Friends and Fables: the AI game master for 5e

Friends and Fables is a text RPG in the browser where an AI game master runs D&D 5e adventures for you. The official name is Friends & Fables, and the site is fables.gg.

The press page calls it “a generative tabletop roleplaying game (GTTRPG) inspired by Dungeons and Dragons 5e.” A tabletop RPG is a game where players tell a story together and a game master (GM) runs the world. In Friends & Fables, the GM is an AI.

The official site lists these parts of the game:

• An AI game master. The AI GM has the name Franz. Franz tells the story and applies the rules.
• Combat on battlemaps. A battlemap is a grid map for fights. Combat is turn-based and uses D&D 5e rules.
• World building. You get a map maker, a place for your lore, and character generators. Lore is the history and facts of your world.
• Quests and one-shots. A one-shot is a short adventure for one session. The site says the quests have branching paths.
• Extras. Franz can read the story aloud with text-to-speech. The game also makes images of characters, places and items.

The site says you can play on desktop, tablet and mobile. You can play solo or in a party of up to 6 players.

Who made Friends & Fables?

William Liu and David Melnychuk founded Friends & Fables, the press page says. PC Gamer names their studio as Side Quest Labs. In a July 2024 post, the two founders called themselves “two indie developers” who built the game “on nights and weekends.”

The game is not official D&D. The site says it uses material from the D&D System Reference Document (SRD 5.1) under a Creative Commons license. It also says it is not affiliated with Dungeons & Dragons or Wizards of the Coast.

You read this on the LifeSim blog. LifeSim is our game, and it is a different kind of game. We are not affiliated with Friends & Fables. We say where our game fits near the end, and where it does not.

Franz is a system of AI models that reads your message, updates a game database, and then writes the next part of the story. Franz is not one chatbot with a long chat history.

David Melnychuk explained this to PC Gamer in October 2024. “It’s not just one chatbot that you’re talking to,” he said. One part of the system checks if the story added something new. If yes, that part saves it to the game state, or updates it.

The game state is the record of facts in the game. It holds your character sheet, your hit points (HP), your inventory, your XP and the places that you know. The official blog says this record is structured data in a database. A chat tool such as ChatGPT keeps its memory as plain text. The blog says plain text gives “more and more inaccuracies over time.”

What does Franz do in a session?

• Franz describes the scene and plays the non-player characters (NPCs).
• Franz asks for dice rolls, such as skill checks and saving throws.
• Franz tracks HP, items, spells and monsters with the 5e rules.
• Franz uses the lore that you add to your world.

Does Franz make mistakes?

Yes. The PC Gamer writer said a session felt “like a classic game of D&D.” But Franz put more than one “intricately carved wooden box” into the story. Franz also used the name “Elara” again and again.

William Liu said this happens because language models predict the most likely next word. He also said the game was “still in beta” at that time. The DreamGen review, from May 2026, says users report memory problems in long campaigns. It says the problems are worse on the lower plans.

For the history of AI that runs game characters, read our guide to what NPC means.

Yes, Friends & Fables has a free plan, with a limit of 25 turns a day. A turn is one reply from Franz. The paid plans cost from $19.95 to $39.95 a month at the time of writing (November 2026).

We took these numbers from the official pricing page in November 2026. Prices change, so check fables.gg/pricing before you pay.

All plans include long-term memories and unlimited campaign slots. All plans also give access to the featured and public worlds. The paid plans add text-to-speech. The pricing page says a yearly plan gives “2 Months Free.”

What are credits?

Credits pay for the premium narration models, the official blog says. A narration model is the AI model that writes the story. The DreamGen review says one credit costs about one cent. It also says only the host of a campaign spends credits.

Do the sources agree on the free plan?

Not fully. The official comparison post from December 2025 gives the free plan “between 5-25 AI turns per day.” The pricing page in November 2026 says the free plan is capped at 25 turns a day. Use the pricing page, because it is newer.

Yes. You can play in a party of up to 6 players, and your friends can play for free. The host’s plan sets the number of players: 3 on Free, up to 6 on Legend.

The pricing page lists “friends who can play for free” on all plans. So one person hosts the campaign, and the other players join it. The DreamGen review says the host’s credits pay for the premium turns. It calls this “a flaw in the current system.”

Is there a Friends and Fables Discord bot?

There was one, but you now play on the website. The game started in March 2023 as a Discord bot named Franz, the press page says.

In July 2024, the team moved to a standalone web platform. The team then called the bot “Legacy Friends & Fables.” The post said the bot “will remain live, but is not currently under active development.”

