Music to Game To: The Psychic Maelstrom Mixes

I listen to a lot of music (over 41 days worth in 2018 according to last.fm) and I find that few things help me keep the mood of a game foregrounded in my mind like a good soundtrack. Plus, I’ve discovered that when I’m playing music to a speaker via Bluetooth, I’m less likely to be on my phone, lest my players hear any stray sounds, letting me better model engagement during a game. To that end, I want to share some of my favorite music to game to; the albums that inspire and inflame my imagination and that I’ve found work well as background music for games as well. I’ll do a mini-review and cover the basics of what mood it helps me set.

The Psychic Maelstrom Mixes

So a few weeks ago, listening to the new <PIG> album, Candy, and thinking about running Apocalypse World again, and this happened...

1st, I was just going to pick a song ("The Power of Love") as a theme song for my new #ApocalypseWorld campaign-Then I got to thinkin' several of the tracks worked well in conjunction with the different playbooks https://t.co/2HDcSv67Kl #MusicToGameTo #AntagonistRelations 2/14

— Antagonist Relations (@antag_relations) June 28, 2019

then this happened...

Postscript... #psychicmaelstrom preserve me, I'm already contemplating how to repeat this but with Einstürzende Neubauten songs... #AntagonistRelations #MusicToGameTo

— Antagonist Relations (@antag_relations) June 28, 2019

Then I finally just made a playlist of 12 songs (for each playbook, plus the MC) for each playbook, plus the MC...

So, I present the Psychic Maelstrom Mixes... There were some arbitrary rules I invented for myself to craft each mix, but those won't be interesting to anyone else, so I'll skip listing them. Unlike most Music to Game To that I recommend, these are heavier on lyrics and cover songs. While normally, I wouldn't want players to get bogged down in recognizing songs, here I want the covers they catch to feel like echoes of the past rising up through the psychic maelstrom of Apocalypse World.

• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Angel
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Battlebabe
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Brainer
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Chopper
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Driver
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Gunlugger
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Hardholder
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Hocus
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Maestro D'
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Savvyhead
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Skinner
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Master of Ceremonies

For my upcoming Apocalypse World Game, I plan on adding the mix for each playbook in play to a master list and playing it on shuffle during the game, which is easy for me since I have all the mp3s, but hopefully others can get good use from these mixes as inspiration for playing or running Apocalypse World too, or at least getting a peak into the psychic maelstrom inside my mind that drives me to put together 13+ hours of music for RPG games.

A Bang & then a Whimper - The Final Dispatch from Parcher's

When we left our rag-tag band of PCs and their 50-60 hangers on (in addition to Pinky's gang, Man also decided to take the 'have a gang' improvement), they had been chased out of Parcher's old hold by Dremmer. They decided to head off to the 100 Acre Dump to regroup and plan, and that's where the sixth session began.

We're Really Not in Parcher's Anymore... (Apocalyptic Dispatches from Parcher's Pt. 4)

It's so pretty it makes me feel pretty too! #ApocalypseWorld #AdvancedFuckery

A photo posted by Zack Schwartz (@thatwordyguy) on Jan 28, 2017 at 8:42am PST

Look what came! Not in time to run our fifth session of Apocalypse World, but still, it's a gorgeous book, though after running Apocalypse World off of print outs and tablets for the last two years it'll be an adjustment to run from a book, but a good adjustment.

Oh god. I really do apologize for this post, it's... it's not going to be a great recap. About an hour into the session I said out loud, to the players "Shit, I'm not taking any fucking notes, I am a shit GM" and then before I write the session up on Monday while it was still more or less fresh in my head, my wife and I got the stomach flu, probably from Gimli, the apoca-baby (whose arrival heralded the end of the first Apocalypse World game I ran for this group). So yeah, I'm trying to put this all together on like five words of notes a week after the fact through a haze of several days of fever dreams. I can make no claim that my recollection is actually what happened... Apologies.

So what maybe happened last time? Let's maybe find out!

New Year, New Games (and Old too...) - State of the Blog III Part Two

Well... I did not expect my first post for the 2017 New Year State of the Blog to devolve into a 4,000 word screed... Apologies to all who suffered through that...

Game Master bag buttons with my new Over the Garden Wall buttons!

A photo posted by Zack Schwartz (@thatwordyguy) on Jan 1, 2017 at 11:12am PST

So... I ran 11 different games in 2016, got to play in 4, but what are my plans for 2017?

