I don’t like vicious mockery.

It’s a weirdly dissociated mechanic. If you kind of squint at it in the right light, you can almost see an association. Magically enhanced insults so utterly devastating that they can literally kill you with psychic damage seem like a thing you put your thumb on.

But can you actually describe in character what the spell is doing? If a bard casts vicious mockery and kills a dolphin, what actually happens? If you’re targeted by the spell, what does it feel like?

Your mileage may vary, but this is one of those mechanics that, when the players trigger it, I’m completely uncertain how to describe what actually happens. That’s a red flag, in my opinion. (See, also, non-divine guidance.) More often than not, it feels like casting the spell means we all disconnect from the game world for a bit, do some dice stuff, and then reconnect to the game world with no clear description of anything actually happening (except maybe someone keeled over and died).

Alternatively, you’ve got the issue where players feel like they need to improvise the insult they hurl at the target of the spell. (Or, often, the DM will demand it of them.) That, too, seems fine. But, if we can be honest for a moment, how easy do you find it to improvise an insult so withering that someone falling over dead after hearing it seems like a reasonable outcome?

What actually happens most of the time, of course, is a sort of comical mismatch:

Player: I call the dolphin “fish-face”!

DM: This insult overwhelms the dolphin, who instantly dies!

Yes, I understand that the insult has been “laced with subtle enchantments.” But, again, what does that actually look like?

The mechanics of the spell — first introduced in the Player’s Handbook 2 for 4^th Edition before being adapted for the 5^th Edition Player’s Handbook — are also getting more dissociated over time. In 2014, for example, your target had to hear the insults, “though it need not understand” them. (Which kind of raises the question of why it needs to be an insult at all.)

In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, however, this requirement is dropped. The target of the spell is now “one create you can see or hear within range.”

So we’ve gone from insults that drive your foe into a blind rage to a spell where the target doesn’t even need to understand what you’re saying (I guess they can just tell from your tone) to, today, your target standing in a silence spell while unable to see you, but still being completely wrecked by how mean you’re being to them.

Mechanically speaking, though, there’s nothing wrong with “Wisdom save or suffer damage and disadvantage on your attack roll.” It also provides pretty core functionality for bards, so I don’t want to just nix it from my game.

So can we tweak the presentation of vicious mockery to achieve the same or similar mechanical effect without the issues?

ETHEREAL SONATA

With the aid of subtle enchantments, you pitch your voice so that it vibrates through the Ethereal Plane instead of through air. As these ethereal tones resonate with a target you can see and who can hear you, they psychically damage and discombobulate them.

VICIOUS MOCKERY (REDUX)

You utter an epithet from the primal ur-language which was used by the gods to carve the minds of the first sentient races in the multiverse. Infusing the curse with magic, you precisely tune it to a target you can see and who can hear you. On a failed Wisdom saving throw, the target’s mind momentarily rewrites itself, shaking them with the sudden belief that your disparagement is utter truth.

SONIC BARRAGE

Weaving your magic, you tune and focus the perfect pitch of your choice into a killing word directed at a target you can see and who can hear you.

Note: This version would be an evocation cantrip dealing thunder damage instead of psychic damage.

FURTHER READING
Guidance Sucks in 5th Edition

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 41B: The Return of Arveth

At Myraeth’s, they found a bag of holding formed from links of golden chain with a dragon worked in crimson links within it. It was larger than the ones they already owned and Tee – envying the dragon design – was depressed to find it was too bulky and heavy for her to carry.

Ranthir took it instead, nesting it among his many bags and pouches.

Something you may notice throughout the campaign journal is me giving specific, unique descriptions to various items. Sometimes I’ll even go so far as to prep visual handouts for them.

This is probably even more prevalent at the actual table, since only the most notable or pertinent examples actually make it into the journal.

(I should mention that I’m not prepping all of these ahead of time. A lot of them – including the bag of holding described above – are being improvised at the table. The principles of smart prep apply here.)

Some of these descriptions end up being ephemeral – useful for a moment to conjure an image of the world before the inner eyes of the players, but otherwise largely or entirely forgotten.

Others, however, will stick.

Which ones?

Nobody knows.

Sometimes I try to predict it (“this is so cool, they’ll obviously remember it forever!”), but I’m almost certainly wrong more often than I’m right. What sticks with this sort of thing is usually a lot more situational than you might think. Attention and memory can be fickle things, and which objects sentimental value and notoriety attaches to often has at least as much to do with what’s happening to both characters and players at that precise moment as it does the object itself.

