Music and RPGs is a topic with stubborn opinions pro and con. Some like playing background music and sounds, others play a particular track during fights or a certain scene, still others detest it, claiming to be a GM, not a DJ.

I prefer music and some SFX in my games. Depending on the genre and tone of the game, I may loop a playlist in the background, or just highlight certain scenes with some background music.

In my recent Deadlands game I always played three songs from the Deadwood soundtrack as we sat down to play: “Theme From Deadwood,” “Arriving in Deadwood,” and “Iguazu.” These set the scene, as it were.

Recently I used Marco Beltrami’s excellent score for the 3:10 to Yuma remake. It is dark and subtle (for the most part) and perfect for looping quietly in the background.

Of course movie scores often get mentioned when music and RPGs comes up, and there are quite a few good Western scores out there. (Personally I found Morricone soundtracks distracting, they were too familiar and hence distracting.)

This topic comes up from time to time at the Pinnacle forum for Deadlands. Here a compiled list of music Deadlands players have used.

But what about sound effects? Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an easy way to have a gunshot or galloping horse or rambling saloon piano to a scene?

There is.

A little program called Soundstokey allows you to map sound files to your keyboard, making your laptop a sound board. It’s a snap to use.

During one game (it wasn’t a western game) I was playing a thunderstorm in the background and background music and using Soundstokey for specific sound effects. It was very easy to do with my laptop and Soundstokey.

If you don’t have any sounds for your game, try http://www.freesound.org/index.php.