How to play D&D online with shared sound

Your players hear the same room you do, in sync, over Discord or Roll20 — without installing anything.

About 4 minutes · you need Thaumaturgy open, and a speaker or headphones.

1. Understand what gets shared

   A broadcast sends what Thaumaturgy is playing — the environment and every board button you press — to everyone who joins. It is not a microphone and it does not share your screen or your voice: keep talking on Discord or whatever you already use, and let this carry the sound. Your players hear the scene change at the moment you change it.

2. Sign in, then press Broadcast to players

   Broadcasting needs an account, because the broadcast belongs to you and has to survive a reload. Nobody listening needs one. Sign in, open the Session screen, and press Broadcast to players. You get a six-digit code and a link.

3. Send your players the link

   Press Copy link and paste it into your group chat. It opens the listener page with the code already filled in, so there is nothing to type. If someone would rather type it, the code is six digits and the page to enter it on is thaumaturgy.app/listen.

4. Ask everyone to press play once

   Browsers will not start audio until the person asks for it, so each player presses play on the listener page. After that it keeps up on its own — they can lock the phone, switch tabs or answer a call and the sound carries on.

5. Run the game as you normally would

   Change the environment, load a board, tap a sound. Everyone listening hears it within a moment. You do not have to think about the broadcast once it is running; it is the same app you would be using at a table.

6. End it when you are done

   Press the broadcast control again to stop. Everyone listening stops hearing you, and the code stops working — so a link from last week will not quietly let someone back in.

If a player hears nothing

Almost always it is the one thing a browser will not do for you: audio has to be started by a tap. Ask them to press play on the listener page once. If it still does nothing, have them reload the link — a listener who joined before you pressed start will reconnect on its own, but a reload is faster than waiting.

What it costs them

Nothing, and no account. The listener page is deliberately small: it plays sound and shows what is playing. On a phone it keeps playing with the screen locked.

What it is not

It does not carry your voice, your camera or your screen, and it is not a recording — there is nothing to download afterwards. It is the sound of the game as it happens, which is the part that is hard to share any other way.

Next

• How to add ambient sound to a D&D game — What to play, when to play it, and how to keep it from becoming a distraction.
• How to build a tavern soundscape — A worked example: crowd, fire and the occasional mug, built from scratch in about five minutes.
• How to build a dungeon soundscape — Drips, air and distance — how to make stone feel like stone without putting players to sleep.
• All the documentation — every screen and every dial.

Ready? Open Thaumaturgy — it is free, and there is nothing to install.