How to run game sound from your phone

Setting up a phone as the table's sound desk, including what to do about Bluetooth and battery.

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

1. Set the scene up before you leave home

   Build your environments and boards on whatever screen is comfortable, sign in with an email link, and they are on the phone when you sit down. The phone is for running the game, not building it.

2. Open it as an app, not a tab

   Add Thaumaturgy to your home screen — or install it from Google Play — so it opens without browser chrome and keeps playing when you switch away to look something up.

3. Deal with Bluetooth before the session

   Pair the speaker first and play something through it before anyone arrives. Bluetooth adds a fraction of a second of delay, which is invisible for ambience and noticeable for a sound effect you meant to land on a word.

4. Keep it plugged in

   Continuous audio with the screen on will drain a phone over a four-hour session. Bring a cable.

5. Learn where STOP is

   One control kills everything. On a phone it sits in the bar at the bottom of the screen, always in reach, so you never have to scroll to find silence.

Does it keep playing with the screen off?

Yes. Sound continues when the screen locks or you switch to another app, and the phone's own lock-screen controls can pause and resume it.

iPhone and the first tap

Safari will not start audio until you have touched the page once — that is an iOS rule, not a setting. Press PLAY once after opening and everything behaves normally from then on.

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.