The Sound of the Table:

The smell of the library is dust and old leather bindings. The only sound is the soft, sibilant scratching of pencil on paper as Archie Drake pulls the forbidden book of lore from the shelf. Heavy with secrets, the unusual leather it is bound in feels repellently warm in his hand. The metallic smell of the ink catches in his nose as he opens the volume. The pictograms seem to crawl across the page with a frightful, insectoid life of their own.

Page sixty-six, verse six.

He chuckles dully at the numerology.

He finds the rite and—

“Yeah? What? No, I’m at roleplay,” says a player into their phone.

“You’re shafted now, mate,” chuckles another.

And just like that, the tension evaporates like incense smoke in a sea breeze.

A good soundscape can’t rescue a failing game, but it can elevate a good one to a great one. Atmospheric sound and music, even the careful use of silence, all help build the mood and tone of a game, especially in something like Call of Cthulhu, where the tacit understanding is that it’s not so much a question of if you end up dead or mad as a hatstand, but when.

Minis, handouts, and maps are brilliant tools for immersion. But if you really want to elevate your game, then listen.

Noise vs Focus

When planning game night, it’s easy to think about the plot, the minis, and the snacks. But it’s just as important to think about the sound.

Where are you playing? At a club, battling the second-hand noise of every other table? Around a dining room table with the television humming in the background? Even a brilliantly prepared game can feel flat if the sound environment is working against you.

Control what you can. Ideally, you’ll have a group that doesn’t talk over each other and stays off their phones when they aren’t the focus of the scene. This can be tricky, especially with games like Dungeons & Dragons, where so many character sheets now live on apps. If it becomes a problem, it may be worth printing character sheets to remove the temptation.

The best environment is one where you have some control over the room. Noise doesn’t just distract players. It breaks the narrative flow. In games built around investigation or horror, that focus matters even more. Players need mental space to think, speculate, and feel the tension build.

Music Is Emotional Steering, Not Wallpaper

Being a Game Master isn’t just storytelling. If it were, we’d all be novelists.

It shares many of the same tools, pacing, characterisation, plot, even dialogue, but there’s another layer to it. A GM doesn’t just tell a story. They direct it.

In practical terms, that means using sound deliberately.

Dimming the lights or lighting a few candles for your Call of Cthulhu game is a good start, but music is where things really begin to shift. Used well, it adds an extra dimension to your table. A good game becomes great. A great game becomes unforgettable.

Music works because it feeds the subconscious. Give your players an epic score, and they start to feel epic. Give them something tense and uneasy, and they’ll lean forward without even realising why.

That said, you have to be careful with your selection. A tender scene between characters doesn’t benefit from an aggressive battle theme, unless that’s a very different kind of relationship.

As a general guide:

Scene	Music Style
Investigation	Quiet, ambient
Travel	Light instrumental
Combat	Faster, percussion-heavy, rhythmic
Horror reveals	Cut the sound entirely. Use silence.

It doesn’t even have to be music. There are countless soundscapes available, from the hum of a spaceship bridge to the crackle of a fire. Rain is a particularly effective choice for slower, character-driven scenes. It softens the room and encourages players to settle into the moment.

The key idea is simple: music shouldn’t fill silence. It should guide emotion.

It’s also worth setting expectations early. A light agreement at the start of a campaign, or during session zero, about limiting phone use and out-of-character chatter during key moments can make all the difference. If your table understands that some scenes deserve focus, then silence becomes a deliberate tool.

And when you choose to remove sound entirely, your players notice.

The Weaponised Pause

As much effort as you put into eliminating unwanted noise, and as carefully as you select your music, you should also learn to love the weaponised pause.

Silence is not the absence of sound.
It is the presence of tension.

Picture the scene.

The cultist looks up, their expression dull, their eyes burning with the quiet fire of a zealot.

The Game Master leans forward slightly.

“You have met our god already.”

The book closes with a soft, deliberate thud.

And then… nothing.

No music. No chatter. No explanation.

Just silence.

In that space, your players’ imaginations begin to work. They fill the gap with possibilities, with dread, with questions you haven’t even asked yet.

Silence creates pressure.
And pressure creates tension.

Used well, a pause can land harder than any description. It gives weight to your words, and it gives your players time to feel the moment instead of rushing past it.

The trick is simple, but not always easy: say less, and wait longer than feels comfortable.

Because, that discomfort?

That’s where the magic lives.

Chatter Kills Horror

We roleplay for a lot of reasons, but at the root of all of them is a simple one: to have fun.

If you want everyone to stay in character at all times and deliver perfect performances, join a drama society.

That said, we all have a part to play in building atmosphere at the table. When players drift into side conversations, rules debates, or jokes about last night’s sci-fi binge, the tension deflates like Edward Scissorhands on a bounce house.

A bit of camaraderie and table banter is brilliant for heroic fantasy. When it’s just you and your mates carving through goblins like extras from The Lord of the Rings, that energy works.

But horror is different.

Games like Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green rely on focus. They need space for unease to grow. Constant chatter breaks that spell before it has a chance to take hold.

That doesn’t mean investigation games have to be completely humourless. Some of the most memorable moments come from things going spectacularly wrong.

In one game of Call of Cthulhu, set in the 1940s, one of my characters took a swing at a Nazi aboard an airship. Critical miss. He stumbled into a window. Failed the Dexterity save. Out he went. Failed again to grab hold of anything on the way down.

My off-brand Indiana Jones plummeted into the English Channel.

It was objectively hilarious.

Moments like that are unicorns. Organic. Unstoppable. You don’t fight them. You ride them out, laugh, and let the table breathe.

Because in horror, it’s often right after the laughter fades that the real scare lands.

Practical Tips for GMs

As a Game Master, there are plenty of practical ways to use sound, and the absence of it, to improve your game.

Think of your voice as your primary tool. You don’t need to be a trained actor, but a little performance goes a long way. Lower your voice during tense scenes, even in narration. Players instinctively lean in when things get quieter.

Control your pacing. Slow your speech just before a reveal to build anticipation. Then, when the moment lands, let it breathe. In contrast, keep combat descriptions short and energetic. You don’t need to narrate every swing like a historical epic. Quick, punchy descriptions keep the momentum high and the players engaged.

Use the pause. After delivering important information, especially in investigative games like Call of Cthulhu, give your players space. Let the clues sit. Let them talk. Let them connect the dots. Sometimes your job is simply to step back and let the table think.

Be deliberate with music. Choose tracks that support the scene, not just ones you like. Rob Zombie might be perfect for a cyberpunk brawl in a dive bar, but it’s less helpful when the group is quietly piecing together clues afterwards.

And finally, don’t be afraid of silence. Let it linger for a few seconds longer than feels natural. That’s often where the tension lives.

In role-playing games, dice often dictate the outcomes

Our words create the worlds

But our silences add texture to them.