The point, though, is that for anything to stick you have to keep throwing stuff out there. Enough stuff that you can start winning the numbers game.

Although, on the other hand, you don’t want to throw out so much stuff that it overwhelms the players and becomes indistinguishable noise. Not every rusty sword the PCs find in a moldering crypt needs to be lovingly detailed. And, if you are giving an item the bespoke treatment, you don’t need to lavish it with multiple paragraphs. Usually just one or two cool details will get the job done. (Maybe three on the outside.) Even if you know that not every item you describe will ultimately stand out, you still want every object to have the opportunity to do so.

Which is why, in D&D, I’ll often focus this descriptive detail on magic items. It inherently narrows the field for me. I also want magic items to feel special. For example, it’s easy for every bag of holding to glob together into a generic nonentity, and they really shouldn’t.

(Although by no means should this dissuade you from occasionally hyping up a mundane item with a cool description. It certainly doesn’t stop me.)

This is not going to be a comprehensive discussion of all the different ways you can give objects cool descriptions, but here are a few things I like to think about.

First, what’s the utility of the object? What does it actually do? How could that be reflected in the structure of appearance of the object?

For example, a staff of fire gives its wielder resistance to fire damage and can be used to create flame-based effects (burning hands, fireball, wall of fire). Some quick brainstorming suggests various options:

• Someone attuning to the staff is limned in a flickering flame.
• The staff is topped be a large ruby, inside which is trapped an eternally burning flame (and all the various fire spells blast out from this ruby).
• The entire staff is actually made from a frozen flame.
• The staff is warm to the touch.
• When one attunes to the staff, it scorches the hand holding the staff, leaving a brand depicting the arcane sigil of the wizard who created it.
• The staff is a long shard of obsidian, split down the middle. To create one of the staff’s fire effects, pull the two ends of the staff apart, revealing the heart of flame held within.

Second, add one other purely decorative or incidental detail. If the utility hasn’t already added some flash to the item, this is a good opportunity to do so. These details might also suggest ownership, origin, or similar information. (Which may just be flavor, but could also reveal relevant information about the situation or scenario.)

Let’s do another one. A keycharm, from Eberron: Rising from the Last War, allows you to cast alarm, arcane lock, and glyph of warding spells that alert the holder of the keycharm if they’re triggered or bypassed. The item description suggests that this looks like a “small, stylized key.” If we stick that, we might still look at options like:

• The key is formed from a black stone with strange purple veins running through it.
• The key is made from taurum, the true gold and its bow bears the sigil of House Abanar.
• The key is a living “bud” sprouted from the heartwood of a dryad’s tree by druidic arts.
• A plain key of battered copper, but the bits of the key are a whirling, ever-shifting blur.

As you’re improvising these descriptions, remember that you can put your thumb on the scale of the party’s reaction by thinking about what you know the players or their characters already love (e.g., Tee’s infatuation with dragons) or hate.

(I would honestly pay good money for a book that was just a dozen different “looks” for every magic item in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.)

Campaign Journal: Session 41C – Running the Campaign: Home Bases
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 41B: THE RETURN OF ARVETH

August 15th, 2009
The 22nd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

“That’s her,” Arveth said.

Another cultist stepped through the door behind her and swung it shut.

In the next room down, Seeaeti was aware that something was wrong. He stood up and started barking at the wall. Agnarr let him out into the hall… but missed the tail-end of the ambush by mere seconds.

The cultists started clubbing Tee, who managed to avoid the worst of it by rolling with the blows and tossing around in the cushions… until Arveth stepped forward and slipped a dagger between her ribs. “They took my eye, bitch.”

Tee, who had been screaming, gasped in pain.

Agnarr hadn’t heard her muffled screams because Seeaeti was still barking loudly. (“What is it, boy? What is it?”) But Ranthir heard the screams through the walls and rushed into the hall. He quickly told Agnarr what he had heard and then hurried on to Tor’s door.

The cultist who had followed Arveth into Tee’s room dropped a silence spell over it, abruptly cutting off Tee’s screams.

Agnarr ran down the hall and threw himself against the door… but it held firm. Elestra, wakened by Seeaeti’s barking (but oblivious to the cause) also came out into the hall. Ranthir, beating on Tor’s door, managed to rouse the scarce-sleeping knight. He rushed back to his own room… just in time to see Tee thrown out of her window in a silent, cascading shower of glass. She hit the pavement below with a sickening thud.

