Show HN: Initiative.sh, an in-browser command line for D&D
This project has been my full-time for the past six months or so (coming up on a
year since I joined the Great Resignation and decided to try my hand at
self-employment). I release somewhere between 2 and 10 times per week.I set out to build something that I could use as a game master at the table
without having to put the game on hold as I navigated through menus and
bookmarks for the various references and generators I use. My general design
principle is that everything in the app should be available at any time, with no
need to navigate menus on one extreme, or read documentation on the other.The core is written entirely in Rust with a couple of hundred lines of JS glue.
I was running it as a command-line app for the first month of development, and
it still works as such. However, since I added autocomplete to the web
interface, the web version is now more feature-complete than the command line. I
don't see much value in the extra work of backporting features to the command
line at this point. (Turns out Rust was the wrong choice for this particular
project, but the die is cast for the moment, and it has been fun.)I've barely scratched the surface of the feature that I'm most excited by,
namely context. Soon it will be possible to tell the app where the party is and
what they're doing, and the demographics of suggestions (and ultimately music,
lighting, and other integrations) will be updated accordingly. In a seedy bar in
the docks district? You're more likely to run into sailors down on their luck.
Pick a fight? Cue the epic music. Sun sets? Dim the lights.More details are available on my blog:https://mikkel.ca/blog/introducing-initiative-sh/I do have plans to monetize this project in the future, charging for the
server-side features (integrations and cloud sync) while keeping the client-side
features free. Everything that is currently implemented will always be free.