Music and Roleplaying
During the Saturday Amber game MK was playing some CDs; a symphony based off of Lord of the Rings and the soundtrack to Fellowship. I used to play themed music during games I GM'ed. It adds a feeling of mood to a game. If MK was trying to do that, he went about it all wrong. The music he was playing had a variety of styles and most of the time it did not fit the mood the game was in and was distracting.

If you play music in a game it should fit the mood being seen at the time. When I played music, I kept the CD player handy and started the proper music at certain scenes. For example, the first time I used music in a roleplaying game was in a fantasy game. The heroes were going in to battle against a horde of foes. I put in Orff's Carmina Burana and played "Oh fortuna!" The epic feeling of the song combined with the fact that it has been used in multiple movies during climactic battles got the players even more hyped about the fight and we had a great time. The next time I used music was in Bloodshadows, a pulp noir setting. As the first game of this new campaign started , the players were hanging out in a speak-easy after solving a case. I put on a song (saying that it was the song coming from the radio) that you'd expect to hear coming from sexy film-noir singer as she leans over the piano with a flirtatious look. It immediately set the mood.

These days I have been thinking of using my laptop and MP3s to play music in games. I can store hundreds of songs and pull the right song up in an instant without interrupting game play by changing CDs. We'll see.