Some background: Shadowrun is a cyperpunk pencil-and-paper role playing game, a little like Dungeons and Dragons. To determine if a Shadowrun character succeeds at an action they’re attempting to do, you roll a “dice pool” of six-sided dice and count the number of fives and sixes, called “hits”. This is different from D&D, where you generally only roll one die to check if an action succeeds. Because dice pools can get really big–upwards of 10 dice is not unsual–lots of people use online dice rollers instead of physical dice.

The problem with these dice rollers is that a lot of them are really bad; they’re either slow, or really badly designed, or both. So I decided to make my own, with three goals:

1. Have a simple, clean look
2. Be fast and lightweight
3. Be mobile and desktop friendly.

1 and 2 were top priorities, and 3 was a stretch goal. You can see the result here. 1 and 2 definitely succeeded; the site scores a 100 on a Lighthouse performance audit, and the visible elements have been reduced to the bare essentials. 3 is mostly true; the site is usable on mobile, but the controls for selecting number of dice are a work in progress. I’m also proud to say that the site shows up on the first page of google when you search “Shadowrun dice roller”. Here’s the app: