You crest a hill and finally see it. Moedinar, your 2nd childhood home. A flood of mixed memories enters your mind. You stop and your companions follow suit. You look over the large city. You see tall but sturdy stone buildings. You see precise streets and roads laid out in a grid pattern. You see a very large wall all the way around the city. What catches your attention most of all though is the lack of livery. You don’t see the traditional flag featuring a golden deer with enormous antlers, each one tipped with a candle, all on a field of deep green. You don’t see any of that. Instead, you see white flags blowing silently on a chill breeze. Instead of a golden deer with candles, you see the head of a deer with antlers of fire and in the fire the symbol of the elemental cult of fire. Yes, it looks like the cults has been here the whole time. Light snow begins to fall. You look at your companions and ask, “Anyone got any ideas on how to get past the wall guard?”

What would you like to do?

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. I’m Justin Lewis and I’m your DM today and together you and I will learn how to craft better stories for you and your friends as you dungeon master sessions of D&D 5e. We’ll help the noob DM, the Master DM, and everyone in between.

As a DM, your highest goal will naturally be to achieve full immersion into the world you create. You want your players to feel like they are in the scenes you describe. There are many tools out there to help you do this, but to really achieve full immersion you need to engage all of the senses, including hearing. Therefore, many DM’s have turned towards music and ambiance to help achieve this. Today I’ll be sharing some D&D soundboard tools that you can use to help enhance your experience. 

Before I get to the tools, however, let me go through a few housekeeping items. 

First, a big thank you to everyone who has supported the show thus far. We really can’t keep going on without your help and support. It’s you that make this show possible.

Second, I want to give a shoutout to show supporter Robric Vanhelm (Though that is his DM Name). He has given me and Tanner access to an encounter he authored on http://www.dmsguild.com/. It’s an awesome encounter called The League of Libraries: The Lorecroft Collection. He has generously offered up the Promo Version of this encounter to any of our listeners. We’ll make that available through our newsletter so if you want the promo version of the encounter go to betterdungeonmaster.com/newsletter. But after you get a taste for this encounter make sure to go to https://betterdungeonmaster.com/robric. All proceeds go straight to Robtic the DM who is a fantastic supporter of our show so you should be a fantastic supporter of him.

Lastly, if you haven’t noticed, we’ve updated our website domain, so now going to betterdungeonmaster.com will be the home of the podcast. This means that moving forward the one-shot is at betterdungeonmaster.com/one-shot in case you want to sign up and you should! Spots are filling for our September one-shot. We have 3 so far and the target is 5 do get in before they fill up.

I think that is way too many announcements so before I say anything else, let’s actually get to the meat of the show.

Intro

Before I get to my list, let me first give a few caveats.

Caveat #1: I have only compiled tools that are free to use in some capacity. I want you to be able to be a better DM without breaking the bank. I know and understand what it’s like to have a limited amount of time and resources to put toward this hobby. These are free so you can spend money on other things (like rent in some cases).

Caveat #2: Your ambience/music situation will largely depend on your available equipment. If you have a cinematic surround sound system, great. If you have only a phone, great. It all works. How you use it is what matters. For the purposes of this episode, my system has access to:

• An Alexa speaker
• My Computer
• My Phone
• Bluetooth handheld speaker.

In the case of the two speakers, it’s an either or scenario where I can’t hook them both up. Maybe in the future, I will set up a better sound system, but that will probably be down the line when I have a dedicated gaming room rather than my dining room.

Youtube

Now, I don’t even know if I have to mention this one. Youtube is an obvious choice because it is so widely used, no only for music but for videos. There are so many choices out there that it is inexcusable if you want to add music to your game but have been to lazy or haven’t found the right method. Start with Youtube and work to everything else. This is assuming of course that you have some method for playing the music.

One note: When I’ve used Youtube, I’ve found that it’s easy to forget about the music and then suddenly an add comes up or it moves from one song to another that it totally wrong for the mood. Just be aware of this and know that it can have the opposite effect. Rather than immersing your players it can be somewhat Jarring.

Spotify

Ok, so I kinda lied a little bit. Spotify is free, however you get ads just about every other song. Luckily for me, my wife makes me pay for Spotify so we have it without ads. Regardless, Spotify is a great option for making those playlists for excellent D&D playing. It has a lot of options and you can even use soundtracks from your favorite video games or movies. A caveat here. If you are in some way monetizing your D&D sessions or your DMing you have to be very careful with which music you use and how. Copyright is a thing and you can get in trouble if you don’t abide by it. That said, if you’re playing with your friends then you can basically use anything. 

