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If you can remember to play a sound amidst all your other duties as GM, hitting your players with a dragon's roar ought to make a big encounter even more memorable. There is a decent variety across the sounds in this collection, so you ought to be able to find something you like that will make your players jump.
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If you run espionage games, these are well-nigh essential bits of tradecraft... and if you run any kind of game in which radio has been invented, a numbers station message or two can add an air of mystery or intrigue to whatever might be going on. It might even have something to do with your plot - or it may be a complete red herring.
So, if you didn't crouch over your shortwave radio during the 1970s (which is when I found them on the airwaves) what is a numbers station anyway?
The short answer (at least officially) is that nobody knows. Or at least, not that they'll own up to. The most common interpretation is that they carry coded messages which could only be interpreted by the intended recipient, hunched over his radio with a one-time pad at the time he expected his controllers back home (wherever that was) would be transmitting his instructions.
So, how to use them? It could be something that your characters intercept. Or they find that an otherwise innocent-looking fellow has a shortwave radio and a one-time pad hidden away, so perhaps they'll be able to find out what he is being told to do. Or maybe they are the ones awaiting orders... you'll have to work out a way for them to decode whichever message is for them in that case.
Have fun. Meanwhile I shall have to explain to my family why I'm listening to a numbers station!
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Very good generic atmospherics. Useful for those times when there is no specific sound or music you want to play but you still don't want that awkward silence. ;)
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Für mich ist Musik eine der wichtigsten Komponenten des Rollenspiels. Gerade für Horrorabende brauche ich eine Grundstimmung die die Atmosphäre trägt und mich anregt oder in abwesenden Minuten wieder auf das Setting einstimmt. Da ich ungern für jede Szene neue Musik aussuche benötige ich dafür unaufdringliche Musik, die mein Setting trägt und im Hintergrund bleiben kann. Hierzu eignet sich Filmmusik natürlich außerordentlich gut, gerade neuere wird aber schnell aufdringlich oder löst in den Spielern Erinnerungen an die Filme aus, die meine Vorstellung stören.
Toxic Bag Productions hat gerade letzteres im Blick gehabt, als sie den Original Motion Picture Soundtrack zu "Ghost in the Graveyard" produziert haben. Die Musik zu diesem bewusst nichtssagenden Titel ist sowohl eine Hommage an 80er/90er Horrormusik, als auch der Versuch Filmstimmung zu erzeugen ohne an einen echten Film zu erinnern. 9 (kurze) Tracks stellen Filmmusik zu einem fiktiven Film von 1983 dar, die eine spannungsvolle und beunruhigende Atmosphäre erzeugen sollen. Dabei nutzt die Musik der Zeit entsprechend ausschließlich dumpfe tragende Synthesizerklänge, die teilweise mit etwas spannungsvollem oszillieren oder traurigen Klavierappregios gewürzt sind. Umgebungsgeräusche oder andere Atmosphäreschnipsel fehlen - bis auf kurzes regnen – völlig, was meines Erachtens ein lobenswerter Zug ist. So sehr Sounds wie das Bellen eines Hundes oder Kneipengerede passende Stimmung erzeugen können, so unpassend kann es an anderen Stellen sein, oder bei Wiederholungen zum peinlichen Scherz verkommen.
Gerade das Problem der Wiederholung hätte die CD dabei hart getroffen, da es die 9 Tracks auf gerade einmal25 Minuten Spielzeit schaffen. Diese sind allerdings so unaufdringlich, dass sie auch nach mehrmaligen Hören nicht unerträglich werden und selbst als Hintergrundmusik zum lesen taugen können. Die Tracks erzeugen also genau das was sie sollen, bzw. was ich von ihnen will: Eine dumpfe, düstere Stimmung ohne zu viel Charakter zu entwickeln.
Die andere Hälfte der Idee kann ich hingegen nicht beurteilen. Als ungebildeter Horrorfilmkonsument, weiß ich nicht wie weit die Hommage an die Synthiehintergrundmusik gelingt - wenn sie auch ein paar -äußerst positive- Assoziationen an Twin Peaks bei mir auslöst. Für mich erzeugt die Musik eine getragene Stimmung, wie sie gerade bei langatmigeren und andeutungsvollen Mystery/Horror-Serien aufkommt und mit „The Lurking Shadow“ gut betitelt ist. Das (leider stark verpixelte) CD-Cover und die Lobby-Cards suggerieren hier einen pulpigeren Effekt, sind für mich aber auch nur eine nette Dreingabe. Die Filmannounce, Plakate und Lobbycards für den fiktiven Film versprechen mir keinen Nutzen, außer etwas Futter für (Trash?)-Horrorliebhaber zu sein. Preislich gibt es die „CD“ zusammen mit den Filmplakat-pdfs, Lobbycards etc. für knappe 6 Euro oder auch einzeln. Die Merchandise-Pdfs liegen dann zusammen bei etwa 90 Cent und die Tracks schlagen mit 70Cent zu buche, so dass man mit dem Bundle selbst dann spart wenn man die pdfs nicht haben möchte.