Ranthir ran back into the hall and shouted to the others what had happened. Elestra ran past him, through his room, and jumped out the window, tumbling onto the jutting corner of the first floor below and from there down to Tee’s prostrate form.

Unfortunately, Elestra was seen by the cultists above. One of them – the one who had followed Arveth into the room – leapt to the first floor roof himself. Whirling he lowered his hands and sent forth a wave of flame which Elestra narrowly ducked under.

Arveth was close behind him, leaping directly to the ground with acrobatic aplomb. Her sword was out and she attacked Elestra before she could reach Tee’s side.

Above, Tor had pushed his way past Agnarr and also thrown himself ineffectually against the door. Agnarr, frustrated past words, drew his greatsword and just started hacking. As the door fell apart into smoldering kindling, they saw that the thugs had ganged up on the other side of the door. Tor sent one staggering back, trying to hold his intestines together. The others fell back cautiously into a defensive line.

Below, Elestra drove Arveth away and then dove for Tee. She managed to release a burst of healing energy into Tee’s torso just before the cultist arcanist hit her with a second blast of fire. Tee rolled to her feet, grabbed Arveth, activated her boots, and levitated up into the air.

Ranthir, looking out from his window above, threw a web, trapping the arcanist and webbing up the window of Tee’s room to stop additional reinforcements from escaping. The arcanist responded by twisting within the webs and hurling a magical epitaph in Ranthir’s direction. In a burst of flame, a black leopard with burning coals of fire for eyes and a throat of flame appeared before the rapidly backpedaling Ranthir.

The creature’s claws caught and tore at him as he stumbled back through the door into the hall. Ranthir cried for help, but Agnarr and Tor – fighting in the pervasive magical silence of Tee’s room – were oblivious to his need. Despite Seeaeti’s brave efforts to intervene, Ranthir collapsed in a gurgle of blood.

But Seeaeti was successful in keeping the fiendish leopard from finishing its work. Hounding the leopard, Seeaeti was able to draw it back into Tee’s room. There, the leopard earned the wrath of Agnarr when the barbarian saw what it had done to his faithful dog. Tor, meanwhile, was able to finish off the panicked and trapped cultist thugs.

Tee, now floating high above the street, tried to gouge out Arveth’s other eye. But Arveth caught her wrist and managed to twist the dagger around to scrape it painfully across her ribs on the left side. Twisting the knife free from Arveth’s grip, Tee almost managed to choke the life out of her—

Before the arcanist struck her in the back with another blast of fire. In the burst of pain, Tee’s vision turned black and her mind slipped away… her boots stopped working…

And they both plunged to the ground below.

Arveth managed to roll slightly with the blow, cracking several ribs and breaking an arm, but alive. The unconscious Tee, on the other hand, fell helplessly. There was a sickening crunch as her head struck first and her neck snapped.

With Tee dead, Elestra unconscious, and everyone inside the inn completely unaware of what was happening outside, Arveth easily escaped.

But only by mere moments. Seconds later, the others arrived in the street below. Healing potions were poured down Elestra’s throat and then she called upon the strength of the Spirit of the City to revive Tee.

PARANOIA IS BUT A FEAR UNPROVEN

The ambush had shifted something inside of Tee. Just a few hours before she had been counseling Tor on the virtues of compassion, but now she had no mercy for any of them. The thought of Arveth – her endless haughtiness; her insatiable cruelty – filled Tee with a silent rage, compounded by the flashing images of Wuntad; the abominations of the cults; and the humiliations and agonies that had been visited upon her, her friends, and the people of her city.

But Tee’s immediate thoughts were consumed by Nasira: If this attack was a retaliation for their assaults on the Rat God and Ebon Hand temples, Nasira would be in danger, too. While the others stayed for damage control at the Ghostly Minstrel, she and Agnarr raced out into Delvers’ Square and haled a carriage.

When they reached the Welcome Inn, however, they found Nasira unmolested. Looking at the still bruised and battered Tee, however, Nasira’s brow knit in concern. “What happened?”

Tee gave a quick summary of the ambush at the Ghostly Minstrel. “It might be best if you came back with us. There’s safety in numbers.”

Nasira agreed, if for no other reason than because she had befriended the innkeepers Markus and Valene Schuk. This friendly older couple and their daughters (Rona and Illene) had been the only people to make Nasira feel welcome in Ptolus before she had met the rest of them, and she had no desire to bring trouble to their door. Nasira explained the situation to them, promised to keep in touch, and paid her bill ahead for two more weeks. Then she and Tee joined Agnarr in the waiting carriage and headed back towards the Ghostly Minstrel.

