PaizoCon OZ takes place this weekend in New Zealand, and the world’s biggest Pathfinder convention is gearing up to be a good one. Not only does it take place in Hobbiton, where the picturesque Shire scenes were filmed for the Lord of the Rings films, but Benjamin Loomes, the creator of the Syrinscape app, will be on hand to DJ the festivities and run workshops on how to better integrate sound and music into your tabletop gaming sessions.
Syrinscape is an app for a variety of devices that uses complex algorithms to create ambient sound and music for tabletop games. GMs merely need to key in a few variables to have an ever-changing audio backdrop for any campaign setting. Syrinscape allows GMs to change music and sound on the fly – a quiet evening camp might be ambushed by bandits, for example – and a few quick button presses will swap the audio to a more fitting tone and tempo.
Loomes, a DJ and lifetime tabletop gamer, created the app to help GMs create more immersive gaming settings. He will host and DJ two of the infamous “Pathfinder Specials” – one on Friday night at the Mahatma Club and one on Saturday night at the Green Dragon Inn Hobbiton movie set. Before the Green Dragon Inn show, Loomes will host a workshop entitled “Sound, Music, and Ambience in Roleplaying Games” alongside several veteran Pathfinder GMs.
Pathfinder is an offshoot of Dungeons & Dragons, and the dice-based tabletop RPG is one of the most popular roleplaying games in the world. Check out our review of the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path here. All you Kiwis out there, head to PaizoCon OZ and learn how to use music and sound to improve your own GMing. Your players will thank you, right before that random dragon encounter kills them all.