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Rowan woke surrounded by an opulence they had spent their life trying to escape. Lady Duskin’s bedsheets even felt like those of Rowan’s childhood. Too soft. Too light. No texture to catch or drag on your skin and remind you that you were, in fact, a mortal being bound by the world you occupied.
That it would be over soon was a small comfort. That they were here to rob the Lady Duskin was a greater one.
As Rowan untangled themselves from the elaborate dressings of the four-post bed, Pepper entered from the next chamber. There was a haggard look about their eyes and a regal bearing in their shoulders Rowan had not seen before. It seemed, to Rowan at least, the two might have more in common than they’d first thought.
At the table, Zoe hesitated. Was this the right time? They’d waited a half dozen sessions already to share any piece of Rowan’s backstory. Was now dramatic enough? Would now disrupt the flow of the game?
Through the room, a timid violin began to sing out the first few measures of Craig Armstrong’s “Opening”. Rowan’s character theme. Zoe made eye contact with the DM. Someone thought that the moment was right.
“I see I’m not the only royal here, Pepper.”
Tabletop Gaming is a massively multidisciplinary medium. By necessity of play, we participate in improvisational storytelling. By necessity of facilitation, we engage in game design. By necessity of preparation, we write. We draw characters and maps. We sculpt terrain and paint miniatures. At the table, we act when we speak as our characters. Whatever your disparate art is, odds are that it can find a supporting role in your campaign.
In this way, the tabletop is very similar to theater. And like in theater, stories told at the tabletop have massive potential to be improved by well-executed technical craft.
Technical elements like sound, lighting, and sets can direct attention, conjure emotion, and enhance the play happening at your table. Frankly, I think they deserve more attention in the tabletop space.
I think the biggest reason they don’t get that attention is the limited capacity of facilitators. In a traditional roleplaying game, a game master is responsible for the steady motion of an intricate clockwork; at any moment, they will have a dozen narrative, mechanical, and social responsibilities demanding their attention. This leaves little space for them to attend to additional game elements.
This is a very real obstacle for tech in tabletop, but I think it is an obstacle well worth overcoming. So today we’re zooming in on one slice of tabletop tech: music. When should you use ambient music, how should you use specific musical motifs, and how can you manage music under highly limited bandwidth?
Ambient Music
If you use music at the table, this is likely what you’re already doing: during your session, you put on themed music. Maybe you have a handful of playlists for different vibes.
If you’re not doing this right now, you should probably start.
Ambient music is mostly about focus. When we play tabletop games, we exist simultaneously in two spheres. The first is the magic circle. The magic circle is (as it’s relevant to us here) the collective make-believe that our game takes place in. We agree that the rules of our game are real, that dragons exist, and that it matters whether Sutgr the Vile is allowed to complete her evil plan. The other sphere is the real world. We’re all sitting around Justin’s dining room table. It smells like pizza, and I’m exhausted after an eight-hour work shift. For fairly obvious reasons, we want our players to spend most of their time in the magic circle.
Good ambient music shortens the distance between these two spheres. It creates a stimulus in the real world that engages players with the magic circle. Instead of losing focus on the game and hearing the TV in the next room over, a player loses focus and hears the driving soundtrack of a fantasy adventure.
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