Will Savino

All Hope is Lost

Note: Please send in track requests for the July track request poll! Limit one per patron. If you submit more than one, I'm just going to take whichever you write first.

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This month's winner of the Track Request Poll was Discord user CocoaMix who requested "All Hope is Lost - Battle Theme." He also added these little side requests in the Discord: 

-A more sorrowful, but intense b...

2021-06-24 12:30:15 +0000 UTC View Post

Minis: Vol. 2

I've got more minis for you today! First up, a note: last time I uploaded some minis, I did not include id3 tags in the "Comments" section, which may have interfered with your ability to play these in Music d20 Player. Well, no longer! I've fixed that original post ...

Puzzle Time

A well-timed puzzle can really break up the intensity of many modern TTRPG sessions. Even if it's not something as obvious as a sliding tile puzzle or a "which poison do I drink" sort of affair, a locked room with any non-obvious mechanism can keep the party entertained for a minute before it's back to slaying skeletons and dragons and young women's hearts and whatnot.

"Temple of the Idol (Sparse)" has the same methodical pacing to it as the original, but it's slower, more plodding, and...

The Golden Idol | Collaboration with the Goblin Explorer

Hey folks! Today I've got another collaboration with Matt aka The Goblin Explorer. He brings you a stellar map inspired by the intro scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. If your party can resist attempting to grab the Golden Idol, well... they have more self-control than any party I GM for, let alone Dr. Jones himself. You just know this place is booby trapped to high hell. Grab the map below!

My track toda...

The King Arrives

Progressing from low-tier adventures to mid-tier can be so exciting in a game like D&D. First you're slaying rats in basements and sewers, and then you're taking on quests from the royal advisor, advancing beyond the know realms at the behest of the king. Simply being afforded the opportunity to speak with the royals can be an exciting demarcation of progression. The arrival of these powerful figures into a campaign can be made all the better with a fitting track.

So here's "Lenneto...

Neutral Fantasy Music

I think most of you know by now that the majority of my music is... not that subtle. When I'm making a pirate ghost song, I want it to sound like a pirate ghost song. This is often great for TTRPGs! With any luck, players won't be paying super close attention to the music (because they're focusing on the game obviously), so blasting them with some very obvious mood- / scenario-settin...

Minis: Vol. 1

tl;dr: I'm going to start releasing the occasional bundle of 1 minute-long tracks designed to be looped. This first bundle is available to everyone, but hereafter the bundles are going to be for my Artist Tier + patrons.

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In my time working on Music d20—as well as years in the video game industry—I've learned that different folks have wildly different tolerances for hearing the same track ove...

Track Requests: June 2021

Man, you guys just keep submitting more track requests. I love it! When I started doing these in early 2020, I would have to fill out these polls with random ideas I had, because otherwise there'd be, like, 2 or 3 entries per month. Now there are over 20! Dang!

UNFORTUNATELY apparently there is a limit to how many entries we can include in a Patreon poll, and for the first time ever... we've hit it. Luckily, we didn't exceed that number. That said, from...

Quick Update + Poll

Hey all! First and foremost: please send in track requests! Same rules as always: limit 2 per patron, and please write it in a way that I can share in tomorrow's track request poll.

Next up, I'm very curious about how y'all typically listen to music when playing RPGs. It seems there's a wide gap from GM to GM, so I want to gauge how best to suit your needs. Please let me know!

How do you use music in your TTRPG sessions?

Music d20: Vol. 5

Hooray! It's release day! Even though I've done this [checks notes] five times now, releasing one of these albums is always very exciting for me. Thanks specifically to your generosity, I'm able to dedicate hours and hours and hours to making this music and sharing it with the world. To be clear: if I relied on streaming income alone, I simply could not do this. Your support essentially subsidizes my Spotify listeners. So, for that, I thank you!

OKAY, so here's Vol. 5!...

Aztec Stems

Every once in a while, I really like stripping down my denser music into its component parts. The less dense arrangements can often shine a light on cool aspects of a track that get lost in the mix a bit once things get overcrowded. That's definitely the case for "The Old Gods Hunger," whose percussion track alone is so rich and full of cool elements (ring modulated synth impacts, aggressive stomps and claps, weird war drum cross-rhythms), as well as the non-percussion version which highlight...

