The Ravens Nest

Psoundtracks, Psongs & Musings on Old-School Soundtracks

Pictured: Darkrune album Book of The Black Rose, a companion soundtrack to The Chronicles of Aeres and Loot The Body’s album Skate Wizards, the companion soundtrack to the game Skate Wizards.

Gather ‘round people of all ages, let me tell you some things. Depending on when you grew up and played D&D, you might have a soundtrack that sounds like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. For me, it was Metallica, Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne and some Iron Maiden. Yours may sound like Evanescence, Marilyn Manson, Cradle of Filth, Entombed or some other such bands.

If your soundtrack is Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber or something like that…I don’t even have the words. You do you but I’m never sitting at that table. I get enough of that at work.

I’ve been seeing these make the rounds. First, it happened with Darkrune who, incidentally allowed me to use a couple of tracks from Book of The Black Rose as an intro and outro theme to my videos for my channel. Then, Skate Wizards came with a soundtrack by Loot The Body. Now, I’m looking around on Bandcamp and I see an entire host of bands like Loot The Body and Fantasy Audio Magazine do companion soundtracks for all kinds of games.

Fantasy Audio Magazine did a soundtrack for The Desert Moon of Karth which gave me Ennio Morricone vibes and it fits the setting. Loot The Body has also done work for DCC which coincided with one of their games. Fantasy Audio Magazine also does tons of different soundtracks including one for a recurring series called Candle for Old-School Essentials which you can also check out.

This got me thinking, why aren’t more people doing this? Certainly, there’s Bandcamp where you can buy the album digitally, download it and you own the files or you can stream it right from the app itself. Alternately, you could pick up those limited edition cassettes and vinyl albums.

Before you ask, yes, I still own a Walkman cassette deck with AM/FM radio on it and I do still use it. Wouldn’t give it up for the world. It also gets me some looks when I walk in to a place carrying it. My belt’s a little too thick for the belt clip attachment, unfortunately.

In any case, if you really wanted to take it old-school and have a soundtrack for your games, sure you could queue up a dungeonsynth playlist or whatever playlist you’ve managed to put together yourself but there’s nothing like the hiss of that tape being played and having to turn the tape over once one side has run it’s course.

Why? Well, imagine settling into a game of Castles & Crusades, Horde Wars, Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age, Shadowdark, Old-School Essentials or whatever your old-school poison might be. Get a soundtrack together and play that sucker on a cassette tape or record player instead of your phone or laptop. Set the tone and create that atmosphere. If you don’t have one ready-made, customize one. Don’t have anything but your phone and a bluetooth speaker? Okay, fine, just load it up and start it playing in the background somewhere.

This is more of an optional element to add to your games rather than take away from them and if you haven’t tried it yet, join us old-schoolers in a time-honored but unspoken tradition.

Creators, now is a great time to think about this kind of thing. Companion soundtracks to your games make a great addition that people like myself can take away from the game, meaning, we put that soundtrack on and listen as much as we can because, why the hell would we not? Reliving memories of the stories that emerge from gameplay at the table also adds that aid to memory. How many people will remember that heroic deed or that rather heroic and untimely death of their character when there’s a song to accompany it? I know I do.

I know someone out there is playing an OSR rule-set to the tune of the Conan The Barbarian official score right now or at least has recently. Tell me I’m wrong, here, folks because I rarely am.

I think Cassette or Vinyl is the ideal way to do it, certainly not the most convenient but the best because there are just sounds that we took for granted. Like I said before, the hiss of that tape as it plays (If you have a tape deck that does an auto-reverse, even better) or the sounds of the needle in the groove of an album before the songs actually begin to play are sounds that provide atmosphere and depth. The cold, sterile, digital format is excellent more for games like Cyberpunk, Hostile, Traveller, Cepheus or perhaps even Alien RPG. There’s really no wrong way to do it, just some ways that are more ideal than others.

While I’m here I did want to address something. Original D&D. Primarily with regards to Chainmail! as a rule set being recommended.

I am always a proponent for Your Table, Your Rules, Always In All Ways. Run your table the way you see fit. Plenty of people have played games like White Box: FMAG, Swords & Wizardry, Iron Falcon and even Delving Deeper as a means of experiencing what the original D&D from 1974 was like.

I’m no exception, those books were all joys to read and I have three different versions of Swords & Wizardry and all I have to say is, what’s said is true. Nearly every one of them is missing something from the O.G. that’s true.

