My RPG group often uses music in the background to set the tone for the current game.

Some examples that we have used are:
Generic Fantasy fights: Various tracks from the Fellowship of the Ring Soundtrack
Horror Encounter: Various tracks from "Bram Stoker's Dracula" Soundtrack
Inn Background noise: Moonlight Concert by Tom Rasely (it's acoustic gutar)
Group gets ambushed by the hords of hell: Painkiller by Judus Priest.


However I've started to run out of songs in my collection.
SO anyone have any suggestions for songs, sountracks or other things that seems to set the mood for their gaming?

Hmmm. Well, the "classic", "The Planets" from Holst might be surprisingly good. The different segments of the symphony piece have been used in quite a few fantasy genre movies, like Conan, and have found their way into war movies and films for TV. Probably a bit older than what you mention ( ), as it was first recorded in the mid 1940s, it is still pretty good. You might be able to find it online for a listen or a download. Celtic music also has that fantasy sound to it, and there are tons of good Celtic music on CDs. They all have that same feel as the music from Lord of the Rings, even though some were written and passed along for centuries and some written a bit more recently.

Then again, a stroll through Caveworks during one of your games might call for "King Solomon's Mines" from the Three Dog Night "Suitable for Framing" album/cd. That one is primarily a drum solo with a bit of a rythmic chant, and if you have a good stereo in the room, it sounds like it is passing right through your head.

Tom, an oldie but goodie, himself.

For Celtic I have grown fond of , among many others. is great, you can't go too far wrong by playing a song with the chorus 'How many of them can we make die?'

The Auld Grump

Here are some things that spin in the background when we play - I have yet to set up different tracks/albums for different situations, however.

Anne Dudley: Tristan & Isolde, 10th Kingdom, American History X, A Man Apart

Anne Dudley is probably my favorite composer of orchestral scores; never banal but also generally not too obtrusive.

Vangelis: Soil Festival

Vangelis has many more albums that work in the right context, but this is the only one I would recommend unreservedly.

Jerry Goldsmith: The 13th Warrior, The Secret of NIMH, Planet of the Apes, The Omen, Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Goldsmith is another one of those that has many albums that could be right, and you probably have to excise one or two things off of some of them, like the more overtly Trek-like tracks off of the last one. Apes (which is very angular and noisy) and Omen probably work better for suspense games.

Basil Pouledouris: Conan - The Barbarian, Conan - The Destroyer, Starship Troopers, The Hunt for Red October

Again, you may have to take out the Russian male choir-based tracks from tha last one.

Lalo Schifrin: Abominable, The Hellstrom Chronicle, THX 1138, The Amityville Horror

The last one obviously for CoC and the like. Schifrin is probably my favorite composer of all time, but most of his stuff is too funky, jazzy and/or in your face to work for RPG backgrounds.

Danny Elfman: Planet of the Apes, Spiderman 1 & 2, Hulk, Batman Batman Returns

This is someone who also has a fantastic back catalogue, but as his star has faded, his soundtracks have become a little more generic and thus more suited for background music.

Trevor Jones: From Hell

Actually works for most anything, not just horror.

Wojciech Kilar: Dracula, The Ninth Gate

Powerful music, often a little too noticeable, however.

Peter Gabriel: Passion

It's a very organic-sounding album and as such works in almost any context.

Ulf Söderberg: Nattljus, Vindarnas hus

Sounds a lot like Gabriel's soundtrack mentioned above. Maybe a bit more tribal. Often a little too dynamic as it'll tend to fade away into the background noise for longer stretches. Defintiely worth checking out, however.

Brian Eno: Ambient 4: On Land

An absolute classic. I've been using this for gaming music since the early eighties and Jon Hassel's ghost voice-sounding trumpet has scared more than one Cthulhu investigator silly.

Tangerine Dream: most everything

The early stuff is more noise/texture oriented and the later more melodic, but most of it seems to work fairly well, even though it's synthesizer-heavy.

Sylvian/Czukay: Plight & Premonition, Flux & Mutability

Excellent ambient works that manage to be spooky without being overly obvious about it. Also long-standing residents in my musical RPG arsenal.

For more modern gaming, most of Amon Tobin's, Orbital's, Neotropic's and FSOL's back catalogues are very useful.