Alles in allem finde ich die Idee einer fiktiven Filmmusik auch als Filmbanause sehr ansprechend und kann mir die Musik sehr gut als Hintergrundmusik zum spielen vorstellen und habe sie zum lesen bei Zugfahrten gerne genutzt. Auch wenn ich nach mehrmaligen durchhöhren manche Tracks aus habe und gerade den Main Title erstaunlich unpassend finde (er ist mir etwas zu schnell und 'hell'), gefällt mir die grundlegende Stimmung äußerst gut. Schade ist lediglich das die Tracks so kurz sind und die 25 Minuten schnell durchgespielt sind. Gerade da sich sequentielle Musik mit wenig Aufwand verlängern lässt ohne sich atmosphärisch auszureizen wären wesentlich längere Tracks möglich und sinnvoll gewesen. So ist man ist leider völlig auf die Zufallswiedergabe angewiesen und kann bei selten mehr als 3 Minuten Spielzeit gar nicht auf die Idee kommen einen passenden Track für die passende Stimmung suchen zu wollen.
Wer Stimmungsvolle Hintergrundhorrormusik mit Retroatmosphäre sucht ist mit dem fiktiven OST gut aufgehoben, auch wenn er für 6€ verhältnismäßig wenig Spielzeit bekommt.
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Great sound quality and overall download. Exelent for my Outbreak: Undead campaign. Looking foward to future releases in this series.
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A delightful conceit... after carefully creating a completely ficticious movie soundtrack so that you can generate the right background and moon for your horror game without distracting players who have seen whatever horror movie whose soundtrack you might otherwise be using...
They give you some movie posters and adverts for the ficticious movie that the soundtrack was porportedly written for!
Even before I've finished listening to the soundtrack - and I tend to use music as background and inspiration when WRITING rather than playing games - this has spawned a plot.
[Looks round for lurking players... nope. All clear]
How about starting a horror game, probably set in some small Mid-West town, by the characters going to see a horror movie? This one, of course. You've got some wonderful handouts here after all. And then... things start to happen. Maybe some of the movie characters come to life, start chasing them around the cinema. Or when they emerge after the screening, they find themselves in the film for real instead of in their own hometown. Or it may be a complete red herring, the one normal thing - catching a movie - that happens in an otherwise twisted horror game...
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The nine tracks that make up this “soundtrack” to a nonexistent movie are short (the longest tops out at 3:42, and all nine tracks combined last fewer than 25 minutes), simple, and repetitive. Even the “Main Title,” the most complex of the compositions, consists essentially of the same chord progression over and over. This can actually be beneficial at the gaming table, where you want to be able to loop a track under your scene and then forget about it until it’s time to change to another track. However, for listening out-of-game, it gets tedious quickly. Given the brevity and relative simplicity of the tracks, the price point may be just a tad high (by a dollar or two). The ID3 tags are well-populated (something that some game music publishers overlook), and album art is even embedded in the MP3s (something that most game music publishers overlook). All in all, “Ghost in the Graveyard” isn’t something you’re likely to listen to for pleasure, but it’s a reasonably good investment for scoring horror or suspense RPGs.
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There are really two things to consider when evaluating this collection: quality of execution, and usefulness at the gaming table.
In terms of execution, this “album” is top-notch. For each of the four different genres represented, you get an introductory track, a loopable main track, and a fade-out track. Each track captures the genre extremely well, and creates a good immersive experience. You can easily picture yourself or your character being right in the thick of the action. Sound effects (swordplay, gunfire, and so on) dominate, enhancing verisimilitude.
I’m less enthusiastic about the collection’s usefulness at the gaming table. Most of the tracks include very distinct dialogue that may distract you and your players from the action going on within your own story. On the whole, the tracks seem too busy, too intrusive. They could easily overwhelm your back-and-forth discussion with your players.
In the end, I don’t think I’d be too likely to use these tracks to score role-playing scenarios, though I might very well play them in the background of a skirmish-type game. I think these tracks serve board/miniatures gamers more than role-players.
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GMs who like to include sound effects in their games (and I’m one of those) will get several useful clips from this collection, although some of the other clips may be less inviting. Don’t expect background music; these are short, one-off clips of various things like a sarcophagus being opened (from the inside, presumably), a vampire dying in sunlight, and so on. If you want to use these alongside of your background music, you’ll need a way to queue up the GMS clips to play without disrupting your background music, which will require a little extra planning. This pack included a few tracks of people reading “mummy’s curses,” which I did not care for; that’s not the sort of thing I would subcontract to a sound clip. But the others are pretty good; the sarcophagus opening and the angry mob are particularly effective. Unlike some other music/sound-effect publishers, Toxic Bag has taken the time to make sure the ID3 tags are in good order and contain useful information (though “album cover” art would be great to add).
