Bardic Tools Update - September 2025

Greetings, Chosen of the Fracture.

It's me again. Hope you're having a magical Autumn, full of steaming drinks and just-warm-enough blankets. Or lots of sun and beach if you're living on the other end of the globe :D

How was your month? My September was pretty busy with distinctly un-bardic things, as I had two freelance projects running at the same time. However, that's not an excuse to be idle!

Let's get into it.

The Library for The Library

This is not a new feature per se, but rather a meta-feature. See, a surprising number of folks tried Bardic Tools last month, but a lot of them told me that there were important features missing. Things like classifying your own sounds, or moving the track playback to a different point, or scheduling ambiences.

If you've been reading these for a while, you'll notice something in common with all three of the above: They're already in the app!

They also have another thing in common: They're really hard to find. If you hadn't read the post where I introduced library tagging, I'm fairly sure nobody would have found the feature.

Now, that's on me. I intentionally hide the advanced features in hidden corners, so that the basic experience is still intuitive and punchy. But if you are looking for those features, I still want you to find them!!

This is a classic problem, with a proven solution.

Introducing: The Bardic Tools documentation site.

This site will be the ultimate reference of all you can do with Bardic Tools. As other references, it can be rather dry, but at least everything is there.

Now that the site is up with basic information, it will be very easy for me to keep it up to date with every new feature I release, so I can stop linking to blog posts!

Interested? Take a gander at docs.bardic.tools. You may find a feature you missed! You'll definitely find a new video tutorial with my face on it, so there's that :D If you find anything missing, or are interested in producing tutorials, please let me know!

Alright! Moving on.

Kris has made more scenes!

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may remember that @Kris from Kris's Compendium of Trade Goods has created amazing scenes for Bardic Tools in the past.

Well folks, he's did done it again!

Since I'm so busy with feature implementation and freelancing, I've barely had time to add anything to The Library lately. Since Kris has produced such bangers in the past, I figured it would be worth it to ask him for help. And help he did!

He dove deep into the internet, found new composers, and applied his years of experience as a GM to create two incredibly haunting scenes. Introducing...

Into the Mystwood is a Curse of Strahd-inspired forest scene. The mood we were going for is "you're in a forest you don't want to be in, and something could be out there... oh. No, it's here. shit shit shitshitshitrun!"

That... matches really closely with the mood of the other scene:

In fact, the emotion of both scenes are very similar ("you're being watched and, eventually, chased"). This one, however, features an even quieter sense of place, stretching the tension so much that the sound of a branch cracking will make your players spring. The music should only be used when everything truly goes pear-shaped.

They both feature tracks by not one but TWO new artists, composer Alexandr Zhelanov and ambience wizard Ulrich Wehner, who will get their own spotlight in the near future. For now, let's just say that their tracks slap, and I couldn't be more grateful to @Kris for finding them. Find out more about @Kris's work in his Patreon (or just asking in our Discord, he's very active there).

Awesome!

Artist Spotlight: RPG Audio Vault's new shop

You may remember Justin from the RPG Audio Vault. We collaborated on a few scenes a while ago, and his words are etched on the frontpage of the site.

Well, he's opened a shop! If you want any of the magnificent pieces in his library that are not on Bardic Tools, you can now purchase them. No subscriptions, just a one-time payment for great music.

That's it! You can find the shop at rpgaudiovault.com.

This is not a sponsorship, I just love Justin's music, he's an awesome person, and when he told me about the shop I got excited and thought you may be too.

Community Spotlight: Minis!

You folks have been super active on Discord lately, sharing amazing stories about your games in the #🔥fireside-chat-about-your-campaign channel. That makes me incredibly happy, so I figured that instead of a personal update I'd showcase some of the amazing pictures you've shared!

This month's theme is "Amazing Minis", since there have been a lot of them. Let's go!

Let's start with a jumpscare.

That is user @Al-Gorre's Alpha Lurker. It's a gargantuan monster, made to fight parties of levels 11 or 12. I... I don't even want to think how its breath smells like. But that's a good thing, because I'll probably never have to! I'll be long dead before it's ever an issue.

But that's not the only cool mini Al-Gorre has! Here are some other pictures of his collection of big and small bois:

That's a truly epic connection!

Following closely is user @Unknown's own collection. A short while ago he was painting this beautiful giant:

Apparently, the party had just rescued the giant, and now they were fighting side by side in an, and I quote, "F***ing GOATED session" :D Nothing makes me happier than a GM having a good time, and by the descriptions it sounds epic.

Congratulations @Unknown, your players are lucky to have you!

Lastly, there's @Kris, who recently got to attend a bunch of TTRPG events, and even GM professionally at one of them! 🎉

That is such a cool achievement, to get paid to do the thing we all love doing. Well done!

He took so many cool pictures at the events, it made me quite jealous to be honest. Here are some of my favorites:

Closing Thoughts

That's it for this month!

As always, thank you so much for your support. This "building a company" thing is way harder than I thought it would be, but it's all worth it if I get to hear stories like those :D

• Borja