At the Minstrel, meanwhile, Elestra had gone to tell Tellith of the attack. Tellith was shocked at first, but her shock quickly turned to outrage and then to apologies. After a few minutes, Tellith came upstairs with Elestra.

While Elestra had been talking to Tellith, however, the others had kept busy: Tor hauled the unconscious cultist arcanist into Ranthir’s room while the others looted the bodies of the thugs (on whom they found golden bell charm bracelets).

Elestra reassured Tellith that Tee was all right and had merely gone to check on a friend to make sure they were okay. Tellith realized that the watch needed to be notified and left to do so.

Meanwhile, the arcanist was roughly woken up and questioned. His name was Nikkei. He told them that the attack was in retribution for the betrayal of “Laurea” and the attack on the Temple of Deep Chaos. Once “Laurea” had been identified as Tee, it was a simple matter for them to find her at the Ghostly Minstrel.

Satisfied (more or less), they knocked Nikkei unconscious again and waited for the guards to arrive. Which they did shortly thereafter.

“Oh, it’s you again.” Naturally Tellith had gone to the watch station just across Delvers’ Square. And, naturally, they were blessed once again with the blustering fellow who they had first met after a shivvel addict had tried to mug Ranthir.

The watchmen questioned all of them bluntly and performed a cursory inspection of Tee’s room and the street outside.

“And where is the victim?” one of them asked with suspicion.

“I’m right here,” Tee said, walking up with Nasira at her side.

“And where have you been?”

“Checking on a friend.”

The watchmen were taking a generally hostile tone, but Tee wasn’t impressed with their bluster. Finally one of them blurted out, “Just don’t leave town.” Tor laughed and Tee rolled her eyes.

“We’re not planning on it. But I’m glad you’re so concerned for our well-being. What were your names again? I’d like to mention you to the Commissar next time I see him. I just want to tell him what a fine job you’re doing…”

The watchmen exchanged nervous glances and then backed down. Tee and Tor turned Nikkei over to them before they left (although Tee would have preferred to slit his throat first).

Once the watch were gone, however, they were forced to consider what Nikkei had told them: It was their worst fear, and only confirmed what Malkeen’s appearance in Tee’s room two weeks before had suggested. Not only were they known, but they could be found. And easily.

This left them with the tough choice of what to do next: Should they leave the Ghostly Minstrel? And if they did, where would they go?

Without any clear answers, they bedded down. Tee wanted no part of her own room again, and they all thought it wise to stay close through the night. Half of them slept in Tor’s room and the rest in Elestra’s suite.

THE DREAMS OF TEE & ARVETH – PART 1

That night Tee reached out through the Dreaming in an effort to infiltrate the dreams of Arveth. She hoped to plague them with nightmares of losing her remaining eye. Or perhaps falling forever. Or both.

Unfortunately Tee found her own thoughts conflicted, and Arveth’s dreams proved impenetrable. But she vowed that she would try again the next night. And every night, if necessary, if it meant that she could eke out at least a small slice of revenge.

Running the Campaign: What the Magic Looks Like – Campaign Journal: Session 41C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent.”

– Victor Hugo

Music at the gaming table can be as straightforward as someone clicking their favorite artist on Spotify, doing a Youtube search for “fantasy music,” or slapping their favorite CD into a music player.

But music’s role in your roleplaying adventures can be so much more than that. It can be the shorthand of the soul. It can rock the world and change the course of history. There’s a reason why the biggest celebrity on the planet is always a musician; why fight songs are blasted over stadium loudspeakers; and why you can instantly recognize the theme songs of your favorite films.

One of the things I’ve learned about music at the gaming table, though, is that it’s simultaneously soundtrack and muzak, and I think if you’re going to take full advantage of it in your RPGs, then you need to understand and appreciate both of its roles.

In its role as soundtrack, RPG music fulfills a function similar to the soundtrack of a film: It helps to set the tone and expectation of a scene and can heighten emotional investment. It can also create specific mnemonic touchstones, which can be used to reinforce familiarity, suggest structure, and even foreshadow. (“Bah gawd! That’s Vecna’s music!”)

The truth though — and maybe I’m making a false assumption here — is that I think we all have a general sense of why films and TV shows have soundtracks, how that music affects us as audience members, and, therefore, how we can use music to parallel effect during a roleplaying session.

