Atmosphere in D&D: Are You Sure We’re In a Dungeon?

One of the stereotypical images of a Dungeons and Dragons game is the group sitting around a table in a dark basement.  While often seen negatively, it does highlight one of the important qualities of a good D&D game – atmosphere.  An excellent Dungeon Master can describe a situation is such a way that the players really feel immersed in the experience – the bright living room becomes a gloomy forest with a few well-chosen and well-orated words.  I am aiming to become that good, but I don’t think I am as of yet.  One of the tools which can help this process however, is to have at least a vaguely similar atmosphere in the real world to the one you are trying to create in their minds.  The basement therefore rears its eerie head once again.

Of course, some people just have awesome rooms

Here’s a story for you.  When I first started playing D&D, I was living in Brazil.  I ran a campaign in my friend’s living room – a quest filled with undead-infested cities and chasing elves through dark woods.  The only problem with this was, not only was I a rubbish DM, but it was a little difficult to make the atmosphere convincing when his living room was gloriously sunny with a beautiful view looking out over Ipanema Beach.  The lovely sunshine meant that every so often I would be saying “You enter the cathedral slowly, uncomfortably aware of the unholy aura emanating from the blood-soaked altar at the end of the aisle.  Shadows swirl about the place, obscuring the corners of the hall.”  The players would then look outside and look confused.  Sometimes, suspension of disbelief is a little more difficult.

Always appropriate

So other DMs have solved it with darkened rooms and relevant music.  I find music to be the most useful type of scene setter, because it is a lot easier to come by compared to an appropriately decorated/lighted room.  Muse makes excellent battle music, and Rhapsody of Fire have an entire album describing their own fantasy adventure which is fun to listen to.  I find Youtube to be a saviour of games, though.  A good mixture of music from Zelda, Bleach, and Kingdom Hearts gives a wide variety of moods available, and everyone enjoys listening to Gerudo Valley.  However, if it is possible to get a comfortable room which is appropriately themed to the campaign, then that’s certainly a help.  The artistically inclined could simply decorate the room with certain additions like tree branches.  I’m sure there are other ways of doing things, but I am not so inclined.

So DM’s out there, how do you deal with this?  Music is easy and effective, but does anyone go any further in creating a setting that is actually believable to the players?  A sunny living room is not always the ideal spot, unless you run a desert campaign I suppose.

Video Games Live: Suddenly Orchestras Are Cool Again

I’m a violist.  That means I play the viola, not the violin.  They’re very different instruments.  But that’s beside the point.  I’ve been playing in orchestras for a long time, and I’ve learned to really enjoy classical music as a result of it.  While I enjoy playing in concerts, I find listening to an orchestra concert far less entertaining.  Sitting still for an hour and a half is not my idea of a good time, so I can sympathize with how orchestral music has been declining in popularity in recent years.  However, there is one concert series which I think is bringing orchestral music back in a big way.  Today’s post is going to be about Video Games Live.

Hosted by Tommy Tallarico, this organization has travelled several times around the world putting on high-energy, awesome concerts of music from the full spectrum of video games, starting with Pong and going all the way up to present day.  Beginning with this introduction, they then go on to perform a selection from about 50 different games.  They don’t have a travelling orchestra, however.  Instead, they send the music ahead to the local city orchestra and give them a little time to prepare before they arrive and set things up properly.  I imagine it must be an awesome experience to be playing in that orchestra.  It’s not often that a professional orchestra gets to play with electric guitar accompaniment and a full light display with screaming fans jumping around.

That’s the thing I love the most about these concerts: the atmosphere.  Instead of everyone sitting around and listening politely to a group of musicians perform a recital of some of the great works from video games history, everyone is cheering and singing along and calling for their favourite songs to be played next (the most recent VGL I attended had to do Chrono Trigger as an encore because the fans were demanding it so loudly.  Yay).   The host, Tommy, is great fun, and he knows how to keep people excited.  He also joins in sometimes, as when they did the Castlevania music he stepped forward on the electric guitar, which was quite awesome.  Also impressive is the one musician that does tour with them: Martin Leung, more famously known as the Blind-folded Pianist.  After attaining global Youtube fame for playing the Super Mario music on the piano while blind-folded, Video Games Live asked him to come on tour with them and perform Mario, Tetris, and other songs with amazing ability.

