Fantasy and SciFi

Suggestions
#1

Hello Syrinscape Team,

When I first became a subscriber two years ago there wasn’t a lot of released content yet and the fantasy and sci-fi players seemed to really do a good job of keeping things organized.

Two years later it feels as though the two players are a bit of a mess. The fantasy player has some sci-fi soundscapes but not everything. The sci-fi player feels as though it has become the “miscellaneous” player.

Need Alien Spaceships? Sci-fi!
Need a modern coffee bar? Sci-fi…!
Need a 1920’s car chase? Sci-fi?

I’m worried with the recent partnership with Chaosium that this is going to get worse and more and more cluttered as miscellaneous soundscapes are added to sci-fi player just because it isn’t the fantasy player and there is no where else for it.

I’m a huge fan of Syrinscape but it is getting more difficult to run some sessions. I can only imagine it must be a huge logistics issue to figure out how organize the massive amounts of soundscapes out there.

Any tips or tricks? (I know I can manually add any soundscapes I need in the creator tool, but I’m afraid that will make things even more cluttered)

Any changes in the pipeline that will help with this? Maybe genre categories in one large player?

Thanks,
-Samare

#2

The easiest way to keep it all organised is through the Campaign Manager, our resident Soundset Sage @HECook has even set up lots of different lists to help keep things organised :slight_smile:

#3

I’d have to agree with mechmike’s point - the massive number of soundsets Syrinscape now has is making it more and more of a challenge to manage. Sci-fi has become an “everything that isn’t D&D” category.

And on a related note, if you’re a GM of a SciFi or Modern World game, you pretty much have to go Supersyrin to cover all the things you’re likely to need. On a spaceship? Sci-fi. Docked at a space station? Sci-fi. Land on a desert planet… erm Fantasy? Attending a debauched gala… Fantasy again.

What I think I’m trying to say is, I’m wondering if the original model of Fantasy/Scifi/Boardgames is starting to struggle a bit under the sheer volume and variety of content you have available. Even in the short time I’ve been a Supersyrin subscriber I’ve felt it getting harder to find things. Campaign Manager helps some, but finding stuff mid-game, or sometimes even finding stuff in Campaign Manager can be a bit overwhelming.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have so much content available, but have you ever heard of the expression “drinking from the fire hose”?

#4

When I open the Sci-fi player:

Yuuuuup. :slight_smile: A way to sort things with tags or categories would be fantastic. “Environments” is a SORELY needed category!

#5

The Campaign Manager is designed so that you can do that. @HECook has even set them up ready with all of the Soundsets grouped into relevant sets ready for you to use. I’ve linked it above :grin:

#6

What sorts of environments?

I’ve made campaigns (essentially categories) for the following:
Modern Places (present-day locales) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/5811-4f5ff9ba87/
Alien Locales (alien places) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/5808-be3c31ccdb/
Present-Day City (this is what I call an “instant campaign” - a combination of city sounds and fights/encounters likely to take place within a city, for when running a game on the fly) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/6079-ea14d866d7/
Cthulhu Mythos (all Cthulhu-related sets not attached to a campaign) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/5993-2cde3a71a9/
Future City (another instant campaign, this time with a futuristic, sci-fi city suitable for cyberpunk, Blade Runner, Shadowrunners, etc.) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/6081-2c9315180d/
Space Travel (going somewhere in space? something likely to blow up along the way? this is your set!) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/6080-176a501e7e/
Starfinder Ships (all the ships in the Starfinder game, also good for any spaceship!) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/8320-72d0563c0a/
Cthulhu Rockharbor (both soundsets for the community content campaign of the same name) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/5812-6550a38604/
Modern Music (modern music for your modern places, from battles to Vegas lounges) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/8766-b734c7e54d/
Sci-Fi Monsters and Fights (all the sci-fi things you can swing at!) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/5620-c790e73239/
Space Places (places you’ll run into out in the black) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/5809-c9ccfc508f/
Old-Timey Things (anything older than modern) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/6919-b9f6debe55/
Incident at Absalom Station (for the adventure path of the same name) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/9922-9100d018d9/
Starfinder Society (for all Starfinder Society adventures) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/11259-04abbe352d/
Weather (weather sounds from both players) - https://syrinscape.com/account/campaigns/11453-e65c5d36b6/

1 Like
#7

That can work Steve, but it would be nice if there were preset categories instead of “All” and “Purchased”. Heck, I’d like to see “Not Installed” as a counterpoint to “Installed”, too! So I can easily scroll through and find new content. :wink:

As it is, to use Campaign Manager, I have to scroll through tons and tons of content to find soundsets that are related. I know there are labels/categories/tags/etc in each soundset, else the search feature would only return names.

1 Like
#8

All of these pre-made campaigns are great for trying to categorizing different soundscapes. They are especially great if you have time beforehand to tweak or add other soundscapes to them that you might need for a session.

It can be difficult to use the two different Syrinscape players in tandem, even using the campaign manager, to accomplish everything that is needed in a session. If the players decide to settle down for the night in the middle of a Sci-fi game, and create a campfire it can be a bit of a hassle to hurry and switch over to the Fantasy player to find a campfire sound inside of a soundscape. Later, when I hit the stop button for the Sci-fi player, I have to make sure I also go over to the Fantasy player and pause it.
A sort of solution to is to import all of the commonly used soundscapes in the Fantasy player into the Sci-fi player using the web-based tool… but that would take quite a bit of effort and time. At that point the “Sci-fi” player would really be the miscellaneous catch all player that it already is starting to resemble.

This is in no way a complaint about Syrinscape. This program has been revolutionary and I wouldn’t have been a subscriber for so long if I thought it didn’t work well. So kudos to the Syrinscape team.

but… there is definitely room for improvement and I don’t think the current format hasn’t aged really well with how many soundscapes exist now. The interface is just starting to become cumbersome. I think the campaign manager helps, but I’m not sure it actually helps with the root problem.

Given the cost and time it takes to make changes, I don’t want to pretend it is easy, but here are some potential solutions:

Create one Syrinscape player that has all of the soundscapes and can sort by genre. Need horror? click the horror tab. Need Sci-fi? click the Sci-fi tab.

Make the search feature of the Syrinscape players more robust. Perhaps it can add a small description describing why it pulled up the soundscapes it did when you typed “campfire”.

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#9

Many of the features that you mention @Mechmike are included with the new Syrinscape Online Player and yes there are still improvements to be made as always with the original Players. Now that Syrinscape Online is up and running we are able to look much more closely at the current app and find ways to improve it.

Syrinscape Online is only one player and contains all of the soundsets, with the added advantage of not needing to download them. The search function is also much better and make it a lot easier to see why it’s brought up the content that it has. Now we need develop ways to bring these improvements to the offline Player

1 Like
#10

That sounds useful, though not ideal because of the online requirement. Still, I’ll check it out. Do you know when it will be released?

#11

It already is :grin:

Syrinscape Online

#12

I’m confused. Shouldn’t there have been an announcement, an email, something? I just looked through all of my Syrinscape emails and nothing. :confused: I’ll check it out.