When I tried Spotify, I found it very difficult to create a playlist that fit general moods that I wanted. That’s because I don’t create general music playlists to listen for myself anyways. If you are good at making playlists then Spotify is a great choice for you.

RPG Fantasy App

This is the one that I’m currently using right now. It is like a basic soundboard that allows you to play both ambiance noise and music at the same time. I can even throw in sound effects though I never do because that seems a bit corny or overproduced. This app has a free version and a paid one. The free version doesn’t allow you to close your phone and have the music play so if you use this for free then you’ll need a charging cord nearby. I haven’t figured out a way to upload music to it as well which is kind of a drawback. It would be much nicer to be able to add music to it that I pull from other places.

Roll20

We obviously can’t talk about DMing in almost any context without mentioning Roll20. There are other platforms out there, but I’ve used Roll20 the most. It also has a feature that allows you to upload and play music so your players can listen to it. I’m not a huge fan of the UI but what are you gonna do. Roll20 also comes with some preloaded songs so if you plan on using Roll20 during a session and you specifically want to use the roleplaying soundboard capabilities make sure to spend some time testing out exactly which songs you want to use so you know what to use before the game starts.

Syrinscape Fantasy Player

Syrinscape on a mobile device is a bit heavy and takes a lot of memory. It has a lot of situation specific options though which does make for a great playing experience. It has other paid options that you can get if you create an account with Syrinscape. I think I would maybe use this tool in conjunction with other tools as it’s not my go-to. One thing in particular that I don’t like is that you have to download the packs for each scenario you want to try. Syrinscape is a little more sound effect heavy though it does have background music that works great for any D&D scene.

You and your companions walk through the gates. You’d had to leave Judir’s bear outside. You don’t know how he’ll find the bear again but Judir doesn’t seem concerned. After making it past the wall and the guards you all immediately look for a side alleyway where you won’t draw attention. You find it and immediately start pulling off your disguises.

“It worked, but I won’t ever do that again. Dressing up as women? How in the world did you come up with that idea Cojari?” You ask.

Cojari shrugs as he undoes a corset and starts to wipe makeup off of his face. “Infiltration makes you think up all sorts of crazy ideas. Believe me, this ain’t the worst way of getting in somewhere, not by a long shot.”

Hipam snickers and points at a grumpy Judir. “Yeah, but at least this way we got to see Judir look like a lady hehe. That’s a memory I’ll be keeping for a long time.” Judir throws a bonnet at Hipam. Those two were becoming fast friends. 

You’re in the city now. Next step is to look for dissidents.

What would you like to do?

Tabletopy

One of the things I like most about Tabletopy is the simplicity. You can use it in Browser form and it’s not complicated. There are icons demonstrating what the sounds/music is and you can click more than one and use multiple at the same time. There are icons with infinity symbols that mean they play on a loop and others with a number 1 meaning that they play a single sound and you have to click again to play it again. There is also a software version of the soundboard that I haven’t yet downloaded. The browser version is simple and useful enough that anyone can open it up and start using it right away.

Tabletop Audio

While Tabletopy is beautiful in its simplicity, Tabletop Audio is rugged in its complexity. There are a lot of options on Tabletop Audio for both paid and free users. The Paid users support the creators via their Patreon but there are enough free resources to whet your whistle. I particularly like the Sound Pad feature where you can click on a Motif such as “dark forest” or dungeon and then there are a handful of resources from sounds effect to background music and ambiance. There is even a broadcast feature within the sound pad that you can send to your players if you aren’t playing in the same locale. That allows them to digitally hear what music you are playing and stay tuned in that way. 

Ambient Mixer

Ambient Mixer, as its name suggests, is a tool primarily for creating ambience. You can find the right mix of natural and unnatural sounds that would be occurring within the scene you are creating in D&D. As a D&D soundboard, it’s useful only as much as you want to create those scenes. It doesn’t help with music as far as I can tell, though more often than not, ambiance does the trick just fine. With this tool, you do need to look for the moods you want beforehand. Searching the whole site can get fairly difficult and complicated if you are attempting to do it during the game. Overall though, it’s a great free option for the Dungeon Master looking to help their players hear the game as well as play it.

“Ulv, you’re alive? I thought you were dead!”