Ritual Sacrifice

Mesoamerican culture is definitely under-explored in the world of tabletop RPGs. Aztec temples, Incan mountaintops, and great Mayan civilizations are ripe for gaming inspiration, and yet so few RPGs engage with these cultures meaningfully! My bud DM Dave has created a lot of Mesoamerican-inspired adventures, monsters, and player mechanics, but ultimately it seems like a pretty large blind spot for plenty of tabletop creato...

Typical Town, And Nothing Feels Terribly Wrong

Sometimes pleasant towns are truly just that: pleasant! I find this is rarely the case in RPGs (or in real life, for that matter), but on the off chance it is true, "Andale Has A Little Secret (All Good)" is a totally appropriate score for such a town. Early game villages, short respites in towns that haven't been subject to demon swarms or constant onslaught, or little roadside inns and are all appropriate locales to for this inoffensive number.

Or alternatively: you ...

Typical Town, But Something Feels Terribly Wrong

I was soooo dreading working on this tune when it won the May Track Request Poll (sorry Christian!), but boy, it turned out to be a lot of fun. Here was my strategy:

• 1. Make absolutely bog-standard pleasant village music
• 2. Add in stuff that sounds super ugly
• 2. Periodically also destroy the sounds that aren't ugly
• 4. Mix and master

Turns out that was a pretty winning formula! This track bounces back and forth from the pleasant to slightly si...

Remembering Home...

"Along the Zizira" is all about the present tense: towns and villages with lively cultures that might be a bit off the beaten path. Places where people are born and die and make lives for themselves. A town (perhaps!) where you, fine adventurer, may have grown up. Maybe you're passing by town, or maybe you've encountered an NPC from your backstory, and you just start to... reminisce...

That's when you throw on "Along the Zizira (Music Box)," a sparse arrangement of the track that puts m...

Lively Riverbanks

I tend to romanticize small river towns. I'm not sure why that is... something about The Mississippi and blues music probably. There's something both sad and romantic about a town whose very draw pulls you in and just as quickly pulls you away from it. By nature, your stay in a river town is likely to be temporary. 

In my growing library of "tracks that score specific types of towns," here's "Along the Zizira," a piece meant to evoke peaceful riverbanks, sleepy hamlets, and lively ...

Sea Ghosts

There's something incredibly unsettling about being alone at sea. A ship drifting in the fog, miles from any land is such a primo horror setting, and I think that's why there are so many pirate-themed ghost stories in fiction. There's no where to go, unless you feel like the terrors of the deep are more less dangerous than whatever is on your ship.

If you want to run a maritime adventure with a heavy degree of terror, you'll need some spooky ambience to set the scene. "Eyes in ...

The Depth Watcher | Collaboration with Paper Forge and IADnDMN

Got a great little collabo for you today! It started with a simple premise: what if "beholder" but underwater? Enter the Depth Watcher, codename: SEAHOLDER. Brought to life by my wonderful collaborators Paper Forge and ItsADnDMonsterNow, this deep sea aberration has both a gorgeous and creepy mini plus a CR 14 statblock designed ...

Desert Palace Vibes

I've released plenty of castle music to help you score your standard medieval fortresses and palaces, but there are so many different flavors of castle! A snowy mountaintop citadel should absolutely sound different than a pirate fortress or renaissance era estate. As a GM, you can really share so much about your setting with your music choice, and exotic locales deserve a fitting a score.

With that in mind, here's "Our Hakim Wills It (Palace)," the perfect piece to help you sco...

Marauders of the Lost Tomb | A D&D 5e Adventure

Explore the centuries-old Tomb of Emun-Rah in this adventure for three to seven characters, optimized for a party of five characters of 3rd level.

An angelic cat has just informed you that marauders have begun to defile a nearby pyramid, and that it up to you to stop them. Will you heed the cat’s warning and refrain from disturbing the tomb yourself? Or will you plunder it for everything it’s worth? Avoid traps, explore secret passageways, and find wondrous loot in this epi...

Peaceful Piano Musings

Harps are great for fantasy and medieval campaigns, but for something a little more "setting agnostic," solo piano often does the trick. Now the actual fortepiano (i.e. a hammered keyboard string instrument with variable loudness) wasn't invented until the 18th century, so if you DO want to be authentic to a more medieval-era campaign, I'd avoid the piano altogether. That said... y'know, who cares. Plus, plenty of D&D campaigns span much more technologically advanced set...

