YourRoll
YourRoll
Welcome to YourRoll, a mobile app made to enhance your TTRPG experience! As the app continues to develop we will be posting updates on this website, but we also wanted to provide more than just a bulletin board on this website for you. We are going to be posting stories about our TTRPG adventures, fun ideas for building characters, and tips and tricks on running your games!
For our first post here, we thought we would introduce our team a little bit and tell you about what led us to begin the journey of developing this product for you all.
Hi, I’m Robert. I’ll be posting a lot of content to this site when I’m not playing D&D or spending time with my wife and kid. My love of fantasy definitely began at a very young age, with the advent of the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and the Harry Potter books and films. I grew up loving those movies and books, playing Legend of Zelda and just always had a world of fantasy in my mind with everything I looked at. I’m a huge nerd. I was even in a marching band.
I first started playing TTRPGs back in high school when a group of my friends convinced me to try D&D. This was shortly before 5th edition had come out. I had heard of D&D before, but had always been too afraid to try it, until I saw the Community episodes and I knew that I had to try it for myself.
Ahoy! I’m Kyle. When my character lept from the rigging of a ship into the snapping jaws of a giant spider, all to save a friend, I knew D&D wasn’t just a game. It allows us to explore the depths of human character, and empathize in ways we otherwise couldn’t. It’s been a big part of my life ever since.
I’ve been doing most of the programming for YourRoll. I’m working on a master’s in computer science right now, and let me tell you, once I got a taste for the pure creation that is possible with code I was hooked. So when we didn’t have the tools we needed to keep our D&D campaign going, I decided I would make the tools. I started with just a live-updating map, then added a chat feature with dice rolling, then character sheets, and soon the app evolved to what it is today. It was useful for us, and we hope it will be useful for you and your friends too.
We’ve been playing regularly for the last few years and it’s become a huge part of our lives. However, as most of our friend group finished college, got married, had kids, got jobs, we found it harder and harder to find to get together for regular sessions. We all had moved to different towns and had different schedules and needs. So we started playing online. After trying that out for a while, it became abundantly clear that even then, it was difficult to find a night where we all had 2+ hours of dedicated time for a session at the same time. We decided as a group to play asynchronously. Checking your phone a few times a day to respond to a text was a lot more manageable for us, and allowed things to keep moving at a steady pace, albeit slower than live sessions.
We tried a few different systems and platforms, but none of the platforms seemed to have everything we needed. While there were some quality products out there, none of them seemed to be specifically designed for mobile, asynchronous play, complete with chat and dice roller, character sheets, and an interactive, shareable, live map.
When we couldn’t find the tools we needed,we decided to make our own platform. This was shortly before the recent Covid-19 pandemic began. With how 2020 turned out for most of us, we saw that not only was there an increase in demand for TTRPGs in general, but many people sought digital platforms.
That’s what has led us to this point. We want to be THE one-stop-shop, do-it-all-in-one, mobile platform for synchronous or asynchronous play. We want to be your companion app for the games that you play with your friends. We don’t want long distances or conflicting schedules to stop you from enjoying your hobbies.
We want it to always be YourRoll.