Question for D&D 5e Dungeon Masters

[redjacobson]

First off, my apologize if this is the wrong forum but it was as close as I could find.

My question is regarding the Syrinscape Sound Link Packs - Any DM's that use it as part of your game, is it worth the money to buy a subscription? Does it add enough to the game experience? I'll admit, some of the stuff looks neat, but not to the point where I'm willing to shell out more money.

Thanks

Also, in the Fantasy Grounds Store, there are source books and adventures for 1st/2nd Edition, and 5th Edition, but does anybody know if there are VTT versions of 3.0/3.5 Edition sourcebooks and Adventures? (I'm ignoring 4th Edition because I took a look at the Players Handbook and it was far too big a change in game mechanics, not to mention what it did the Forgotten Realms Pantheon.

Anyway thanks for any help you can give me, and if this is the wrong forum, can you point me in the direction of the right one?

[Zacchaeus]

I haven't used the sound pack extensively but they are fun; I suppose it depends on whether music and sounds are important to you and your group. Even in the silent film era they had a piano player who played music live in the theatre to emphasise the drama on the screen.

WotC has only licensed Smiteworks to publish 5e and 2e modules; hence there are no other modules available for any other edition of D&D. However Pathfinder 1 is pretty much the same as 3.5 and there's tons of material for that and a well supported ruleset.

[LordEntrails]

Currently there are no commercial books for D&D 3.0/3.5E. WotC has never granted license for them to be converted and distributed. The SRD content does exist, along with a lot of Pathfinder 1E content. See this thread; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?16074-List-of-Modules

Syrinscape... Right now I'm not GMing at all. But that's a new thing for me. But I'm not a fan of subscriptions, and this is partly why. i.e. If I'm not GMing for a year or two, do I keep my subscription or give it up and make all the modules I would have purchased not work? So the cost model is one thing to consider (though I think you can purchase individual sounds on Syrinscape and not have to subscribe.) Second, when the first of the community sound extensions came out, I tried one of those. At the time, it was fiddly and a lot of work to setup. The new integration should be much easier than that. But the real stopper for me was my players simple weren't interested in it. They tended to mute the sound channel and leave it that way. Again, part of this was me, and my inability to keep the soundscapes fresh and interesting.

All that said, there are a lot of tables that are using and absolutely loving sounds. Many of them can't imagine playing without sounds.

My take away from all of this is; it depends. Do you and your players think sounds will enrich their play experience? Are you thinking just chat sound effects (easy and straightforward) or ambient/background sounds (more difficult to keep interesting, and more challenging)? And of course, cost, are you good with it?

[redjacobson]

Currently there are no commercial books for D&D 3.0/3.5E. WotC has never granted license for them to be converted and distributed. The SRD content does exist, along with a lot of Pathfinder 1E content. See this thread; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?16074-List-of-Modules

Syrinscape... Right now I'm not GMing at all. But that's a new thing for me. But I'm not a fan of subscriptions, and this is partly why. i.e. If I'm not GMing for a year or two, do I keep my subscription or give it up and make all the modules I would have purchased not work? So the cost model is one thing to consider (though I think you can purchase individual sounds on Syrinscape and not have to subscribe.) Second, when the first of the community sound extensions came out, I tried one of those. At the time, it was fiddly and a lot of work to setup. The new integration should be much easier than that. But the real stopper for me was my players simple weren't interested in it. They tended to mute the sound channel and leave it that way. Again, part of this was me, and my inability to keep the soundscapes fresh and interesting.

All that said, there are a lot of tables that are using and absolutely loving sounds. Many of them can't imagine playing without sounds.

My take away from all of this is; it depends. Do you and your players think sounds will enrich their play experience? Are you thinking just chat sound effects (easy and straightforward) or ambient/background sounds (more difficult to keep interesting, and more challenging)? And of course, cost, are you good with it?