Muzak, on the other hand, has been oft-disparaged. When I talk about RPG music as muzak, though, I’m not talking about the particular style of generic pablum that we sometimes call “elevator music.” Instead, what I’m drawing a parallel to is the function of the music that’s played in public spaces. Why does your local shop want you listening to music? Why does the customer service line want you listening to hold music while you wait? Why are Disney themeparks filled with the stuff?

The touchstone I use here is the way that music at the gaming table can subconsciously (and almost invisibly) cover the gaping void of abyssal silence whenever I need to spend fifteen seconds looking up a rule or rolling the dice.

Another is the way that you can use music to start a session: You hit play on the music (or switch from general hanging-out music to the game soundtrack) and it’s a signal to the entire table that Play Has Begun.

In this role, our session music is helping to establish a specific atmosphere the fills the room. It’s creating a broader touchstone for the game as a whole; a sense of comfortable familiarity. “We’ve been here before,” it says, reestablishing our common experience and our immersion within the game world in an instant, and then helping to maintain the continuity of that experience by lifting us up and silently supporting us even through the moments when we might otherwise stumble or become distracted.

Note: There’s actually a third function music can serve during a roleplaying game, which is diegetic — i.e., the music the players are hearing is the same music that their PCs are hearing in the game world. Diegetic music can sometimes fulfill the same functions as soundtrack (there are, in fact, diegetic soundtracks in film), but in some cases it might be thought of as something closer to prop or handout. I’m not going to be talking much about diegetic music in this essay, largely because I haven’t experimented with it very much and I think its use in RPGs is pretty rare in any case. But it’s definitely worth thinking about as an option.

MUSIC TIPS

Tip #1 – The Big Pitfall: “Wow, this two-minute track sounds perfect for the fight with the cultists!” Then the fight takes forty minutes and everyone is really, really sick of listening to a two-minute loop.  I’ve learned that the absolute minimum length for an RPG loop is 7-10 minutes, and ideally more than that.

Tip #2 – Mystery Music: Try to avoid well-known and easily recognizable music that your players are familiar with. They’ll associate it with the source instead of the adventure, and that can often become distracting, too. (“Oh! I love this movie! Let’s talk about it out of character for the next ten minutes!”) The exception, of course, is if you specifically want to create and benefit from those associations (e.g., using John Williams’ Star Wars leitmotifs while running a Star Wars game).

Tip #3 – No Lyrics: Don’t use music with lyrics. Lyrics in a language unknown to anyone in the group might be okay (and can be effective at setting at the scene), but even those can be problematic. You’re playing a game entirely based on talking to each other; you don’t want your voices competing with recorded ones.

The combination of Tips #1, #2, and #3 means that what you’ll usually want to source your music from film or video game soundtracks. These are often designed to be emotionally resonant while also fading into the background under a dialogue track. (Video game soundtracks, in particular, are often designed to be seamlessly looped without becoming too repetitive.)

Tip #4 – Speaker Placement: Volume is obviously also important to avoid making it difficult for people to hear each other at the table (err on the side of the music being too quiet!), but speaker placement also plays a big role here. What I’ve learned is that there’s no One True Way here. The right solution will depend both your specific room and your players. With some rooms and groups, for example, I’ve found it works best if the music is coming  from behind me (as the GM), while in others the exact opposite is true.

My current game room is equipped with surround speakers, and I can actually control the direction the audio is coming from. If your speaker placement is less flexible, though, you can achieve the same effect by simply changing where you’re sitting.

In my previous game space, I actually had the music playing from speakers in the next room, audible through an open doorway. This can be surprisingly effective in having the music be part of the experience, while being so spatially distinct that it poses no challenge to hearing.

Tip #5 – Remote Control: When the big moment comes, you don’t want to undercut it by pausing the action so that you can fiddle with your music player. You definitely don’t want to have to get up and walk across the room to swap tracks. Figure out a set up that lets you easily and seamlessly control the music. Anticipate upcoming music changes and get them cued up ahead of time, so that when the dramatic moment arrives you can tap the button without the players even realizing what you’re doing. When in doubt, ignore the music and focus on keeping the game moving. You can circle back and get the new track cued up when you have some breathing space.

In prep, this might also mean splicing multiple tracks together so that you can play them all by just pushing one button and don’t need to think about manually swapping between them during a scene.