When we checked in November 2026, the legacy.fables.gg links sent us to the main site. The Discord server is still the place for the community. The official site links to it.

Can a human be the game master?

Not yet, as a full feature, from what we found. In 2024, Liu told PC Gamer about a plan for human GMs. He said, “That’s definitely part of the future vision, but we’re not there yet.” The founders said they want to help human GMs, not replace them.

Yes. Friends & Fables uses the D&D 5th edition (5e) rules for checks, saving throws, items, spells, monsters and combat. It does not have its own rules system.

The official blog says the AI game engine is “governed by the D&D 5e ruleset.” The homepage says the combat is “based on D&D 5e rules.” The game uses the rules from the free SRD 5.1, not from the paid D&D books.

Liu told PC Gamer that the language models already knew 5e. The reason is that the 5e rules are free to read on the internet. The team trained the models on other tasks, such as when to add an item to your inventory.

The DreamGen review lists “only supports D&D-like systems” as a con. If you want Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu or a rules-light game, Friends & Fables is not the right pick.

We could not open Reddit threads for this post, so we do not quote Reddit. The reviews that we could open give a mixed picture: good tracking of rules and items, but problems with memory and speed.

The DreamGen review tested the game in March 2026. It lists these pros:

• Strong tracking of facts in formats that tabletop players know.
• Some worlds have hundreds of characters, spells, items and mapped places.
• “Franz is great at balancing narrative for multiple players.”
• Good dice and combat tools on the screen.

It lists these cons:

• Memory problems in long campaigns, more on the lower plans.
• A screen with a lot of information, which takes time to learn.
• Slower replies than similar platforms.
• The free plan is not enough after the first test sessions.

PC Gamer also said that players on the Discord server keep a list of words that Franz uses too much. The list includes windmills and hooded figures.

For Reddit opinions, search r/DnD and r/rpg. The official site also links to a Friends & Fables Reddit community. Many tabletop players do not like AI in games, so expect strong opinions on both sides.

Friends & Fables is better if you want D&D rules, dice and combat. AI Dungeon is better if you want free-form stories with no rules.

Latitude makes AI Dungeon. Its site calls it “a free AI text adventure game where players create open-ended stories.” The Friends & Fables blog says AI Dungeon has no specific ruleset. The founders told PC Gamer that AI Dungeon did not meet their hopes. That was their reason to make Friends & Fables.

We took the AI Game Master row from the Friends & Fables comparison post. That post comes from a competitor, so check the app yourself. AI Game Master is a different product, not a plan of Friends & Fables.

More alternatives to Friends and Fables

• A human group. For the full tabletop experience, find a group and a human GM. Franz is a fill-in when you cannot find one.
• AI roleplay apps. These apps let you talk to one character, with no rules. Read our guide to AI roleplay and our list of the best AI chatbots for roleplay.
• Classic text games. Read our guide to text based games and our guide to story games.

For a wider list, read our guide to AI games. For our own comparison, read LifeSim vs AI Dungeon.

No. LifeSim is our game, and it is a life sim in a real city. It is not a fantasy RPG, and it is not a D&D tool.

LifeSim fits one part of what Friends & Fables players want: AI characters that remember you. In LifeSim, you live one life, a day at a time, in a real city that you pick, on a 3D map of Earth. The people in the city talk back in their own words. They remember what you said, and they tell their friends.

You type what you say, so there is no list of choices. LifeSim is free, with no ads and nothing to buy. It plays in any browser at play.lifesim.com, and there is an iPhone app.

Where LifeSim does not fit

• LifeSim has no dice, no character stats and no combat.
• LifeSim has no dungeons, no magic and no 5e rules.
• You cannot play a campaign with friends. You play alone.
• LifeSim has no voice chat.

If you want a D&D night with an AI GM, play Friends & Fables. If you want a modern daily life with people who remember you, read what LifeSim is, or play LifeSim for free.

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• Friends & Fables: official site
• Friends & Fables: pricing
• Friends & Fables: press page
• Friends & Fables: llms.txt summary
• Friends & Fables blog: A new chapter (July 2024)
• Friends & Fables blog: How is Friends & Fables different from ChatGPT, AI Dungeon or NovelAI?
• Friends & Fables blog: AI Game Master vs Friends & Fables
• Friends & Fables blog: 2024 year in review and 2025 preview
• PC Gamer: Can AI really play Dungeons & Dragons, and should it?
• DreamGen: Friends and Fables review
• AI Dungeon: official site