There’s nothing like a full orchestra to give you the full experience that you were meant to receive with video game music.  The VGL version of Kingdom Hearts is beautiful, and seeing a live African choir performance of Baba Yetu from Civilization IV is fantastic.  I’ve said before that a lot of older music was designed with simpler music technology and so the simple melodies that became so iconic in Mario and Zelda were the result of necessity more than anything else.  Hearing the modern versions played live though, makes you wish they had had this ability all along.  I cannot recommend these concerts highly enough.  Outside the concert hall there are many different game stations set up and there is always something cool happening in addition to the actual concert itself.  Boredom is extremely unlikely.

Tour Dates: http://www.videogameslive.com/index.php?s=dates

Classic Game Music – Why more restrictions made better music

Everyone knows the Mario theme tune.  Most know the Zelda theme, and even a fair few know the one for Tetris.  Now hum the tune to Metal Gear.  Ok, maybe you know it, but it’s definitely less widely known, if there’s even an identifiable theme at all.  Kingdom Hearts?  Great music, but not much you can really sing.  Halo?

Sound technology in games has improved exponentially over the past few decades.  We’ve got from the days of 8-bit gaming with only a handful of available tones to live recorded orchestral scores.  And yet while the quality of the sound we hear has increased so much, the music has not become any more memorable, if not becoming less so.  Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.  I really like the Kingdom Hearts music.  Video Games Live is an incredible series of concerts playing all sorts of gaming music, and they certainly don’t play music only from older games.  If you go to one of their concerts though, and I’ve been to two, it is unmistakeable that the biggest cheers and the loudest roars are for the great melodies of the classics.  At the last concert I went to the entire audience was calling for the orchestra to play Chrono Trigger, not Halo.

Link for those who are interested (i.e. all of you): http://www.videogameslive.com/index.php?s=home

At that concert, I got to hear a talk by the head composer for Blizzard, which was really cool.  He talked about how in the past, when technology was limited, the composers were forced to stick to one solid, strong melody with only light harmonization because that was all that they could manage.  This meant that tunes were catchy and easy to remember.  Now that more complicated arrangements are possible, composers are free to go as big as they like, and while this means that music is more varied, there aren’t as many solid melodies to hang on to, and we forget more of it.

Obligatory Image for Today

Perhaps Ocarina of Time is the balance point here.  The songs that Link plays on his ocarina are simple, and those are the ones we love, and have become incredibly iconic.  Yet the background music, as it was just on the stage where music was becoming more complex, isn’t worth remembering at all.

In my 30 Days of Gaming Challenge, I put Syberia down as having the best soundtrack.  This is because it is one of the exceptions to the rule.  It has strong, beautiful Russian melodies with a full orchestral score.  The designers probably had to make sure that the music was pleasant and enjoyable to listen to as there is so little action or dialogue in the game (it’s a mystery game).  VGL plays a lot of modern music, certainly.  I have a CD with Halo, Medal of Honour, and God of War on it.  They’re pleasant to listen to, stunning even.  But you can’t hum it, and I can’t remember them.  Medal of Honour has a decent trumpet part, but meh.

I’d like to see more games with a melodious soundtrack.  If they need to strip away the fancy technology of the composers to do it, I’m fine with that.  I listened to a whole concert of World of Warcraft music, and you know what?  I was bored.  In the meantime, here are a few of my favourites.

Super Mario Sunshine Bonus Stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw-udW34t1o

Civilization 4, Baba Yetu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmut6FBx4xk&feature=related

Sonic 2, Mystic Cave Zone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVEyGntyOZQ

Sonic 2, Metropolis Zone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRuJfhEeCe8