tabletopaudio

New Ambience: Shrine of Talos

Greetings Patrons,

I stumbled into the idea for this ambience based on a request for a mountain-top shrine. I began with a web search for fantasy gods and started scrolling through a very long list. I eventually settled on Talos, the god of storms and destruction.

Having played Skyrim years (and years) ago, I vaguely remembered a Talos from that world, but the D&am...

New Ambience: Base Assault

Greetings Patrons,

I thought I'd do an action modern/sci-fi ambience this week. So, I started with guns, then added more guns, then some artillery (more guns), and then, apparently, I had a full scale ground assault happening.

As we all know, you can't have an action I saw that Mass Effect released a legendary edition recently and I remembered enjoying the soundtrack to that game a ...

New Ambience: Mysterious Grotto

Greetings Patrons,

Here's a massive, natural cave, complete with waterfalls and seismic events and crumbling walls.  The musical accompaniment starts off majestically, as if you've just entered the cave, but then gradually becomes a bit darker. Perhaps as you start to discover that all is not entirely right here? 

I've attached a music-only version and ambience-only versio...

New Ambience: Victorian Slums

Greetings patrons,

I was reading about the famous London slums of the Victorian age last week. Charles Dickens would famously walk them at night in his desire to learn about 'the other London'. He described them in his novel Oliver Twist:

"Crazy wooden galleries ... with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched ... rooms so small...

2021-06-02 14:30:46 +0000 UTC View Post

New Ambience: Unto the Breach

Greetings Patrons,

This battle track had been kicking around, in various states of done-ness for the last month. It's a hybrid type score, which means I strayed outside of the usual orchestration, and added synths and some boomy low-end drums and things. 

It seemed so bombastic that I created a siege type scenario to go along with it. It's pretty chaotic. Marching armies, caval...

New Ambience: Skyship

Greetings Patrons,

The musical portion of this ambience definitely came first. In fact, While I was working on it, I wondered what type of scene or scenario it might go well with. I went back and forth on a few ideas, but I couldn't get the sensation of flying out of my head.. 

A few days later, I stumbled upon a web page describing magical skyships in D&D and I immediately...

New Ambience: Grand Theater

Greetings Patrons,

This ambience is a bit of a departure in terms of structure. I usually try to avoid any sense of time or linearity when designing ambiences. The idea is that they can loop over and over again, or start anywhere and still give the listener a sense of  place. For Grand Theater, I made an exception.

This track has a clear beginning and end. The audience...

New Ambience: Blighted Forest

Greetings Patrons,

Going back to some classic fantasy tropes this week. The blighted forest is a popular setting because it's such excellent story fodder. 

Something has turned the forest rotten. Is it foul magic? (of course it is!), is it a demonic presence from an alternate plane (sure, why not!). But, it could also be a species of insidious weevil that stowed away o...

New Ambience: Country Workshop

Greetings Patrons,

I made a pastoral ambience this week, to celebrate the arrival of spring here in New York City.  I'd already done a blacksmith, which might have a similar vibe, but I've always found that those shops were always a bit darker, noisier, smellier and hotter. I imagined this as more of an open sided shed, where the light and breeze and sounds could flow in. The shed is...

New Ambience: Ice Dragon

Edit: Added a looped version of just the action part of the track. - Tim

Greetings Patrons,

I didn't know this track was going to be called Ice dragon until a couple of days ago. I had been working on a musical idea when I realized that I was scoring an imaginary movie scene that was playing in my head.  That scene was a small mountain village being stalked, a...

New Ambience: The Hearth Inn

Greetings Patrons,

Once again, I've gone back to erm, Candledeep. This time, I wanted to create the famous Hearth Inn. Like the Tardis, this tavern is bigger on the inside, which comes as a bit of a shock to many first time visitors.  It's got some glowing magicky type contraption that keeps all the spells working and there are portals on one side of it which is why...

Do you play RPGs via Virtual Tabletop?

Greetings Patrons,

This is an informal poll just for my own curiosity. I've never done one of these so if it doesn't automatically share the results with everyone, I'll make sure I post them. If you choose 'other', please mention what it is in the comments. 

(I'll leave voting open until 19, April)

- Tim

New Ambience: Desert Planet Souk

Greetings Patrons,

Off to the stars this week. Or, perhaps, a galaxy far far away? Yes, I made a location on Tatooine. Only I couldn't call it that - or could I? I did toy with calling it "Moss Isley" but then, well, that's a bit awful.

