Hi, all!
Just reaching out to see if there are any Kids on Bikes players active in this community! I've been working on a tool to support play groups at my local games shop, and I thought -- why not open it up to more people?
It's 100% free, there are zero features stuck behind a paywall, ads, or other monetization and I intend to keep it that way. Full disclosure: there is a link to donate to the project, but it's out of the way and will never be shoved in anyone's face.
I want to make the tool better for anyone and everyone who uses it, so if it interests you at all please check it out! It's called Handlebar Heroes. Feel free to make suggestions, ask questions, give strongly worded criticisms, whatever you like. I'm here for it all. ๐
Thanks so much for your time! I hope someone gets some use out of it.
A very valid point! An account is needed so that character data can be tied to you; your characters aren't stored in a cookie or a file somewhere local, they're stored in a hosted database, that way you can access them from your phone, a laptop, a library computer -- anywhere, really.
Allowing use without an account would be possible, but would require either: storing character data locally (so, if you used the app on your phone, you wouldn't be able to pull up that character on, say, a laptop) or forcing users to bookmark their characters and storing them without an associated account. Both are potential options I will explore.
In the mean time, though, I will gladly add some screenshots!
I can say with absolute confidence the data kept here is minimal: a username, email address, and password which are never used for anything more than authentication, and then your characters. There is an option to totally delete your account after creation, which wipes clean any and all data associated with your account from the database. No stored email, all your characters disappear, everything.
Also I want to apologize if my tone came off a little harsh, I feel like it may have, and that was not my intention, I was just sort of throwing thoughts out there while I had a couple free minutes.
Yeah, an account definitely makes sense to store characters online, totally get that.
Personally, and I can of course only speak for myself and the groups I usually play with, we tend to use character generators for initial character creation, then print out or manually transfer things to a paper character sheet, we just kind of prefer the pen and paper experience, but character generators sure are convenient, especially for one-shots or if you need to quickly whip up a few NPCs, so being able to save our characters isn't a huge bonus for us. Other peoples' play styles are different of course so I'm not knocking that feature, it's definitely something a lot of people find useful.
Also with that in mind, having not seen what the actual site is like, some sort of printer-friendly layout is always appreciated if you haven't already thought of that.
Personally I think the ideal is to have the character generator be useable without a log-in, and have a "create an account/log-in to save your character sheet online" option for people who want that.
I also personally appreciate a "save as a fillable pdf" option for when I do save a digital copy of a character sheet. But now I'm just spouting off wishlist items at your.
But most importantly, thank you for spending time to make something like this. These kinds of tools are always appreciated. And please don't bend over backwards just to accommodate my wants in a character generator, I'm just some stranger on the internet sharing my thoughts, and I don't pretend to speak for anyone but myself, don't give me any extra weight because I'm loud and opinionated.
Whenever I get around to running a game I'll definitely be be keeping your site in mind.
Thank you, I appreciate that!
And while you may just be "some stranger on the Internet," the whole point of sharing the tool is to make it better -- I'll be keeping your loud, opinionated thoughts in mind as I look at the roadmap for what's next for this tool. ๐