this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025

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Kids on Bikes Online Character Sheet (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi, all!

Just reaching out to see if there are any Kids on Bikes players active in this community! I've been working on a tool to support play groups at my local games shop, and I thought -- why not open it up to more people?

It's 100% free, there are zero features stuck behind a paywall, ads, or other monetization and I intend to keep it that way. Full disclosure: there is a link to donate to the project, but it's out of the way and will never be shoved in anyone's face.

I want to make the tool better for anyone and everyone who uses it, so if it interests you at all please check it out! It's called Handlebar Heroes. Feel free to make suggestions, ask questions, give strongly worded criticisms, whatever you like. I'm here for it all. 🙂

Thanks so much for your time! I hope someone gets some use out of it.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Just a heads-up about netlify, I am building a website and planning to host there as well, but be sure to do rate limiting or put it behind a cloudflare proxy to avoid ridiculous $100k bill from netlify.

Update: I checked netlify's docs on rate limiting and it is a paid feature :(. That means you're a DDoS attack away from a huge bill from netlify, even if you're on a free plan. I'm going to host my site on GitHub pages or cloudflare pages instead, netlify is simple to use but this is simply too dangerous.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Great call out! Thanks a bunch.

EDIT: Just a heads up, since that fiasco in Feb 2024 (where the user got a surprise $104k bill) Netlify has updated to offer a Free Plan in addition to the Starter Plan. The difference being, the Free Site plan shuts off traffic after 100GB, and the Starter Site plan will begin billing at a rate of $55/100gb after the first 100Gb. So the site should be safe from unexpected bills, but could be shut down by a malicious attack...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I hope you're right, I also tried to read the pricing page on netlify carefully about this. The Q&A says the websites will be shut off if the bandwidth limit is reached, but the pricing table still says $55/100 after 100G is reached. Talk about not reassuring. From the look of it, it's probably fine to use the free tier since it technically didn't ask for credit card info and real name to sign up iirc, I don't think they have enough info to send a bill to any users home address, so nothing is stopping from surprise charge free tier user from just not paying the bill at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's a little confusing to look at but their pricing page does have "Starter only" next to the $55/100Gb on bandwidth for their "Free & Starter" tier overview.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I see, thanks for the clarification! May we never receive a $100k bill :D

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I've not heard of this before, sweet! :) Thanks for this, the idea sounds great, and I bet a site like this would rule for character sheets, as roll20 does for D&D :)

now to try and rustle up willing ~~guinea pigs~~ players 😅

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's always the hang up, isn't it? 😂

I'm glad the tool seems useful, and the idea sounds fun! I'm always looking to improve it, so if you come across anything or need any help, just let me know!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Thank you! :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I've been interested in Kids on Bikes for a while just haven't gotten around to actually getting a game together.

I will say though that needing to create an account and log in to use it is a pretty big turn-off for me, especially without any sort of preview of what the actual site looks like so I can gauge if it's gonna be worth it for me.

Being able to use it without logging in would be really nice. Or at least include some screenshots or something. As it is you're kind of just saying "trust me, there's a useful tool on this website, give me your email address and password"

Not that I have any particular reason to distrust you, but I also don't have any reason to trust you either. Sure you're open source so anyone can audit your code, but I don't have the technical know-how to do that, and I don't really know how many people who actually know what they're doing have taken the time to audit it themselves.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A very valid point! An account is needed so that character data can be tied to you; your characters aren't stored in a cookie or a file somewhere local, they're stored in a hosted database, that way you can access them from your phone, a laptop, a library computer -- anywhere, really.

Allowing use without an account would be possible, but would require either: storing character data locally (so, if you used the app on your phone, you wouldn't be able to pull up that character on, say, a laptop) or forcing users to bookmark their characters and storing them without an associated account. Both are potential options I will explore.

In the mean time, though, I will gladly add some screenshots!

I can say with absolute confidence the data kept here is minimal: a username, email address, and password which are never used for anything more than authentication, and then your characters. There is an option to totally delete your account after creation, which wipes clean any and all data associated with your account from the database. No stored email, all your characters disappear, everything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Also I want to apologize if my tone came off a little harsh, I feel like it may have, and that was not my intention, I was just sort of throwing thoughts out there while I had a couple free minutes.

Yeah, an account definitely makes sense to store characters online, totally get that.

Personally, and I can of course only speak for myself and the groups I usually play with, we tend to use character generators for initial character creation, then print out or manually transfer things to a paper character sheet, we just kind of prefer the pen and paper experience, but character generators sure are convenient, especially for one-shots or if you need to quickly whip up a few NPCs, so being able to save our characters isn't a huge bonus for us. Other peoples' play styles are different of course so I'm not knocking that feature, it's definitely something a lot of people find useful.

Also with that in mind, having not seen what the actual site is like, some sort of printer-friendly layout is always appreciated if you haven't already thought of that.

Personally I think the ideal is to have the character generator be useable without a log-in, and have a "create an account/log-in to save your character sheet online" option for people who want that.

I also personally appreciate a "save as a fillable pdf" option for when I do save a digital copy of a character sheet. But now I'm just spouting off wishlist items at your.

But most importantly, thank you for spending time to make something like this. These kinds of tools are always appreciated. And please don't bend over backwards just to accommodate my wants in a character generator, I'm just some stranger on the internet sharing my thoughts, and I don't pretend to speak for anyone but myself, don't give me any extra weight because I'm loud and opinionated.

Whenever I get around to running a game I'll definitely be be keeping your site in mind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Thank you, I appreciate that!

And while you may just be "some stranger on the Internet," the whole point of sharing the tool is to make it better -- I'll be keeping your loud, opinionated thoughts in mind as I look at the roadmap for what's next for this tool. 😁

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Hey cujo, you might have more success posting at [email protected]. That's a much more active community than this one.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Thank you! I'll post there, as well.