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Show HN: I made a note-taking app for roleplaying games like D&D

83 points by kevinrenskers 6y ago

kevinrenskers 6y ago
It's meant for both DMs and players to keep track of the timeline of events, characters, NPCs, locations, quests, party loot, etc. Written in Svelte 3, it uses Firebase and is hosted on Netlify at the moment. An iOS app was in the works, but due to numerous SwiftUI bugs, it's in the freezer for now.
- BatFastard 6y ago
  Try flutter for the mobile app, cross platform for iOS and Android, works great with firebase.
LostLetterbox2 6y ago
I feel so asleep, your pages are beautiful and I should have thought of using something like this and leaflet (though I have no idea what the fair use provisions are like for published maps). Great job!
ketzo 6y ago
Not much feedback other than it all looks really good! Great polished landing page and login flow. I'm gonna try this out for our next session!
- kevinrenskers 6y ago
  Let me know how it goes! I've been using it with multiple D&D groups, in 5 campaigns now, and everybody in the groups likes using it. The timeline UI is not ideal when you add a whole bunch of calendar entries (a lot of scrolling...) but it all works and will be improved :)
sebringj 6y ago
I like the concept. You could expand it quite nicely as you go, putting maps and possibly player icons in spaces on board for saving last positions etc. I noticed there was some stuff not working but i know its early. Maybe have it rely on rock solid data such as firebase or s3 or something to make it more reliant but good start.
- kevinrenskers 6y ago
  This is built on top of Firebase :) Curious what didn't work! And yes, it's definitely a plan to have a map with the party position, linked to calendar entries. Like a dotted line showing where you've been over time.
  - sebringj 6y ago
    I noticed when I went to different tabs, like the player wasn't editable or the tab wouldn't select but I know this is early so best of success, good idea.
    - kevinrenskers 6y ago
      Hm, well that should definitely just work, not sure what's going on. Haven't seen this or heard about this before. If you'd like to share some more details, that'd be a great help! @CritNotesApp on Twitter, or contact@critical-notes.com.
    - kevinrenskers 6y ago
      A JavaScript error was reported and is now fixed - so hopefully these problems are now gone.
      - sebringj 6y ago
        Looks like those issue are gone now.
lostcolony 6y ago
This looks really neat! Reading through I caught a small typo, "annoucements".
krisoft 6y ago
If you are not associated with the Critical Role team I think you shouldn’t call a D&D related site Critical anything. I’m not saying this on a legal level. I don’t know enough to say if you are legally allowed or not. What I know is that it feels inappropriate. Best case it will cause confusion, worst case it feels cheap and scammish.
- nohat 6y ago
  The name of the show is a play on the DnD feature of rolling a critical. Seems a bit unfair to criticize someone else borrowing a classic DnD term just because Critical Role got so popular.
  - krisoft 6y ago
    That’s right on the origin of the term. Similary one can say that a face book is a kind of student registery with photos. It is still a bad idea to call a social network which is not related to Facebook face-something. It is an already estabilished and recognizeable brand your new thing might get confused with. If you did it unintentionally then you just caused unintentional confusion to your users. If you did it intentionally because you want to ride on the popularity of the already existing thing then you are a shyster. Again, this is not a legal analysis. This is a decency analysis. I might be more simpathetic with their naming choice if it would have been an accidental thing. It could be that the makers of critical-notes never heard of the brand Critical Role, they just settled on the same word because of the game term. This is unlikely to be the case. Critical notes mention on their frontpage that they support the Exandrian calendar for note taking. Exandria, and thus the exandrian calendar, is the invention of Critical Role’s Dungeon Master. The chance that they heard about Exandria but haven’t heard about Critical Role is basically zero.
    - stolenmerch 6y ago
      This is a note taking app for D&D. Exandria is an officially published world by Wizards of the Coast. Makes sense to support it.
vermilingua 6y ago
The service looks great, but one pet peeve I have with 50% of landing pages, including yours: you mention that there is a free tier and a subscriber tier with no indication of what features fall where. I have no way of telling whether a) everything I've seen on the rest of the landing page is free, and there's some hidden content that would be a killer feature for me; or b) I'll sign up only to find that I get a gimped experience compared to what I've seen. This info is only present in a tiny site directory link in the footer, please either add that link prominently to the body, or better yet move all the content of that page to your free/sub section. A majority of your potential users will never make it past the landing page if it isn't clear what they're actually getting.
- kevinrenskers 6y ago
  Fair point, thanks! I've updated the homepage and subscription page.
manbash 6y ago
I would love to try this out. Thanks for all the effort :) P.S. happy to see other "critters" around here.

