Making December's Pathfinder Adventure Path SoundPack for the second chapter of Hell's Rebels has been amazing! Not only because I got to build a complete SoundSet for underwater exploration and combat (so cool, making all my normal sounds wishy washy and strangely muted), not only because I got to build a Xorn, and a Rope Golem (except I can't call either of them by their real names, because OGL), but mainly because I got to work with two of my favourite voice actors again.
Morgan Rands, I met at PaizoCon, and this year he donated a series of roars that we chose to be the official Pathfinder Green Dragon for the amazing Dragon's Demand SoundPack. The horror and sheer guttural intensity of what Morgan gave at the microphone cannot be underestimated, so when he offered to give more sounds whenever I needed something I couldn't pass up the offer. Since then Morgan has given all sorts of bits and pieces, including the King Chess Piece voices and the Dice Roller sounds for our brand new shiny Catan SoundSet in the Board Game Player. And for Turn of the Torrent Morgan didn't disappoint! From Barzillai's sneering Proclamations to the slightly disturbing snarls of the three headed cerberi.
Morgan Jenkins, I met at PaxAus, and this year I spoke on a Panel he ran about Tabletop Gaming for Visually Impaired people. It was extremely informative and inspiring. Morgan does great things for a not insignificant group of gamers, for example encouraging us at Syrinscape to add interface scaling to our Apps (already done = you can make the buttons bigger) and high contrast backgrounds (in the works now = making the backgrounds black). Morgan has a seemingly endless hoard of voices bouncing round in his head, and for Turn of the Torrent he gave me a trio of extremely peculiar and quite inebriated NPCs to populate the wonderfully seedy tavern the "Tooth and Nail". These characters (who even sing), will enable GMs to deliver an amusing and genuinely memorable break from slaying and looting in any Pathfinder adventure.
It's wonderful having these two great guys on the end of an email. All I have to do is type in, "Right, are you keen to give me a slightly psychopathic, disturbed, but competently deadly human Expert/Fighter/Rogue?" and before I can say, "mixing up the pretty sounds" I've got an inbox full of several thousand bytes of viscous Pathfinder audio gold.
So thank you so much Morgans! Since the beginnings of Syrinscape, we have been keen to use community created content and voice acting rather than just standard commercial sample packs. That's one of the reasons I love freesound.org, where I am able to use great recordings made by keen amateurs, and best of all put their names in lights inside our app. One of these days one of my fantastic contributes is going to get a lead role in a feature film after a big producer with an even bigger cigar hears their voice in a Syrinscape Pathfinder SoundSet. That'll be a great day.
If you are a Syrinscape Fantasy or SuperSyrin Subscriber you'll see these SoundSets live in the Fantasy Player already as well as stand alone "Seedy Tavern" and "Flooded Dungeon" versions very soon. If you're not a Subscriber you can still hear them by grabbing a free 30 day trial sub, which unlocks everything we've ever made.
And remember, if you're another Morgan (or Morganette), don't hesitate to get in contact with us to see if you might just have exactly what we are needing in our next Pathfinder Adventure Path SoundPack.
Benjamin Loomes
Creative Director
Syrinscape