My next D&D session is going to start with the players inside a church watching an NPC being raised from the dead. And unknown to them, Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead is going to try to interrupt the ritual. The attack is going to start with a flock of undead birds flinging themselves against the window, slowly at first and then more and more as the attack increases.
And I thought: how can I make this into a jump-scare? Or use sound to unnerve the players?
We play over Discord, using a private channel because we’re not all in the same state, so we needed an online way to play. There may have been a way I could pipe sound effects over the call, but I wanted something simpler because I’ve tried using hacks to re-route sound on my Windows computer and it’s always super complicated and breaks easily and doesn’t produce the best audio.
Luckily, the site we use to share battlemaps, Owlbear Rodeo, has an option to share audio to anyone else with the page open. I found a video of birds hitting a window over and over again, and with that playing in one tab, I can share the sound of that tab over Owlbear Rodeo. But I had to replay the video manually; YouTube doesn’t have the option to loop a video.
But there’s another site that does! I drop the URL of the bird video into LoopTube, share that over the battlemap site, and Bob’s your uncle.
I really wish I could find a video that starts slow and reaches a crescendo, though. I still have a day or two to search. But this will do for now.
Nobody tell my players, OK? I want this to be a surprise.