You stand silently facing Herlia. She was a friend of yours when you were younger. You and she had both gone to the academy together. Because you weren’t slated for the throne, you’d entertained thoughts of courting her. But that was before. Things were so different now. Now, you have responsibilities and bigger problems.

“Herlia, I know it’s been a while, but we’re here for a reason. Hobart, my brother, he’s destroying the kingdom. We’re here to stop that. I saw you and knew you’d help us. Do you know of any dissidence in the city or anyone unhappy with the king’s rule?”

Thank you so much for listening to today’s show. We here at How to Be a Better DM are constantly surprised and appreciative of the messages of support we get and the fact that people even listen. We truly want to be the very best support for Dungeon Masters who want to take their craft and make it something special, and you are helping us do it. We couldn’t do it without you, so I’m gonna end this episode with a massive thank you. We’ll be back next week, but until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

Bonus Resource: Monument Studios

There is also a bonus resource for you call Monument Studios, and they are actually a supporter of the podcast. Go to www.fantasy-plus.com and get 10% off your first month and then the rest of the months are only $4.99 with the code BETTERDM at check out.

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Dungeon Master for Hire

yeah ye

you crest a hill and finally see it dinar your second childhood home a flood

of mixed memories enters your mind stop and your companions follow suit you look over

the large city and you see tall sturdy stone buildings you see precise streets and

roads laid out in a grid pattern see a very very large wall all the

way around the city but what catches your attention most the lack of livery don't

see the traditional flag featuring a golden deer with enormous antlers each one tipped with

a candle all on a field of deep green you don't see any of that

instead see white flags blowing silently on a chill breeze instead of a golden deer

with candles you see the head of a deer with antlers of fire and in

the fire the symbol of the elemental cult of fire yes it looks like the

cult have yes it looks like the cultists have been here the whole time a

light of snow begins to fall you look at your companions and ask

anyone got any ideas on how to get past the wall guard what would you

like to do welcome back to how to be a better d m i'm justin

lewis and i'm your d m today and together you and i will learn how

to craft better stories for you and your friends as your dungeon master sessions of

d and d five will help the nub dum and the master dem and everyone

in between and as a d m your highest goal will naturally be to achieve

full immersion into the world you create oh you want your players to feel like

they are in the scenes you're describing and there are many tools out there to

help you do this but to really achieve the height of emerge and you need

to engage all the senses including hearing therefore many d ms have turned towards music

and ambionce to help achieve this today i'll be shared some dandy sound board tools

that you can use to help enhance your experience but before i get to the

tools let me go through a few housekeeping items first a big thank you to

everyone who supported so thus far we really can't keep going on without your help

and support and it's you guys you the listener who make this possible okay oh

oh second i want to give a shout out to our show supporter roberick van

helm though that is his d m name he has given me and tanner access

to an encounter he author on d m gild dot com it's an awesome encounter

called the league of libraries the law craft the league of libraries the low craft

collection he has also general we offered up the promo version of this encounter to

any of our listeners including you and we're going to make that available through our

news letter so if you want the promo version of the encounter go to better

dungeon mass dot com slash newsletter but after you get a taste for this encounter

so the smaller version make sure to go to better dungeon master dot com slash

rob rick and you'll actually buy the full encounter written by roberic and all proceeds

go straight to robicroberic the d m this does not benefit the podcastand anyway it's

just helping one of our sup orders so supporting our supporters and he's just been

an awesome supporter of the show so if you could be an awesome supporter of

him that would just go so far in just making everyone be happier next we

have finally fixed a date for the one shot in september halliluyeah it's actually gonna

be on september seventeenth which is a sa to day it's probably gonna be around

two p m mountain time and we have four signed up so far four players

signed up we have spots for one more so if you are itching to get

sour feet in the game so get so if you are itching to get into

the game have an awesome experience with an excellent d m a k a tanner

wayland you can sign up at dungeon mass sorry you can sign up at better

dungeon master dot com slash one dash shot and you'll be instantly transported to a

world of tanners creations although it it won't be interest sign up better dungeon master

dot com slash one dash shot again we have one spot left is first coming

first surf so make sure you get signed up and also just a little uh

teaser for you we're going to have some awesome things coming out with our one

shots including possibly other dams from other podcast shows or youtube videos so definitely make

sure on that list we're probably going to revamp the whole system but anyways lastly

if you haven't noticed we've actually updated our website domain so now going to better

