Welcome

Roller is an interactive play that runs on your Mac. Roller was designed by Michael Mangelsdorf at Swirlsea.org in 2026. You write a little world and its characters. Then you step into the scene yourself, and a language model plays up to three characters around you. An audience watches from beyond the fourth wall and can call out now and then.

"Roller is a tool that I like using and which I personally find helpful for a variety of tasks. I would love to hear from you if this app is useful to you over time! In the case that you would like to show your appreciation, I have a printshop where I sell decorative prints I make if you are interested."

In the words of the author of SQLite, which is incidentally a central piece of this app:

The author disclaims copyright to this source code.
In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing:
May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

You write what your character says and does; the characters answer, act and react, each in their own voice. Turn by turn, a story grows that nobody wrote alone.

What you can do with it#

• Build worlds: a setting, a cast of up to six characters, and the places where scenes happen.
• Play games in a world: each game is its own playthrough, and you can keep as many as you like.
• Steer the scene with what you say and do, with events nobody controls, and with remarks from the audience.
• Edit anything the characters said, undo turns, or let Roller polish a turn with Patch.
• Save a game as a stage-play script with Download.
• Save a whole world as a file, and load it again (or on another Mac, or in another app built on Roller) with Export legacy and Import.
• Dictate instead of typing, and have lines read aloud.

Everything stays on your Mac#

The model runs on your own computer, and everything you write is stored there, locked with your password. Nothing is sent to the internet.

How this guide is organised#

• New to Roller? Start with Getting started, then look at The window at a glance.
• Worlds, cast and places and Playing a game explain the main ideas.
• How to… has short step-by-step recipes for common tasks.
• When something goes wrong helps with problems, and the Glossary explains the words Roller uses.

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