My new gaming tool! - The Sony ICD-PX820

The Bro and I spent a little time this afternoon looking into getting a voice recorder so we could do some interviews in person starting with our interview with Rob Kouba (reminder, only a couple of hours left to submit questions for our interview about the new Battles of Westeros board game!). We shopped around a little bit and ended up with the ICD-PX820 from Sony.

I played around with it a little bit just now and really dig how intuitive the controls are. It's easy to record, picks up sound pretty well, and most of all easy to putz around with once you've started recording and have finished. My only complaint in this tiny amount of time I've been playing with it is that it requires AAA batteries and is not naturally rechargable. Not a big deal really.

Of course I'm excited that it appears we picked up a good voice recorder on our first try. I'm optimistic that it's of a good enough quality, while definitely not being the most expensive on the market, that I shouldn't need to upgrade it anytime soon.  I'm also excited because it's my first step at all towards getting to the point of being able to record live-play RPG or board game sessions and - who knows - potentially podcast some day, but that day is not exactly close by at the moment. Of course this isn't a blog about technology (generally speaking) and I don't tend to talk about the business-side of things often, so when I say it's a gaming tool, I really mean it.

I'm certainly a nerd when it comes to gaming, it's no secret, and I'm just not ashamed to admit it. I'm happy enough to have a piece of technology that's going to help me do a better job with the blog and Hopeless Gamer in general, but I couldn't stop there. As soon as I played back some sound effects to see how it handles non-voice sounds, it hit me. The ability to record messages and other sound files could be fantastic as a prop. Whitewolf has been experimenting with professional-quality sound files you can buy from places like rpgnow.com to play in the middle of a game. Ever wanted to be able to play the last words of a lost expedition deep into an underground cave they were planning on entering anyway? What about the lost journal recordings of the mad scientist who experimented on the loved ones of the players?

I'll have to look into how to make some of these recordings available online in the future and would love to hear if anyone else has experimented with these kinds of sound props in their own games.