Since starting my new Shadowrun game, we've moved to a new location, and I now have the option of using music to enhance my games. I've already got a bunch of stuff from my iTunes in a few playlists (Combat, Legwork, Sneaking, etc), and what I'm asking is this:

What kind of music have you used in your games? Do you have any suggestions for good background music that I can look up?

I'd appreciate all of your 2

Thanks in advance

most of my players are old enough to have had bad haircuts in the 80s, and since shadowrun has always had an80s esque feel to it, for me anyway I tend to play a lot of 80s bands and old style rock. Motley Crue, ACDC, Iron Maiden, then throw in stuff from some soundtracks like xxx underworld etc just stay away from Vangelis

The Bladerunner themes are good, along with the rest of the work by that band (Vigelis, IIRC?).

JaronK

Crosslink!

Soundtracks are generally going to be good sources for music, since they need tracks appropriate to all kinds of situations.

@JaronK:

Vangelis is a single artist who plays all instruments himself (although he occasionally works with other artists on a song here and there, and an album here and there). His real name is Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (Greek obviously!).

I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment that he works well. His music is great as an ambient mood-setter (at least the non-vocal stuff). My players complained when I had music that was too loud to be able to hear over, so I found Vangelis to be a good option. Other "ambient" artists would work well, the more electronic the better I would think to capture the "futuristic" retro 80s vibe. Underworld is good, as is Jarre, but any Drum n' Bass tends to be too hard to talk over, as is anything with too much vocals or guitars.

If you like Vangelis' Blade Runner theme (and you may not - Vangelis is rather "special"), you can download these MP3s.

The hosting site is in french, so lemme give you a quick rundown - these MP3s are music from the score of a computer game called Nikopol, which is a game based on a (rather very good) French cyberpunkish bande dessinée. It's not entirely clear, but it appears this is a legal download, as the files are not for sale anywhere... That's what the site says, anyway.

I've given it a listen - it's nice background music, Vangelis-like Nothing to write home about, but I think it'd probably make good unobstrusive ambiance music.

Somafm's internet streaming stations 'Doomed' and 'Drone Zone' would be tits to play as background ambiance

My PC's did a little bouncing at a local club at the beginning of their careers and the Orc Hardcore Band "Orcus" played the concert. The band did a cover of Iron Maidens "Run for the Hills" and it became their theme song. They play it at the beginning of all our games now. It is hilarious.
I've really only brought in music in my D&D games but that did not go over to well. It would be interesting to try it out again as it has been a long time. Good topic. I will try out some of these suggestions.

We use mood music before we start to play. Stuff like Rage Against the Machine; Prodigy and The Clash.

Ambient music is okay if you are playing in a bar.

-Chrysalis

Great I know our rigger pogo gonna vote for circus tones. Our Ork meat shield decapitator Will want Asian flute. I'm voting for death metal...Thats gonna sound weird...lmao

Ayreon
My Dying Bride

This one gets my vote!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5VBxABWZhU

Was searching for a thread like this. I also have started and want to incorporate music into the storytelling of a GM. The tough thing is finding music set for the universe of 2072.

This mind be silly. But I have started to use musical soundtracks from classic future based anime series. One of my favorites has been the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. The instrumental background music that was created by Japanese composers to enhance their stories is a great source of audio enhancers for Shadowrun.

i tend to use a lot of industrial for my games. when that becomes too repetitive or doesnt fit the scene i have plenty of soundtracks to choose from and anime is a gold mine for this stuff too. i also use cowboy bebop. the animatrix soundtrack is something that can be repeated for a while too without getting grating.
its also a good idea to set up a playlist. kind of like arranging a musical score for a movie.

perhaps i should be more specific:
rammstein, nine inch nails, wumpscut, snog, funkervogt, kmfdm, aphex twin, acumen nation, vnv nation, bauhaus, frontline assembly, front 242, kevorkian death cycle... plus various metal and 80's rock (billy idol always reminded me of a shadowrun kinda guy. in fact, i think he even did an album named that or something)

Equilibrium Movie Soundtrack.

