[HN Gopher] Show HN: Find people to play tabletop roleplaying ga...
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Show HN: Find people to play tabletop roleplaying games with
Author : dyeje
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-03-31 14:03 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (roleplayful.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (roleplayful.com)
| Galanwe wrote:
| That's a cool idea, though why limit it to US cities? Wouldn't
| cost much to just allow creating/searching in the whole world.
| Could also be nice to have "language" selection, so that I can
| know if it's fine for other players to include a non native
| speaker.
| dyeje wrote:
| US limitation for In Person campaigns is just an MVP scope
| decision. International support is definitely on the roadmap.
| La1n wrote:
| I'd love to be able to sign up for a single email when
| international support happens. Seems like a great way to
| instantly get a bunch of people internationally when that
| launches.
| dyeje wrote:
| Sure, send an email to info@roleplayful.com and I'll reach
| out when it's available.
| poisonborz wrote:
| If avatars - which, given the context, could be missed by users -
| were not added because of moderation/abuse concerns, you could
| utilize a service like gravatar.
| mealkh wrote:
| For anybody interested in Germany / DACH, we had this page for
| ages: https://www.spielerverzeichnis.org/
| sshagent wrote:
| In the unlikely chance any of you happen to be around
| Northampton(England) and need a group give me a poke :)
| Taikonerd wrote:
| This is great! I was looking around for an in-person D&D game a
| couple months ago, and wishing that there were a site like this.
| dyeje wrote:
| Nice! Make sure to do a saved search so you'll get notified
| when one by you is added. My goal for April is to get over 100
| campaigns in the system :)
| throwaway123409 wrote:
| If you're interested in the indie rpg crowd you may want to
| change how game selection works.
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| Agreed. Might want to show any/all games and use titles as
| filter instead.
| dyeje wrote:
| Sure, do you have any specific recommendations? I'm not sure
| I'm familiar with the indie rpg scene, I typically play D&D,
| Starfinder, and Fantasy Flight Star Wars.
| twh270 wrote:
| I like it! Looks great and seems to work great too (tho I didn't
| register so can't comment on all the things). I would like to
| suggest a few things:
|
| It automatically detects your location, which is great except if
| you're on a VPN. A (pre-populated) Location field would be great.
| (Bonus points: add a "More..." button or something to expand the
| search radius.)
|
| How about adding a Twitter account for us to reach you?
|
| Not a fan of "View" opening a new window; how about expanding
| details in-line?
|
| Good start on a list of game systems and tags but it would be
| really nice to give registered users the ability to contribute.
| And once this gets popular you'll want an 'admin' role that can
| approve these! Think Big! :)
|
| Very good start.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| This is really cool!
|
| I'm glad more people are breaking in to this space.
|
| The founder of D&D Beyond is currently working on Demiplane.com,
| which has similar aims.
|
| PlayRole.com is also doing some cool stuff that's similar.
|
| Really glad to see more people trying to enable great gaming.
| genezeta wrote:
| FYI I don't know why but it doesn't seem to work on Firefox.
|
| I can't look at it right now, but at first glance it looks like
| either the requests to "campaigns/search" fail / return empty or
| that they are discarded because you're not doing a preventDefault
| on form's submit.
|
| It's weird because it does work on Chrome-based browsers.
| dyeje wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up, I'll take a look. EDIT: Should be
| fixed now, thanks again.
| genezeta wrote:
| Yes. Working fine now. Thanks.
| dyeje wrote:
| Hi everyone, I've been working on this project on and off for
| quite a while. In my experience, it can be tedious to find a game
| of Dungeons & Dragons if you don't have an existing network of
| friends who play it. You have to trawl various LFG forums which
| is time consuming and tedious. So I built Roleplayful to help
| automate that away. Users are able to do a detailed search
| (location, game, play style, and more), save the search, and then
| receive automatic email notifications when new matches appear for
| their search. Feedback welcomed and appreciated.
| gverrilla wrote:
| it's been a few years since I don't roleplay but (of course
| after covid) I think events like comicons work as great
| catalysts to get people together in this space, and maybe you
| can explore this. there's also platforms like d20 and tabletop
| nowadays, which may represent a market to you. good luck and
| have the resilience because in a niche like this even going
| viral takes sometimes much more time than people expect
| dyeje wrote:
| Definitely! I'm looking into sponsoring content creators and
| events like Gen Con.
| CollinEMac wrote:
| Awesome project!
|
| Why limit it to just role-playing games? I know that RPG
| players have to struggle quite a bit to find other players, but
| as a board-game player, I'd like to see some other dense games
| on here like Gloomhaven or maybe some trading card games like
| Magic: The Gathering.
| dyeje wrote:
| Great question. I chose to focus on tabletop RPGs because I
| wanted to focus on a niche I was personally familiar with.