dungeon master dot com will be the home of the podcast that means that moving

forward the one dash shot is at better than master dot com such one dash

shot and basically everything we have just take the trailing slash and the last bit

m oh and the last bit and put it on better dungeon master dot com

all right i think that is way too many announcements so before i say anything

else let's actually get to the meat of the and actually i spoke to ou

soon but before i get to the list let me first give you a few

caveats cave number one i have only compiled tools that are free to use in

some capacity i want you to be able to be a better d m without

breaking the bank and i know and understand what it's like to have a limited

amount of time and resources to put towards this hobby just because we're podcast which

doesn't mean we are made of money these are free so you can spend money

on other things like rent or groceries in some cases caveat number two your ambiance

slash music situation largely depend on your available equipment if you have a cynematic surround

sound system great if you only have a phone great at all works how you

use it is what matters so for the purposes of this episode just so you

know my system has access to and aleccess speaker my computer my phone and a

blue tooth hand held speaker in the case of the two speakers it's in either

or scenario i haven't really figured out a way to hook them both up together

m m oh oh so we don't really have kind of the full surround sound

set up maybe in the future i will set up a better sound system but

that will probably be much farther down the line when i actually have a dedicated

ing room rather than just my dining room in the town house that i live

in so in the list of d n d sound boards that you can use

while deming in person games and some on online games and some online games number

one is youtube now i don't even know if i have to mention this one

youtube is the obvious choice because it is so wild widely used not only for

music but for videos oh there are so many choices out there that it is

inexcusable if you want to add music to your game but you've been too lazy

or you haven't found the right method because youtube is the right place to start

because it works you know you can work up from there to anything else really

and this is assuming of course that you have some method of playing the music

if you don't then just disregard this whole episode one note that when i have

used youtube i found that it's kind of easy to forget the music and then

suddenly an add pops up or it moves from one song to another that is

totally wrong for the mood so just be aware of this and know that it

can have the opposite effect rather than emerging your players it can be somewhat jarring

i do believe that there is an option to create play lists on youtube so

that might be something to investigate number two is spotify so i kind of like

a little bit spotify is free however you do get adds just about every other

song luckily for me or unluckily depending on how you look at it my wife

makes me pay spotify so we have it without adds regardless spotify is a great

option for making those play lists

for excellent d and playing it has a lot of options and you can even

use some sound tracks from your favorite video games or movies cave here though if

you are in some way monetizing your dandy sessions or your deming you have to

be very careful with which music you use and how copyright is in fact a

thing and you can get in trouble if you don't abide buy it plus who

it's their stuff stolen and sold without their knowledge so if you're playing with your

friends you can basically use anything but if you're playing for money you need to

make sure you use copy right free of music and just so you know when

i tried to spotify i found it somewhat difficult to curate a play list that

really fit the moods that i was looking for and that's more so because i

don't i'm not very good at creating play lists generally i don't do that oh

i don't do that for my own music listening anyway so if you're good at

making play lists then spotify is a perfect choice for you number three is r

p g fantasy app it's literally r p g fantasy in the up store at

least on i phones this is the one that i'm actually currently using right now

it's it's a basic sound board that allows you to play both ambiance and music

at the same time and i can even throw sound effects though i never do

because that seems a bit corner or over produce it really depends on how you

play but this app has a free version and a paid one so the free

version doesn't really allow you to close your phone while you're playing have to have

the phone open and and the music playing so you're gonna have to have a

charging cord near by but the paid version does i haven't figured out a way

to upload my own music to it though which is kind of a drawback but

it would be much nicer to be able to add music to it that i

pull from other places and things but over all it's an excellent out of the

box solution for you know any demean d m

yeah

yeah

yeah oh

oh

all right number four is rolled twenty we obviously can't talk about deming and basically

almost any context without mentioning roll twenty there are other platforms out there but i've

used role twenty the most and for those of you who haven't heard of it

it's a platform for playing dandy online but it also has a feature that allows

you to upload and play music so your players can listen to it specifically in

the online space and to be honest i'm actually not a huge fan of the

user experience or the user inter face i think it could be a little bit

more streamline what are yu goin a do anyway role twenty comes with some pre

loaded songs as well so if you plan on using role went during a session

and you specifically want to use the role playing sound board capabilities make sure to

spend some time testing out exactly which songs you want to use so you know

what to use before the game starts number five is siren scape fantasy player also

