A full-stack D&D 5e companion: rules reference, character sheets, leveling and live tables for the DM and players, in one place.
Part 1 · The story
Finding rules during a game was a struggle. There was a fan wiki we used that had everything we needed, but it was hard to navigate and slow to find anything in the middle of a session. Mostly, Google was the middleman: search, open a tab, then another, then figure out which one actually answered the question.
As a new player, it was a lot to take in, and the rules lived in one place while my character sheet lived somewhere else.
That's the whole reason I started QuestKeeper.
Me, and the friends I play with. QuestKeeper was built around our table, and we use it during our games. That's the whole user base. No inflated numbers here.
A faster reference. The first version was a school final project: a search page and browsable lists of races, classes, spells and backgrounds, with the browser calling the public D&D 5e SRD API directly.
It didn't have character sheets, accounts or anything for running a game. Those came later.
The school project: search plus reference pages, calling the SRD API straight from the browser, hosted on GitHub Pages.
The overall interface stayed the same. Underneath, I moved the SRD calls behind my own Express backend, merged the frontend and backend repos into one monorepo with both histories intact, and deployed to Render.
Character creation, a full character sheet and leveling, saved in the browser's local storage. The sheet was one long page.
A full redesign, a tabbed sheet, accounts and saved characters in Supabase, guided beginner-friendly character creation, and live tables where the DM runs combat for the group.
A cozy tavern homepage, a site-wide redesign, and a DM screen split into Combat, Story, Players and Prep tabs. Tables got campaigns, recaps and secret messages, search learned to work by meaning, and the server stopped napping between game nights.
The first search sent you to a results page with an empty "Select an item" panel, and nothing useful showed until you clicked. The routing improved in August. The empty panel only fully went away in October, after I saw it again in a portfolio screenshot.
Character creation offered exactly one background: Acolyte. I was sure it was a filtering bug. I traced the data path, and QuestKeeper wasn't dropping anything: the 2014 SRD only includes Acolyte. That turned a "bug fix" into a content and licensing decision. The Backgrounds page now also shows the 2024 SRD backgrounds, labeled by edition. Guided character creation still uses the 2014 list; how to bring 2024 backgrounds into creation is an open decision on the roadmap.
Every feature added another section: attacks, spells, resources, equipment, feats, backstory, companion, notes. At level 1 the sheet was 3,073 pixels tall, and a Fighter still scrolled past spellcasting.
Problem Public rules data and private player data need different things.
Decision Rules requests go through my Express backend to the SRD API. Accounts, characters and tables go straight to Supabase.
Why The backend gives the public data one place to add validation, caching and source information later. Private data is protected where it's stored: row-level security gives each player access to their own characters. The table-sharing policy grants the DM read access; it does not grant editing access.
How this works → Behind the BuildProblem The single sheet was 3,073px at level 1, and sections that didn't apply still had to be scrolled past.
Decision A persistent combat header, six tabs, and a Skills sidebar visible from any tab.
Why The combat numbers stay in view while you move between shorter, focused sections, instead of scrolling one 3,073px page mid-fight. A tab that doesn't apply, like Spells for a non-caster, isn't shown at all, which was simpler than show/hide toggles for every section. On desktop the Skills sidebar stays visible from any tab; on phones the tabs wrap into a grid and a Stats/Skills toggle takes the sidebar's place.
Problem Guided creation works from SRD data, but real characters pick up things the SRD doesn't have: homebrew items, DM-granted resources, feats from other books.
Decision Every core stat is directly editable, and every list accepts freeform entries.
Why Characters that are actually being played change over time, so every stat needs to stay editable as the character changes, not just at creation. One shared editable-list component keeps add, edit and delete consistent across every section.
AI showed up after all, but only where it earns its spot: search by meaning, and a first-draft recap built from the notes the table shares. Private notes never go in, and it only runs when someone asks.
Part 2 · The receipts
Straight to the source, no digging required.
QuestKeeper uses only SRD content released for reuse. A page being public doesn't mean it can be copied. That's why the fan wiki isn't used as a data source.