ADVENTURE SOUNDTRACKS

For my first decade or so of playing and running games, I didn’t use music at the gaming table. Then I played in a Star Wars campaign where the GM used the movie soundtracks. Sometimes they would pick specific tracks that matched specific moments in the game. (I particularly remember them always cuing up the music for the opening credit scroll whenever they would recap the previous session.) At other times they would just let the CD play through. (This would lead to funny moments. A running joke, for example, was for bad guy music to start playing and all of the players to immediately declare, out of character, that the NPC we were talking to obviously must be an Imperial spy.)

One of the things that made this work pretty well, though, is that one of the players owned a portable CD player with a remote control and a big display you could see from across the room: The GM could load the CD up, put the player at a comfortable distance from the group, and then control it from across the room. This was a game changer! (For context: iPods didn’t exist yet.)

This Star Wars group ended up being the same group that I ran my first long-term D&D 3rd Edition campaign for. Having enjoyed the Star Wars music, I began prepping custom soundtracks for each adventure, keying tracks to specific events, characters, locations, and scenes. I would not only burn CDs that I could use with the CD player during the session, but additional copies — including jewel cases and cover art — that I could give to the players as keepsakes.

Creating these soundtracks was, of course, labor intensive. I’d often spend as much time prepping the soundtrack as I would prepping everything else for the session.

I’ve shared a couple of these soundtracks here on the Alexandrian, if you want to take a peek at them:

The Fifth Sepulcher
The Sunless Citadel

SOUNDSCAPES

Over time, I’ve moved away from adventure-specific soundtracks and instead prep broader campaign soundscapes. For D&D, for example, I have playlists for:

• D&D Generic Background
• D&D City
• D&D Combat
• D&D Epic Combat

I’ve been building these playlists for more than a decade, occasionally adding tracks that feel appropriate. Since I’m still the type of person who likes to actually own their music, I’ll also make a point, whenever I add a new album or soundtrack to my collection, of going through it track by track specifically to add songs to appropriate RPG soundscapes.

These playlists started out on an iPod. They now exist on my computer, and I’ve recently transferred them to a Sony Walkman for easier use and transportation between venues. You could obviously achieve similar effects with Spotify, Youtube Music, or similar streaming services, but I do, in fact, like to own and control my media. (For example, I remember a GM who discovered that a bunch of their playlists had broken when transferring from Google Play Music to Youtube Music. No thank you.)

For my long-running D&D campaign set in Ptolus, I’ve also prepped additional soundscapes:

• Ptolus – Day
• Ptolus – Night
• Banewarrens
• Banewarrens – Combat
• Chaos Cults
• Mrathrach Machine
• Banewarrens – Level 10

You can see the two base background soundscapes (Day/Night), while the other soundscapes are associated with the major arcs/villains of the campaign. The exception is the Mrathrach Machine and Banewarrens – Level 10 soundtracks, each of which were designed to accompany big finales.

Similarly, for my Night’s Black Agents campaign, I have:

• NBA Background
• NBA Action
• NBA Vampires

These, again, allow me to broadly set tone for whatever is currently happening across any number of scenarios.

To boil this down to the most basic template:

• Background
• Combat/Action

This duality may seem overly simplistic, but I’ve found it remarkably effective in practice. You can almost think of this in terms of tempo, and switching from the up-tempo action music or back to the more atmospheric background soundscape often gives you everything you need to signal major shifts in the narrative, while the random transitions between tracks don’t need to be individually managed in order to provide a little texture within the broader energy level.

You can then easily add additional soundscapes for anything that you want to punctuate something remarkable and have it really stand out from the rest campaign. (For example, by having a Vampires soundscape for my Night’s Black Agents campaign, it gives me a very clear switch to flip for something-is-different-here that can also morph into oh-crap-the-shit-is-about-to-hit-the-fan.)

Starting from the background/action duality, you may also want to split one of those into multiple soundscapes based on some other significant factor. In a D&D campaign, for example, you might want wilderness, urban, and dungeon environments to all have their own identity. In a Monster of the Week campaign, you might have a small soundscape that only plays when the PCs are gathered in their favorite tavern discussing what their plan of action is.

Going the other direction, you might also find that just having a single playlist for a campaign is more than enough. (For example, I only have a single playlist for my Numenera games.)

Tip: When creating a soundscape, make sure you listen to the entire track before adding it to a playlist! This is a lot more time consuming, but there are plenty of tracks that start out as being absolutely perfect for a background soundscape, but then midway through switch to fast-paced action, jump-scare horror, or the like. Usually you just have to let a track like that go, but I have been known — when I’ve found the perfect track except for the 30 seconds of chase music in the middle of it — to actually edit the MP3 file and create a custom version that I can use.

