Well really I was talking about it regarding DMing my own game some time in future, but if Wes thinks it would be a good idea, then I'd be happy for him to use it to help out in Dyfed/future games - I have quite a bit of orchestral and ambient stuff that I would use in my own game, from soundtracks, arrangements, artists in that field, even some slightly less-well-known classical stuff, that I've been sorting into playlists based on things like 'D&D - Battle', 'D&D - Town/city', 'D&D - Dungeon', 'D&D - Wilderness', etc. No vocals or anything, just pretty cool background music which I feel could help with immersion (provided its not too well-known or overpowering).
The way I theorize It could be used in a D&D game is like this; connect an external hard drive / a portable hard drive, containing all relevant music and playlists, to a laptop on the day, which is in turn wired up to a sound system (my portable hard drive is like a big fragile brick though, and I don't have a laptop or a decent sound system except for a slightly dodgy $100 boombox or some basic Logitech speakers, so this is all just in theory). With Windows media Player, when set to shuffle, when a playlist is loaded a random song is chosen to begin playing, and when that one is completed, another is chosen at random, etc. Basically, with a folder full of the different WMP playlist files, they could each be opened at different times, providing instant, suitable background music for the game, depending on the scene.
Not my idea to work this into Dyfed though, just a bit of musing I was doing regarding DMing my own game sometime once things are worked out/interesting DMing tricks in general. Of course, the downside with this is that it can distract the DM from his more important duties, unless he has an aide, which most DMs do not (and besides, an aide would not know exactly what type of mood the DM wishes to set). This is made even worse if the same laptop is being used for other purposes to help with the game, eg. taking notes, recording tables, using DM tools, etc. For background music, it's probably the most efficient way to manage it & keep it suitable though, in my opinion.
Anyways, just throwing this out there now that Kate's brought it up.
