Rene Plays Games

Welcome back for another episode of Colostle - Dungeons!   After escaping the Castle Revolving major labyrinth, Sybil recovers back in Oubliette during a festival known as Stillnights.   Learn more about Colostle and the Dungeons supplement here! If you like all of the new additions and ideas constantly being added to the world of Colostle, I highly recommend checking out Nich's Patreon page !   -...

Welcome to another episode of Perspective Checks where I sit down with friends and folks from the TTRPG world and discuss what they love about this wonderful hobby!   We're kicking off 2026 with PJ Sack, a fellow solo podcaster and host of the excellent A Wasteland Story Fallout 2d20 solo AP as well as the incredible The Solo Roleplayers Podcast , which you will absolutely love if you're listening...

Welcome back for another episode of Colostle - Dungeons!   Pressing on and into the major labyrinth Castle Revolving, Sybil and the rooklings (and Zorn) quickly realize this is not like the rest of the Dungeons. This labyrinth is hostile and brutally punishing on top of being a confusing maze to navigate.   Sybil begins to figure out the way through, but the elemental attrition and Bastion defende...

Another year of the podcast is in the books! In this short episode I mostly just want to thank everyone for listening and share some insights from the year.   Some big ones were: Over 10,000 downloads in 2025 (whoa, thank you) Better gender diversity in Perspective Checks (working on racial diversity, I promise) 15 different games on the podcast in 2025 (same as 2024, weird)   And for 2026, I have...

Happy Holidays!   DO YOU HAVE THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT IN YOU?   Welcome back to another DMs After Dark holiday one-shot! This year we decided to do a sequel to a previous holiday special - the Thursday time loop cheesy holiday movie set in a strange little bean tree town that we have appropriately named Beantree! This year, a group is traveling to avoid holiday get-togethers in a one-shot of Grant Ho...

Time for another Tabletop Tutorial, the series where I play two player TTRPGs with friends and we learn them together.   BIG OL' CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THIS EPISODE: Death, Alcoholism, Inappropriate Crude Body Humor, Body Horror, and probably a whole lot more, be careful with this one, please. It's heavy.   I'm once again joined by Troy from the DMs After Dark to play the heartbreaking two player TT...

Welcome to another episode of Perspective Checks where I sit down with friends and folks from the TTRPG world and discuss what they love about this wonderful hobby!   The last Perspective Checks of 2025 is a wonderful conversation with Kat The Dungeon Mom , a GM, actual play performer, teacher, mom, and so much more as a community member. We sit down to talk about raising the next generation of ne...

Welcome back for another episode of Colostle - Dungeons!   Sybil wants to return to Oubliette to have her new unique rookstone appraised, but she didn't get here alone, so she continues deeper into the Dungeons with Zorn and the rookling  to find the lost rooklings and possibly a Rookling Forge.   Sybil finds a way back to the surface, but with too many questions left unanswered, she stays in the...

We're a few days late, but if it means anything to you, dear listener, it made me haul a lot of my music equipment up to my office and I am definitely going to try and do more original music for my episodes now!   Welcome to another one-player one-shot where I play games I have been dying to get to the table all by myself. This time it's another by one of my favorite designers in the TTRPG communi...

Welcome back for another episode of Colostle - Dungeons!   Sybil and the Rookling are joined by the traveling Bastion monk, Zorn, who is searching for something known as a Rookling Forge after many of the rooklings from his monastery have left to destinations unknown. When their expedition hits a dead end, they are waylaid by a Lichen Rook and rush away only to find that Sybil's Whisperstone is pu...

Welcome to another episode of Perspective Checks where I sit down with friends and folks from the TTRPG world and discuss what they love about this wonderful hobby!   This month's episode is with Craig Hatler (a.k.a. Tezrak the Impslayer most places on the internet), a game designer and educator who came on to talk about the importance of a game's communication and resources when sitting down to l...

Welcome back to the new series of Colostle - Dungeons!   Sybil ventures out of the hanging city of Oubliette with her ice rookling in tow to attempt to find her way back to the surface. The two have more time to appreciate the immensity of the subterranean world and its architecture, but hear a cry for help while investigating a chained rook husk. The find a stranger bound with spectral chains, bu...

