New sound: Steampunk Dirigible

You stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of the gondola and watch the city fade into the distance. In a mere 50 hours, you’ll be at your destination. Behind you, the steady hum of the airship’s propellers becomes a soothing drone, and only occasional gusts of wind remind you that you’re thousands of feet in the air. This is the only civilized way to travel, you think to yourself.

 

The Dirigible track is a 10-minute ambience that loops seamlessly, and features a constant sound of multiple propellers and occasional blasts of wind. This is a perfect background sound for airship travel in Steampunk, early 20^th-century Cthulhu games and…is there a “Fringe” RPG?

 

Our first sound effects CD, released in 1996, was The Game Masters Collection: Vol. 1: The Twentieth Century. Aimed at modern and modern-ish RPGs like Call of Cthulhu, it featured a variety of background ambiences including towns, cities, bars and nightclubs in several decades, a couple of battlefields…and a dirigible. The dirigible soon became a customer favorite – we almost got more compliments on that track than the whole rest of the disc.

 

Recently we were asked to create a longer, loopable version of the dirigible track for a LARP event, so we dug out the original track, remixed and remastered it, and have now released it as a ten-minute loopable mp3. You can pick it up for $1.50 at toxicbag.com, DrivethruRPG.com or D20pfsrd.com.