8 D&D Soundboard Tools DM’s Can Use While DMIng

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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