Crit Crank logo: a d20 with a crank handle

Your 5e character sheet, on a crank.

Crit Crank turns a Playdate into a D&D 5e character sheet. Pick an ability, save, skill or attack, then turn the crank to roll real 3D dice.

Download for Playdate Read the manual View on GitHub

Try it

This is the real game, ported to your browser. Drag the crank in a circle (or scroll over the screen) to roll. Click the buttons or use the keys: ↑↓ pick a row, ←→ switch pages, X is Ⓐ (read the row's rule, or −1 on a counter), Z is Ⓑ (advantage, or critical on damage), [] (or arrows on the focused crank) turn the crank and Esc is Menu.

Want every control and rule? Read the full manual.

Everything at the table, on 400×240 pixels

Two d20s tumbling under an ADVANTAGE bar on an Athletics check, landing on a natural 20 with a 25 NAT 20! result line
Crank-powered 3D dice. Wind up with the crank and stop to let them land. A natural 20 plays a DJ air horn and a natural 1 plays a sad trombone.
Skills page showing proficiency and expertise marks
The whole sheet. Abilities, saves, all 18 skills with proficiency and expertise, initiative, spell DC and passive Perception, plus a Traits page for senses, languages, defenses and proficiencies.
Actions page with weapons and cantrips
Attacks and spells. Roll to hit, then damage. Crits double the dice, and spell slots are spent automatically.
Status page tracking hit points, hit dice, Heroic Inspiration, Exhaustion and spell slots
Resources and rests. Track HP, Hit Dice, spell slots, limited features, Heroic Inspiration and Exhaustion. Crank on Short Rest or Long Rest to take one. At 0 HP, death saves are counted for you.
Dice page with a 2d6+d4+2 pool rolled for 13
Dice pools. Build any pool, like 2d6+1d4+2, and roll it together.
Abilities page for Brenna Stoutheart
Four prebuilt heroes, a fighter, a wizard, a rogue and a cleric. Or import your own. Each hero remembers its page, roll mode and dice pool.

Rules at a pause

Press Menu and the left half of the pause screen explains the row you have selected: what it does and how its bonus adds up. Long text? Pick Read Rule to read it all, cranking to scroll.

Pause card for Dexterity with its description
Pause card for Fire Bolt with its attack bonus breakdown

Bring your own character

charsync is a small command-line tool for Mac, Windows and Linux. Download the binary for your system from the latest release. It turns a public D&D Beyond character into a Crit Crank hero and sends it to your Playdate over USB. Run ./charsync-macos on macOS, ./charsync-linux on Linux, or .\charsync-windows.exe in Windows PowerShell. On macOS and Linux, make it executable first; on macOS also clear the download quarantine:

chmod +x charsync-macos
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine charsync-macos
./charsync-macos import https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/12345678

It converts ability scores, saves, skills, HP, AC, spell slots, weapons, damage and healing spells, and limited-use features. Spell and feature descriptions show up on the pause screen and in the Rules viewer too. See the charsync README.

Install

  1. Download crit-crank.pdx.zip.
  2. Sideload it at play.date/account/sideload, or unzip it and copy critcrank.pdx into the Games folder in USB disk mode.
  3. Or build it yourself with the Playdate SDK: cd charsheet && make run.