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Toxic Bag has some of the best sound files for gaming!
I love that these can all be played in the background during a gaming session to provide mood and atmosphere but don't intrude themselves so much that they interupt play.
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Volume Three: Fantasy features – you guessed it – fantasy themed sound effects and ambient background effects. This collection boasts fifty six tracks, with over a third of them battle themed – arrow hits and flybys, sword draws and clashes, and outdoor and dungeon skirmishes.
Other audio goodies include a royal fanfare, some orcs grunting and talking, a bit of Gregorian chant (with some nice reverb effect to make it sound like it’s happening in a monastery), a church service, a few spells being cast and some dragon noises, to name a few – all of which could find a place in any good fantasy campaign.
As with the other volumes in this series, the ambient tracks (like the Busy City, Smithy, and Enchanted Forest) suffer from long stretches of silence at the end, which isn’t a problem when the tracks are played once, but will create a noticeable hole in the sound if they are looped during longer scenes in the game. This could be resolved by playing the sounds at a lower level, or using an audio program to trim out the silence and maybe even extend the entire duration of the file through cutting and pasting.
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Volume Two: Monsters is a collection of sixty three creature sounds and noises ranging from bugs, cats, and snakes to aliens, undead, sea monsters, and demons.
Many of the effects here are very easy to repurpose. The Dimensional Beast, for example, could easily be used as a malfunctioning robot or distorted radio message, if you don't happen to have a place for a Dimensional Beast in your scenario, and anyone with access to some audio editing software and even a modicum of skill could combine two or more of these tracks into something perfectly suited for their needs.
Most of the tracks run less than thirty seconds, with some of the more simple sound effects clocking in at between :10 and :15. Some of the effects are a bit campy, but intentionally so (such as the "Polly Playtime" doll and one of the zombie tracks) which means that GMs looking for humorous and/or cheesy sound effects will find something of use here as well.
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Volume One: The Twentieth Century is a collection of ambient sound tracks and individual sound effects for contemporary RPGs. The ambient sound tracks are full and rich - "1930s/40s Swing Club" features three minutes of crowd noise and jazz music, with laughing patrons, clinking glasses, and cigarette girls in the foreground. The "1950s Corner Gin Joint" track features the sounds of a pool match, a radio broadcast of a baseball game, and some background conversation, and the 1960s Go-Go Club, 1970s Disco, and 1990s Industrial Bar are just as full and rich. Each track clocks in at around three minutes.
Other goodies in this set include: a noisy, staticy morse code message (I'm tempted to try to translate it), calm and panicked distress calls with lots of dropouts and static, an emergency broadcast message announcing the declaration of martial law (thousands of uses!), an evil genius headquarters and mad scientist lab, a cave, a sewer, a couple of different cities, and several different types of gunfire. Most tracks seem to run around a minute and a half long, with the ambient tracks running closer to three minutes, and the sound effects (like gunfire) clocking in at less than half a minute.
Some of the background tracks don't work quite as well when looped. The Swing Club track, for example, fades in as the house band is in the middle of a song, and fades out the same way. I feel this track might have worked better if it were a bit longer, and included three complete songs (that would make the track seem less repetitious to the players if their characters are spending a lot of time in that particular scene). Some of the other tracks have a long period of silence after the fadeout, which would create a noticeable hole in the effects if it was being looped. This could be somewhat remedied by playing the tracks more quietly (at the risk of losing some of the nuances), or more technically adept gamemasters could use an audio editing program to remove the silence and make their own extended versions of the tracks.
All in all, it's a quality package for a reasonable price.
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I like this product!
I bet you'd like a more comprehensive review, eh?
The variety of tracks in this collection make for a very versatile audio environment. I will use these as atmospheric back ground as well as specific effects for events within games I run. The tracks themselves are specific enough to be recognizable and generic enough to be reused in a variety of ways. Another positive aspect of this collection over standard 'Hollywood' sound effect collections is that the tracks are designed to have a more direct use in a gaming environment without overwhelming the gaming experience.
I like and endorse this product!
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For GMs looking to add an aural dimension to their games, this pack of fantasy trap sounds might be a cheap and helpful addition. The sound effects are very short cues meant to be played when a certain trap is triggered or when a player falls into a certain trap. They vary from 2 seconds up to 30 seconds of sound effects. The effects include a creaking hinge opening, a screaming man falling into water, crushing noises and others. While entertaining the first time around, they may lose their luster over time if you use traps constantly (and so have to play them repeatedly). But at least for a few sessions they might be a cute novelty, and for 99 cents, it's not like the experiment will be a monetary setback.
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