New Year, New Games (and Old too...) - State of the Blog III Part One

Hello there gorgeous...

With the turn of the new year, it seems appropriate that I do another State of the Blog post, though this one will probably be even longer and more rambling than previous installments... So, hold onto your dicebags, 'cause here we go!

We're Not in Parcher's Anymore... (Apocalyptic Dispatches from Parcher's Pt. 3)

Not gonna lie, this is my inspiration for the look of the Beast...

Last session ended with Parcher dying from a nasty 'pede bite, so technically, the PCs aren't in Parcher's Hardhold anymore (Still going to use the Parcher's tag though, so that these dispatches are linked together). I wanted to shake things up as we started our fourth session and saw on my quakes threat countdown that we were due for another seismic event, plus I wanted to force the question right away and up front for Man, whether he'd become the hard holder or not. The easy way to do this, seemed to be another set of Love Letters, so I whipped up a fresh batch. (Reminder to my players not to peek).

'Pedes, Pup & Pump-can (Apocalyptic Dispatches from Parcher's Pt. 2)

Hopefully these man-sized millipedes will haunt my player's dreams...

Got in our third session of Apocalypse-World. Not quite as action-packed as the last, but I did some poking, prodding and prep for what's to come (if you're playing the drinking game, take a double for my overuse of alliteration...).

Bringing a Hand Grenade to a Tire Iron Fight (Apocalyptic Dispatches from Parcher's Pt. 1)

First, a reminder, please consider supporting my 2016 Extra Life campaign. It's not often that I get to put my nerdy hobbies to the cause of good, so donations do mean a lot to me. Thanks!

So... last month I started a new Apocalypse-World Campaign, taking the second edition rules out for a test drive, and got to run a second session this last Saturday. For this particular campaign, I went in blind, not having any ideas what I'd run until the players chose playbooks and created their PCs, and so I ended up having the following to toy with (a note, Parcher is the Hardholder NPC I created once it was clear there wasn't a Hardholder PC to run the joint):

• Pinky - The Chopper
• A woman with a busted face, wiry body and kind eyes. Wearing combat biker wear and a grotesque prosthetic leg with lots of straps, buckles and a complicated harness.
• Has 2 harm gang medium savage mobile 1-armor, vulnerable to breakdown. Notable gang members: Winkle, Goldy, Stinky, Gary (the new Guy), Larry, Harry and Barry. Gang can call her Half-Pint, but no one else can.
• Left Man bleeding and did nothing.
• Has a side-car for Thirteen to ride in.
• Just coming back to Parcher's Hardhold on day 130.
• Ming - The Driver
• An older Asian woman with a fine-boned face, sad eyes and a slim and frail body. Wearing an immaculate windbreaker suit. Also has a comfortable, hand-built, prosthetic leg with a complicated harness.
• Has a Buggy that is fast, pristine, luxe and cramped.
• Has been with Firefly for days on the road.
• Also just coming to Parcher's Hardhold.
• Man - The Gunlugger
• Concealed gender, battered old armor, a dull face, sad eyes and a stringy body.
• Carries a silenced sniper rifle, a shotgun and a shit-ton of knives.
• Got Ming out of some serious shit and used to ride with Pinky's gang until they abandoned him in Parcher's Hardhold. Now serves as Parcher's enforcer and sometimes bodyguard.
• Firefly - The Battlebabe
• A woman with a girlish face, merciless eyes and a slim body, clad in display wear with high boots.
• Wields a long-bladed sword staff.
• Does odd jobs for Parcher, as well as Twice, who runs a club in the hardhold.
• Has fought shoulder to shoulder with Man. Trusts all the PCs but Pinky, who she thinks she can take in a fight.
• Thirteen - The Child-Thing
• A girl with a pretty face, wise eyes and a child's body, clad in scrounge wear.
• Always hiding from the Wolves of the Maelstrom, perversions of birth, who look like beasts under their disguises but they have empty holes for eyes and they only howl when their nature is revealed.
• She has a radio that speaks only to her, and her den is a crooked, labyrinthine set of interconnected tunnels and boltways with ways into basically everyone's spaces, even if they've taken pains to close them off.
• She thinks Ming and Man might be Wolves of the Maelstrom.

Fair warning... plenty of foul language below the cut...