Audio-based immersion is one of the key tools available to gamers at the table, helping them get into the spirit of the story.
Most people who play TTRPGs are used to having a soundtrack or sound effects used to set a tone for how a story might go or what the experience might feel like. However, some companies are taking that to the next level. See Forteller, an “immersive experience” provider who create special narrated programs that can be used for TTRPGs as well as dungeon crawler board games like Gloomhaven to give it flavor and character. The company has been at it for five years and is slowly expanding beyond sound to create even more immersive experiences and to also help tell different stories in the tabletop gaming space.
The Fandomentals got a chance to sit down with Forteller CEO Thomas St. Pierre to talk about the company’s technology, its processes and some of the new projects it is preparing for 2025.
What is Forteller?
We started as an audio engineering provider that any company could use, whether board games or tabletop engines.
So, on the board game side, you have a lot of story-rich dungeon delvers and crawlers. We actually fully produce it. We script it out. We work with voice actors. We do full audio drama production and score it fully, you name it. On the technology side, we’ve essentially built an open platform that can run a choose-your-own adventure style whatever, whether it’s book or board game, right? Because it’s still technically structured the same way. So that’s our primary product. We’ve worked with over 20 different companies. We’re about to launch our 35th game. Our products are ranging from like small ones to 500,000 words, which is 55 hours of audio produced. So it’s like 27 movies.
On the TTRPG side, we’re working on what we call a “genre radio station” which contains music and tools that reflect the genre in question, whether it is sci-fi, grimdark, fantasy or whatnot. We’re getting our curated music that we’ve made over the last five to six years and breaking them down into seven minute tracks that we can start procedurally stitching together so it’s almost infinite and never repeated. I compare it to a bunch of lego blocks that can produce a continuous stream of coherent ambience and sounds.
What’s it like to create sounds for a board game or TTRPG?
We have musicians across the world who work with us.I’m a musician and my lead sound composer is in a major punk band in the UK. We also have contractors across the globe. So it really depends on what we’re looking for.
In the music process, you usually start building blocks and stems, and then you start using those stems and changing them. Those are the foundation pieces we make, right? Yeah, we have some libraries that all of Hollywood uses.. But those are small little things that are only used with modification, right? All of them have to be modified for legal reasons, like they have to make it commercial. We have to do something with it to make it our own. So we pull from some of that stuff, as everybody does in the industry. But for the most part, we have terabytes of audio just by doing this stuff for six years. You know, like we have a stockpile. So we just make new music from that.
What does the process of working with companies look like to capture a game’s stylings or vibes?
We work closely with the designers. For example, when someone reads a name in a book, we know how to pronounce it because we get a pronunciation guide from them. We ensure they get the final say on whether it meets their vision.
We also work primarily with independent creators.
For example, Gloomhaven designer Isaac Childres cares much about his stuff, as he should. So, being part of that process helped him get that comfort level there, like in we do this with everybody, but it proved it was the right approach because, at the end of the day, it got their stamp of approval. But we get to capture that vision and share it with everybody. And now everybody gets to listen to a little piece of his brain.
It’s also helped others to get into these sorts of games. The COO of Cepholofair Games said that he kept trying to get his wife to play Gloomhaven and she never would. We sent him a demo of our narration for that game and he played it at the table with his wife and it hooked her into playing Gloomhaven.
Does Forteller work with actor guilds like the Screen Actor’s Guild, or mostly independent performers?
We do open and blind casting on a global scale and mostly work with independent actors, as SAG doesn’t work with board games or TTRPGs. We also just can’t afford SAG dues or rates, since the revenue isn’t on that level yet. We also prefer independence because we’re been able to cast more culturally appropriate performers. For example, we were able to recruit actual South African actors when we needed someone with a South African voice.
What’s Forteller’s opinion on AI?
I have been very vocal about how much we won’t use AI. We have held Reddit AMAs with voice actors about AI and their concerns. So I’m a big proponent and supporter of trying to be a resource for voice actors to what to look for in contracts. You need to be aware of these things before you even sign something. If the contract doesn’t specifically address AI models, then the signee can just use your voice and train models, right? So I’m trying to be a bit more vocal to let people be educated on what they might get into in a bad agreement, right? So it’s a big issue.
How does Forteller’s tools help those with accessibility issues?
Accessibility is one of the reasons why we did this. I started this company because I’m dyslexic. I grew up, and I couldn’t reach it. It was challenging. It still is. It’s still hard for me to read, right? So you get these great games with so many written words, which means that people like me struggle with that. It’s hard. So why? I can’t experience those games without all this text, or without somebody else reading it out loud. Tools like this are great because they can help bring in a new player.
2024 was the year that Forteller went beyond audio production into game publishing. What does that look like in 2025?
First up, we have our Deck of Many Dice. These are basically a 60-card deck and ‘technically’ an oracle deck since they use minor arcana. But it also has several dice rolls on it.
We also have Sunset, a TTRPG we’re publishing that deals with characters who are quickly facing their deaths. A lot of passion has gone into this, this game, and what it says about dealing with death, and it was birthed from a place of trauma and grief. It reflects on the fact that we’re all mortal, no matter who we are and where we are or what we believe, like we’re all gonna die at some point.
We also have our regular audio narration products coming. For example, we’re already working on preparing for Gloomhaven 2. There were also a couple of other games we’re preparing for, such as Oath to Embers, which we helped play-test at PAX Unplugged.
You can learn more about Forteller at their website, Fortellergame.com
Images via Forteller
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