HIGHLIGHT TRACKS

As a kind of compromise between a meticulously bespoke adventure soundtrack and broad soundscapes, you can instead use carefully selected highlight tracks.

Basically, you key up the perfect two-minute track to set the tone of a scene or launch it with a big, dramatic bang, but then, instead of looping that single track, you transition into one of your campaign’s soundscapes.

The fun part is that you can choose to highlight almost anything.

For example, when running the globe-hopping Eternal Lies campaign, each time the PCs arrived in a new city I would play a specific musical selection handpicked for the location. Although I would then transition into my general Cthulhu-themed soundscape, I could periodically come back to the city’s theme and play it again. Done tastefully, the result gave each city a unique audio profile even though most of the music the players were hearing was just the generic soundscape. This, in turn, meant that I could play the city theme at the beginning of each session and immediately evoke a sense of tone and place.

You can also employ highlight tracks to create Wagnerian leitmotifs, which you may also recognize John Williams’ Star Wars scores. Identify the big, important characters in your campaign and assign each of them a unique theme song. When they show up in a scene, play their song. (If you’re running a social event, you could even quickly prep a playlist that includes themes for all of the NPCs who will be there.)

I’ve never actually done this, but it occurs to me you could also do this for the PCs: When someone’s PC is acting as the face for a scene or lands a big, dramatic critical hit or otherwise demands the spotlight, hit their theme song. You could even get the players in on the game (pun intended) by having them pick a theme track for their character.

When the D&D 3rd Edition Player’s Handbook was released at Gen Con 2000, two third-party modules were available the same day on the convention floor: Atlas Games’ Three Days to Kill by John Tynes and Green Ronin’s Death in Freeport by Chris Pramas. The first official D&D module for 3rd Edition, The Sunless Citadel by Bruce Cordell, wouldn’t be released until September 2000. This might seem totally unremarkable today, but that’s only a testament to how truly revolutionary the moment was at the time. This was the birth of the OGL, and the hobby and industry would never be the same again.

I was and am a big fan of all three of these modules. When I launched my first D&D 3rd Edition campaign, I used Three Days to Kill and used the end of that adventure to plant a hook that would lead the PCs to The Sunless Citadel. (My second 3rd Edition campaign would start with Death in Freeport.)

At this time, I was prepping mix-tape soundtracks for every adventure that I ran, with tracks cued to specific locations, characters, events, and scenes. I would also often take these soundtracks, burn them to CD, create cover art, and give them to the players as mementos. (You can see the CD cases for the Sunless Citadel soundtrack above.)

I’ve previously shared one of the soundtracks from my D&D adventure The Fifth Sepulcher. As I was recently prepping my review of The Sunless Citadel, I revisited my notes for the adventure, found the original soundtrack listing I’d used, and thought it might be fun to share it here. It can be just as easily used with the 5th Edition version of the adventure, which was published in Tales from the Yawning Portal.

SUNLESS CITADEL – SOUNDTRACK

Oakhill

1. The Journey North (Final Fantasy IV, Track 7, Main Theme)
2. Avenue of Stone (Princess Mononoke – Japanese Soundtrack, Track 1)
3. The Villagers (Ancient Airs & Dances, Track 4, L’usignuolo)
4. Oakhill (Ancient Airs & Dances, Track 8, Villanella)
5. To the Citadel (Final Fantasy IV, Track 33, Somewhere in the World)

The Sunless Citadel

6. Song of the Citadel (Final Fantasy VIII, Track 2-7, Galbadia Garden)
7. The Threatened Halls (Final Fantasy IX Plus, Track 13)
8. Haunted Ways (Final Fantasy VIII, Track 3-14, The Salt Flats)
9. Shadows of Suspense (Lost in Space, Track 13, The Proteus)
10. The Eldest Halls (Planets – Holst, Track 5, Saturn – The Bringer of Old Age)

Combat

11. The Thrill of Blades (Final Fantasy IX Plus, Track 3) – set-up to fast pace
12. The Goblin Drums (Final Fantasy VIII, Track 1-9, Starting Up) – thrilling to steady pace
13. Race to Perdition (Final Fantasy VIII, Track 2-5, Only a Plan Between One and Perdition)
14. A Suspended Breath (Princess Mononoke – Japanese Soundtrack, Track 2) – suspense to combat

