When my family and I started playing Dungeons & Dragons when I was 7, I was introduced to the game in a very old way. We played AD&D 2e, my dad insisted on me mapping each square of the dungeon in pencil, and we played Keep on the Borderlands (B2) as our first adventure. My dad was a very traditional, by the book DM, and its interesting comparing that first experience back in 2007 with the games I play in or watch now–specifically as it comes to audio.
The first thing that humans are, are auditory creatures. After the first trimester in the womb, we can hear our mother’s heartbeat, breath, stomach, laugh. Another trimester passes, and we can hear beyond her body. Hearing is not only a sense, but even before our infancy, it is our primary way to perceive the world around us. Though we are birthed into a very visual world and visual society, audio is more prominent than ever. Due to the internet, anyone can release a song or podcast for the masses. Movies & TV shows have scores as long as the run length to tell us how to feel, and some things always have music. Watch HGTV and count how many seconds go by without music. Trust me it will be easy. Once you realize this, you realize you can get the same entertainment by scrolling through Zillow and turning on Spotify at the same time. We’re bombarded by sound, and by juxtaposition, silence strengthens.
Watching songs like Critical Role, or playing at my friends’ games who enjoy all the bells and whistles of music and soundtracks while playing is a definite switch as to what I grew up with. Every scene change needs a new ambience; every encounter needs an epic instrumental. This is fine, in my opinion, but in my own games, I try something different.
I almost never use sound tools in my own game. First, it’s less work for me. I don’t have to prep a playlist, and it’s one less plate to keep spinning while DMing. Second, when I do use audio–any audio–it immediately heightens the stakes.
In a campaign I ran in college that lasted for over a 18 months (I’m saying it like that because it’s my baby), I used music in 3 or 4 times the entire game, and the looks on my players’ faces were priceless.
I played two songs: Haunted by Shawn James and God’s Gonna Cut You Down by Johnny Cash.
Both of these are country songs, which was a bit of a changeup from the moderately high-magic megadungeon the campaign took place in, which I felt worked well to first make it noticeable, beyond just the fact that music was playing. The songs are both intense, and they both have a hook that allows for the scene to be set.
Haunted was the theme song, the walkup music if you would, of Silinio, the main antagonist of the campaign. The party had seen where he lived and had only heard rumors of the former Knight of the Fifth Hell. They knew he had betrayed his former partner and lover and sought control over the Tor, the megadungeon and the only home the heroes had ever known. But I didn’t pull out the music until they saw him in all his glory after the party botched an attempt at infiltrating Silinio’s Archive, causing a meeting of three armies in the canyons of Rasmus’s Quarry. The look was priceless. They didn’t have direct confrontation with him yet, but introducing the song that heralded him, let it be known that when music rang, after about a year of playing, the boys were in trouble.
Silinio would only appear a few more times in the campaign. Though he was the main antagonist, the final boss was the King of the Fifth Hell himself, Levistus, who they encountered for one fight on the icy glaciers of Stygia, and whose song had an intense amount of gravity and preceded the final fight, and final encounter of the campaign. The room was electric. I felt empowered, and after a long campaign, and everything on the line, the music set the tone. Would it have been just as epic if I had always played music. I don’t think so personally. The plot wouldn’t have changed, but these moments are highlighted by their use of music, and standout because the other encounters for 99% of the rest of the campaign didn’t have a score, or music, or ambience.
I think that audio heightens TTRPGs, but I’m not a fan of continual noise. I like the silence, and the natural ambience, and not being always told what a bar or woods sounds like, so when the time comes for a climactic moment, music–art–can punctuate the scene.
