u/Slaine06

hey guys. i run a game every other week and i have literally never written a proper session recap. i always mean to, and then it's four days later and i've got three bullet points i can't read anymore.

so i built something for it and figured some of you might be interested in it.

Chronicle

basically it records the session and afterwards it transcribes it and mashes it together with the stuff my table already produces anyway, dice rolls, when combat kicked off, who went down, what monsters and npcs turned up. then it spits out a recap i can read out loud at the start of the next session. i still edit it every time.

Chapters

the audio and the transcript get deleted once the recap is written. and if you don't like being recorded or just don't care you can turn the whole thing off.

it's not perfect btw, it absolutely butchers made up names. one of my npcs was called Ysolde Vantenebre and it came back as "isoldeven" lol, but yeah you can fix those manually, and hopefully in the future I will fix these little issues.

anyway it's part of a site i've been building called RollCamp, it's free. i post devlogs over on r/RollCamp if you are curious and wanna see more of it.

RollCamp is a VTT that only supports D&D 2024, I really just wanted to focus on 2024 and make it the best single system TTS it could be. No system-agnostic engine, no expansion roadmap to other games, no plugin marketplace. One ruleset, built in properly.

Campaigns

Each campaign has its own page the DM can customize with a name, description and background image. There's an archive for images, soundtracks and notes, and the DM decides what gets shared: everything to the party, or specific resources to specific players only. Notes are always private to whoever wrote them, DM included.

You can create characters, NPCs and monsters, homebrew or from the book.

Campaign Page

Character Sheets

Sheets are dynamic. You go through the creation wizard, and (almost) every choice you make propagates: AC, HP, saves, proficiencies, weapon masteries, spell slots, spell save DC. Change your armor, pick a different feat, choose a fighting style, and the numbers follow. You're not typing your own AC into a box and hoping you did the math right.

There's a full creation wizard and a guided level-up wizard, so leveling is "click level up, answer the questions it asks you" instead of "open the PHB, find your class table, remember what you're supposed to get at 5th level."

Character Sheet

Maps

There's a built-in map editor. You import your own battlemap (up to 8K resolution), set the grid, place tokens, done. You can attach character and monster sheets to tokens.

Map Creator Page

The Table Itself

Almost everything in the session exists to keep the game from stopping. Dice are 3D and animated so a roll is a shared moment rather than a number in a log. Webcams are built in over P2P so nobody has to juggle a second app. Initiative lives in a tracker the DM controls, so the turn order isn't something one person is holding in his head.

The compendium is available in session as well as out of it, which kills the classic five-minute pause where someone goes looking up a spell. Same idea behind the chat, and because the sheets are interactive you can drop a spell or a feature into it as a link with the full text attached. Nobody has to describe from memory what the ability does.

Session Page

The legal part, because I'd rather say it upfront

Right now the site only contains SRD 5.2.1 content, which is the material Wizards released for free under CC-BY. That's not a placeholder, it's a licensing reality: I can't distribute the actual PHB without a license, so I don't. The hope is to get enough of a userbase to be in a position to ask for one. If that happens, the whole book goes in. And eventually, also all the future adventures and expansions.

Compendium Page (Spells)

RollCamp is my attempt at something modern and quick that handles the annoying parts of a 2024 campaign and then gets out of the way, closer to how it feels when you're all sitting at the same table.

Try it

Registration is free and doesn't ask for a credit card. The free plan is meant to be wide enough that you and your friends can actually try a campaign on it, and see if you like it.
If you find bugs, or there's a feature you want, or you just think something is ugly or confusing, tell me. Here or on Discord, both work.

Contacts

Site: https://rollcamp.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/uCuReGE6pa
Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RollCamp/

I've been playing D&D with the same group for years, always around a real table. Recently I moved to another city for a while, so we're looking at VTTs like Roll20 and Foundry to keep the campaign going.

I've watched a bunch of videos, and maybe I'm missing something, but... why are they all so complicated?

When we play in person, we basically use character sheets, pencils, dice, and our imagination. That's it. Then I open a VTT and I'm greeted with dozens of buttons, menus, automation settings, effects, macros... it feels more like learning a new piece of software than sitting down to play D&D.

Are all these features actually things people use? Or is it just feature creep over the years?

One thing I also don't really enjoy is the amount of automation. I don't want every attack and spell to be a button that automatically rolls everything for me. I actually like looking at my character sheet, adding the modifiers myself, and rolling the dice. For me that's part of the game, not something that needs to be optimized away.

I also have mixed feelings about things like spell VFX, animated maps, and dynamic lighting. They look impressive, don't get me wrong, but I feel like they also take away a bit of what makes tabletop RPGs special. I enjoy imagining what the fireball looks like, or picturing the hidden room in my head, instead of having everything shown to me.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

Are there any VTTs that are closer to the experience of sitting around a real table? Something more streamlined, with a clean UI, minimal automation, and just the essentials?

Or is there simply no demand for that, and most people actually prefer feature-rich VTTs? I'm a software developer, so part of me is wondering whether it's worth building something like this, or if it's just a niche idea that only appeals to me.