I sincerely love the concept of ambient gaming music. I'd love to experiment with this. However, can someone help me understand how the pricing model for Syrinscape works? As soon as I see the word "subscription", I get nervous, particularly with something gaming related.
You see, my group are all approaching dreaded midlife, and while we try to make our game take place every second week, we have young children, jobs, significant others, extended families, and any number of other things that cause us to miss sessions, sometimes several in a row. I don't want to start a subscription and then continue to pay when I'm getting no use out of the product. I see something about "keeping" packs, so I think there must be some aspect I'm not getting. Can anyone clarify for me what I get for what I pay?
Hi Drakir2010,
There are several ways you can get the sounds going in the Syrinscape Players.
1) Each Player (Fantasy and Sci-Fi) comes with 2 free SoundSets so you can test them out, make sure they work on your machine, and see if you like them.
2) You can (as you mentioned) subscribe to all the content. This gets you permanent ownership of everything we release while you are a subscriber PLUS everything in the back catalogue unlocks while you remain a subscriber. You can buy 2 month blocks of subscription here at paizo and apply as many as you like to your account at syrinscape.com. The subscription blocks you buy here at Paizo don't automatically renew.
3) You can just buy individual SoundSets here as well. You pay once, and you own it forever.
Does that all make sense to you?
Feel free to ask more questions so I can clarify further. Also, check out syrinscape.com for lots more info (in the store and FAQ). OR ask questions at forum.syrinscape.com and users themselves can help you.
Ben
I saw the blog post yesterday. My first impression was it was pricey for just some sound effects. I went to Syrinscape's website for further investigation.
The free SoundSets to try out was a nice surprise. After playing with both the Sci-Fi and Fantasy SoundSets, I showed it to my wife. She was also highly impressed with both the quality of sound and the ability to customize and save SoundSet options.
We looked into the subscription model and determined the cost was extremely reasonable for what Syrinscape provides. Having access to the full backlog is amazing. I also like that it can be on 3 devices at the same time.
My family recently got into the Pathfinder RPG and is still using the Pathfinder Beginner Box. I put together some sounds and we played one of the Beginner Box Bash scenarios (Ruins). My 11-year-old absolutely loved the addition of sound with our game. His delight was well worth the money and time spent.
A note on SoundSets. I found on the website, users can login and create custom "playlists". I created a playlist titled Ruins for the scenario. From there, I was able to add a couple of the SoundSets to the playlist. Then, when I went to the player, a separate tab appeared on the left titled Ruins and only had the SoundSets I selected. It appeared literally seconds after creating the playset online. This made it very easy to locate the SoundSets I used during the game without needing to scroll through the main listings.
After my family's positive experience with the Syrinscape player and SoundSets, we started looking through our board game collection for what other games we can use it for. We found games like Claustrophobia, Shadows of Brimstone, and many others this would work well with.
Hi Drakir2010,
There are several ways you can get the sounds going in the Syrinscape Players.
1) Each Player (Fantasy and Sci-Fi) comes with 2 free SoundSets so you can test them out, make sure they work on your machine, and see if you like them.
2) You can (as you mentioned) subscribe to all the content. This gets you permanent ownership of everything we release while you are a subscriber PLUS everything in the back catalogue unlocks while you remain a subscriber. You can buy 2 month blocks of subscription here at paizo and apply as many as you like to your account at syrinscape.com. The subscription blocks you buy here at Paizo don't automatically renew.
3) You can just buy individual SoundSets here as well. You pay once, and you own it forever.
Does that all make sense to you?
Feel free to ask more questions so I can clarify further. Also, check out syrinscape.com for lots more info (in the store and FAQ). OR ask questions at forum.syrinscape.com and users themselves can help you.
Ben
Thanks Ben,
That's exactly the kind of breakdown I have had trouble figuring out here on Paizo's site. You have a new (non-subscription) customer!