- J.

I've yet to really employ it yet, but I've whipped up a bunch of playlists for bands to have playing bars, clubs and even arenas in-game. Most of the music is from artists the players have never heard of, with the occasional 'oldies cover band' with some recognizable artist's music. I had been looking for some more ambient stuff to bridge the gaps between places those bands could be playing, though. Methinks some of the content in this thread may help in that endeavor.

It's the 70's
Subject them to Led Zep and disco.

As musical as I am, I don't usually use music *while* gaming, since it's a distraction. I do have a few songs that remind me of SR.


Rising sprawl runners. "Karmakaze" is one hell of a runner name, too.

Grumpy cyborg has run out of happy.

Toxic Spirits of Man are deeply unpleasant individuals.

What your rigger wants to do.

A good portion of the EVE Online soundtrack is available for free at the game's website. If you're like me and prefer a softer, subtler, and more loopable soundtrack than pink mohawks can provide, you might want to take a look.

You say that like Zeppelin was a bad thing ....

Maybe he likes Zeppelin and Disco.


Man, now you've got me listening to this and reminiscing.

Trust me, I know exactly what you mean. Just remember: spreadsheet.

The Billy Idol album you are thinking of is Cyberpunk, and I use it occasionally to set the mood for Shadowrun. Although I have used ambient music for Shadowrun (as well as D&D) in the past, the current group I am GMing is too large/ too loud for me to use ambient music. I do have background music playing as people arrive for the game (afterwards as well), and like to mix things up depending on the focus of the nights mission. Most times it is going to be techno (Crystal Method, Chemical Brothers, 808 State, Dust Brothers etc.) or industial (Rammstein, NIN, Das Ich, KMFDM, etc.). When the group was investigating around a goblin rock band I went for punk and thrash metal (DRI, Nuclear Assault, Suicidal Tendencies, Misfits, etc.). Up against blood magic, time to trot out the death metal (Arsis, Morbid Angel, Amon Amarth, Behemoth, etc.). Lately though, I have been a bit lazy and neglected to make playlists for the nights festivities, so I just tune to Octane on the Sirius receiver.

My players have actually endured a shoot out to "take a chance on me" and "dancing queen". One of them finally started using called shots to attack speakers in the firefight.

Billy Idol's Cyberpunk

Industrial rock and Cyberpunk go hand in hand.

For all of those not so action-y sequences, I resort to Electronic Downtempo Breakbeat music. Some of the darker stuff is really atmospheric and wicked for walking BGM or legwork stuff.

I've never felt metal fit in the cyberpunk genre for some reason.

That's mostly breakbeat, similar to what I mentioned.

Other notable artists that fit:

Fluke, Rob Dougan, Hybrid, Hyper, Cirrus, Photek, Future Sound of London, Prodigy, Juno Reactor, Junkie XL, and a lot of other electronic artists that were really popular from 93-99. Those were good years for this style of music.

I recommend if you need to find a good assortment of music in a specific genre, check out Pandora.com. Type in an artist and you'll get 10-15 others cycling through that have similar moods and tones. It's better to find specific sounds for a campaign rather than searching by genre.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about

Great list team. We should get someone to make a master list.

Well no list is complete.

Something like this?
http://www.listafterlist.com/Listof/tabid/...50/Default.aspx

-Chrysalis

Very nice Lady Chrysalis. Heavy Metal meets blood, leather, and bondage.

Hi everyone. First post from a new SR4 GM. I go for ambient electronic as well. Artists like The Future Sound of London, Aphex Twin (Ambient Works), and Coil fit nicely for most scenes other than fighting or clubbing.

Nine Inch Nails, and Rammstein for almost everything, Finntroll for bars(the perfect mix of heavy and fun), and Amon Amarth, Arch Enemy and Children of Bodom for fighting. It works well enough.

I've only used little music through my time as a GM, but in the early-mid nineties one of the players had a 90min tape with Haddaway - What is love - wall to wall on both sides - does that count?

