
I made an offline HTML character sheet because I hate how useful RPG tools keep getting trapped behind subscriptions
About a year ago I posted this proof of concept for a TTRPG rulebook that was just one offline HTML file:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1hp4ou6/proof_of_concept_a_fully_offline_ttrpg_in_a/
Since then I kept messing with the idea and ended up building the character sheet side of it too.
Visual demo here:
This is not polished yet. Some parts are still ugly, some parts need cleanup. But it works.
The sheet runs locally as an HTML file with all its code inlined (mainly bootstrap and javascript), and it can pull stuff from the offline rulebook file I had made before. So instead of copying every class, ancestry, move, spell, item, etc. into the sheet by hand, the sheet can read that stuff from it.
So why am I sharing all of this?
Mostly because form-fillable PDFs do not really cut it for me anymore, and I wanted to see how much of the useful stuff from tools like Demiplane and D&D Beyond I could recreate without needing a server and complex databases that ultimately lead to needing subscriptions.
So this is mostly me sharing the experiment in case it gives other designers ideas. You do not necessarily need a platform to make an interactive character sheet for your game. Not every game needs that, obviously. Plenty of games are better as a simple PDF or paper sheet. But if you have ever wanted something a little more interactive for your own games, this is one way to do it.