Home

One of my favorite narrative tricks in longer campaigns is to include a small part of the adventure where the party just ends up going home. Not permanently, of course, but just to say hi to to any non-murdered family members, to explore their old environs, and to raise the stakes for why saving the world is so important. Of course, not every campaign has time to dip into such narrative treats, but when it is possible, it's a great way to remind the players that their charac...

Track Requests: May 2021

Hey y'all, I'm posting this late so I'm going to leave this poll open for 48 hours instead of the normal 24. Plus, this is also by far the most requests we've ever gotten in a single month. Cool! Lots of competition.

Anyway, same rules as always:

• Feel free to vote for more than one
• This poll will stay open for 24 hours
• If you have a suggestion for next month, you can drop it in the comments! Limit 2 per person.

May Updates

First and foremost: I'm going to post the track request poll tomorrow since I never dropped a reminder to send in requests. With that said, please send in requests for tracks! Same rules as always: no more than 2 requests per patron, and please provide something I can include easily in one of the  polls (i.e. no full paragraph descriptions). Feel free to drop requests in the comments here or in the Discord.

Next up, check out this beaut:

2021-05-03 14:51:30 +0000 UTC View Post

New Spotify Playlist: DnD Pirates

Swashbuckling! Drinking! Booty! As someone who's been running a largely pirate-themed campaign for almost 2 years now, I can say definitively that pirate aesthetics + pirate activities make for A+ optimal RPG sessions. Pirate adventures have everything: epic combat, thrilling intrigue, and plenty of "roleplaying" scenes where the characters are almost as drunk as your players. If you want a playlist to just put on and forget about it, 2021-04-30 00:23:10 +0000 UTC View Post

Let's Take the Stealthy Approach

There's something inherently satisfying about "ghosting" a mission. Pulling off a tricky job fully undetected is (in my experience!) a pretty uncommon occurrence in tabletop RPGs, but when it works, it feels awesome. Especially when avoiding violence is a primary goal, being slow and methodical can be even more exhilarating than going in guns blazing.

With that, here's "Ain't Gettin' Away With It (Stealth)," a decidedly sparser and more deliberate arrangement of "Ain't Gettin' Away With...

Rail Baron Robbery | A Great Expanse Adventure

Note: If you just want to grab the music, there's a link to my track at the bottom of this post!

Welcome back to the Great Expanse!

This new addition to Venatus Maps's wild-west themed campaign setting brings together some of my favorite creators from the TTRPG scene to bring you a fully-wrought mini adventure: Rail Baron Robbery. An exploratory heist set within a 'repurposed' lumber mill, this adventure will bring players face-to-face ...

Dapper Disco Gentleman

Okay, bear with me...

An extremely stylish man with stellar moves does not like your presence in his dancehall of choice. He challenges you to a dance-off... to the death.

My campaigns have definitely gotten weirder over the years, and I could certainly see this being a plot point in one of my campaigns. More realistically, "Lord Merriweather Wants You Dead (Disco)" might be useful in near future campaigns against wicked CEOs (looking at you, Shadowrun players), or just g...

Evil Dapper Gentleman Boss Battle

Patron / Discord user CocoaMix has been gunning for "Evil Dapper Gentleman Boss Battle" to win the track request poll repeatedly for the past few months, and I'm thrilled that he was finally able to get his wish. I tend do so many big monster fight combat tracks or dueling armies or vengeful gods or whatever, but sometimes the best bosses are just regular dudes with a bit of style and a strong desire to kill you.

"Lord Merriweather Wants You Dead" is your backdrop for epic duels in lavi...

Nanofluidics THEME SONG

Okay, so this track is likely not going to see a ton of use in your campaigns because it goes from fairly sedate to outrageously loud and bombastic over the course of 3 minutes. THAT SAID, I think it's cool as hell, so I'm giving it to you anyway. Enjoy!

When would you actually use "Subtle Fluid"? As a theme song, a pump up track, for a "gearing up" montage, or for when you're describing that finishing blow in an epic sci-fi / cyberpunk adventure. Those moments are probably pretty infre...