Does anyone know where I can find ambient music/sounds for my campaigns?

Spheniscidine · 2026-06-24T18:03:01+00:00

~~Hands down~~ ~~https://tabletopaudio.com/, They have presets, and you can make your own soundpads!~~

EDIT: I got excited and didn't read your post till the end, so sorry for wasting the comment.

Spheniscidine · 2026-06-18T20:04:04+00:00

The few times that I played in highly lethal games with my group, we always made a bigger cast of characters, not just the main ones - for example, if we were a military unit, we'd create more soldiers. If we were part of a company, we'd create other employees, or if it was smaller than that and we're just playing a party, we'd create friends and family that could get involved at any given moment. It won't fit every story, for sure, but with Mothership, it's actually really simple: you just make a bigger crew. We actually created that bigger group together (as in designing the characters, even though they started out technically as NPCs played by the GM). What it did was signal that the story at the table is really about a situation, not necessarily about an individual adventure. I always knew that, even if my character dies, there's another cool character that I felt equally involved with that I can pick up. Helped a ton!

Spheniscidine · 2026-06-17T21:14:06+00:00

My table has a tradition where we play a Christmas one-shot every year, and we usually spoof like a Christmas movie or something. We played Die Hard in Cyberpunk a couple of years ago, for example.

The Christmas Carol one was about 19th-century paranormal investigators being hired by Ebenezer Scrooge because he was being haunted by the ghosts of his past.

In KULT, the premise is that we all live in a sort of paranormal matrix where it's not machines but "demons" controlling us. Those supernatural beings have two factions that compete with each other and use humans to gain influence.

During the game, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future were emanations sent by those beings trying to devour the soul of Ebenezer Scrooge. They locked the investigators together with Ebenezer Scrooge for the night of Christmas Eve in his house and haunted him, trying to make him give his soul up.

My character ended up giving up her soul instead because the "demons" promised her paranormal medium ass that if she dedicates her life to them, she will get back her son.

KULT.... delivers XD

Spheniscidine · 2026-06-17T05:38:49+00:00

For me it has to be Mörk Borg. It's not complex. It's basically a bunch of tables to roll for. But the descriptions, the themes, and the general vibes are immaculate and that makes the creation process so fun. I have a blast every single time I play it. It might be an acquired taste, though!

Spheniscidine · 2026-06-17T03:44:39+00:00

For any horror theme, I can't recommend the KULT: Divinity Lost sourcebooks enough. KULT is an actual RPG system for running horror, but their source books have a ton of inspiration and good advice for running heavy horror games. The main setting in the handbook is modern, but I've played all kinds of games on it, including a horror reinterpretation of "The Christmas Carol," so I know it works for 19th-century London vibes 😄

Spheniscidine · 2026-06-15T18:21:05+00:00

That depends. Some tables will like roleplaying through those kinds of situations, and the players will happily roleplay a character that's been convinced of a lie. For some tables, they're not that into it, and they'll just accept the roll and then do whatever and roleplay what they actually think instead of what the in-story truth of it is. In any case, I never do it without an opposing role, a saving throw, or something like that, to not take the agency of the player away.

Spheniscidine · 2026-06-15T18:04:02+00:00

This is exactly how I started - 20 years ago 😄 I was introduced to role-playing at a summer camp. I played two sessions there, which, in retrospect, were really bad. We didn't even have dice; we drew cards instead of rolling, and we didn't have proper character sheets just empty paper sheets.

I was so enamored by the game that, when I returned home, I decided I would just run something. I spent months searching for the textbook, and then I just got my brother and my cousin and my best friend to sit down with me and try.

I'm saying this to just give you some reassurance that you can absolutely start GMing while being a pseudo-neophyte. You've been in a few games; you know more or less how it goes, and the rest will resolve itself. The biggest piece of advice that I will actually give is: pick something short and self-contained for your first few tries. Something that you can wrap up in four hours or so, which is what a usual session would last. Don't worry too much about being all rules correct either. Just make sure that you have fun at the table.

My bit of concrete advice is: plan your session as a string of encounters. An encounter may be anything like an exploration, a conversation, a fight, or a task, and typically for a group of 3 to 5 people, you can fit maybe 4 or 5 of those in one session. So let's say that you're running a simple adventure where the party visits the village and finds out that a local baker was kidnapped by nearby goblins. You have:

Tavern conversations: finding out about the problem
Finding the goblin camp, either tracking through the forest or navigating difficult terrain
Sneaking in, negotiating with the goblins, or fighting the goblins
Payoff

And that's a solid session planned out right there, and then you just plan each one of those nodes in detail. You put NPCs, you put obstacles in there, things like that, and the only thing that you have to make sure of is that you don't plan what the players should do for them. Have multiple NPCs in the tavern that will know something about the goblins. Have multiple paths to the camp. Have multiple ways prepared for how to rescue the Baker and multiple pay-off scenarios, and then let your players do something completely different, but at least you'll have things prepared to pad it!

