Sea Voyage & Naval Combat Music
A sea arc swings between long, calm stretches and sudden chaos. Build a calm sailing set, a storm set and a broadside set, and switch between them as the weather and the enemy ships allow.
Calm sailing & port
- Tabletop Audio: Pirates!: "salty, rum-sodden" sea ambience with music.
- Sea of Thieves soundtrack by Robin Beanland: hurdy-gurdy and concertina sea shanty feel. Great for shipboard downtime.
- Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag soundtrack by Brian Tyler: adventurous Caribbean age-of-sail orchestral music.
Storms
- Tabletop Audio: Storm at Sea: "A terrifying squall from the east. The crew must work together to save the ship."
- Tabletop Audio: Ship of the Line (storm version available): warship-at-sea ambience.
Ship-to-ship combat
- Tabletop Audio: Age of Sail SoundPad: trigger broadsides, single cannons, cutlass fights and damage one-shots over your music.
- Ship Battle from Tabletop Audio's Cursed Captains of Cthulhu pack: with ambience-only and music-only versions.
- Syrinscape: live layered soundsets if you want the cannon fire to land on the dice roll.
Ghost ships & things beneath
- Tabletop Audio: Ghost Ship and Ship Graveyard: eerie and good for a derelict.
- Something Lurks from the same Cursed Captains pack: for the moment before the tentacles.
Sea monster / leviathan
A leviathan rising from the deep deserves its own track. Go big and orchestral, and drop the shanties.
Runes & Ruin (AI-assisted): The album "Ashes of the Dragon Sea" features a sea leviathan and dragonriders over the waves, made with AI tools (Suno) by this site's owner. It works as a dramatic sting when the monster surfaces. It's optional and labeled, and the human-made picks above cover the whole voyage. Spotify · YouTube
Tips
- Use the SoundPad for sound effects and keep the music low underneath them.
- Use silence plus wave ambience for long travel montages, and save the music for events.
- Give each recurring ship its own theme. Players will start to recognize it.
Adventures at sea
Ship combat pick: Limithron's Guide to Naval Combat for 5E — hex-based ship-vs-ship and ship-vs-creature rules with ship cards, tokens and water maps.