Hey everyone,

Part of a group of friends who play over the internet. We were using the Hangouts plugins to do our dice rolling. Now that's shutting down.

So I built one that has the realtime shared dice rolls, but stands on its own:
https://dice.owenmead.com/

Been using it for a handful of runs and ironed out a lot of the kinks already. Missing a couple features the best plugin we were using had, but it's working well so far.

Wanted to share the love in case others have run into a similar issue.

Let me know what you think.

------------ Updates ---------------

- Can add automatic advantage/threat/success.... to rolls. Click Extras to show them [Sep 1]

- Sorting of rolls added. Click user portrait of rolls, then sort via the new menu at the top [Sep 1]

- Triumph/Despair now on leftmost side of summary roll, easier to read [Sep 1]

- Can clear personal list of results [Mar 20]

- Added ability to comment on rolls [Feb 23]

Oh, and I should mention, currently I'm running it on a "micro" server. If this get's popular or lots of people check it out at the same time it could cause issues. I'm happy to upgrade the server as needed, but if it doesn't work or your friends can't connect, that is likely the cause. Let me know and I'll work to get this thing robust. I'll monitor it's usage and upgrade as needed. May ask for donations if it gets really popular.

This could really work for my group, thanks!

(answered my own question, nothing to see here....)

Owenmead, this is really slick!

Now for the obvious questions: what do you plan for going forward? Do you need help?

I love how clean this is. Maybe I'm missing something, I don't do much live play, but do you usually just have this running in another screen or do you have a bot that reports it to the Hangouts feed? If it's just in another window, then the ability to add a label to each roll would be very useful.

7 minutes ago, SladeWeston said:

I love how clean this is. Maybe I'm missing something, I don't do much live play, but do you usually just have this running in another screen or do you have a bot that reports it to the Hangouts feed? If it's just in another window, then the ability to add a label to each roll would be very useful.

I think you have to have everyone join the same room. I've logged out and back in and I show my previous dice rolls, neat!

40 minutes ago, themensch said:

I think you have to have everyone join the same room. I've logged out and back in and I show my previous dice rolls, neat!

Ya, I figured as much. It would be nice to be able to flag the pools though.

4 minutes ago, SladeWeston said:

Ya, I figured as much. It would be nice to be able to flag the pools though.

Yeah ability to tag a roll is probably going to be the most requested feature. The next one will likely be adding specific results like automatic Advantage. Then likely the ability to save rolls. Still quite useful as it is though.

Agreed. It strikes a really nice balance between being lite and minimal but still looking good. I really like it. It doesn't quite have the features to replace Orosok yet, but it looks close. I've got the page bookmarked so I can keep an eye on its development. Thanks again for the hard work @owenmead

Thanks for the kind words.

Yes, everyone needs to be in the same room. Think chat rooms but with dice instead of text messages.

Our group has hangouts in one window, and this in another. But it doesn't need hangouts. You could use Skype, conference call... whatever for the main part. Some in our group use their phone for the dice and computer for chat etc.

Plan going forward is to slowly improve this thing as needed. No plans to "monetize" it, but instead want to give back. Ogg Dudes tool has been amazing, and I want to throw what I can into the hat so to speak. If it gets really popular I may ask for small donations to cover the server costs, but that's a ways off. Perhaps some code submissions, but I'm happy to hack away.

Seems that "tagging rolls" is the main thing missing at the moment. Our GM has asked for the same thing. What exactly does that need to be? I'm still fairly new to the RPG world.

33 minutes ago, owenmead said:

Thanks for the kind words.

Yes, everyone needs to be in the same room. Think chat rooms but with dice instead of text messages.

Our group has hangouts in one window, and this in another. But it doesn't need hangouts. You could use Skype, conference call... whatever for the main part. Some in our group use their phone for the dice and computer for chat etc.

Plan going forward is to slowly improve this thing as needed. No plans to "monetize" it, but instead want to give back. Ogg Dudes tool has been amazing, and I want to throw what I can into the hat so to speak. If it gets really popular I may ask for small donations to cover the server costs, but that's a ways off. Perhaps some code submissions, but I'm happy to hack away.

Seems that "tagging rolls" is the main thing missing at the moment. Our GM has asked for the same thing. What exactly does that need to be? I'm still fairly new to the RPG world.

