Welcome to another episode of Perspective Checks where I sit down with friends and folks from the TTRPG world and discuss a topic of their choice!

This month's episode concerns the power of music, ambience, and sound in TTRPG play, and I'm joined by brothers Noah & Tyler that make up Monument Studios, which is launching a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for their upcoming Fantasy+ app full of music, ambience, and sound effects for fantasy, horror, sci-fi, and more.

We talk about their history with music, how their journey led them to doing ambience and tailoring things towards the TTRPG hobby space, and more.

The Kickstarter launches on August 20th, but you can click here to sign up for the pre-launch and get notified when it goes live. There will be tons of audio assets in every tier, as well as bonus maps from Domille's Wondrous Works, VTT assets, and stretch goals to get Discord plug-ins and more.

Where to Follow Rene Plays Games:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | Threads | DMs After Dark

email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com

Music in the Episode:

Tavern Fiddle by Monument Studios

Heroic Orchestra Mix B by Monument Studios

While technically a bonus for 5 Tuesdays in July, editing is a process and I'm a busy person, so this one took a few more days, enjoy the second half of our Dragonbane Free RPG Day one-shot scenario The Sinking Tower to kick off August!

Also! All episodes during the month of August will be using music from Monument Studios, who is running a Kickstarter campaign for their Fantasy+ collection of TTRPG music, ambience, sound effects, and more! Click the link to sign up and be notified when the campaign goes live and get TONS of incredible, professional quality music for your tabletop games!

Download Rene's Finished Games (for free!):

• One Last Quest - bring back your favorite characters for one more mission as elderly versions of themselves!
• Pine Island - Rene & Christian's first game for the PocketQuest 2022 summer game jam. Play as campers or counselors at a summer camp where nothing at all creepy will happen, surely...

Where to Follow Rene Plays Games:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | Threads | DMs After Dark

email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com

Music in the Episode:

Theme Song written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands

Prelude by Monument Studios

Recap by Monument Studios

Old Town by Monument Studios

Skirmish by Monument Studios

Loading Screen 3 by Monument Studios

Forsaken Sanctum by Monument Studios

Dangerous Marshlands Tonal by Monument Studios

Simple Combat by Monument Studios

Somber Cello by Monument Studios

Viking War by Monument Studios

Dragon Scream R by Monument Studios

Meta Heroic Ensemble by Monument Studios

Ascendancy by Monument Studios

5th Tuesdays are for bonus episodes and this one comes IN TWO PARTS! Part 2 will be releasing on Thursday August 1st!

For July's Bonus Episode, we're playing Free League's 2024 Free RPG Day scenario for Dragonbane called The Sinking Tower. It's a tight one-shot adventure for the classic Swedish fantasy RPG that's designed for "tournament style" play, and all happens on a two hour clock! After character creation, start the timer and speedrun this tower!

In the past, a mad sorcerer named Kamandur built a seaside tower to honor his sister and placed an eerily bright emerald at the top, luring ships and pirates to their watery graves in revenge for her death. Even after his death, the magic continued to consume those within and without, and now, every twenty years on the day of his sister's death, the tower rises from the depths for two hours. Will our PCs be the first to make it to the top and retrieve what so many others never could?

Download Rene's Finished Games (for free!):

• One Last Quest - bring back your favorite characters for one more mission as elderly versions of themselves!
• Pine Island - Rene & Christian's first game for the PocketQuest 2022 summer game jam. Play as campers or counselors at a summer camp where nothing at all creepy will happen, surely...

Where to Follow Rene Plays Games:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | Threads | DMs After Dark

email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com

Music in the Episode:

Theme Song written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands

The Mirrormere by Vindsvept

Court of the Count from TabletopAudio.com

Drowned Sailors from TabletopAudio.com

Ghost Ship from TabletopAudio.com

Skull Island from TabletopAudio.com

The Drowned Tower from TabletopAudio.com

Terror in the Woods from TabletopAudio.com

Rewind Sound Effect from ZapSplat.com

Get deep enough into the indie tabletop RPG scene and eventually you'll come up with an idea that you want to play out in a game, but you can't find a good match for it (despite the thousands of games out there). So what do you do? You start making one yourself!

Most people homebrew rules in their favorite RPGs, and if you think about it, even that is game design in a way. You're no longer playing the game you were before right out of the book or box, you've added your own piece to engage with the story that you felt worked better in a particular situation. It may seem crazy, but anyone can make a game, either hacking an existing system or coming up with something entirely new, it just depends on how much work you're willing to put into it!

In this episode, Rene talks about all the games he's got in various states of development and completion, either through recognizing a niche that hasn't been explored well enough, or just an idea he couldn't get out of his silly head.

Please reach out if any of these ideas seem good to you and let's playtest them or urge me to finish them!

1. Empires of Rust - Post-Catastrophe Exploration & Community Building RPG
2. BRP Design Challenge - T.I.M.E. Unit; Time Travel RPG
3. Party Animals - Young player RPG where you play animals working together
4. MECH - Carved by RUNE solo RPG pitting mech vs. kaiju
5. Shared Dice Pool / Multiple Resolution Mechanics
6. Modular Classless Progression System
7. Cell(F) Defense - Play as white blood cells in the human body during infection/injury
8. The Estate - Tarot prompt-based year of an artist at a legendary estate
9. A Modern Discovery of Magic - What if magic was discovered in the 1910s?
10. Candles in the Dark Library - Dark academia Forged in the Dark
11. Decktectives - 2-player Buddy Cop RPG using a deck of cards & poker mechanics
12. All That Jazz - A music-making improv game of tossing dice and filling out sheet music
13. Lumen & Nox - The battle between light & dark in us all with Mass Effect style morality tracking & grid-based combat where light/dark affects your options
14. Pokemon TCG RPG - Just a way to use those old pokemon cards to tell shared 'mon stories without the many overtuned fan-made Pokemon RPGs out there...

Download Rene's Finished Games (for free!):

• One Last Quest - bring back your favorite characters for one more mission as elderly versions of themselves!
• Pine Island - Rene & Christian's first game for the PocketQuest 2022 summer game jam. Play as campers or counselors at a summer camp where nothing at all creepy will happen, surely...

Where to Follow Rene Plays Games:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | Threads | DMs After Dark

email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com

Music in the Episode:

Theme Song written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands

Welcome back to the developing trilogy of the bot-human construct Nomad ISIL-8 in NOTORIOUS and OUTSIDERS by Jason Price, a.k.a. Always Checkers Publishing.

ISIL-8 finds themselves wanted on the planet of Arro after their run-in with the hostile hunting down a rogue hacker. Bounties go up through the Guild to bring the missing Bot-Construct in however possible, but ISIL-8 still has a job through Huska's Corsairs and questions of their own to answer about the Company that created them.

Tracking down leads including the target Xed Gron's hacker ally, being confronted by a hired assassin, and meeting other discarded victim's of Arro's corporate experiments, ISIL-8 finally finds the loudmouth Quadoi, but their answers about the cloning program will have to wait, as they're ambushed on the way off planet... Luckily, they've taken a hostage.

Where to Follow Rene Plays Games:

Instagram | Facebook | X/Twitter | Threads | DMs After Dark

email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com

Music in the Episode:

Theme Song written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands

Cyberpunk City from TabletopAudio.com

Docking Bay from TabletopAudio.com

Dungeon Collapse from TabletopAudio.com

Mega City Slums from TabletopAudio.com

Robot Scrapyard from TabletopAudio.com

Sand Raiders from TabletopAudio.com

Stakeout from TabletopAudio.com

Starforged: Planetside from TabletopAudio.com

Weirder Things 2 from TabletopAudio.com

Welcome to another episode of Perspective Checks where I sit down with a friend in the TTRPG world and discuss a topic of their choice!

If you're familiar with Ironsworn, especially Starforged, this week's guest likely needs no introduction - Matt Risby is the man behind the microphone for the incredible podcast The Bad Spot, which has 3 incredible seasons of Ironsworn: Starforged, some original Ironsworn, and is just beginning its brand new Sundered Isles series!

In this episode, we talk about playing solo RPGs, how it's a different experience as one shared among friends, and how it gets even more complicated when you're making solo RPG content for an audience. We talk a lot about how running games for groups has made us better at playing solo, and how the opposite also works - solo play greatly enhances your GMing at a full table! Matt heaps praise on Jason Cordova / The Gauntlet's The Between, a Victorian horror RPG which builds on Brindlewood Bay's mystery mechanics, and we have a blast talking about our journeys in solo gaming.

You can follow The Bad Spot on Twitter at @thebadspotcast and go subscribe to the YouTube page to catch up on the adventures of Gideon & Lorenzo in Ironsworn: Sundered Isles!

Where to Follow Rene Plays Games:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | Threads | DMs After Dark

email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com

Music in the Episode:

Theme Song written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands

Not a 5th Tuesday bonus episode, but just keeping up the rhyming bonus episodes with Gila RPGs solo games and in June that means RUNE. Similar to REAP, which I played back in February for the Leap Year, RUNE is a solo TTRPG based on the Dark Souls and Elden Ring games, and it plays just as punishing (you'll see).

If you want to hear Spencer play through this realm on his YouTube channel, you can watch it here, and if you want pick up Aaron Joliffe's RUNE Realms and content, you can find his games on his itch.io page.

Where to Follow Rene Plays Games:

Instagram | Facebook | X/Twitter | Threads | Itch.io | DMs After Dark

email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com

Music in the Episode:

Theme Song written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands

Court of the Count from TabletopAudio.com

Escape from Shadow from TabletopAudio.com

Lord of Bones from TabletopAudio.com

Survivors' Bivouac from TabletopAudio.com

Through The Woods from TabletopAudio.com

Witch Mountain from TabletopAudio.com