Alpha Release Features for Dice Friendly Librarian
Here's a quick run-through, with videos, of what will be in the Alpha release of Dice Friendly Librarian.
First of all, it's a system that lets you select a few folders and use it to view all your rpg .pdfs in one place. Well, any .pdf really but the system is tailored for tabletop role-playing games. Here's a video showing how you would do that:
Source Annotation and Organising
Once your files are loaded in, you can annotate them according to a set of rpg-specific properties. While the system offers some common suggestions, you can add and re-use new ones of your own.
- Title
- RPG
- Game System
- Source Type (core, bestiary, adventure, etc. or your own custom values)
- Campaign Setting
- Edition
- Contributing Talent
The application will also skim the pdf itself and return a bunch of words that might be handy for a one-click update of these properties.
Once you've done this a little things will start looking very tidy in the system, and you can use presets of how to drilldown though sources according to these properties, or even customise your own. Here's a video of the annotation and organisation flow in action:
Content Search
With everything loaded in, you can index all your files for fast searching. The application will note any prominent words it finds and add them to a locally stored search table, and you can access things really quickly. Type in what you're looking for to see where it appears in any of your sources, and click on a result to open the pdf on the right page, with the corresponding text highlighted. Fairly cool and you can open a few of these results in different windows for side by side comparison. Watch this video to see it in action:
Want to Play With This?
Cool! Alpha testing will be starting soon. Really that just means I give you the latest build and act like you're not allowed be cross when it breaks "because it's alpha". In seriousness though, I want to know if you see value in it, if there's any bits you don't like or do like, and if you have any suggestions. I like this thing I'm building, I want other people to like it, and I'm hopeful that it could be a cool addition to the broader indie RPG system in particular.
If interested, you can sign up to the newsletter on this site, or follow the social accounts on Mastodon and Bluesky
It's desktop only for now, but alpha will be available for Windows, Linux and OSX, all going smoothly.