83 points by kevinrenskers 6y ago

It's meant for both DMs and players to keep track of the timeline of events, characters, NPCs, locations, quests, party loot, etc. Written in Svelte 3, it uses Firebase and is hosted on Netlify at the moment. An iOS app was in the works, but due to numerous SwiftUI bugs, it's in the freezer for now.

BatFastard 6y ago
Try flutter for the mobile app, cross platform for iOS and Android, works great with firebase.

LostLetterbox2 6y ago

I feel so asleep, your pages are beautiful and I should have thought of using something like this and leaflet (though I have no idea what the fair use provisions are like for published maps). Great job!

ketzo 6y ago

Not much feedback other than it all looks really good! Great polished landing page and login flow. I'm gonna try this out for our next session!

kevinrenskers 6y ago
Let me know how it goes! I've been using it with multiple D&D groups, in 5 campaigns now, and everybody in the groups likes using it. The timeline UI is not ideal when you add a whole bunch of calendar entries (a lot of scrolling...) but it all works and will be improved :)

sebringj 6y ago

I like the concept. You could expand it quite nicely as you go, putting maps and possibly player icons in spaces on board for saving last positions etc. I noticed there was some stuff not working but i know its early. Maybe have it rely on rock solid data such as firebase or s3 or something to make it more reliant but good start.

kevinrenskers 6y ago
This is built on top of Firebase :) Curious what didn't work! And yes, it's definitely a plan to have a map with the party position, linked to calendar entries. Like a dotted line showing where you've been over time.
- sebringj 6y ago
  I noticed when I went to different tabs, like the player wasn't editable or the tab wouldn't select but I know this is early so best of success, good idea.
  - kevinrenskers 6y ago
    Hm, well that should definitely just work, not sure what's going on. Haven't seen this or heard about this before. If you'd like to share some more details, that'd be a great help! @CritNotesApp on Twitter, or contact@critical-notes.com.
  - kevinrenskers 6y ago
    A JavaScript error was reported and is now fixed - so hopefully these problems are now gone.
    - sebringj 6y ago
      Looks like those issue are gone now.

lostcolony 6y ago

This looks really neat! Reading through I caught a small typo, "annoucements".

krisoft 6y ago

If you are not associated with the Critical Role team I think you shouldn’t call a D&D related site Critical anything. I’m not saying this on a legal level. I don’t know enough to say if you are legally allowed or not. What I know is that it feels inappropriate. Best case it will cause confusion, worst case it feels cheap and scammish.

nohat 6y ago
The name of the show is a play on the DnD feature of rolling a critical. Seems a bit unfair to criticize someone else borrowing a classic DnD term just because Critical Role got so popular.
- krisoft 6y ago
  That’s right on the origin of the term. Similary one can say that a face book is a kind of student registery with photos. It is still a bad idea to call a social network which is not related to Facebook face-something. It is an already estabilished and recognizeable brand your new thing might get confused with. If you did it unintentionally then you just caused unintentional confusion to your users. If you did it intentionally because you want to ride on the popularity of the already existing thing then you are a shyster. Again, this is not a legal analysis. This is a decency analysis. I might be more simpathetic with their naming choice if it would have been an accidental thing. It could be that the makers of critical-notes never heard of the brand Critical Role, they just settled on the same word because of the game term. This is unlikely to be the case. Critical notes mention on their frontpage that they support the Exandrian calendar for note taking. Exandria, and thus the exandrian calendar, is the invention of Critical Role’s Dungeon Master. The chance that they heard about Exandria but haven’t heard about Critical Role is basically zero.
  - stolenmerch 6y ago
    This is a note taking app for D&D. Exandria is an officially published world by Wizards of the Coast. Makes sense to support it.

vermilingua 6y ago

The service looks great, but one pet peeve I have with 50% of landing pages, including yours: you mention that there is a free tier and a subscriber tier with no indication of what features fall where. I have no way of telling whether a) everything I've seen on the rest of the landing page is free, and there's some hidden content that would be a killer feature for me; or b) I'll sign up only to find that I get a gimped experience compared to what I've seen. This info is only present in a tiny site directory link in the footer, please either add that link prominently to the body, or better yet move all the content of that page to your free/sub section. A majority of your potential users will never make it past the landing page if it isn't clear what they're actually getting.

kevinrenskers 6y ago
Fair point, thanks! I've updated the homepage and subscription page.

manbash 6y ago

I would love to try this out. Thanks for all the effort :) P.S. happy to see other "critters" around here.