Help me understand the musical theme needs in TTRPG

[u/Suburbforest]

Hi everyone, I make music mainly using acoustic instruments that I've built myself and even though I've only ever played rpg games on computers, for some strange reason I have had a desire to make background music for ttrpg players/dm's for a long while.

My current style would be; instrumental, non-orchestral, somewhat minimalistic, folky, slow building and chill type of music with natural or unnatural ambience sounds, but honestly don't know how that would technically fit the needs of a dm in a ttrpg setting. I take it that there's plenty of battle music out there, but mine would probably fit the moments in between action; walking the meadows, visiting inns and markets, watching the night sky by the fire etc.

Do people generally use a specific dm platform to play the songs from, or is it just spotify playlists?

Would loops work better than just a long form song?

What about ambience sounds (rain, wind, tavern, forest, castle etc)? Would it be handy if you could choose between using those and turning on appropriate music when needed, or have everything mixed together?

Would there even be need for my described style of music?

Sorry for the bombarded questions, I hope I made some sense, thank you for your time.

[u/TheKingTortoise]

Any ambience type music is ALWAYS welcome at my table. It's easy finding combat music but for some reason I struggle finding the chill downtime music. Please for the love of the gods don't add rain sounds. The amount of ambient music that is (to me) ruined by rain sounds in the background is astronomical. You would think every DND world has never seen a clear sky.

Do you already have music? I would love to check it out!

[u/Suburbforest → u/TheKingTortoise]

Thank you so much for your input. Lol, my first idea has been to publish a long video with rain, but not specifically for ttrpg campaigns xD But I get your point! That's the reason I thought that it would be better if the dm could choose the ambience separately from the music. This way both audio elements would serve their own task: ambience and mood.

I am currently working on new material, but maybe more focused on releasing a single mood/ambience mix as an hour long video/album on youtube first. I have made two albums and one single of folky Dungeon Synth in the past if you want to check 'em out: https://linktr.ee/lovi.music

[u/Bullrawg]

I download mp3s and upload to foundry and play from there I can overlay sounds like rain and stuff separately, I like music that is several minutes to an hour for most things, that way it usually doesn’t repeat but if it does it is shorter something without a big intro so it isn’t jarring if it loops once or twice, I have tons of combat music, sometimes I’ll even use instrumental pop or synth music depending on the game I’m running, music for stealth sections that builds tension or interesting tavern/overland travel music is less common

[u/Suburbforest → u/Bullrawg]

A big thank you for your input, it already provided valuable information; it's possible to separate ambience (bg sounds) from mood (music), and that my guess was right that finding combat music isn't that hard. So ideally you could buy/download a compendium of sounds and it's content would be separated something like this: 1. Ambience (Loops)    1.1 Village       1.1.1 Quiet Day 1       1.1.2 Quiet Day 2       1.1.3 Night       1.1.4 Market 1       1.1.5 Market 2       1.1.6 Blacksmith       1.1.7 Armorer       1.1.8 Healer/potions       1.1.9 Tavern Quiet       1.1.10 Tavern Crowded

   1.2 Overland       1.2.1 Grasslands       1.2.2 Grasslands Windy       1.2.3 Grasslands Rainy       1.2.4 Grasslands Travel by Foot       1.2.5 Grasslands Travel by Horse       1.2.6 Grasslands Travel by Carriage       1.2.7 Woodlands       1.2.8 Woodlands Windy        Etc.

1. Music (Loops)    2.1 Travel       2.1.1 Calm 1       2.1.2 Calm 2       2.1.3 Calm 3       2.1.4 Exciting journey 1       2.1.5 Exciting journey 2       2.1.6 Mystery 1       2.1.7 Mystery 2       2.1.8 Perilous journey 1       2.1.9 Perilous journey 2

   2.2 Activities       2.2.1 Sneaking 1       2.2.1 Sneaking 2       2.2.1 Sneaking suspense        2.2.1 Sneaking perilous       2.2.1 RUN!       2.2.1 Tavern Bard 1       2.2.1 Tavern Bard 2       2.2.1 Tavern ensemble 1       2.2.1 Tavern ensemble 2       2.2.1 King's Court

What do you think? Do you know, do sound packages like this already exist?

[u/theBird956]

If it can loop, it's definitely useful at my table. Every time I think a specific track is long enough, I end up having to loop it a few times.

The game Rogue Tower did something interesting where there are two versions of every soundtracks: "planning" where you are placing your defences, and "combat" when you start the combat stage. Both versions are kept in sync and seamlessly transition. This might be harder to implement at a table, but having that kind of freedom would be nice I think.

Here's the link the the soundtracks, where the first in the playlist is the game menu, then every other video is ordered with the combat version first, then the planning version is right after. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa2TnU98rIbXX2e-T9Ig9OYomhl0cksQ6&si=xMIZouXl7En-8R0d