Atmosphere

[Ahnn Uuh]

What do y'all do to create the proper atmosphere for serious gaming? Do you play the Conan soundtrack in the background? Have players dress the part a' la LARP? Use minis on terrains for the PCs?

[keltset]

Serious gaming? With spell names like "Take That, You Fiend" and "Yassa Massa" you want serious gaming?

I'm probably not the best to answer, since I don't game with a group much, but I guess movie soundtrack "mood music" helps a little.

T&T is mostly fun gaming.

[mahrundl]

Ahnn Uuh,

I tend to try to set the scene via detailed descriptions and making the players see the scene in their minds' eyes. I don't generally do props, other than in those situations where there is too much detail required for a purely verbal description.

This is a game of creativity; give the players an evocative outline, and let them imagine the scene themselves. Most people will create a far more frightening mental image of a troll than anything I could show them. Especially since I can't draw worth a d**n...

Mahrundl

[Boozer]

I love music in the background, my favourite CDs being:

*Conan the Barbarian/Destroyer
*The 13th Warrior
*Gladiator
*Music from the Middle Ages
*Mike Oldfield (later in the night when the Conan CDs have been overplayed!
*Camina Burana
*Jethro Tull (Broadsword & the Beast)

In addition, I like to use miniatures, as I have a collection of about 600 that never get to see the outside of their storage boxes! However, we get less and less chance to play these days, and when we do, its usually just sitting around the table with a bunch of snacks and copious amounts of wine for the GM. I always like a drink whilst role playing...

I also put on voices, accents and perform various sound-effects from time to time...

[Ahnn Uuh]

Keltset, I do see your point about T&T being tongue-in-cheek. However, by "serious" gaming, I didn't necessarily mean solemn and sober. Player focus, concentration on game play, and a fear/respect of possible PC deaths are more along the lines of what I was thinking of. That, and reeling them in to the world itself.

[Ahnn Uuh]

Mahrundl, I confess I cannot draw either. And to make things worse, my brother is something of a cartoonist....

[mahrundl]

My wife is quite a good artist, but I don't want to ask her to do anything at present. I'd *REALLY* like her to finish her PhD as soon as possible...

My T & T campaign (currently on hold) is 'serious', in the sense that the players are attached to their characters and will care if they die. But that doesn't mean there aren't silly things happening from time to time. And my latest submission to Boozer's Collaborative Dungeon has quite a lot of sillyness.

I think that 'frivolous' is a better term than 'silly' here. I don't think my current batch of players would enjoy a frivolous campaign. But at least some of them would be quite happy to do a frivolous one-off.

[Ahnn Uuh]

Actually, there are a number of games I'd like to try as one-offs, but it's an awful lot of work for just one evening's play. Somehow I just can't see playing an Og campaign... Nor When Good Villagers Go Bad. Nor Escape From Westerville State. Nor the Viral Vegetable Wars. Nor... You know, it occurs to me I really have to stop acquiring games I'll never get to play....

Boozer: I confess I haven't heard Camina Burana or Mike Oldfield (to the best of my knowledge, that is). And Jethro Tull is definitely an acquired taste. You have to be in the right mood. We seem to forget quite often to play any music at all, and when we do put it on, it seems to fit the theme of the game. When we were playing a pirates campaign, we played Pirates of the Caribbean constantly, and though I'm not a Cher fan, "If I Could Turn Back Time" definitely fit our time travel adventure.

[mahrundl]

One downside of music in the background: I and a number of my players have some hearing difficulties. In my case, I have very little in the way of background noise filtering. Having music on when there are potentially several people try to talk to me just exacerbates the problem. Which is a pity, since I like music (I've recently been watching the 'Tubular Bells 2 and 3 Live' DVD, since we're talking Mike Oldfield).

[Boozer]

Other CDs I play are soundtracks to 'The Mummy' and Clannad, and quite often just have some classical music running along quietly in the background.

Having said all this, we hardly ever play

[pluzbeta]

Carmina Burana is an excellent piece of music. Some of it was in the King Arthur movie "Excalibur".

[Boozer]

Yes it is indeed Pluzbeta. For a while, they also played it as the players ran out onto the pitch at my local footy club!

[quoghmyre]

I have to admit that our old T&T group used to occasionally dress up and go out on "Urban Adventure". Exploring large old cemeteries, race through children playground mazes. Climbing into school playground forts and castles. One time getting chased from a construction site by "Orc" security guards. I guess if we were anywhere else in the world we would have been shot or jailed.

Music? while are all into our music we never used it as RPG aid. Our games had a lot of verbal interplay and you had to listen carefully to keep up with the play.

Like Boozer I have a few miniatures. I found especially with new or younger players they distracted from the "Shared Dream" and became more board-game focused. This limited the players creative solutions. I tend to just keep adding detail to the room descriptions until the players take over and start explaining what they are doing. My players are very good at asking questions, what kind of torches? how big a door? Does it have a lintel? Is there light coming from under the door? So they help build the scene by looking around.

[Ahnn Uuh]

quoghmyre said:

My players are very good at asking questions, what kind of torches? how big a door? Does it have a lintel? Is there light coming from under the door? So they help build the scene by looking around.

Ye gods, my group is apt not even to know there is a door, let alone whether it is (a) closed, or (b) has a light under it. This probably has a lot to do with two toddlers screaming cheerfully as they careen through the living room where we game. On the other hand, it could just be due to the total obliviousness of the group. (Aha! We're hobbits!--oh, wait, that's another thread.)

[mahrundl]

Agreed Khaydhaik. Miniatures just don't do it for me. I'm in one campaign (not T & T) at present where we use miniatures, and all they are used for is in situations where the exact order or position of a party member is crucial. That's normally for combat, to see who can hit what.

My T & T campaign doesn't use miniatures, and I seriously doubt it ever will. Mind's eye visualisation is much more detailed and exciting. And I ad-libbed quite a bit, and threw in random pieces of descriptive prose that had no impact on the events of the campaign but hopefully helped the players 'see' the world better.