u/-CRD95-

TL;DR: I run a PbP community, got tired of the Discord bot circus, and built a free platform called RoleKey that handles character sheets, locations with music/images, economy, dice, guilds and more. Looking for honest feedback from fellow game runners. Demo links at the bottom.

Hey everyone! I'll start with some context: I run a play-by-post community in Italy and I got tired of managing everything on Discord. Discord is an incredible tool...but to me it's not a tool built for playing. I need to create classes, races, internal documentation, guilds, character sheets, creatures for my setting, chat rooms with themed images and music and visuals that actually let me immerse myself in what I'm playing.

I started looking into bots, even coded a few myself, but Discord's structural limitations hit every time, and in the end the most natural fallback is Tupperbox and some templates (nice as they are) to create character sheets. And honestly, I'm just tired of dealing with the "technical" side of things when I'd rather spend that energy expanding my world with my own content.

I started looking for ideas and advice here and in other communities, but couldn't find anything that fit. I found solid tools for D&D, but my game doesn't use anything D&D offers, so they were the wrong tools for me. In the end I fell back on the only practical solution: I built the tool myself. Basically I told myself "why not put all those years of game development experience to use?"

I created a platform called RoleKey. A dead-simple platform that gives a game runner everything they could need for any game or setting.

Character Sheets: the core of everything. Both me and my players care deeply about our characters, and Discord just can't do them justice. I built an entire dedicated section for each character: their backstory, equipment, portrait, stats, abilities and so on.

Locations: not channels. I made it so every location has real depth and you can set background images, write dedicated descriptions, add music that loops while you're in the room, and more.

Internal Economy: players can buy items, sell them at the market or trade with each other, exchange coins, earn salaries from guilds or through in-chat actions, and much more.
Dice: fully integrated into the chat. Just type "1d20" and the system rolls it automatically. Type "1d20+Strength" and it rolls the die and adds the stat value. You can also set up preset dice.

Guilds: one of the things I missed most on Discord. Guild management where guilds aren't just profile badges. Guilds have internal roles, salaries, linked abilities, their own charter, dedicated images, chat, forums and much more.

Bestiary & Documentation: you can create creatures with images, abilities, items, characteristics and documentation organized by chapters or sections however you prefer.

Core Systems: the platform supports both automation and hands-on control. Players can sign up and play right away, or you can require approval first. You can set up roles (similar to Discord) so everyone manages their own area (who can assign items? who can rename characters? etc.)

Characters join, not accounts: when someone signs up, there's no need for Tupperbox. What joins the game is the character, not the account.

Dedicated Workshop: essentially a "mini-mod" system that lets you import content into your game, completely free. Right now you can import documents (races, classes, abilities, items, etc.); soon you'll be able to import entire systems (modular weather, animal companion management, and so on).

There's a lot more but I don't want to build a wall of text (and i've done it ahah, sorry) I'd rather drop some screenshots to give you an idea. These are just two themed demos; everyone can set their own images, colors, styles, and rename practically anything. What you get is your own self-managed site: it won't be "discord.something" but "yoursite.rolekey.app" , database, server and code are something you never have to think about, the site handles everything on its own.

Now the critical part: the platform is built, it works, I've translated it into Italian and English, it's 100% mobile-friendly BUT I'm struggling. I'd love to see if people actually like it, hear from other game runners about features that might be needed, find bugs I haven't caught, spot bad translations. Basically, an honest take from people who've lived through the same bot-and-Google-Docs pain on Discord.

And to be clear, Discord doesn't need to be abandoned! It's great for everything else: off-game chat, meme channels, voice calls...RoleKey simply moves the actual gameplay side of things to a dedicated space. You can also setup your "community links" in the home page/sidebar of the game.

I'm not selling anything. The platform is in free beta and will stay that way until it's truly solid. It would mean the world to me if some game runners could take a look and honestly tell me what works, what's missing, and what sucks.

https://www.rolekey.app/ (main site)

Edit: i'm trying to remove some links cause reddit remove my post for spam :(