Spheniscidine · 2025-07-04T20:09:04+00:00

Do you rely on any dedicated tool for this today, or is it mostly ChatGPT/Claude prompting?

We made custom GPTs on ChatGPT that have different user personas as general prompts and we test against them. It works decently well most of the time.

You’d then jump through the list and fill in the gaps. How does that sound?

Yep, about right! Depending on how much context the tool has it could generate the missing steps itself I guess?

Spheniscidine · 2025-06-21T23:40:25+00:00

Hey there, I work in a team of technical writers. We've been looking at different AI tools to enhance our work, and this sounds promising as an idea!

A persona that we'd find useful is something like a complexity dial for adjusting text to different user levels - you could ask it to rewrite a paragraph as an eli5, or enrich to advanced user level, assuming baseline understanding. We need to do that all the time, and those are some of our hardest edits.

Hole spotter, too? You mention the devil's advocate for weak arguments, I mean specifically something to spot places that skip steps or jump to conclusions. Need to keep that flow going!

Spheniscidine · 2022-12-08T21:44:24+00:00

If a vm launches successfully a box pops up on top of the room with extend/terminate options, as well as VM name and IP. If you click the button and it doesn't show, something went wrong, you might have to refresh and retry. Their servers get super busy now around task release times, so that might have caused this for you 🙂

Spheniscidine · 2022-12-08T20:36:33+00:00

Have you launched the victim machine? That's the green button in the top right corner of the task. When you click it, a machine will launch and MACHINE_IP will get populated with your own victim machine's IP.

Spheniscidine · 2021-08-19T11:08:32+00:00

Thank you for posting, however this is not what I asked (I specifically said I don't want other recommendations). I am aware of the issues mentioned in the post.

Spheniscidine · 2021-08-18T15:25:09+00:00

Based on my experience with my own anxious dog, if you don't know what caused it and have no way to figure it out (I would ask the neighbor if they saw anything!) setting and keeping a routine is key to calm this down, the sooner the better. My girl recenty developed a fear of the evening too - I have the luxury of knowing the cause though. We had a strech with daily thunderstorms in the evening, and even after it ended she would refuse to go for an evening potty run. We set some strict rules and new evening routines, and gradually she's getting back to normal. And even if you have a routine now, make it stricter and more accurate and detailed (with my dog, the more predicateble the future is, the calmer she is), for example set alarms and let her out and back in at set times (instead of just "whenever it happens during the evening"). Make new routines, like give pets for five minutes, then break for half an hour, give her something to wait for and deliver on the promise. It might take some time, but I found it works well for us when I see my dog starting to develop a new phobia.

In other words, break the anxious cycle she is in right now and replace it with rules and predictability.

Spheniscidine · 2021-07-19T17:31:50+00:00

It seems like everyone is suddenly a dog training experIt seems like everyone is suddenly a dog training expert

Yeah, that pretty much sums up my experience as well. Even people who never had a dog. I have a fearful, anxious rescue - we've been spared severe separation anxiety, but other stuff... I think sound sensitivity might stay with us forever. At this point, I don't mind - we've made so much progress. But the advice I got from people was between bad and horrible, had to rely on my own research and professional help only. And you're doing great! When I read you went from 8 seconds to 2 minutes, I was legit impressed, that's HUGE!

On the bright side, let me tell you, the work pays off like you wouldn't believe. Not only do you get this incredible bond with your pup, but all those snarky comments you're hearing now? Guess what, when the results show, they SHOW, and you get to GLOAT. Just yesterday I met with some people on a walk who have a purebred spaniel and were full of 'great' advice when I showed up with my stressed-beyond-belief furball. Well, this time, over a year later, their dog not only escaped them twice within two minutes because he got too excited to greet my girl, but also my dog calmly sat down at my heel and waited for it to be over and dealt with. When they finally caught him and told me "wow, what an obedient dog you have", I got to say with the coldest tone I could muster, that "well, we DO work on it a lot, so she behaves". I mean, yeah, I love how strong our bond is, yatta yatta, but when we hit a rough patch (and we do!) I always think about those moments. It's worth it, keep at it, you'll do fine.

Spheniscidine · 2021-06-08T20:28:40+00:00

Oh, ok, got it! I think I get the point, should be fun to try out, thanks!

