Gaming and music

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 35: Music

How does music influence your campaigns? As a GM, do you feel there are "soundtracks" for scenes, and as a player, do you perhaps have "songs" for characters? Name three songs that relate to favourite characters or situations.

Interesting question. I'm a big rock fan, such that this blog is as much about music as it's about gaming, so this ought to be much easier to answer than it is.

I don't tend to think of music for individual scenes in games, but I do occasionally hear songs that strongly remind me of characters, not only my own, but sometimes other player's characters in games I GM. For instance, the song Paper Chains (The Crime Part 3) from the now-defunct British prog-rock band Grey Lady Down is to me the theme tune of Kalnyr, the demon-possessed wanderer of Kalyr. Not sure what his player would make of that, as far as I know she's not much of a prog rock fan.

Of course, I have to mention the rock musician character I play, Karl Tolhurst. I've spent a lot of time trying to come up with a list of songs that illustrate how I imagine his band Ümläüt to sound. They're influenced by the 1990s British goth-metal scene, including such bands as Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and most of all, Anathema. I actually bought several albums by these bands as 'research'. Probably Anathema's album "Alternative 4" is the closest; when I first listened to that album, my first reaction was, "That's Ümläüt!". There is of course the infamous Ümläüt tape recorded by my brother, which Karl's original GM (also Kalnyr's player) stubbornly refuses to listen to. At the moment I'm trying to come up with a list of covers the band played before they started writing their own material.

Now I could try to link my first long term character, Mudgard, with Yngwie Malmsteen's ridiculous "I am a Viking". But I won't.

Finally not so much individual characters, but a couple of songs who's imagery evokes scenes from published game settings; I can't hear Black Sabbath's "Neon Knights" now without thinking of Malakim from In Nomine. And the song "Master of the Wind" from the mostly risibly awful but occasionally brilliant Manowar powerfully evokes the storm-god Orlanth from Glorantha.