another app or you can use it on a browser so it is a bit

heavy on the up side because because you kind of have to siren scape is

a bit heavy on the mobile devices you have to download certain packs as it

were but it has a lot of situational specific options which does make for great

role playing experience so if you know your players are going to be in a

tavern or a market you can get that specific pack as it were but it

also has other paid options that you can get if you create an account with

sarinscape and kind go that route i think i would maybe use this tool in

conjunction with other tools as it's not really might go to one thing in particular

that i don't like is that you do have to download the packs for each

scenario you want to try and it's it's separated by that uh so if you're

looking for music you can't just browse all the music you have to go into

each individual pack it's a little bit more sound effect heavy though as well but

it does have some background music and ambiance that worked right for any d n

d scene

am you and your companions walk through the gates you'd have ah you've had to

leave he deer's bear outside but you and your companions finally walk through the gates

you had to leave deer's bear outside and you don't know how he's going to

find the bear again but he deer doesn't seem concerned and after making it pass

the wall and the guards you all immediately look for a side alley way where

you can depart down and draw less attention you find it and move down the

alleyway and then art peeling off your disguises ye it worked but i don't it

worked but i won't ever do that again dressing up as women how in the

world did you come up with that idea kajar you ask jory shrugs as he

undoes a corset and starts to wipe make up off his face infiltration makes you

think of oh infiltration makes you think up all sorts of crazy ideas believe me

this ain't the worst way of getting in somewhere not by long shot he pumps

snickers and points at a grumpy huger yeah but at least this way we got

to see he look like a lady that's a memory i'll be keeping for a

long time he throws a bonnet he am those two were becoming fast friends you're

in the city now next step is to look for decadents so what would you

like to do number six is table toppy one of the things i like most

about table top is the simplicity you can use it in a browser form and

it's not too complicated the are icons demas writing what the sound slash musics would

sound like and you can click that and actually click more than one and use

multiple at the same time and then there are icons above each one with infinity

symbols and others just one and that describes whether it goes on a loop or

whether it just plays once and it's pretty simple which is which is necessary in

my opinion for d n d because there's so many things going on as a

d m so you want the simplest thing you can get as well there is

also a software version of the sound board that i have not yet downloaded because

i prefer to not overload my computer as it is super old but the browser

version is simple enough and useful enough that anyone can open it up and start

using it right away number seven is table top audio while table topic is beautiful

in its simplicity table top audio is rugged in its complexity there are a lot

of options on table top audio for both paid and free users the paid users

support the creator's via their patron but there are enough free res sources to wet

your whistle i particularly like the sound pad feature where you can click on a

motive such as dark forest or dungeon and then there are a handful of resources

from sound effects to background music and ambiance that you can meet le play and

there's even a broadcast feature within the sound pad that you can send as a

link to your players if you aren't playing in the same local and that allows

them to digitally hear what music you are playing and stay tuned in that way

if you're you're playing online and you prefer to not go the role twenty route

number eight is ambient mixer and as its name suggests it's a tool primarily for

creating amba you can find the right mix of natural and unnatural sounds that would

be occurring within the scene you are creating in d and d as a d

and sound board it's useful only as much as you want to create though scenes

it does not help with music as far as i can tell though more often

than not audience does the trick just fine and with this tool you do need

to look for the moods you want beforehand because searching the whole site can get

fairly difficult and complicated and take up some precious time if you're attempting to do

it during the game but over all it's a great free option for the dungeon

master looking to help their players hear the game as well as play it of

you're alive i thought you were dead stand silently facing heli she was a friend

of yours when you were younger and she had both gone to the academy together

and because you weren't slated for the throne you'd actually entertain thoughts of courting her

that was before things were so different now you have responsibilities and much bigger problems

yeah i know it's been a while but we're here for a reason hobart my

brother he's destroying the kingdom and we are here to stop that i saw you

and knew you'd help us you know of any discidences in the city or anyone

unhappy with the king's rule thank you so much for listening to today's show we

hear it how to be a better dam are constantly surprised and appreciative of the

messages of support we get and just the fact that people even listen we truly

an to be the very best support for your dungeon mastering so if you if

you get a chance reach out to us on instagram at how to be a

better dam and send us messages of what we can do improve anything you're looking

for and that we will love to help you make your hobby something special and

again we couldn't do this without you so i'm gonna end this episode with a

massive massive thank you and we'll be next week but until then let's go ahead

and roll initiative