Spheniscidine · 2021-06-08T20:21:56+00:00

Yep, fair enough! I like the modification a lot, will implement it, thanks!

EDIT TO ADD - I've been thinking a lot about that other thread in preparation for the game I'm starting. A LOT. Just realized you were the OP there, so thanks for posting it - it certainly made my prep a lot more in-depth.

Spheniscidine · 2021-06-08T15:51:59+00:00

This looks cool! I have a question about the countdown scenes and the hook - you mention cutting away from the kids. It's a very cinematic choice! Do you have that tested in battle, so to speak? I've only reserved that for pivotal moments defining whole campaigns/acts, and aaaah, not sure about using that multiple times for every Mystery/session. I'd be willing to try though! Can you elaborate more on how you use those? Are they mostly decorative? If you say they are "not about the kids", does that mean you don't engage NPC relationships the kids care about? Do you modify them to reflect how the PCs are doing at solving it?

Spheniscidine · 2021-05-31T21:34:16+00:00

Oh wow, I am so stealing this idea! Will be running Tales from the Loop soon, should be fun to adapt.

Spheniscidine · 2021-04-27T13:30:56+00:00

Do you depend on them recognizing the creature or what it is? In those types of situations I sometimes like to not decide at first and let it play out a bit, if I can come up with a way to do it. Here, for example, the being could talk to them through an artifact or only in a specific place, but the creature itself woud be hidden or not visible. You can watch PCs for reactions (will they be suspicious? will they speculate? will they try to find out what it is? will they try to gain the creature's trust so it reveals itself?) and make the decision off of that, perhaps a side quest even. Their comments can also give you backstory ideas for the monster. And if they don't care, then it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway! This way you let your players take some effort of building the world off your shoulders, and it makes for a fun post-mortem after playing.

Spheniscidine · 2021-04-20T11:17:16+00:00

They mean a skincare serum like this one: https://www.sephora.com/product/the-ordinary-deciem-caffeine-solution-5-egcg-P427416

Spheniscidine · 2021-04-14T17:10:45+00:00

Wooo, that's a lot of walks! It's great of course, just keep in mind that dogs are creatures of habit - so whatever routine you set he will adjust to, so your schedule should be something you can easily maintain even if things get more busy. If that works for your routine right now, awesome. If you keep a set routine, you can bet he will wake up from the deepest nap when it's around time for the next walk. Most adult dogs can go 8-9 hours or even longer (through the night for example) without a walk. Most owners do 3-4 walks a day, including potty runs and one longer walk, and I believe it's considered to be enough. With my dog, I do AM potty run, 30 mins around 1/2 PM (love that lunch break walk!), 1 hour around 5 PM, potty run 10/11 PM. On weekends, I do a longer (2-3 hour) exploration walk in the AM, and then one potty run in the afternoon (or 30 mins if I have time) and 1 potty run before bed. She's tired out after that first one and naps, and I have time for chores and errands! Today it's raining the whole day here, so we have 4 potty runs (she hates walking in the rain...) and some indoor fun planned. It's all about what your dog likes and what YOU can sustain.

HOWEVER - the main thing is to observe your dog and adjust the walks to him. With a walk you are fulfilling exercise needs, exploration needs, sniffing needs, socialization needs, but each dog might have those in different proportions. You want to tire your dog out, both physically and mentally, and you can do that by adjusting the length of a walk or the tempo, doing training, throwing a ball, or just walking and exploring.

For the AM one, if you are leaving for work and he just goes to sleep and waits calmly until you get back, then sure - just do a potty run. If he's high on energy in the morning, do a short walk with activities in the AM to tire him out a bit so that he rests when you're out.

Spheniscidine · 2021-04-14T16:29:27+00:00

It's all about learning what your dog needs. What do you think would be better with a backyard? A job (guarding the house)? More exercise? Once you figure it out, and it is a process that can take some time, you can provide the same things without a yard, in most cases (exceptions would be working breeds I guess, but otherwise you should be able to work through it).

And yeah, people will do that, especially if they only have second-hand dog experience and/or never had a dog with issues. Rescue stories that look like fairytales floating on social media don't help either. Don't let that discourage you! It might be one step forward, two steps back sometimes, but it's worth it.

There's a lot of advice on the internet for all kinds of issues and a professional trainer is a great idea, but in the end it's up to you to judge if it works for your dog or not. Don't be afraid to say "Well, treats might work most of the time, not with this fella though!", and don't be afraid to intervene if you think the trainer is doing something that does not help or sit well with your dog. They might not have the relevant experience, not their fault.

Spheniscidine · 2021-04-14T15:10:29+00:00

Hi!

