The Evil GM – Mood Music during play?

I was sitting down with a friend this weekend as he was planning his adventure for his game during the week and he was running plots by me to see if they sounded good or not so good. 
Then he looked at me and said, “Well what if we grab some cool music and play it on a small speaker to help set the mood for each new area they enter. So if they are in a tavern some nice tavern music can be playing in the background.”
I said to him if that’s what he wanted, go for it, but ask the players first, seeing how they feel. Then I explained to him that in the games I’ve played in, that had “mood music” I felt it was too distracting and gave me a headache. 
But I also said that was me, everyone has different feelings about the situation and its best to ask or say to the group, “I am going to try a little mood music and its too annoying distracting please let me know.”
What you think about “Mood Music”?

3 thoughts on “The Evil GM – Mood Music during play?

  1. For my Doctor Who games, the group and I love playing the The Majestic Tale (Of A Madman in a Box) track during moments where the drama starts to reach new heights or 'when the game is afoot'! Of course, we always start the session with the Doctor Who theme song just to set the mood from the beginning. We do similarly for our Star Wars games. These types of games naturally lend to this being that they are the kind of stories adapted for the screen with their own soundtracks. For our previous D&D games, I tended NOT to use a soundtrack.

  2. For some players like me, mood music or backing tracks are excellent in a game. Roll20.net has a Jukebox feature where you can save any track on Soundcloud that you search for, and then trigger it (at your choice of volume) in-game during the teleconference for all to hear. But it kind of tosses you onto all of Soundcloud to try to find something suitable.

    Tabletop Audio has a number of 10-minute tracks to fit any genre, playable for free. That's an organized, excellent compilation specifically for tabletop gamers, just to show the mood-music that is possible.

    http://www.tabletopaudio.com/

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