I’m pretty certain it was with the Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure, Death Frost Doom, that I first saw music used to illustrate the atmosphere of the adventure. Iced Earth and more. It was a fantastic idea and I was shocked I had not seen it done before.
The goal of an rpg adventure is to share in discovering a story, with the referee in something of a shamanic role, tremulously leading a group of players and their characters to unknown experiences. The dice and the random tables and the NPCs and the maps, all of them are oracles of possibility scrawled on paper and thrown on tabletops to conjure up a vast, infinite, incredible world (like the UVG, which you can find on my Patreon).
A crucial task for the written adventure is to present the atmosphere of the world to the referee and to give ways for the referee to easily share it with the players as an experience. The easiest way is to engage the senses–after all, theatre has been doing this for millennia! Sound. Light. Smell. Props. Handouts.
An adventure plays out differently if it is played in a cigar-smoke-filled library or under a spreading walnut tree where you saw me and I saw you.
The easiest prop these days, thank you internet, is music. If I, as referee, know that I should blast out black metal while the players are trying to decide, turning up the volume the longer they take, that tells me something about the adventure.
I took it to heart, and there are now various Ultraviolet Grasslands playlists around, many riffing off my own UVG music list, but many entirely their own things—everybody who’s made those: wow, thank you. It means a lot.
Now, as you might know, I’m writing something completely different
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been writing Witchburner (which I occasionally misname Witchfinder, but that’s ok). It’s a step back from the immensity of the UVG. Where I went for expanse, space, trips, journeys with the UVG, with Witchburner I’m writing an intimate, tragic, personal adventure. From a continent to a small town huddled between rivers and mountains and forests. An important crossroads, but an inaccessible one. A place where the sky and the earth and the underworld still walk among the mortals, tempting them to cross and cross again, from the safety of dull civilization into the wild tangles of magic. Or so they say.
And, as I’ve been writing, I’ve also been assembling a playlist. It will get pruned before I’m done, but I’ll share it now, wild, bushy, and gloriously unkempt. Behold. Explore. Some of this stuff is very well known, some of it is ridiculously unknown.
Unkempt Witchburner Music
All Them Witches – album – Lightning At The Door (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC6O4OlHE8Q
Ancient Vvisdom – “We Are Damnation” – Sacrificial (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjmnfApszsE
Black Sabbath – “War Pigs” – Paranoid (1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUXuQ6Zd9w
Black Widow – “That’s When Evil Touched Me” – Sleeping With Demons (2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68wYE7uRUVo
Blood Ceremony – album – The Eldritch Dark (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU9LDakggAg
Blues Pills – “Devilman” – Bliss (2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMYDYYQmqgA
Coven – album – Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls (1969) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn31rnq8eTc
Danzig – “She Rides” – Danzig (1988) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA8RG96QViA
David Bowie – “Heroes” – Heroes (1977) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBuwC4VJi50
Dead Can Dance – “Wild in the Woods” – Dead Can Dance (1984) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2CKukuzgdw&index=8&list=PLfimnwaZdumjHOPQz3mAysn8rfFfyJHqb
Devil Electric – “Hypnotica” – Devil Electric (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h9CSWbeRiY
Diablo Swing Orchestra – “Voodoo Mon Amour” – Pandora’s Piñata (2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2mZVOd0jWY
Diamond Head – “Am I Evil” – Lightning to the Nations (1980) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVid_fLzN5g
The Doors – “The End” – The Doors (1967) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSUIQgEVDM4
Earth – album – Hibernaculum (2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hGghVqabW8
Ennio Morricone – “Il Giardino Delle Delizie” – Il Giardino Delle Delizie Original Soundtrack (1967) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO7Us9cQknc
Gabor Szabo – album – Dreams (1968) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr0XWmEbiMQ
Ghost – “Cirice” – Meliora (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Ao4t_fe0I
Giuseppe Tartini – “Il trillo del diavolo” – Sonata per violino in sol minore, B.g5 (c. 1749) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl9FTlKK1e0
Goblin – “Suspiria Theme” – Suspiria Original Soundtrack (1977) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pins1y0XAa0
Heilung – “Krigsgaldr” – Lifa (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRg_8NNPTD8
Immortal – “Call of the Wintermoon” – Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBdAY8eA9w
Jess and the Ancient Ones – “Astral Sabbat” – Astral Sabbat EP (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hgWxb1bXkE
Jethro Tull – “Hunting Girl” – Songs from the Wood (1977) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibDLLDOYfmY
Johnny Cash – “Hurt” – single (2003) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5pc
Lucifer – album – Lucifer I (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs8QdGz1FfM
Pink Floyd – “Echoes” – Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-E7_VHLvkE
Rezső Seress – “Szomorú vasárnap (Sad Sunday)” (1935) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOkUd4IZHE0
Saint Vitus – “I Bleed Black” – V (1989) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhjP96dKYIU
Santana – “Black Magic Woman” – Abraxas (1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thkPgKpozH8
Silent Kingdom – “Reflections of Fire” – Reflections of Fire (The Journey) (2006) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxE2bUmHdc
Stribog – “Morana” – U Okovima Vjećnosti (2010) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuSWgAUb9cU
Stray Train – “Wander Man” – Just ‘cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9T_lNQziDQ
Type O Negative – “Black No. 1” – Bloody Kisses (1993) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFwYJYl5GUQ
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats – “I’ll Cut You Down” – Blood Lust (2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSpsffboOAc
Urborg – “Winter Void” – single (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2bMAR7gAAo
Witchcraft – album – Witchcraft (2004) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEQQvuEQGe4
Witchfinder General – album – Death Penalty (1982) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPYdUdp87GQ
Woods of Ypres – album – IV: The Green Album (2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SducQbGm_dU
Feel Like Getting Onboard?
Time for the regular pitch. If you want to support my writing and drawing, which both the UVG and Witchburner are full of, the easiest way to do so is with my Patreon: WizardThiefFighter. As I finish layout, there will also be a POD and–probably–a physical book of the UVG coming to reality.