World of Creatures Mini-Review
A few weeks back I put out a question: how can one tastefully implement music into a Dungeons & Dragons game. I received plenty of sound advice, ignored it all, end ended up breaking out my laptop and having the Lich play a piano version of Metallica’s Master of Puppets I found online. It worked, but it felt incredibly out of place without any noises before or after. Thankfully, I was sent a few CDs to help fix that problem, and throughout this week and next check back for reviews of World of Magics, Monsters, and Ambiances.
Next up: Creatures.
Without sounding redundant, many of the same issues from World of Magics reappear in World of Creatures, which features 19 tracks of monster noises. Some are inanely short, with the Giant Bat sound being only two seconds long, while other clock in at a more impressive time, with the Lord of the Seas clocking in at over 30 seconds. The difference, however, is how they can be used. Where it might be unnecessary to tell the party’s Wizard to wait a second so the DM can play the fireball sound effect, monsters are, for all intensive purposes, completely DM controlled. This makes the difference.
The room is dark, just light enough for the players to make out their dice and character sheets, and the DM describes the party’s surroundings. All of a sudden, behind his screen, the DM hits a button, which blares the Owlbear’s roar, creating a great sense of danger in the players. They are generally well produced, and the largest issue is the amount of tracks. As mentioned earlier there are only nineteen, and unless the campaign involves killing a massive amount of Bats it would have been nice to include more generic enemies as well. Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, and even wolves should be represented, and with the length of the effects being so short it would have given the CD more bang for its buck.
Either way, for adding more to a game, it’s definitely worth checking out, and can be found here. Be sure to check back soon for a review of World of Ambiances.
