Random Thoughts Table: Sounds of Free D&D with new Tools!

Here’s a mix and match of some of the things lying here and there on my blogging desk.

Worlds of Sounds

Earlier this year, I got a complimentary set of 3 CDs from reader Giorgio Vezzini.  Giorgio runs a studio in Italy called World of Twillights where he produced 4 CDs of sounds to use in your favorite tabletop Roleplaying games.

• World of Creatures: 19 short tracks of monster sounds from the Tarrasque to Giant Ape.
• World of Magic: 19 tracks of magical effects and incantation.  The Evocation of Yog-Sothoth is particularly creepy.
• World of Ambiances:  19 tracks of sounds you are likely to hear in the background of a fantasy RPG scene, from city sounds to the nightly noises of the forest.

That last one is my favorite one, mainly because the tracks are long enough (a few minutes each) to be left playing in the background while playing out a scene.  The sounds of the taverns and town square are great tracks to create immersion and I’d like to find a way to include this in my game.

The other CDs, being usually shorter tracks, would require more fiddling on my part, potentially creating dead air in the game.  In fact, as I muse about using such tracks in a game, I’d likely put them in my iPod and play them as needed in the game.  With a playlist of sounds arranged to fit with some of the scenes I plan in a game, that could work while limiting fiddling with a CD player or browsing 16 GB of files to find the right tracks.

Oh and each CD has a 20th track with music composed to fit with the CD’s theme.  They are all very good.

So give them a look, Giorgio has a few samples available on his website.

D&D 4e Test Kit

I got an email yesterday informing me that Wizards of the Coast was releasing the Keep on the Shadowfell freely as a PDF along with the Quick Rules booklet that came with it.

Here’s the press release:

Today it’s even easier with the release of the 4E Test Drive, a collection of downloads that contains everything a gaming group needs to try out the D&D game for the first time, for free. The gaming kit, which is available on the Dungeons & Dragons Web site, comes with the following:

• The popular Keep on the Shadowfell adventure, revised with the latest rules and updated, action-packed encounters
• A set of pre-generated characters for quickly jumping into the game (or create your own character using the Character Builder, free for levels 1-3)
• A downloadable set of Quick Start rules
  

You can check it out for yourself by going to http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4dnd/dndtestdrive

All right, I know this news might be taken left or right by the various people debating Wizards recent business decisions or the relative financial health of D&D 4e, but here’s how I like to see it.

With the Quick Start rules, the Character Builder demo going from level 1-3 and Keep on the Shadowfell, D&D 4e now has a complete basic game that includes character generation.  If you combine this with the 19$ Starter game, you now have a full roleplaying game that includes many monsters, dice, Tokens, tiles and and extra adventure.

It does imply that someone needs Internet access in order to get all this, but I suspect that Wizards’ target audience is the online 12 year old+ market that are well acquainted with the Web.

So I see this as good news.

An alternative to D&D insider?

My friend Yax of Dungeonmastering.com has been hard at work to create some D&D 4e tools that allow a DM to create monster cards, templates, encounter and trap cards (with Power and Magic Weapon cards in Beta).

It’s completely legal since the tools do not have any 4e information in them when you create an account, you still have to enter all the numbers of your favorite monster/trap etc.  However what it does for you is create nice looking cards with the now familiar 4e formatting.  You can print out these cards or export the code to either your Obsidian Portal campaign wiki (the Tools were created to be easily integrated in Obsidian’s structure) or any other website.

Of course, this service is not quite free.  Yax calls it freemium, an expression I see cropping here and there in web-based businesses.  Still, with the basic account, you’re allowed to create unlimited trap and power cards and you are limited to 10 monsters, 3 encounters and 10 magic items cards.  That’s enough to decide if its worth the 7$ monthly (57$ yearly) fee.

So give it a try!

All right, tomorrow I’ll be posting the weekly update of the one-page Dungeon contest, in which Chgowiz and I will be answering 4 questions about the template in our own way.

Take care!