Client:
self

The Opportunity:
How might we help tabletop role-playing game masters keep players engaged between sessions while reducing the overhead of managing quests, notes, and campaign updates?

Designing a Companion Experience for Tabletop RPGs:

As a personal product collaboration with a software engineer, I designed a cross-platform web and mobile application that extended the tabletop role-playing experience beyond game night. The goal was to give game masters a centralized place to manage campaigns while providing players with a more immersive and connected experience throughout the adventure.

The application featured role-specific experiences tailored to each audience. Game masters could create and organize quests, objectives, campaign notes, and story content within a private workspace, saving drafts and controlling exactly when information became visible to players. Once published, players received real-time notifications when new quests, objectives, or story updates were available, encouraging ongoing engagement between sessions.

Designing the product required balancing two distinct user groups with very different goals. The game master’s experience prioritized organization, content management, and editorial control, while the player experience focused on clarity, discovery, and timely communication. By designing separate workflows within a single product, the application created a seamless experience that supported collaboration without exposing behind-the-scenes campaign planning.

This project also provided the opportunity to collaborate closely with engineering throughout the product lifecycle, translating ideas into functional experiences while iterating on features, interactions, and information architecture together.