Roll for Initiative

Our Story Begins... The idea behind rpg.actor was to create a system that harkens back to the olden days of carrying your D&D character between multiple campaigns and playing as that singular identity, regardless of whose table you were sitting at. There's just something so COOL about developing a character's adventures, experience, and relationships across many worlds that we wanted to find a way to broaden the number of places we could "be ourselves" in play. Back then, everything mostly relied on the honour system (for better or worse) but times have advanced and the number of potential worlds has expanded far beyond such simple trust. Enter AT Protocol, the tech behind Bluesky and a surprisingly deep Reflecting Pool capable of waaaaaay more than anyone seems to realize. Once we understood how it allows everyone to keep and access their data from their own Personal Data Servers we realized the potential for folks to carry their characters universally, all while retaining full control over their data forever. So, we started experimenting. With some background in video game development, immediately we thought about digital experiences and realized that in addition to simple stats, we could also house a sprite the same way. Together, the two elements provide everything we need to represent ourselves in any virtual experience imaginable, and so rpg.actor was born! !characters.PNG Accepting the Quest Now... there are a million services that offer character sheet storage, but most are centralized within company servers that demand subscriptions for upkeep, or could eventually shut down and lock you out of your hard-earned experience points. Having lost entire worlds and communities to these sort of corporate cataclysms before, we know exactly how devastating that can be. What rpg.actor changes is that your data stays under your control forever and there's literally nothing we can do to stop that. None of the characters in the compendium live on our server, they're indexed from the world-wide web across many different homes. This leaves everyone free to leverage what we've built without fear of us blocking access, or selling out to The Man. Because the data is open, game developers can create titles where you login with your own character, pull from the collective pool to summon NPCs, or even provide new and better portals for you to manage your character sheets from. Don't like our site? Fine!
Go make your own, and everyone's stats and sprites will still work on yours. That's the kind of magic we felt the internet always promised. The Adventure Ahead Much of our plan is already underway, but there's still a lot more to come. While the base of the character compendium is already available and over 100 characters (!!!) have started their journey, we plan to keep rolling out new features as we can. Game Jam Our first game jam is happening right now from April 1st - 20th and we're very excited to see what folks create given the basic elements we've provided. Folks are already showing previews online in different game engines, and we can't wait to play everything and bestow our winners some kudos (and prizes!). Follow along via #rpgactor and get your character ready to play the submissions! Sprite Generator Slowly we're adding new clothes, hairstyles, and accessories to our Free Sprite Generator and will continue doing so periodically. There's been enough requests to busy our chief pixelator for a while, but keep your ungodly demands coming! We want to provide everything you need to realize your characters, and to be a genuinely useful tool for any game developer needing such a resource. Creator Accounts For those of you who need more than one character we've created a wonderful system that lets you Become a Creator and gain the ability to produce multiple personas on our server. Each of them is a complete account and able to interact on Bluesky or anywhere else on the open web. They can even be handed off to friends with a simple claim link that lets anyone adopt the character and take permanent control. We've also added a Domain Panel for incorporating custom @user.handles so your world can stay aesthetically cohesive, and we'll be announcing more features to empower world builders as they develop! Equipment & Inventory Those of you digging through the records may find some new lexicons designed to handle inventory, including a means of verifying item sources. Through these it will be possible for games to grant you new equipment, potions, or keys, and have them carry into other experiences. We'll talk more about these records later, but suffice to say for now that it's opening up some tremendous potentials for cross-game utility. !inventory.PNG It's Dangerous To Go Alone... Go forth and gather your party! Things only get more fun with others. We can't thank you enough for your attention and interest. It's only been a few weeks since we've made ourselves known and you've already given us so much love we can't help but get more excited about the future of rpg.actor and all it enables. — rpg.actor team