Bonus Halloween day episode release and it's one we teased wayyyy back in February in our Valentine's Day bonus episode! I'm joined by my wife Lynn to play another game of Star Crossed ( and in digital ) by Alex Roberts , published by the wonderful Bully Pulpit Games , but this time we're not leaning hard into the expected romance tropes or characters, we're getting spooky! (spoiler: it is not, in...

Can't forget to do a solo one-shot for spooky month, so here is my one-player one-shot experience of Spellbook by DValeris a.k.a. Edaureen Muhamad Nor! This game is based on a familiar game from last year's holiday one-shots, Bucket Of Bolts by Jason Price and uses the Lost & Found SRD to simulate the life of a sentient spellbook that is past down through the hands of witches over three Acts....

Welcome back to the new series of Colostle - Dungeons!   In episode 4, new friend Thorug guides Sybil and the Rooklings to the capital of the Dungeons - the Hanging City of Oubliette! This incredible city hangs from the top of an enormous cavern, lit up in all different colors in a perpetual nightlife. Run by four clans (Cups, Rings, Keys, and Shards), the city is both powerful and dangerous. What...

Welcome to another episode of Perspective Checks where I sit down with friends and folks from the TTRPG world and discuss what they love about this wonderful hobby!   This month's episode is with Kate the Great Cosplays talking about the many, many angles she approaches the TTRPG scene through. Not only a cosplay event coordinator including TTRPG cosplay photo sessions and meet-ups, but an actual...

It's spooky month 2025, and that means bonus episodes! They can be Halloween-y, generally spooky, or related to common tropes of the season, but this year it's kicking off with a one-shot of The Witch Is Dead by the incomparable  Grant Howitt !    The Witch Is Dead is a one-page RPG by the master of the one-pager about a kind and good witch who is brutally and unfairly MURDERED by a witch-hunter!...

Welcome back to the new series of Colostle - Dungeons!   In episode 3, Sybil has escaped the major labyrinth of the Cistern only to find herself forced to explore further down into the Dungeons, which turn out to be much more interesting than expected. Incredible architecture and mechanisms are in place from who knows when - a whole world beneath the surface of the Roomlands... But before she can...

It's time for another one-player one-shot!   The Librarian's Apprentice is a solo game I've had near the top of my list to play for a LONG time, and it's a shame it's taken me so long to get this to the table. This is a game by friend of the channel Daniel Bronson-Lowe, a.k.a. Almost Bedtime Theater who you may remember from the Tabletop Tutorial episode of i'm sorry did you say street magic? wher...

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an incredible new game by French developers Sandfall Interactive, and it is AMAZING. This is not a light lift for you TTRPG folks who may want to emulate the game at the table, but that doesn't mean there isn't a LOT for you to mine for your own games without having to try and replicate this masterpiece.   Take home notes: Asymmetric design is awesome, and each chara...

Welcome back to the new series of Colostle - Dungeons!   In episode 2, we pick up with our main character Sybil as she emerges from the water deep below the surface where she fell at the end of episode 1. As she gets her bearings, she realizes she is in an ancient, underground mechanism with no way back to the surface, so the only way out is through. Luckily (or not), she rescues a small Rookling...

Welcome to another episode of Perspective Checks where I sit down with friends and folks from the TTRPG world and discuss what they love about this wonderful hobby!   There are a lot of tabletop roleplaying ganes, and there is an almost 100% chance you will never sit down and play them all, and even if you could, there would be a a lot of games you probably wouldn't enjoy. This month's episode is...

100 Episodes! That's pretty neat, and it feels right to go back to the very first series I ever played solo for a podcast - the incredibly wonderful Colostle by Nich Angell!   In this series, we'll be playing a whole new character, so you don't have to have listened to my previous Colostle series on the DMs After Dark podcast feed, and I'll be going through all of the character creation, rules, an...

Welcome back to Mining Media where we turn your binging into better TTRPG experiences by telling the next episode or next book "You will not break me," and soldiering on anyway because goddamnit, Donut, someone's gotta try and save all these ideas.   This month we're talking about the absurdly popular (and deserving) LitRPG book series Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman . These books follow Car...

Let's do another one-player one-shot!   This time it's  BOW by the design duo (and team at) Hatchlings Games !   BOW is a solo journaling game that uses the Carta SRD by Peach Garden Games, much like Hatchlings' other solo game Dragon Dowser (which you can hear me play in the backlog!). In BOW, you play a Praeloran diver going out in an annual competition known as The Shoaling, a grueling sailing...