Aaron Golas

When I was in high school, my brother received the third edition Dungeons & Dragons core rulebooks for his birthday (I helped our mom pick them out). We were pretty into fantasy, and could really picture ourselves enjoying D&D. Unfortunately, neither of us had ever played before, and we didn’t know anyone who played, which made learning the game rather difficult. Since I was the oldest (and still am, oddly enough), the role of Dungeon Master fell to me. I was able to pick up on most of the rules, and managed to teach my brothers enough that we could create characters and work out the basics, but it wasn’t quite enough to get a real game going. We tried playing a couple times, but we could never really get it off the ground.

A year or two ago, I decided to pull those old rulebooks out of retirement, with my brother’s blessing. (He was still as eager to get some use out of them as I was.) It took a bit of study, but the rules came more easily this time. Once again, I was novice Dungeon Master to a party of novice players, and although our play sessions so far have been too irregular to get a real campaign going, we’ve played through a few low-level adventures and have had a wonderful time of it. Hooray for learning!

One of the most complicated parts of D&D is the magic system. The Player’s Handbook contained something like 600 magic spells, all with their own requirements and nuances. More than a third of the book is filled solely with spell descriptions. It was daunting to try and make sense of all that back when we were first trying to learn the game. Even now, constantly needing to reference spell details in the PHB costs significant time and can interrupt the flow of play.

So, at some point, I decided to give myself a project: to create the “ultimate spellbook,” an application to take some of the complication out of playing a D&D spellcaster.

Hence, my relative quiet these past few months. This project has been more than the subject of idle tinkering; it was an excuse for me to seriously exercise my web development skills, as well as teach myself several new ones. Consequently, it ate up a fair bit of my free time. I think it was worth the effort, however, and I am finally ready to show off the results.

The D&D Spell Library uses rules and spell descriptions from Dungeons & Dragons v3.5 (revised 3rd edition), which has been freely released online as Open Game Content. The application has three core aspects: (1) it dynamically generates lists of spells based on parameters you define, (2) it displays the full description of any spell with a single click, and (3) if you log in, you can create and save character profiles, and the application will manage your character’s spell slots. Taken as a whole, the D&D Spell Library streamlines game preparation and actual gameplay, (hopefully) minimizing the time spent staring at a book, notes, or a screen when you should be interacting with your other players.

You can try the application here, or check it out on the newly-minted Projects page, and we’ll see how this works. I’d be thrilled if you decided to try it out, play around, and leave feedback here if you’d like. Be warned, however, that I still consider it a project in development. Don’t be surprised if it changes over time. And I’ll try not to break it or delete saved data, but I make no promises.

And with that, I have a little bit of my freedom back. We now return you to my life, already in progress.

PS – It’s possible that I’m not the first person to come up with this idea, and that other, better web apps for managing D&D spellcasters already exist. If this is the case, I’m not sure if I want to know.