| I'm bullish on the future of the space and would love to
| build tooling for game masters if the site catches on. That
| said, if those games are something you're interested in using
| Roleplayful for, I would be happy to add them.
| navbaker wrote:
| Oh yes, if you're going to expand on this, it would be great
| to include basically the range of games you typically see
| played at a local game store. This would span card games,
| board games, RPGs, and tabletop miniatures games. There's
| good resources out there for finding what titles are in
| demand. Boardgamegeek is a good one for board games, then for
| card games and miniatures games, any employee at a game store
| not called Games Workshop could give you the short list of
| titles to include!
| Taikonerd wrote:
| I think board games are different from RPGs, though. Like,
| "Ticket to Ride" is a popular board game, but there isn't
| really a TtR community that's specifically looking for
| recurring sessions with other TtR players. It's more like
| there are board-game meetups that rotate through different
| games each time. (At least, that's been my experience at my
| FLGS.)
|
| Games like Gloomhaven, which another poster mentioned, are
| a different ball game -- more like RPGs in that respect.
| walshemj wrote:
| Diplomacy does have a large community
| zomglings wrote:
| I am getting empty list of search results when looking for remote
| campaigns with D&D 5e, D&D 4e, D&D 3.5e, Pathfinder, Pathfinder
| 2e.
|
| Is this expected behavior (because there aren't any campaigns
| listed yet)?
| ammanley wrote:
| This is _awesome_ and I applaud you for working to bring this to
| life. More people in the hobby the better AFAIC.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Does anyone know anything better than Fantasy Grounds for
| managing online pen and paper RPG games?
|
| It's a very clunky and unpleasant UI from my experience with it.
| BryantD wrote:
| I'm fond of FoundryVTT -- it allows for self-hosting if you
| don't want to pay a monthly subscription fee.
|
| https://foundryvtt.com/
| avinashv wrote:
| I really don't like FG either. I use Roll20[1], but if you are
| completely home-brew, Owlbear Rodeo[2] is very simple and
| great. Character sheets on D&D Beyond[3] and the Beyond20
| Chrome extension to link DDB and Roll20.
|
| [1] https://roll20.net [2] https://owlbear.rodeo [3]
| https://dndbeyond.com
| dyeje wrote:
| I really like Roll20 + D&D Beyond.
| wincy wrote:
| Very cool. I played D&D when I was a teenager but never actually
| did a campaign, instead we sort of made characters then joked
| around and rolled some dice with no coherent story.
|
| Back in November there was another Show HN for
| https://startplaying.games , did you create this at all in
| response to that being all premium, paid for games? I signed up
| for Start Playing, and have been doing an absolutely amazing
| campaign with a DM who is a published fantasy author and an all
| around great guy. It's $30 a week but hey, good help is hard to
| find.
|
| I've heard a lot of horror stories about playing online tabletop
| with random people, do you think you could add some sort of
| review or rating system between players? It might cut down on
| some of the toxicity.
| dyeje wrote:
| Actually my original concept was very close to
| startplaying.games! I ended up not pursuing it because:
|
| 1. I did a survey and it seemed like paid GMing was not ready
| for primetime yet, you can read about it in this blogpost [1].
|
| 2. I have been working on this by myself extremely slowly by
| myself since 2018. In the past year I've gotten more serious
| about trying to build micro-SaaS businesses. I decided to cut
| scope, focus on discovery, and just launch the darn thing to
| see where it goes.
|
| I've been pretty lucky myself playing with strangers, but yes a
| rating system is definitely something I'm considering and was
| one of the topics in that survey I mentioned earlier.
|
| [1] https://roleplayful.com/blog/origin-story-and-game-master-
| su...
| webmaven wrote:
| Looks good, and useful!
|
| Two notes:
|
| - The list of systems is kind of limited, for example I was
| looking for Fate.
|
| - When looking for an in-person group, it should be possible to
| leave the system dropdown blank (or have an 'Any' option). I'm
| not sure if that would also be useful for remote games.
|
| There are a bunch of other constraints I have encountered over
| the years for f2f games (mostly health-related), but those can
| probably wait, since remote will likely be the main use for a
| while.
| dyeje wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback!
|
| I will add Fate to the list.
|
| Great point about In Person, probably want to cast the widest
| net possible. I designed it this way so that there is at least
| 1 game to make sure it's hitting an index on the search, but I
| can definitely make it more ergonomic to search all systems.
| Emigre_ wrote:
| Great idea, although it won't be that useful for many people, I
| think, until it supports a wider variety of systems and editions.
| The current selection is quite small. I also think, as somebody
| has commented, that having boardgames and wargames in it would be
| great. But nice idea, it'll be interesting to see how it evolves
| from here.
| dyeje wrote:
| Which systems and editions would you like to see? Adding new
| ones is pretty trivial, the current list is based on my own
| (limited) market research of what is popular. I don't want to
| allow freeform text because I'm worried the search will become
| too fragmented.
