I don’t currently use music for my game, but I plan to, once I have a multi-CD changer or a computer in a convenient location. I picked up Holst’s The Planets because every article on the subject of D&D music ever has mentioned it.
I also recommend the *Pirates of the Carribbean * soundtrack.
Well, there are several possible reason for this:
Songs with lyrics don’t make good background music.
Songs about how roleplaying is a pastime for sad fuckers who live in their parents’ garages don’t usually go down well at gaming sessions.
Nobody listens to shitty bands like Weezer anyway.
Gotta take issue with #1 and #3. Starting with #3, this really isn’t the place to be insulting someone’s taste in music. Weezer’s a pretty good band, IMO, and the ‘Buddy Holly’ video is hilarious.
As for point #1, John Williams’s ‘Duel of the Fates’ from the Star Wars : Episode One soundtrack has lyrics, but it perfectly suited to epic battles.
Lots of good suggestions so far. My current campaign is the first time I’ve used music, and I’m loving it. (the players seem to like it too.)
I have to agree with the no lyrics suggestion, but I amend it to no english lyrics. I find that if the lyrics are in a foreign (or made up) language, it’s not as distraction.
Conan, LOTR, Midnight Syndicate, and Medieaval Baebes all get heavy rotation in my games.
I play Ravenloft, so most of my picks go toward the spooky end of things:
Bram Stoker’s Dracula soundtrack
Castlevania, Resident Evil, Silent Hill videogame soundtracks.
Vas
Signs soundtrack
Danzig’s Black Aria
Some are good for general D&D too:
Nickel Creek
Blackmore’s Night (an exception to my no english lyrics rule)
Jethro Tull (ditto)
I have a couple theme songs for major NPCs. The big one is Nine Inch Nails’ A Warm Place. Very cool song, and I found a bunch of remixes of it for different moods.
It’s more the place to criticise someone’s musical taste than it is to say “he he ur all so lame”. Or what did you think gex gex meant by “I don’t know anything about roleplaying, but you should play this song about how all roleplayers are sad geeks”?
Really? What do they say?
Gibble-gabble lyrics are perfectly acceptable, because they’re just voice-as-instrument. As gonzoron didn’t quite say, it’s meaningful sounds that are the distraction. Languages we don’t understand are just sounds; languages we do, we cannot help but listen and extract the meaning.
Led Zeppelin - Misty Mountain Hop
Weezer - In the Garage
Beatles - It’s Only Love
Ride of the Valkyries
I recommend Hedningarna. Sibelius, Prokofiev and Moussorgsky have also written some great stuff that might be appropriate.
Well, maybe you find lyrics too distracting, but I use songs with lyrics as background in roleplaying on a fairly regular basis, and don’t have problems with it.
Okay, some of them are in German. But I understand enough German that it’s not all gibberish, and some of them are in English and also aren’t a problem.
The fact that you don’t like using things with lyrics doesn’t mean they’re inherantly unusable.
It does occur to me, Evil Death… I just asked several people, to make sure it wasn’t just me taking something different out of it, and you are officially the only person I know of who takes In the Garage that way.
It’s talking about when he was a teenager hanging out there, with the garage band/games thing, not him living there as an adult.
My suggestions:
Qntal
Estampie
Die Verbannten Kinder Eva’s
Excellent mood creators. The music is midiaeval and etherial.
Also check out:
Love is colder than death
Some of Nick Cave
You are the FIRST roleplayer I’ve met who thought that song was offensive. (In fact I first heard it after it was mentioned on a D&D MB.)
You do realise it’s about a teenager (specifically Rivers Cuomo) hanging out in his garage, where he keeps his comics and games, and where he can noodle around with his music, right? (Several parts of the song suggest the early-to-mid eighties when Rivers would have been 13-16.)
Quoth Moo:
That has some merit, too, but you’d have to be careful to use it sparingly. Too recognizable, and it’d be an instant tip-off to the players that this is the Big Epic Battle which Culminates the Adventure. You could play it once that’s already obvious, I suppose. Or if you wanted to be really sadistic, you could just play it at random one day, as the party is just traipsing through the forest, and nothing happens :>.
Since there seems to be a bit of a poll, mark me one down as one more gamer who loves Weezer in general, and “In the Garage” in particular. And yeah, I always thought the song was poking a bit of fun at gamers. So what?
Try the Labyrinth soundtrack. It’s got some songs with vocals, some without, and all of it dandy fantasy music.
Carmina Burana
Sleepy Hollow soundtrack
almost anything by Pink Floyd
Bit touchy, aren’t we? I never set out to call anyone ‘lame,’ and I’d always thought the song was pretty celebratory. Like, “I like Kiss, I like these games, who cares what anyone else thinks?”
I posted a song about gaming. If you perceive that as an attack, you’re the one with issues.
Just because we don’t understand the lyrics doesn’t mean they aren’t lyrics. If you wanted to specify intelligible lyrics, then…
…wasn’t the best way to do that. Even if you had, I’d still disagree. Greensleeves pops to mind as an acceptable song with intelligible lyrics that’d be at home in a D&D game.
Unfortunately, their CD was never released, but Djembe had some awesome songs. My favorite is In Taberna. The Soil Bleeds Black also has some nice songs.
We’re trying to find some songs for our game this Saturday, too.
It’s probably a personal thing whether to use intelligible lyrics or not. I happen to find it distracting. Other people don’t. See what works for your group. I happen to be the type of person who notices lyrics first when hearing a new song. I might not be able to hum it afterwards, but I can usually remember a few lyrics.
So when I use a song with lyrics, I feel as though I’m talking over someone.
Of course, what’s gibberish to one person may not be gibberish to another. I don’t know if anyone in my group speaks enough german or italian (or Zabrak ;)) for it to matter, but I haven’t heard any complaints.
I also avoid overtly recognizable stuff like Ride of the Valkyries or Saber Dance, mainly because I’d rather the players not sing along. 
Oh, and In My Garage is a great song. I wouldn’t play during a game, but it’s a great song.
Interesting to see that so many gamers have put thought into this. Everything I would have suggested, and more, has already been mentioned.
I’m bookmarking the thread–in my next campaign, there will be areas where not only the players, but the characters will be able to hear themes at times, if they have the right abilities. I’ll need a good selection of music to work from, since I don’t want to try to write it all myself.