Hey everyone! We had the chance to talk to the creators of the exciting new BattleBards Kickstarter in the days before it goes live. BattleBards is a new tool for introducing audio into your Table Top games. It comes with an impressive library of sound effects, ambient music, and a way to combine the any files into something new and special for your game. They sent me the Soundboard they created in their last Kickstarter which was really amazing. I enjoyed that they had multiple tabs to keep track of your ambient music, SFX, and other files. You can save your most used files to a side panel, so they’re easy to use over and over, and it’s easy to set something to loop. It’s a much more handy way to handle sound files then fumbling around in iTunes and it looks awesome to boot. We sent our most burning questions to the group behind BattleBards, and here’s what we learned!
- Tell us about yourself and how you got into RPGs
We all grew up around gaming and it’s grown from a hobby to a passion. We’ve all come into RPG’s from different angles.
Mike came into RPG’s starting from reading the Dragonlance series of books which primed him for jumping into Dungeons and Dragons. Alex came into RPG’s from video games, namely, the series of Might and Magic games which also, primed him for D&D realizing “Wait, I can run my OWN Might and Magic type stuff with my friends?!” Kyn has always been a hardcore console gamer and RPG fan (Dragon Warrior!!!!). In highschool he was introduced to Spellfire the CCG based on Forgotten Realms and then to AD&D 2nd Edition through his geek friends. He was hooked and began enjoying weekly doses of junk food driven TTRPG Campaigns.
- What do you think adding ambient music and SFX brings to a tabletop game?
Sound effects provide evocative accenting to combat and important sequences around the gaming table. Music adds the emotional context for a scene, providing that all important tool to help the GM direct players’ energy as needed. A funny example of just how critical music is to contextualizing a scene, check out this rendition of the Star News A New Hope Ceremony scene at the end without John Williams’ score. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-GZJhfBmI. It’s the same way with gaming.
- What do you have planned in the future? Will you continue to develop music/SFX for Battlebards?
The audio library will never stop growing as we continue to work with our talent to continuously release audio for gamers. In the future, once we are confident that we’re offering wonderful content for fantasy gamers, we’ll dive into Sci-Fi, modern, and cyberpunk settings, as directed by the Battlebards Community.
- What sets you apart from other RPG sound projects?
This falls into two categories. First, let’s talk about the audio itself. We set the bar exceedingly high for what we allow onto Battlebards. As such, we work with only the best artists who are known for their work on television, video games, and film. Another key difference is that we do not tie up with just one artist to do all the work. We throw every creative brief for the next audio piece we want to create to the entire artist community for auditions before settling on the right match. So, just because one artist can do an amazing Dark Elf Temple, doesn’t mean that they’ll produce an equally awesome Orc War March.
In terms of the tools, we have an almost single minded focus on simplicity. Alex, our Audio Director, has been using a ton of audio in his games for 15 years and if anyone knows the frustrations of needing multiple media players and minimized YouTube windows open every which place, it’s him. Here, the focus is on customization and accessibility. GMs will be able to bring whatever audio they need at their fingertips by creating custom playlists which they can populate anyway they like. With super simple tools which don’t extend in complexity beyond click and drag, Game Masters can crop tracks, layer a mix, adjust different volume settings in such a way that creating a rich multi-level mix can be done in a flash. Despite having so much audio, you’ll always be able to find exactly what you need when you need it.
- How does licensing work? For instance, if the SFX are used during a game, can they be released in a podcast episode?
Some audio is purchased by us so there is more flexibility in how we can use them. However, most Battlebards audio will be licensed, not owned by us, and those can only be used through the Battlebards system. When it comes to commercial uses of our licensees outside of Battlebards, such as our audio’s inclusion in video games, podcasts, and the like, that is a case-by-case discussion. However we’re open to it and would be excited to discuss possible collaborations.
- What can I get if I pledge for your Battlebards project?
Locked in months of service, the Soundboard & Mixer tools, Battlebards Cloud to integrate your own audio, Offline Mode to use the service without an internet connection, Alpha and Beta access, special Kickstarter only badges to signify that you were what made this happen, and even exclusive Kickstarter-only tracks for download that you get to help decide what they will be! If you want to get in on this, now’s the time.
- I imagine ambient music and SFX could bring a lot to board games as well! Do you have plans to do sounds for those too?
Absolutely! Any fantasy based board games as old as Hero Quest to up-and-coming ones like the Orcs Must Die! The Boardgame, would greatly benefit from the immersive nature of Battlebards audio. Heck, we even played a game of MTG with our tracks and it was immensely gratifying to finish off a player with the lightning bolt card coupled with the lightning bolt sound effect!
- Do you imagine you will have something to help facilitate online gaming, like a Google Hangouts app?
It’s a total no brainer that we need to provide online tools and even integrate with virtual tabletops to really bring this incredible body of work to those games taking place in cyberspace. As soon as we can find our legs, we’re going to be exploring the best way to take this next step so be on the look out!
- What is your favorite game?
Well, that’s a tough one, there’s so much we’re all into but to provide an answer that doesn’t span pages and pages where we point out games we love in different categories, we can say with confidence that on the tabletop side of things, where we draw our inspiration for this whole quest of ours, our heart lies in D&D 3.5 and more and more, warming up to 5E.
- Is there anything else we should know about your project?
We hope gamers out there will give us a chance to be part of the epic quests and journeys told over gaming tables everywhere. We truly believe that we have the best tabletop audio in the world. We know the pains of bringing it to the table and we have the tools to make its use seamless. Ultimately, we hope that Battlebards will be a platform that we can all share together. There really would be no better feeling than to successfully introduce the larger gaming community to the wonders of integrating audio into their games. That’s our passion.
You can find BattleBards on Kickstarter, Facebook, or Twitter. Definitely give their project a look, their tracks sound great and the look and usability of the app is fantastic.
