Hacker News: welldoneator

New comment by welldoneator in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

welldoneator — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 22:10:02 +0000

I'm working on TableForge[0], it's a browser based, solo or multiplayer, D&D 5e game. TTRPG DMing can be effort-heavy and my friend group constantly has trouble finding enough time to play together let alone set it up. In TableForge, the DM is agentic with access to tools strictly following 5e rules. The DM is responsible for narration and reacting to players but your character sheet, inventory, spells are all real server resources you manage. The DM can interact with them through deterministic 5e-based tools (dice rolls, damage, sheet updates, memory). Players can play in real time or async.

You can provide the DM a premise (or pick one from the library) and it'll flesh out a full campaign story arc. Either way it's a fresh story arc reacting to your actual decisions, every time.

I noticed every competitor in this space was a chatbot with only the last ~10-15 messages stuffed into context. They forgot things, made up dice rolls and rules, and was generally not what I was looking for. So far TableForge has been working well for my friend groups and some random folks from Reddit/organic search. Solo TTRPGers seem to like it too.

It's still in early stages but fully playable. I don't feel comfortable charging anything for yet until I know people enjoy it. If you like it enough to hit the free tier limit, send me some feedback in the webapp and I'll gladly extend your free trial. If you hate it, please also let me know!

[0] https://tableforge.gg/

New comment by welldoneator in "Ask HN: S3(AWS) vs R2(CF)–Which is better?"

welldoneator — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:42:09 +0000

I’ve used S3 primarily in a professional setting but R2 has been a breath of fresh air on my side projects.

The zero egress cost is big and IMO their free tier is very generous. It’s S3 compatible so if you use any libraries it’ll just work™. One note is that AWS recently released static pricing for Cloudfront - I haven’t explored it in depth yet but it looks compelling if your primary use case is serving data out of S3.

I’d probably switch to S3 at least for app storage if I moved apps into the AWS ecosystem. It’s just easier if you’re already in AWS.

New comment by welldoneator in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"

welldoneator — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 03:34:34 +0000

Getting a D&D group together in person has been getting harder and harder, and we've had less and less time to DM. I decided to build an agentic AI to handle the work of setting up and running a campaign so we could all participate. It supports real time (preferred, and probably more fun) or async. The agent performs most functions through tool use so it's all 5e rules based but I wanted to leave it a good amount of freedom so campaigns can go on tangents and have fun surprises.

I'm still playtesting it with friends and it's been fun. It's in early access, I don't feel right charging for it unless other folks actually end up liking it and thinking it's fun. If you sign up, send me a message through "Send Feedback" (or here!) and let me know if you like, but especially let me know if you hate it.

https://tableforge.gg/

New comment by welldoneator in "Airbnb CEO: NYC hotels will get more expensive after short-term rental crackdown"

welldoneator — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 17:30:04 +0000

Yes, and that your relationship with the host is fundamentally adversarial regardless of whether the interaction was benign or not.

New comment by welldoneator in "Airbnb CEO: NYC hotels will get more expensive after short-term rental crackdown"

welldoneator — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 17:16:10 +0000

...until something goes wrong and you're dealing with a situation at best more annoying and worst downright hostile (ask me how I know). Your only recourse if something goes wrong is a random host whose income is directly tied to not helping you. If you're dealing with an issue at a hotel, there's strict policies in place and at the very least the person on the other end gets paid regardless of whether or not you're refunded, so you're more likely to actually be refunded via policy rather than the whims of a fraudster.

New comment by welldoneator in "How the ‘urban doom loop’ could pose the next economic threat"

welldoneator — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 18:37:14 +0000

That almost sounds like a purposefully dense view into all of the possibilities of things you can do with your time. I'll give you my perspective as someone who grew up in and moved from NYC to small town in the south.

Everywhere I'd want to be regularly is easier for me to get to when living in the suburbs. Clubs, theaters, museums are still within a short drive on the occasions I want to be there, but no one is going to be there every day. I have more desire to be out in nature than I do in a club.

A non-exhaustive list:

- I don't need to travel 2+ hours to see nature, it's outside my door and huge swathes of public land are available with real nature and wildlife, not manufactured parks full of homeless.

- Restaurants and bars aren't restricted to cities, we've got plenty of them. If anything more of them have more usable outdoor spaces where I'm not sitting 5ft from a pile of garbage.

- I can host more than a handful of people for a dinner party, board game night AND I can do it with comfortable seating/table space for all (impossible in NYC)

- I've got space for _all_ my hobbies: DIY, woodworking, flower preserving, kayaks, cooking. I'm also not restricted by a lack of space to pick up new ones.

All of that _and_ I can be in a city and enjoy its benefits whenever I want to be with a short drive. 99% of my travel by car here takes less time than an equivalent trip by public transportation in NYC from where I could afford to live.

New comment by welldoneator in "West Virginia University to drop 32 majors including all world language programs"

welldoneator — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 14:38:39 +0000

Cost?

New comment by welldoneator in "The way out of burnout (2016)"

welldoneator — Sun, 06 Aug 2023 16:57:56 +0000

Having gone through something similar - therapy with an expert in burnout/depression (although any therapy is like a net positive) and finding the room to re-examine my life and understand what was important to me.

To me that looked like taking a few months to spend with my partner and traveling to spend chunks of time with friends and family. It re-oriented (or rather, helped me re-discover) to the importance of these connections relative to work.

That said, all of that is easier said than done and not everyone can just take time off from work. But seeing a therapist regularly was the 0 to 1 that gave me the energy and my soul back to figure out the rest.

New comment by welldoneator in "Airbnb rental revenues have plunged in some parts of the US, this chart suggests"

welldoneator — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 16:44:24 +0000

Just dealt with this recently and up until then mostly had great experiences with hosts. When something goes wrong (ex: had a family emergency that blew up my travel plans a couple of weeks out), any refunds or resolutions are at the discretion of a host who is directly financially affected by the outcome. So there's never an incentive to be reasonable, and they'll often get hostile or combative - in this recent case pretty much immediately. I was able to easily alter/refund every single component of my trip, including a hotel stay, but couldn't do anything about the AirBnB because the host dug his heels in and started getting hostile.