So what music do you play to set the mood for your Shadowrun games?

Teddy Bear's Picnic, for those Tir/NAN runs.

If you go out in the woods today
you're in for a big surprise...

Like hurricanes, they never truly go away.

Nightwish.

Heh, or some Mission Impossible II stuff. Dunno... Guess it depends on the game in question.

Hell, we'll play to usually anything.

At times I'm nostalgic for some old Queensryche while playing, considering that band was literally all over 1st and 2nd editions...

Though our music has generally come down to some My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult, Sisters of Mercy, a little Dream Theater, and so on. We tend to avoid techno like the plague, and may throw in a soundtrack from a particular movie, depending on the situation.


We do have one musical group tradition though....

... at least one Billy Idol song...

80s movie stuff....like the Bloodsport soundtrack, or music from Rage of Honor and Revenge of the Ninja. Escape from New York too, just because that movie practically is Shadowrun.

I also like to get pumped up by reciting Sho Kosugi lines. "This is no job for the porice. This is something I must do. Onry a ninja can stop a ninja."

Heh, and for a while we had a thing going with Ahnold's line from "Conan the Barbarian"; "Whuu ahh yuuu?"

Zeromancer.
Zeromancer, Zeromancer, and more Zeromancer.

I feel they capture the mood of Shadowrun *perfectly*.
But that's just one little pirate's opinion.

Fight Club Soundtrack

Other than that, just about any other decent techno. Love it!

#ifdef SR_MUSIC_THREAD
#include <srmusic.html>
#endif

Someone a but of a C++ programmer? Hmmmmm?

After I design my campaign outlines, I go through my music collection and go, "Now, if this were a movie, what would the soundtrack be?" Then, I go through my perhaps unhealthily volumous music collection, listening to various artists and songs, jotting notes on which ones make me visualize certain areas of the plot... Then, from that list, I organize an official soundtrack for the game. Some of the songs are source (say, the liquid groove of some remixed jazz to represent the ambiance of Matchstick's), some of it is score (such as some chill for legwork scenes and working the streets, and general mysterious flair, or a little KMFDM or equivalent for that explosive combat scene).

Then I burn the disc, the songs in the "most likely" order the scenes will occur, label and package it, and often give out said soundtracks to my players as a souvenir to remember the game by when the adventure is over.

Wow, this makes me want to pull out the Two-Disc soundtrack volume I burned for when I ran Brainscan and pop it in the player. Too bad it's in storage and not presently in my apartment.

Winter

Right now, I'm in a very Kasabian mood (kinda downtempo/Moby-ish). Here's some lines from "Butcher Blues" that I find highly SR -

A while back there was a music CD for Shadowrun. I'll have to look through my CDs & find it. Back later.

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.

~J

We listen to a lot of different music, not only the typical rpg music like soundtracks. Also hardcore, death metal and some stoner stuff. Over the years we got used to it (or better: my players did, i like the music i hear at home ). The main point is not to play the music too loud, just as a background music thing - then it's unimportant what kind of music one is listening to.

My last rpg-session (Eberron) included bands like comeback kid, opeth, centinex, no turning back, terror as background music.

Blade 1 OST
Blade 2 OST
Blade 3 OST

The soundtrack from Halo 2 has some good ones, particularly if you have lots of gun battles and/or driving scenes.

Such as, featured in Halo 2, Breaking Benjamen's Blow me Away is good for fights and driving. The Halo Theme (Mjolnir Mix) is good for driving. Peril is great sneakery music.

Heh, I have an idea. Have Beatles music playing in an endless loop for astral metaplane quests.

Welcome to the Jungle if I get my way

Wow this has been up for more than 5 minutes without links to the 200 other Srun Music forum posts...who's slackin!?!?!?

Me, bitch. What you gonna do about it?

OK, found my Shadowrun disc.

A while back, both FASA & White Wolf put out "soundtrack albums" for their games. The Shadowrun music disc is more like a score than a sountrack, with 'situation music' than actual bands. It was produced by Orion Design Studio & the music was composed by Alex Cremers. You might find a copy on Ebay.

The Blackhawk Down movie sndtrk was good. Mainly guitar, drum and vocals. Very evocative.

I remember the summer my first group really got into SR, the first STP lp had come out. We used to start every game with the first track, "Dead and Bloated."

I am smelling like a rose that somebody gave me on my birthday deathbed,
I am smelling like a rose that somebody game me cuz I'm dead and bloated into the opening power chords... yeah we were dorks. What of it? To this day every time I hear that song on the radio (which has been a couple of times in the past month, which is odd since it was never a radio hit when the album was new), I can't help but think about shadowrun.

Well in the current game I'm running we use NIN, Hybrid and the Crystal Method.
A previous campaign is entirely linked to the MI2 soundtrack.

<ostly we use rock, industrial and techno.