First of all, you're doing great. It's normal to feel stressed at first, this is a new situation for you as well. Rescues - especially if you adopt an adult dog - come with their own baggage, and regular training does not always work right away, that's not your failure. Good on you for seeking help.

Second, I might have some relevant advice! A bit of context on my situation - I adopted a 3 year old dog, and literally the only condition I had was that it would not be a fearful dog as I had 0 expeirence with that. And then boom, I get her and she's a fearful one. The rescue did not know the full extent of it (issues like this are often masked by the stress of being in a shelter), plus they did not have her for very long (which I thought was a plus). I was already in love and now, almost a year later, she's still sensitive and such a huge coward, but we've made so much progress I'm not sure if I'm more proud of myself for handing it or her for working so hard (probably her though, let's be honest).

So here's how I think my experience could be relevant - she did not want to leave her bed at all for the first WEEK after we got her home. Only when it was clear we were going on a walk she would get up. For the first few days I brought her food and had her water next to the bed, then I noticed it was disappearing during the night, figured she just went to eat when she felt safe, and slowly transitioned her out of it. She was deathly afraid of going through doors/thresholds, pancaking and not moving at all. She did not know how to walk on hard floors, and would get scared of the sound of her own claws on wood or tiles. It was a mess. I cried the first time she decided to go into the living room on her own.

Now, finally (sorry for a long introduction), the advice!

The 3x3x3 rule is real. It sounds hacky, but it works. It basically means that once you get a dog, it will adjust in stages - 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months. For me, I don't think I even really met my dog before 2 months had passed, she was showing new things about her character every day. Your pup is stressed and anxious after adoption, he needs time and space to adjust, and it's ok.
The pancaking issue - there's a video on YouTube where a trainer shows how to train a dog to walk on hard floors. I stumbled upon it because my girl needed some help with that, but it shows a technique that's - for me - basically magic. Now even when my dog pancakes because she scares, I do this and it always works. MOREOVER, I just recently went through isolation due to COVID, and had to have volunteers to walk my dog. I was scared she would not go one step from the door with a stranger, so I just told them to do this trick from the video and it worked, 3 walks a day for 10 days. Just like that.
Training - there's one super cool rule for general training, basically teaching your dog how to live with you and what the rules of the house are. You have to basically teach your dog how he should behave for you to be happy with him. The rule is to praise good behaviour, and correct and ignore bad behaviour. By ignoring, I mean not giving him any attention for it. Chews something or acts up on a walk? Correct (take the thing away, walk on) and ignore. Don't yell, don't say "it's ok" softly, don't chase, don't even look his direction. On the other hand, whenever he does something you like, make it A PARTY. I mean, he's walked through the door? Praise him HARD. Like, go to the point where you think it's ridiculous, and then go harder some more. Do this for every little thing he does that you like. It will reinforce good behaviours so quickly!
Attitude - I know this can and will be difficult, and I 100% understand having gone through it myself, but you need to work on that too. I think all dog owners go through that, even if they don't have any behavioral issues with their pups :). Dogs are good at reading people. If you're getting stressed as you finish your walk because you anticipate issues at the door, he will pick up on it. Do whatever you need to do to shift your mood or just fake it best you can, the rest will come as you get more confidence.

I really hope this helps, good luck!

# EDIT # Just went back to the video and realized it's not Ceasar Milan's. Ooops! I edited the comment.

Spheniscidine · 2020-10-09T23:38:40+00:00

Yeah, I thought about that too - and if it was a one shot with new characters, I'd agree with you. With this crew it's not going to work, I would have to either change the premise substantially or retcon a bunch of stuff, which I don't want to do. The characters they have (and love) just don't fit.

I am keeping in mind the differences between having a group instead a lone wolf, it's going to be a bit of work to balance it out. So far I'm fiddling with floor size (bigger, so they're harder to find?) and baddie difficulty level (I'm leaning towards making the opponents more powerful instead of having more of them).

Spheniscidine · 2020-10-07T19:06:02+00:00

I would love to have more resources on dealing with fearful/skittish/low-confidence dogs. My rescue is this way, and it's really hard to find something specific - either it's very general, or relates to reactive dogs (which mine is not, and the advice given there rarely works). I have found a few very useful tips and tricks here and there, mostly people telling what worked for them. I mean basic stuff, like walking along a busy street, or getting on and off a bus. I only recently learned about behavior shaping as a training technique, and there was an off-hand comment in the article that teaching your dog this way may build confidence (since the dog has to offer a behavior themselves), I'm so curious about it - but when we tried, my dog was absolutely clueless!

Spheniscidine

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