Actually another player had quite a lot of small tidbits/soundtracks etc. on his PC he toyed with for a while. This meant "They're coming to take you away - haha!" when Lone star was on the way, and the mash theme after a fight. Ah.. the memories..

Silly? Hell no. The soundtracks to Cowboy Bebop and Ghost In The Shell remain the de-facto sound of Shadowrun for me. I love the way Kanno takes old sounds and mixes them together in new ways. Between those two series, and Tsuneo Imahori's similarly daring work from Trigun, you have this blend of jazz, blues, hip-hop, funk, hard rock orchestral, and ambient electronica that somehow manages to feel incredibly cohesive despite being so diverse in it's influences and styles.

Also worth checking out is the soundtrack to Gankutsuou, which was a collaboration between Kasamatsu Kouji and Jean-Jacques Burnel (from the Stranglers). The closing theme, You Won't See Me Coming, became the theme song to one game that I ran.

Ooh, I didn't know Kanno did GitS too. I must get that soundtrack now.

Another good Japanese* artist to check out for Shadowrun (and this isn't so much me being weaboo as it is the Japanese being pretty obsessed with all things eighties, including cyberpunk) is Juno Reactor. He did a bunch of stuff for the Matrix soundtracks, as well as this killer track for the opening of Texhnolyze (very good cyberpunk series by the creator of Serial Experiments Lain. Less trippy technomancer awakening, more blood soaked gunfights).

The track is Guardian Angel, and can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nwRSv7uWjQ


*Edit: OK, so I'm an idiot. Not sure where I got the idea that Juno Reactor was Japanese, or a one man band. Further research proves me to be completely off the mark on that one. Anyhow, they still rock.

So it looks like the major genres of music used are the following three:

Industrial
Electronic
Metal


<sarcasm>
What, no mainstream butt-rock? Nobody wants to listen to Nickelback as they play SR?
</sarcasm>

Nickelback is okay, but Bare Naked Ladies is better

Not to mention roleplayer viking metal

After the Chuck season finale, I think Mr. Roboto by Styx should be made mandatory shoot-out music for any game of SR.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the music tastes of most dumpshockers have as much to do with that as anything, which I suspect is what you're getting at.
Of course Industrial and Electronic do tend to work well in soundtracks as background music. Metal is music based largely on aggression, so it's good for fight scenes. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if most of us didn't have to go much farther than our own record shelves to find these sources.

Recently I've made use of The Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Be Your Own Pet, Giant Drag, Calexico, The Foo Fighters, and The Dropkick Murphy's in Shadowrun, to name just a few examples.
Nickelback makes brilliant chase scene music. Seriously, load up Burn It To The Ground next time your runners are on the run from the law. It will be epic.

I like playing the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack.

It gives a good vibe.

Joy Division?

-Chrysalis

I can totally see some Joy Division stuff working really well. Try She's Lost Control on your soundtrack some time.

Another sound I draw on heavily is grunge; Seattle is the default setting after all.
Load up a bunch of Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Silverchair, and Nirvana. It's music heavily inflected by dissatisfaction with corporate culture and the modern wasteland, and a lot of it plays heavily on the themes of Cyberpunk as a genre. There are some more recent Seattle bands that also fit the tone nicely; Straylight Run is an obvious front-runner (I mean seriously, anyone who didn't spot the Gibson reference in their name needs to get out of this forum right now). Have a listen to Hands In The Sky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5uect48Vcc
(Starts off slow, then at 2:19 monsters destroy everything)

speaking of Joy Division, Information Society and most of the other big late 80's New Wave artists have that glam feel that is very early Shadowrun and Cyberpunk. Of course the electroclash (Ladytron, Blonde Redhead, Fischerspooner and Adult) and post rock (Isis, Red Sparrows, etc.) sub genres do an okay job as well.

To be perfectly honest, a lot of the goofy east coast hip hop out of the 80's works too.

This website is a great resource for Electronic Music and putting a name to those sub-genres might not be mainstream. It offers a lot of examples and samples of the music so one can spend hours on this interface and explore what they might find useful for their game. http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/