| Emigre_ wrote:
| Thanks for asking. :) The thing is, if I were to use it I
| would (personally) be interested in some that aren't that
| popular, and in different editions of the same game. Like for
| example, Runequest 3rd edition - but also the new 7th
| edition. The Call of Cthulhu 3rd edition - but also the new
| edition (7th). I know some people that play Cyberpunk 2020, I
| think. So it's more that from my perspective if I were a user
| I would want to create campaigns or games for systems that
| are old, fringe or very specific... not being able to do it
| kind of makes the site unusable if that's what one wants. I
| was actually interested to see if there were people
| organising games for some of these, or wargames like
| Battletech, and others, and seeing that it wasn't an option
| was a little bit of a disappointment. I understand what you
| say about not wanting users type the name of the same game in
| a myriad different ways, and I don't know what would be the
| solution to it. Maybe boardgamegeek offers a service to get
| roleplaying games names data? I also don't know how would I
| present the options to the user so users both get a
| reasonable list of defaults straight away and are also able
| to input more bizarre choices. Anyways - cool initiative, I'm
| sure these kind of issues will be solved somehow in future
| versions of the website.
| Emigre_ wrote:
| But I think that there's a lot of value in allowing less
| popular choices because when one goes to the internet to
| find players, perhaps it's because the game is so niche
| that it's hard to find them in real life.
| BryantD wrote:
| Roll20 has done OK with freeform text, I think. I'm not a UX
| expert but... what if the pulldown menu displayed the top 20
| systems for the previous month, with an Other submenu that
| displayed everything else?
| tomkat0789 wrote:
| Just made a little page for my campaign! Thanks for this! This
| reminds me of Obsidian Portal that a DM I briefly followed used:
| https://www.obsidianportal.com/
|
| Some thoughts:
|
| -Looking at Obsidian Portal for the first time in years, I found
| a bunch of campaigns near me... last updated 5+ years ago.
| "Undead" games will probably be an issue for your service as
| well. Perhaps you could add an additional filter field for
| recently active/updated games.
|
| -Following the last point, some groups might be "passively open":
| meeting regularly IRL, but not active on Roleplayful if there's
| nothing to update.
|
| -I live in Chicago. It might be useful to have something that'd
| allow people to put in location tags for, say, the north side and
| nearby suburbs. Somebody in the city using public transit could
| take an hour or more to go to the other side of the city.
|
| -It might also be cool if I could list more than one system if
| you're open to different options, but I can think of some
| arguments against this.
|
| Thanks again! The best group I ever had (spanning ~4 years) was
| started with a notecard thumbtacked to a bulletin board in the
| back of the game shop. I try to keep an eye out for newer digital
| options!
| troygoode wrote:
| For a more modern take on Obsidian Portal I strongly recommend
| LegendKeeper (https://www.legendkeeper.com/). I use it for the
| campaign I DM for both for my own notes and for making some of
| the lore / locations / characters easily accessible for the
| players.
| dyeje wrote:
| Yes, all great points that I've been thinking about. Thanks for
| checking it out and the link to Obsidian Portal (I hadn't heard
| of it before and it looks really cool).
| elliekelly wrote:
| Great site! Is the assumption that "remote" play occur on
| TableTop Simulator? (Or some other cool thing I don't know
| about?) Perhaps you could add a field to identify which platform
| will be used?
|
| Also, I can't help but peruse the TOS & Privacy Policy of just
| about every site I visit. It looks like you used a policy
| generator (and I didn't read your documents too closely) but I
| didn't notice any language about user interactions that occur
| off-platform and I doubt that situation would be contemplated by
| most terms/policy generators.
|
| Again, I didn't read anything thoroughly so it might be addressed
| by your policy and I just missed it. (Obligatory, this isn't
| legal advice and I'm not your lawyer.) As a website that
| facilitates in-person meetings you might consider including some
| language. If you take a look at the TOS for Tinder or MeetUp I
| would imagine they might have some helpful example language.
| dyeje wrote:
| Yes, the assumption is that you play the game on another
| platform. I don't have any plans to go in the TableTop
| Simulator, Roll20, etc direction because I'm a solo dev, that's
| a huge project, and they already do a great job. I'm focusing
| on the discovery part of the problem and hoping to expand in
| other directions based on user feedback. You can identify the
| platform a campaign is played on by selecting one of the
| "Tools" tags.
|
| Thanks for looking over the legal stuff, I did take care in
| making them. It's a combination of generated content / open
| source (shout out to Basecamp), edited by me, and then edited
| by my lawyers (shout out to Grellas Shah LLP). The in person
| aspect was something I was wary of, but I've been advised the
| language in there is sufficient. Looking at MeetUp and Tinder
| is a good call though, I hadn't thought of that.
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