Gil Luna, from Portland, OR, is seeking to crowd fund an exciting new project, creating ambient soundtracks for players of games like Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, and Pathfinder. Says Luna, “As a GM and gamer since the ‘80s, I have played and run many games from many genres. As a musician, singer, and collector of soundtracks, I started compiling tracks of the best music for use during my games. Soon I discovered that the best songs for use with RPGs were those that involved the players into the game without overpowering it. Players loved having ambient music in the background as it helped them get into the setting, their characters, and the story.”
Luna quickly realized how difficult it was to find the right music for his games, and has long wanted to make his own soundtracks, relying on his musical background. However, prior to Kickstarter, it just wasn’t possible: “These tracks are not cheap to create. They require hours of hard work as well as the cost of purchasing good sound equipment and sound libraries, all to ensure I’m providing the best ambiance for gamers.”
Now, with the help of crowd funding, Luna hopes to create high-quality MP3’s, each a glorious 10 minutes in length, meant to help GMs inspire their players. The basic goal of the Kickstarter is to provide gamers with 48 tracks. That’s over 480 minutes of soundtracks for your games, with many more planned for the stretch goals. And these are more than just sound effects. Unlike some products that just provide sound effects on a loop in the background, Ambient Environments is a complete musical soundtrack for your gaming experience. The sound effects are there, too, but they’re only one part of the whole.
You can visit the Kickstarter page to listen to several free samples from the proposed albums and download an entire free track, “The Temple of Dread.” The samples prove that Luna can achieve his creative goal and portray an incredible range of settings. Listen to “The Forest of the Fae,” with its hauntingly soft choir set over a warm ambiance backed by quiet birdsong, and you will feel like you’re walking in a fantasy forest, populated by fairies and protected by elves. The cyberpunk track “Hacking In,” on the other hand, presents a more industrial feel along with an almost exotic pulse beat that wouldn’t distract from a gaming session but would definitely create the feeling of sneaking around a sci-fi environment. It makes you feel like pulling some friends together to run a campaign, just so you can use the music.
The Kickstarter is asking for $3,000, a sixth of which was raised on the first day. Pledges offer access to the soundtracks, with options available to “build your own prize” using add-ons. High pledgers are offered rewards such as their own custom MP3, a limited edition physical release of the soundtrack, and free access to the stretch goal tracks: which could potentially be hundreds of more songs, depending on how much money is raised.
If the quality of the Kickstarter page is any indication, Luna will be delivering truly amazing soundtracks to the gaming community. The page, video, and sample music have a flair that shows Gil is well acquainted with the aesthetic of his audience and lends credence to his words that he wants to give something to a community he has felt a part of since childhood:
“It was where I’ve met some of my best friends. Some of my favorite stories can’t be found in any book or film, but were created by gamers at my living room table. There’s all these creative minds out there and I want to add what I can to encourage them to keep gaming and to keep creating, and to keep having fun while doing it. That’s what this project is all about.”
