I'm pretty sure that you've wanted to jump into a dungeon, roll some dice, and discover treasures without having to schedule a game night. I've been dungeon mastering for over 10 years, and that means I've been running countless dungeon dives for all of my friends. But one thing I've rarely been able to do is play these adventures myself. That's why I'm always so excited about Friends & Fables. This is the world's first generative tabletop RPG. It lets me dive into dungeons like a player anytime and anywhere. One of the cool parts about Friends and Fables is that I can play it from my phone anywhere that I am. I could be out and about waiting for my car to be fixed at the auto shop. And I could be sitting in the lobby playing a game.
If you're not familiar with what dungeon diving is, I'll give you a quick explanation. Dungeon diving is the heart of most tabletop roleplay games. It's where you explore rooms, navigate dangers, and overcome different challenges to find secrets, treasures, and rewards. Normally, you'd need a group of friends and a dedicated game master, and hours of free time. Friends & Fables changes that. It's powered by an AI game master named Franz, who runs the dungeons for you, asks for dice rolls, tracks statistics, and responds just like a human game master would. You can literally open up your phone and start playing a dungeon dive right now.
Most AI RPGs work the same way, where you type something in and the system gives you a response back. This makes it feel like you're having a conversation, but most of the time the replies are short and generic, or feel like they're disconnected from a bigger adventure. Most apps aren't able to keep track of your stats, remember past events, or adapt to your choices in a way that feels like a real game master is present. They give you text, but they don't give you the full tabletop roleplaying experience.
Friends and Fables just had a new lore update where Frans can now pull from context blocks. This means he could pull from snippets of lore, character memories, and different details from the world to help guide the story more accurately. If you're playing a paladin that swore an oath three sessions ago, Franz will bring it up when the moment calls for it. If your party discovered a hidden passage in your game, he won't forget it later. In some of the games that I play, there are times where I forget something that Franz remembers, and he corrects me on it.
This screenshot is taken from a game that I was just playing today. What makes this so impressive is that Franz isn't just spitting out random text, he's pulling from context blocks tied directly to the world and the story. In this case, you can see what he's referencing here. It's a custom piece of lore that was added to the game by the world-builder. That means the environment he describes, the tunnel flies, and the fungal chimneys are all consistent with the larger campaign worlds. It's not just invented on the fly. When you're dungeon diving, some of the best practices are to stay descriptive and intentional with your actions. You can see here that Varnak had just made a right turn after avoiding an encounter and ended up finding the Mucknest, where he encounters giant tunnel flies.
From here it would be a good idea to keep your responses focused but imaginative. Have a clear goal in mind when you write your response. The more clearly you write your response, the better Franz is at his role as your Game Master.
One of the coolest features in Friends and Fables is the ability to use their interactive battle maps during your dungeon dives. You don't have to imagine where everything is, you can see your character, the enemies, and environment laid out on the map. This makes positioning, strategy, and tactics a bit easier to manage when you're dealing with the AI. Franz is also able to see your token and the monster tokens on the battle map. But that's not all, Franz is also able to see items that have been placed around the map. Your character can also drop things from their inventory, causing the item will appear on the battle map. If you were to go off and complete wild adventures for the next five or six sessions you play with the AI, when you come back to the battle map the dropped item will still be there in the same spot.
If you’re interested in trying out the platform, take a look at some of the worlds from the link below, and if there’s nothing you are interested in playing, don’t worry! You can always build the perfect world for you, using all of Friend’s & Fables world-building tools for free!