The Dark Grove

15. The Greeting of Belak (Final Fantasy VIII, Track 2-6, Succession of Witches)
16. The Temptation of Belak (Final Fantasy VIII, Track 1-8, The Landing) – 50 seconds to combat, segue to Track 17
17. The Death of Belak (Final Fantasy VIII, Track 2-12, Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec)
18. The Blackened Trees (Final Fantasy VIII, Track 1-6, Find Your Way)
19. The Dark Grove (Princess Mononoke – Japanese Soundtrack, Track 6)
20. The Cavern of Stars (Universal Sampler ’92, Track 8, And Evening Falls)
21. The First Seal (Final Fantasy VIII, Track 3-4, Blue Sky)

SOUNDTRACK GUIDE – CAMPAIGN TRACKS

There are a couple of places where this soundtrack reflects how I homebrewed The Sunless Citadel to it into my ongoing campaign, so let’s take a peek at those first.

Track 1 – The Journey North: As I mentioned above, I started the campaign with Three Days to Kill. The PCs headed north to reach Oakhill and the Sunless Citadel, and this was the soundtrack for that.

Track 2 – Avenue of Stone: I placed the village of Oakhill, where The Sunless Citadel begins, in a section of my campaign world that had once been ruled by an Elven empire. (The Citadel was also lightly themed to support this and reveal some of the secret history of this Elvish civilization.) Taking inspiration from Avebury, I embedded the village in druidic circles, including a mystically preserved wood circle (known as an ilda circle):

As you emerge from the far end of the tunnel, you find yourself standing just a few short feet away from two large blocks of wood – nearly four meters tall and half as wide – on either side of the road. It takes you a moment to realize that fourteen others just like them stand in a circle. Each is inscribed with runes which seem to glow a faint blue in the waning sunlight.

The road passes through the center of the circle, and continues on beyond it.

Then, as at ancient Avebury, an avenue of stone led to Oakhill, and then another from Oakhill to the Citadel:

The Unen’dil runs for nearly three miles before its stones begin to decrease in size. The avenue of stone is abruptly interrupted by a natural ravine. At the point where the ravine actually intercepts the road, it more closely resembles a deep, but narrow, canyon. Beyond this ravine you can see a few more of the smaller standing stones of the Ulen’dil, but you notice that – on that side of the ravine – the stones seem to be suffering the weathering of great age. The road also continues, but – like the South Road you came in on – the North Road loses its ancient precision beyond the boundary of the standing stones.

Several broken posts stand on either side of the ravine. It appears that a bridge of some sort once reached across the gap in the road here, but it has collapsed. The ravine itself runs out of sight in an east-west direction.

So this track was picked to set the mood for this ancient history.

Track 21 – The First Seal: The campaign arc involving the PCs finding and sealing three ancient seals that had been damaged as a result of their actions during Three Days to Kill. The hook for The Sunless Citadel was that one of these seals was located within the Citadel, so this track is the grand finale.

SOUNDTRACK GUIDE

Oakhill

Tracks 1 & 2: See above.

Tracks 3 & 4: These are, obviously, for the PCs’ arrival and interaction in Oakhill.

Track 5 – To the Citadel: Track title says it all.

The Sunless Citadel

Track 6 – Song of the Citadel: This was intended to be the default background music for the Citadel.  I used it as the PCs entered the Citadel for the first time, and then I’d loop back to this track out of the other Sunless Citadel/Combat tracks. It was really too short for that, but using it as a transition between other pieces helped with that a bit.

Track 7 – The Threatened Halls: Used for kobold areas.

Track 8 – Haunted Ways: Areas 28, 29, and 30.

Track 9 – Shadows of Suspense: Used for goblin areas.

Track 10 – The Eldest Halls: Area 20

Combat

These were, obviously, used for various combat scenes. They were lightly themed to different opponents (e.g., “The Goblin Drums” was my default for kicking off goblin fights), although I would also swap between tracks to keep things fresh.

You can also see that I notated the track list to indicate the pace/tone/structure of the track. This would help me in sort of “live mixing” the music. (For example, if we reached a suspenseful moment in a fight — maybe somebody was making a vital saving throw! — that might be a good time to swap to “A Suspended Breath – suspense to combat.”)

The Dark Grove

These tracks were keyed to the lower level of the Sunless Citadel.

Tracks 15, 16, 17: These tracks scored the final meeting (and probably fight) with Belak, the dark lord of the Sunless Citadel.

Track 18 – The Blackened Trees: This was the default background track for the lower levels.

Track 19 – The Dark Grove: Areas 49, 54, 56

Track 20 – Cavern of Stars: Area 55

FURTHER READING
Music in Roleplaying Games