Thank you very much, that's basically what I've decided regarding the sounds, to be honest, we are all having enough problems figuring out Discord to make things even more complicated. And that's a bummer about the 3.0/3.5 books, but it is what it is. I've got the physical copy of the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and want to use some of the settings/characters/plots from Hommlet in Lost Mine of Phandelver, and connect it to Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, to keep my players on their toes *GRIN*

[Zacchaeus]

Thank you very much, that's basically what I've decided regarding the sounds, to be honest, we are all having enough problems figuring out Discord to make things even more complicated. And that's a bummer about the 3.0/3.5 books, but it is what it is. I've got the physical copy of the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and want to use some of the settings/characters/plots from Hommlet in Lost Mine of Phandelver, and connect it to Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, to keep my players on their toes *GRIN*

Both of those titles are available from the store (the 2e versions). Using the Universal Modules extension (you can find that for free in the Forge) you can open such modules in any campaign. You will be able to use the story and image assets from those products in your campaign but obviously things like NPCs and items will need to be recreated in the style of the ruleset that you are using in your campaign.

[WinterSoldier7]

I can give my two-cents on Syrinscape, as a was subscribed for a while there.

Syrinscape is great if you are running an official adventure, as it has the full soundscape pre-prepared for you. I wouldn't ever play without some form of background audio, I think it adds a lot and goes a long way to making my players feel less awkward when there are silent moments.

However, the flip-side to this, is that I am 80% homebrew in my campaigns and though you can build your own soundscapes and they are very good, I found I was spending a fair amount of time doing this. The search function is not great and not all sounds are what you need, so you do spend time listening to each in term to curate a playlist.

I think I would have maybe stuck with it to some degree, but I use a laptop and found that it actually couldn't handle Syrinscape very well. Anymore than four audio elements playing at once and it dropped-out. At that point, it was just too expensive and cumbersome.

[Lo Zeno]

I second what WinterSoldier7 said.

I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum, I run a lot of official adventures and for those the sound content is worth it, but ranges from nice to have to absolutely fantastic depending on the specific adventure. For example, if you're running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist or Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, you don't just have ambient sounds, trap sounds and specific puzzle sounds, but also NPC voices with pieces of dialogue to use during the adventure to give your player a sense of different voices for the various characters involved. Other adventures, like Spelljammer: Light of Xaryxis, are less detailed and have next to zero dialogues and voices included, but the specific ambient sounds and battles are still worth the immersion that they provide.

Managing to get the same level of detailed sounds and connections for a homebrew campaign would take a huge amount of work.

[MartianXi]

I have an active Syrinscape sub and use it in game... I found it was too much work to try to trigger sounds manually while trying to run a game so the FGU sound integration is a better way to do it.

That being said, I find some of the Syrinscape sounds aren't what I'm looking for in the moment. There are lots of ones that work really well of course and although it's a bit of work and not too straightforward, you can setup custom sounds with Syrinscape and build triggers in FGU to play them.

I still have the Syrinscape app running during my games to throw in a custom sound here or there when I have time but I run Spotify through my discord audio pipe and just have RPG playlists playing in the background so I tend to only use the triggers for one-shot sounds.

[Mytherus]

I always have some sound in my games (we use discord, I have an audio pipe setup and a Syrinscape sub) If you want to really prep proper sounds that go with the mood of the scene (yep in my mind as DM a think of running a session kind of like a story, except of course the players choose / decide the course where or how it goes) - anyway depends how my week goes in how much time do I have in the days leading up to the session...if I have the time I'll prep very carefully sounds for specific encounters or maps, and I think it adds a lot. And honestly I just enjoy doing it.

But usually I don't have the time to do deep sound prep so I have a standard custom sound bar (with syrinscape) that has generic sounds that apply to a lot of moments in the game.

Have fun with it - I personally think it adds mood to the game. But here's the think I know some of players mute the sound bot in discord -- they've told me they just mute it. I have one player that comments he likes the sound or "nice background music he'll say". So point here -- don't get offended if you have players that mute their sound its all personal preference.

My not so secret secret is I setup the sound because *I* like hearing it.