Back when I was looking into the history of D&D, I found out about B/X, BECMI and Original D&D. Little did I know, and this was only mentioned in passing was that OD&D needed Chainmail! in order to function properly. This was because Chainmail! had rules for mass combat and even catered to fantasy races at the time on it’s own. Dungeons & Dragons was supposed to be a supplement for that game but it became it’s own thing.

I want to show you something and if you’ve stuck with me this long, I hope you’ll come just a little further.

Personally, I think this needed to be clarified. Certainly, players, paper, pencils, imagination, dice, those are all requirement, however, Chainmail! was also listed and all of this is recommended stuff you’d need to play. I honestly think that this section should have read either Required Equipment or to make two lists; one recommended and why and one required. The way this is worded is causing all types of consternation at the moment and, allow me to assure you that I’m not one of the puritans here, I’m saying that the CM rules do cut back on your adjudication.

On a personal level, I agree with some of you that I’ve never put the CM rules to OD&D. Am I willing to give it a try? Yes. Comes with a huge “but” though. I think the reason that there are those of us in the old-school, some of us who’ve been playing for 40 years or more and possibly some before that have never played with those rules because OD&D took the focus from armies represented by miniatures on the board or diorama to focusing on single characters. Many of us have never really done mass combat (I know I haven’t) but even in the Robert E. Howard Conan stories, the time he’s on the throne of Aquilonia and the time that he’s rescued from his own crucifixion, he does end up leading armies and I don’t think having that as part of your game takes away from that. Likewise, I don’t think that the exclusion of that from your game is in any way, shape or form, wrong.

Think of it this way, Lord of The Rings starts with a party, The Fellowship of The Ring. The party splits but, in the end, Aragorn leads an army that’s greatly outnumbered in order to hold the forces of Mordor off, buying time for Frodo and Sam to dispose of The One Ring in Mt. Doom.

Listen, I know some people have been acting like raging jerk-offs about this stuff. It’s okay to disagree, hell, even I do. Still, there’s something interesting about your party leading an entire army in there to clear out a megadungeon. Sure, dungeons can be small and intimate affairs but consider something for just a moment. If the mass combat portions of D&D had stayed, your characters wouldn’t need to constantly be OP, otherworldly beings like tieflings or medieval fantasy superheroes, would they?

I don’t care for a ton of bookkeeping myself. I really want to just sit and enjoy the game with friends without driving myself insane trying to constantly do a ton of math or more than I have to, especially since my math skills are questionable at best. What I’m saying is keep an open mind here, give it a try when or if the opportunity becomes available to engage in mass combat or lead armies. Hell, break it down and use minis and integrate the war game into it when it’s appropriate.

I really don’t care how Gary Gygax might have played. I don’t care about how The Joneses play. I care about my table and how it’s run. That’s all you should be caring about too. Just because I might want to do it doesn’t mean you have to. I’m just suggesting you try it out for yourself. If your table’s been cruising fine without it, great. I hope your games continue rocking along and some of the best memories live on. If you find that it enhances your game, great. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to admit to anything, just enjoy. That’s all.

Many of us, myself included, remember certain editions certain ways. I can tell you there are people wasting their money on books right now. Some just buy them, never read them, maybe get a basic rundown of some of the more remedial rules and play that way, if that and then they speak on them as though they’re the authority. Scott Garibay comes to mind. I’ve detailed in the past how he’s gone from shit take to shit takes that are dangerous and I’ve urged you to stop listening to him if you are at all.

Also, The BrOSR may be studying the shit out of those books, however, they’re complete dicks about it. These are but two extremes and they’re both damn wrong. I wouldn’t listen to either of them if you paid me handsomely by the second to listen to anything they have to say and it’s their own damn fault.

This is why I say that the one hard and fast rule for RPGs needs to apply.

Just don’t be a dick.

Hopefully, this is going out to restore sense and reason and stop dividing us even further than we already are.

At one point in time, we all said “We really don’t need D&D anymore.” I’m kinda wondering whatever happened to that?

If we in the old-school are supposedly so open-minded, then it’s a good idea to act like it and that means not being a complete and total second-rate chucklefuck about it.

Give your games a soundtrack. Give your games a read, find those rules you didn’t know about and discuss them with your table and if they aren’t improving your game, then go ahead and toss them. Nothing wrong with that at all. Just know it’s there and why.

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please…”

-Mark Twain