The Italian label Heimat Der Katastrophe (HDK) is well-known in the dungeon synth world for the quality of their releases and their overall aesthetic. In recent years the HDK logo has become a mark of distinction and they’ve gotten more and more creative in their design. One such example is their Dungeon Nostalgie series of records, re-issues of earlier HDK cassettes given the vinyl treatment and each complete with OBI and a fantasy-inspired role playing game module/supplement.
I didn’t have any HDK stuff until our recent visit to Portland, Oregon and the vintage role playing game shop Dark Future Dungeon, which in addition to having an amazing assortment of used RPG stuff also carries dungeon synth tapes and records. After perusing the cassette section I asked if there was any vinyl and Chuck produced a box from the back for me to look through – a recent shipment arrival that he hadn’t had time to price and put out yet. It was all HDK – cassettes, records, patches, and even a few CDs. I pulled out three of the Dungeon Nostalgie records and added them to my pile of dungeon delights, one of which was Gnoll’s Music For Dungeons.
Much like it’s presumed titular namesake, Brian Eno’s Music For Airports, Music For Dungeons takes an ambient approach to dungeon synth. The album is comprised of two 20-minute compositions (though these do appear to have unnamed unique “tracks” within them) that are the perfect accompaniment to a dungeon crawl, fantasy film, or just for relaxing and letting the music paint an image in your mind of dank, stone-walled corridors and flickering torches. Theremin-like effects occasionally wander into a slightly more sci-fi direction, but for the most part we remain underground in the darkness, smelling the damp, stagnant air as we try to tread quietly so as not to alert the monsters within of our approach. Organs compete with bass drums that march their way down corridors, bouncing off the stone walls as they disappear off into the unseeable distance.
The insert is a fun addition, not so much a module as a collection of ideas including a dozen full-color dungeon maps with enough context and description that you could certainly leverage them as a part of a broader campaign or a one-shot 1 – you’d just need to fill in some of the details and create characters (and decide what system you’d use to play it…).
You can check out Music For Dungeons at the HDK Bandcamp page HERE, and it looks like they still have copies for sale – though shipping to the US from Europe has gotten almost prohibitively expensive, so you may need to look elsewhere.
- In the role playing game world a “one-shot” is a self-contained scenario intended to be played from start to finish in a single gaming session. The length can vary, but generally speaking they’re designed to run for somewhere between two and eight hours. ↩︎