Bardic Tools Update - July 2026
Yes, hello, fellow flesh-beings!
I too am in possession of the squishy parts, and therefore am part of your species friend group!
Pleased to make your acquain--
Sorry, the AI bots get between the cracks sometimes. He's gone now, we can talk like people :D
Anyway, how is your day going? Doing well? I'm glad! I'm a little --
My cycle too is being performed to optimum happiness, fellow meatie! I'm--
Damn it! One second.
Alright. Let's get through the update before he comes back!
Today's Menu
- Truckloads of New Content!
- Artist Spotlight: sarah!! (no, that second ! is not a typo)
- A super spicy collab with Ori & Abyssal Brews!
- A little favor to ask
We have tons to cover, so let's go!
New Content
I may not have time to sit down and ship new features, but we just can't help ourselves. We need to add more and more to The Library.
In the last couple of months, we have added:
New Icons!
Madkey (the artist behind the Bardoc, the guy with the sunglasses at the top) has been hard at work designing icons for your presets. So hard, in fact, that we haven't been able to add all of them yet!
Here are the new icons you can use right now:
That's brings us to almost double the icons, but we're not stopping there. We have at least double more in the pipes!
Stay tuned for them, and let us know if you'd like a specific icon!
Journeys Through The Immaterium
We have added our first Sci-Fi scenes to The Library! We have expanded the work Discord user Unknown did a while back, to create two whole scenes centered around Space travel.
One of them depicts what you would call a "ship in good order". It has sensors, people walking around, holograms, and an engine room. The other one... well you wouldn't call it "in good order" and, if you do hear anything walking around... you should run.
We have bundled these two scenes in a starter kit, for your testing pleasure. Check them out here: Space Travel Starter Kit.
Individual Sounds
Of course, all of this scene making does have its side effects. Over the last couple of months, we have added 43 new sounds to The Library!
This includes:
- 4 new bangers from today's artist, Sarah (more on her later).
- At the request of a kind user, 4 more combat tracks from composers you know and love like Francis Bonin and Alexandr Zhelanov.
- Spaceship sounds! For obvious reasons ;)
- And more!
Thank you all who submitted sound requests. Some are proving hard to find, especially the ones with people laughing, but we're trying!
That's all the content we have for now! Let's go onto something completely different. It's been a criminally long while since we've done one of these, so let's do an...
Artist Spotlight: sarah!
Sarah-Jane Katanning and I met on a Discord server, where she sported the fantastic handle of @sarah! (yes, the exclamation mark is intentional, that's how much she rocks).
There, I learned that she was the one responsible for finally bringing good audio to one of my favorite podcasts (for which my ears are eternally grateful), but also that she GMs a lot (a lot more than me), and also also that she could compose!
What?!
When you get a chance to work with people like that, you have to take them.
So I took it, and the results... well, just listen to this :D
I've got no idea how she gets all those tiny details in there, like the breathing in One Last Breath, that definitely make you uneasy, but don't distract you from the game. You know, like that ghost that is right behind you and you haven't even noticed.
But that's not all! She can do genres. Like, really wild swings of genre. Check out this hurdy-gurdy banger:
Cool huh? This is perfect for a low-stakes afternoon of slime slaying. BTW, the name is a reference to The Sun Is Also A Warrior. If you haven't already, give that song a listen too!
That still is not all!
On top of producing TTRPG bangers, Sarah has a band! domesticated incels is an hardcore (really hardcore) band straight from the Land Down Under. I was raised on a steady diet of distorted electric guitars and people shouting their feelings into a microphone -- and this is right up my alley.
They just released a single, So Sick. And honestly? It is, indeed, so sick. Personally their previous album (Domestic Terror) is still my favorite, but this single still rocks a heck of a lot.
It's been such a pleasure working with Sarah. Stay tuned for more pieces from her soon!
Speaking of working with awesome people! It's time to reveal another project I've been cooking behind the scenes. Introducing:
The Brotherhood of Scales: A Collab With Ori the Cartographer and Abyssal Brews.
Yes that's right! Your boy is doing collabs again[1]! They're just too much fun to pass up.
This time, I teamed up with not one but two amazing creators from the world of TTRPGs. I'm sure they need no introduction, but in case you haven't heard of them:
AbyssalBrews is a team of two creators putting together fully-illustrated magic items every week for 5E as well as Pathfinder 2E. With monthly extras like creatures, ancestries, and more they are curating a growing library of content for your games. They have over 250 items, creatures, and extras in their catalogue that are accessible the moment you join as well as convenient formats like tarot-sized cards and Foundry VTT modules.
Ori the Cartographer is a TTRPG cartographer, offering colorful, story-telling battle maps in numerous variants and sizes, for DnD, Pathfinder and other RPG campaigns, for your cozy homely sessions by the fireplace, as well as your virtual tabletop games with your folks across the world!
Offering more than 1500 map variations, available for printing, in-home gaming experience, and virtual tabletop platforms (Roll20, FoundryVTT).
But what did we build?
Well, the theme is one of my favorite adventure types to run: A Heist![2]
Your players are going to try to gain access to the vault, first bypassing the clerks at the front desk:
Once inside, they'll have to navigate Ori's fantastic Broken Vault map, trying to dodge the two golden dragons in order to recover (that's the word we use for 'steal') AbysalBrew's Wristlock Teller (which is a bracer with a coin slot for useful effects. With. A. Coin slot. Imagine the shenanigans):
Of course, because this is D&D, they are going to mess something up and wake the dragons.
They'll have to turn and run to the sweet sweet beats of Francis Bonin:
It's going to be fun :D
A Little Favor To Ask
I won't beat around the bush: I need your help.
Since I have limited time to work on actual, deep features while I freelance full time, I have decided to try to give Bardic Tools a little marketing push. However, when I was brainstorming ideas to get the word out, I realized something: I'm not sure why people choose Bardic Tools.
Of course, I believe that my tool is better than any other out there (otherwise, what am I doing?), but I have no idea why you, dear user, decided to part with your hard-earned cash to use it.
Hence, my questions: How did you find Bardic Tools? What made you give it a try? What made you stay (or leave)?
Just hit "reply" on this email, or reach out at borja@bardic.tools. Just a couple of sentences are solid gold for me.
As always, thank you for reading!
I long for the day where I can go back to working on this full time. We'll get there. Until then, my deepest thanks for your patience and support!
~ Borja
- Yes, I am 31 years old, and I don't know if I should be writing 'your boy' anymore. But I wrote what I wrote and it's too funny to change now. I will live with my shame.↩︎
- Don't believe me? Well, these scenes are heavily based on ones I made for a one-shot I ran not three weeks ago, which was a heist from the fantastic One Shot Wonders book. They're not a sponsor or anything, I just love that resource. I prepped the game in one afternoon, including handouts and music, which is a record for me. It's the only sourcebook in our house that is actually frayed with use.↩︎