I highly recommend www.sounddogs.com . No suggestions for improvement. I think the site is great.I discovered the site due a google search for sound effects. Several came up and sounddogs.com was the best one I saw a far as ease of navigation and quality and choice.
I must say that Soundogs.com is "very" usefull for me considering the huge amount of fx it contains.
It is brilliant to have the prewiew and not having to put out money for a full cd when you just want a few seconds, they must bee the onely place for this on the net.

Hi James. I'm going to jump on this before someone else does.

The Forge is a pretty peculiar place. We've got a lot of rules...mostly in the form of a big social contract.

Anyway...your post looks a lot like and advirtisement. I'm hoping it's not, because if it is it'll be locked up and shuttled into the abyss, as that's what happens to commercials around here.

However, I'm going to go with the benefit of the doubt, and assume that James wants to discuss sound effects in Actual Play. Just saying, "I want to talk about sound effects in Actual Play" isn't enough around here, either, though. You have to take a position, and defend it, or bring up observations on sound effects in play taken from actual play.

Whew.

As for me, I used to try to use lots of sound effects (from CDs, etc.) in play, but I found that it never really paid off. It took too long to get the sound that I wanted, and usually it sounded lame. Ultimately it reduced the power of the shared imaginary space.

I have had much different success with music, however. I often play with some brackground music, but on a few occassions I actually picked a song or two for a specific event in play, even going so far as to give certain characters or places Wagner-ian theme-songs. Whenever the players heard "Battle Hymn" by Judas Priest kick in, they knew that a major battle was getting ready to hit them. The power was in me, the GM, *not* telling them outright what was going to happen, but like a film audience they took the cue. The result was an "uneasiness" and pre-battle preparation that seemed coincidental, but was actually planned.

That highlights, for me, what I really like about the *separation* between Player and Character. One controls the other, but because they are separate, and have separate agendas, powerful stories are not left to chance. After all, the *characters* never hear the theme music. Darth Vader never hummed dum-dum-da-dum duh-da-dum duh-da-dum to himself as he marched down the halls of the Death Star...

but we did.

Jake

Hi,

One of my friends explained to me how she used sound effects as a major prop in a Call of Cthulu adventure she used to run. She would have several tapes cued up to certain sound effects, pop the appropriate one into a walkman, and hand the player an index card describing something they felt/heard that went along with the sound. The player's reaction would also be the character's reaction.

I thought it was a rather neat update of the old "passing notes" idea, and less intrusive than taking someone to a seperate room. Plus the reaction factor sounded like fun.

Chris