’s an full orchestral soundtrack, so no synthie sounds here. It’s highly recommended for any fantasy roleplaying game. But you should try to get your hands on the Varese Sarabande CD, since other versions like the CD from Milan miss a few tracks. From what I’ve heard the CD versions are quite hard to find, but you can get it on iTunes for around 6€. So what are you waiting for?
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Roleplaying music – “WoW: Taverns of Azeroth”
6September 3, 2008
Recently Blizzard Entertainment has released a new game soundtrack album over Apple’s iTunes Store: “World of Warcraft: Taverns of Azeroth” composed by David Arkenstone, who has composed several great albums with Celtic music. I don’t provide a iTunes Store link here, because they are country-specific. So, if you want to check out the album or even buy it, open up your iTunes and use the search function.
The album features 19 tracks of tavern music from the MMORPG “World of Warcraft”. From the (in)famous “Lion’s Pride”, that was the only tavern music for Alliance taverns before “Burning Crusade”, to the serene “Temple of the Moon” you get a nice compilation of songs, that are probably perfectly suited for listening to during roleplaying sessions.
The complete album sets you back €9.99 and comes as an iTunes Plus album (that is higher quality and without DRM).
By the way, Blizzard has also released several other albums on iTunes Store including the soundtracks from Diablo II, StarCraft and World of Warcraft.
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