For those of you who use BGM when GMing, I'm looking for some more good ambient bgm recommendations for a hex crawl wilderness exploration and town building campaign.
I currently have some playlists made up of tracks from the Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, NWN, Eye of the Beholder, and Dungeon Hack games.
What other osts or games
or movies have a good wordless / orchestral bgm for such things, but wouldn't be highly recognisable? Any suggested tracks / osts?
Temple of Elemental Evil
>Diablo for fantasy
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4C4D2047A5B1423D
also
>Summoner
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBE93875B2F47C61F
>Ruiner for cyberpunk
>Okami for eastern themed
Here we go. Some tracks and channels I use for eastern bgm. My fantasy list selection is very small in comparison, so thanks again for the recommendations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrVQzwhCF2w
Note the channels. These people post lots of instrumental covers in similar styles.
Some of the hour long mixes are good too, but tend to be things you could fall asleep to, so better for "chill in town" music, not combat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0XWI8se1bM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKRCQPB2Tq0
Use newpipe (side load from github) to don't use the play store copycats to save just the music, or play playlists in the background without ads.
>Any suggested tracks / osts?
Someone will probably suggest the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack and while great listening, I don't think it works well for games; tone volume shifts, shifts and crescendos can easily distract.
For a similar feel but with tracks you can loop and have it fade in the background there's the Conan Golden Axe ost. I uploaded it to gofile for you to check out.
gofile.io/d/WU9k5n
Thanks anon. Saved. Listening now. This is some good tense dungeon music. I agree about the movie soundtrack. Its good but it would likely be distracting.
Somehow I forgot about that one.
Thanks anon. I've got some eastern ones too. They're not from videogames though. Let me find them on YouTube and get you a link. Covers of wuxia TV bgm are often pretty good for that, and sometimes just Chinese instrumental tracks.
*Conan The Dark Axe
Glad you liked. I use this ost constantly but my brain still mixes up the title with the old side scroller.
>Conan Golden Axe
Kek. Thanks for the file. The Golden Axe OST is not bad too if you like chiptunes/dungeonsynth.
Speaking of Dungeonsynth, this is great spooky background music for dungeons:
Frick man. These are great too. Thanks.
The many MtG videogames have had some good BGM, and (particularly if your players don't play a lot of them) it'll be stuff they haven't heard. Plus, most of it shouldn't be too distracting, because strategy card game.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8BoewxDXqmmyd-KMAxsaZZykuFeP4lXF
I bet there's some good shot for Gwent too, but I haven't checked yet
It's been a while, but I have some well-liked favorites.
Vindsvept is a folk/adventure artist on YouTube.
Floating Cloud Acoustic Band is a Touhou cover group that deals in Irish, Chinese, and Japanese folk music covers, all live recordings rather than digital. They've got a wide range for how narrow their wheelhouse is.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles made a huge departure from the IP in many ways, including music. They went 10,000% in on fantasy folk with no modern instrumentation at all. Hurdy Gurdys and woodwinds abound.
Tokyo Active NEETs is another cover group that will provide you with epic war scene music based on Touhou tracks.
I finished the third original campaign (HotU) today! Gonna mod myself some items and go for premiums next!
Nice! Check the nwvault for community made modules, too. Some of them are very well liked. Endless Nights IV is regarded as the engine's best roguelike.
As I always do, I STRONGLY recommend Shadowlords/Dreamcatcher/Demon: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/module/shadowlords-dreamcatcher-and-demon-campaigns
You have to give it a few hours, since the beginning is pretty generic and amateurish, but it blossoms into one of the most innovative mod campaigns I've personally played.
There's an interesting experimental party control system at one point, there's a bit where you get to ride on a dragon, the final part has an integrated simplified MtG subsystem complete with deck building that you can play as much as you want, it's cool.
good threads deserve to live
I need some scifi tracks for TL4 worlds, not open space shit (already using EVE, ES2, and a few others for that).
Not an OST, but try Thurnin. This whole album is fantastic for ambience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG506xMzqsA
Also this single: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ2SbEtTiJU
For OSTs, it's not exactly low profile, but check out the Valheim OST. It's all about exploring the wilderness:
I use it sparingly, because it has some pretty intense string instrument sections, but it's nice.
Check out Plains and Black forest first.
Lastly, Risen. Kai Rosenkranz, the composer for Piranha Bytes is a genius.:
Notable tracks: Harbor City, Island, The Don's Camp
Also check out Gothic 1 and Gothic 3 OSTs. They're not as subtle as Risen, but they are beautiful. (Warning: These are niche, but if your players are slavs, or german, they will activate their neurons.)
Also good thread.
Wow. Thurnin is excellent. Is it all instrumental pieces?
Valheim is a good one too.
Risen - I never played Risen. I see what you mean. Good music.
>Good Thread
I thought it might flop without any good replies, but yeah, people have shared some good shit I hadn't heard before.
I see what you mean. Somewhat reminiscent of the eye of the beholder type tracks, but without going full chiptune.
I'll throw Heroes of Might & Magic 4 OST (and only 4) to the pile. The game is often shit upon for raising a hand against its series' sacred cows, but the music is excellent.
>Also check out Gothic 1 and Gothic 3 OSTs. They're not as subtle as Risen, but they are beautiful. (Warning: These are niche, but if your players are slavs, or german, they will activate their neurons.)
Am Slav, can confirm. Gothic OSTs are super soulful.
>The Divinity OSTs
the dwarven tavern song from Divine Divinity immediately started playing in my head.
>Only 4
What's wrong with HoMM2? That music is great. Like. Skip the opera version, but just the BGM version.
It's good (and 2 is probably my favorite Heroes game), it's just a very specific taste and not one I'd recommend to listen as a BGM. Plus 4 has less chance of people immediately veering into vidya memories territory, since many people took one look at 4 and noped away from the changes.
Ah. That's fair. I have an assumptions that nobody I would be GMing for would remember any HoMM before 5 because I'm almost certainly older than them. Haha
>you know hear the toilet-flushing dragon breath sound from Heroes 1
I just tried out something and it was kindof fun.
So. I grabbed SynthFont 1.0.
Then I grabbed the Final Fantasy Tactics soundfont from here
Then I grabbed some midis (just for fun I grabbed the HoMM2 midis, from here - http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=30203).
Then I tried setting it to play the midi with instruments from the FFT sound font as I assigned them in SynthFont. It wasn't bad.
Then I exported that in SynthFont to MP3.
https://ufile.io/wx093osc
If you're wanting a consistent sound, you could use midis from multiple sources, but give them all instruments with the same sound font (the FFT one is nice, IMO).
Anyways. Maybe not everyone is interested in that, but I thought it was neat.
If you are so inclined, you could also grab SPC files ripped from SNES games or something, and run them through an SPC to midi converter, and then apply your sound font of choice.
Perhaps make the Eye of the Beholder music sound a little less chiptune-y and more orchestral, to blend better in with your other stuff.
I heavily use dungeon synth (and similar genres). It gives that nostalgic vibe of old RPG games and it never feels overwhelming during the sessions.
I personally love to listen to Arcanum's OST while I prep. It fits the curent campaign I'm prepping.
That's a pretty good track. I missed out on that game it seems. I often work with the LoM soundtrack in the background. Has a pretty distinct flavour though, haven't encountered much else like it, it feels pretty different from other JRPGs too.
?si=QGbUtrPrd829b1tk
Got your multi-phase final BBEG fight covered.
The Divinity OSTs make perfect campaign music.
Imagine not improvising music live exile GMing.