Makes sense this operates like a chat room. I think I'm set to try this Thursday evening so I can report back how it works. I like that it's decoupled from Hangouts because I've recently discovered just how unreliable and underperforming that videochat client really is, compared to other free options even. I'm interested to know more about your stack.

What does tagging rolls mean to me? Basically, just a text input field that is displayed with the roll, so I could show that this is my Perception check when I look at the log of past rolls. In my mind that's sufficient, but others might have additional requirements.

As for donations, I am a hearty Patreon supporter for projects like these and I would happily contribute. I'm a fan of giving back to the community myself, and since I can't really code in anything modern I can at least throw a few dollars to those that can. I develop, deploy, and maintain modern computing architecture and infrastructure for a living though, so when it comes time to scale up I'm happy to chime in there too.

1 hour ago, owenmead said:

Seems that "tagging rolls" is the main thing missing at the moment. Our GM has asked for the same thing. What exactly does that need to be? I'm still fairly new to the RPG world.

A simple comment field would be fine. Just enough to mitigate confusion over which roll is which.

Ex. "Attack on Trooper 3" "Initiative check using Cool" "Athletics check to jump to platform"

I'm thinking tweet length would be fine.

This is amazing. Thank you so much.

I'm a player in a game tomorrow (Thursday), and I'll try to get the group to use this. Next week I'm running a game, which means I'll make the group use this

Good to know about the adding comments/tags to a roll. I'll add that to the feature request list.

We've been using the "line" function for that. Pop in a line before cool vs vig, and then just before a fight etc. Works well. But I've had a couple ask for the "add some text" functionality so I'll add that in soon.

4 minutes ago, owenmead said:

Good to know about the adding comments/tags to a roll. I'll add that to the feature request list.

We've been using the "line" function for that. Pop in a line before cool vs vig, and then just before a fight etc. Works well. But I've had a couple ask for the "add some text" functionality so I'll add that in soon.

Fair. It might be that you run a much less chaotic session than some people. I know I've been in games where one person is rolling a stealth check while the GM is asking for an initiative check and two other people are rolling perception. Of course I don't play a lot of virtual games so maybe they are inherently less crazy. As an added selfish benefit, I'd like the feature because it makes play-by-post a viable use too.

Thank you very much Owen! We'll be using this starting this week and I can't wait to see how it progresses

I wanted to know how to use light side / dark side destiny point in the app?

Also, yes comments would be awesome, but honestly just as it is right now it's super awesome /o/

Cheers,

1 hour ago, lanmarek said:

I wanted to know how to use light side / dark side destiny point in the app?

I figured that one out: you have to add destiny points with the arrows on the left of the very top area, right above green Ability die, then click them to change them.

3 hours ago, SladeWeston said:

I'd like the feature because it makes play-by-post a viable use too.

A lot of folks seem to like http://orokos.com/ for pbp play, which isn't ideal as for realtime play but is a pretty good tool.

Okay, first session with this and it performed great! I still pine for the ability to comment on rolls, but it wasn't hampering for us. It sure rolled a lot better than my nice do, that's for sure.

Just added the ability to comment on rolls. If you click on "extras" button it will toggle the caption ability.

Planning on adding things like "add 1 Adv to roll" which I'll also put under the "extras" and not just added the caption straight up.

@themensch

Oh, any other forums and such I should tell about this app? Hope to help more people

21 minutes ago, owenmead said:

Oh, any other forums and such I should tell about this app? Hope to help more people

I'd definitely post this in the Compiled Resources List thread here, in /r/swrpg over on reddit, and the d20 radio forums , which are the most trafficked communities I know of for this game. There might be others, I rely upon their proponents to speak up. If you do Facebook, d20 Radio has a group there that loves this sort of thing. There's also a couple G+ communities if you're into that.

Thanks for the update!

My group used this last night (apparently before you added the ability to make comments) and LOVED IT.

Thank you so very much!

1 hour ago, devinebovine said:

My group used this last night (apparently before you added the ability to make comments) and LOVED IT.

Thank you so very much!

We played with it last night too, prior to the comments addition - and we've found it useful as a log for our crafter to save rolls for the GM to peruse later, thus saving tabletime.