This came about while I was re-watching the first season of The Mandalorian and in my notepad I scrawled 'droid market'. I sketched out the...

New Ambience: Submerged

Greetings Patrons,

After last weeks' dungeon horror track I decided I needed something more meditative to work on. I also spent some time playing the absolutely stunning video game 'Inside'. I found the underwater sequences to be particularly stunning. If you haven't played it, I highly recommend it.

This track, Submerged, is hypnotic, psychedelic, or just peaceful. It's a ...

Vault of Terror Module

Greetings Patrons,

Here are the Vault of Terror pdf, assets, and Foundry module courtesy of our friend DMDave. It's a 13th level adventure for D&D 5e. 

If you're looking for the bonus audio tracks, they are on the post just before this one, also called Vault of Terror.

Thank you all, as always, for...

New Ambience: Vault of Terror

Edit: I've now added the pdf module and assets to this post as well to make getting it from the site link easier. - Tim

Greetings Patrons,

Adventure writer (and Patron) DMDave wrote this D&D 5e tournament module for his upcoming game at GaryCon 2021 and asked me to create a spine-tingling ambience fo...

New Ambience: Candledeep

Greetings Patrons,

It's been hard not to pay attention to the hype surrounding the new Wizard's of the Coast D&D book, "Candlekeep Mysteries". I don't often keep track of these modules but just reading the descriptions of a "massive library, built into a fortress, on a cliff, over looking the ocean"...How could I not?

So here's my take on the great library section of this amazin...

New Ambience: Wolf Pens

Greetings Patrons,

This is one of those handy locations that's easy to add to fantasy games and stories. On the surface, it's fairly plain: "There are hungry wolves tied up in a dank, torch lit, stone cage". But you can tell the story a million ways. 

I remember years ago, adding a wolf pen to a game I was playing with my kids. I didn't have anything planned so I created a secr...

New Ambience: Steampunk Station

Greetings Patrons,

Here's a grand interior of a Victorian era (or not!) train station, complete with massive central clock, and various and sundry contraptions, keeping the trains running on time. 

It's based around a field recording I did at Grand Central Terminal here in NYC a few years ago (the before times!). I've used it in pieces before because sometimes there's no substi...

New Ambience: Alien Reactor

Greetings Patrons,

I've had some requests for sci-fi ambiences lately and that was my intention for this week. In fact, I really thought I had created a sci-fi ambience until a couple of days ago. Upon the umpteenth re-listen, I realized that it was also a Cthulhu track...or, a dark fantasy tension track.. or... here's the thing.  As most of you know (and I never tire of restating!),...

New Ambience: Oregon Trail

Greetings Patrons,

Here's a modern cinematic/hybrid take on the classic Western. I got this idea listening to the excellent Woody Jackson / Daniel Lanois soundtrack to Red Dead Redemption II and thought they did an excellent job of tying some older themes and instrumentation to some more modern production elements. It's definitely not an action track, and there's a bit of wearine...

Storm at Sea quick update - bonus track

Greetings Patrons,

Quick update: A few of you have requested a version of Storm at Sea without the shouts of the sailors. Rather than confuse everyone by adding this additional ambience-only track to this post, I've added it to the original Storm at Sea post. You can find that post here:

Updated Stor...

New Ambience: Magic Shoppe

Greetings Patrons,

Here's a small magical supply shop for all your wizarding needs. It started out as a general store, but then, as I worked on the music, I decided it was a bit more wonderous than that. So amid the quiet milling about, sweeping and restocking, potions bubble, and magic zips in the corners.

It's a fairly busy shop (sorry, shoppe) and people are always coming in and ...

Custom SoundPad Content Update: DM Tools

Greetings Patrons,

Just a quick note not let you all know that I've updated the Custom SoundPad with all of the sounds from the latest SoundPad, DM Tools. 

This brings the total number of sounds available for mixing and matching to over 900.

I'm currently working on a fun track I hope to bring you in a couple of days.

Thank you all, for your continuing support.

New Ambience: Secret Facility

Greetings Patrons,

I have a notepad on my desk that is covered in scrawl. It's got ideas, criticisms of in-progress work, time stamps for movies and television programs that I'm watching and...well, apparently a recipe for ramen. 

One thing stood out this week which said: "Claustro...