"I want to play something tonight, but I don't know exactly what."
Have you ever thought that before? Do you want totally unhinged story chaos, or do you want actual dice rolls, levels, and a character sheet? Do you want to play in a game where you can become a king with one good decision or die horribly because of one bad decision? That's really the core question behind, "Should I play AI Dungeon or Friends & Fables?"
Let me give you the short version. If you want pure, free-form narrative, where the AI will follow you into almost any scenario that you can imagine, that's what AI Dungeon is for. If you want rules, stats, maps, and a TTRPG-style campaign like D&D or Pathfinder, with an AI game master that actually runs mechanics, you're looking for Friends & Fables. I'm going to go through when you should use each one and how each one actually fits into your gaming life instead of fighting over the same space. There's a time and a place for AI Dungeon and a time and a place for Friends & Fables. It really depends on your own personal preference and what you're looking for when you want to play an RPG game.
AI Dungeon is basically a freeform story engine that's wrapped up in an RPG coat. It reads what you type, continues the story, and lets you yank the narrative in any direction you want. There's not really a concept of illegal moves. There's only a concept of that if you decide that there are. In AI Dungeon, you can start as a farmhand and end up as a god in three messages. You can mash genres together, like dragons, mechs, and vampires in space. You can rewrite scenes on the fly until they feel right. There's no hit point total to track. No character sheet. No strict action economy. AI Dungeon doesn't really care if the thing you're interested in doing is "balanced" or "fair." It's more like a collaborative improv fanfic with a model that never gets tired.
That's pretty much the magic of AI Dungeon. It's fast to start. You just type a sentence, and boom, you're in. It's very forgiving, and you can undo, retry, or rewrite whatever you want. It's great for solo vibes, daydreaming, and weird experimental scenarios. If what you want tonight is basically to daydream with an AI and see what happens, AI Dungeon is the perfect pick for you. From what I've played of AI Dungeon, it's very good at doing exactly this, and I know that a lot of people love it.
Well, Friends & Fables is built on a totally different assumption. If you want an AI game master that can run a tabletop-style game with rules, then you want to come here. It's the world's first generative tabletop RPG inspired by 5e. You can create or pick a world, make a character, and Franz, the AI game master, runs a campaign for you. He can run it solo for you, or he could run a multiplayer game where your friends join in.
Under the hood, it's doing a ton of things that are different from most AI RPG platforms. It can track the stats and game state. All your HP, inventory, spell slots, conditions, locations, and quests are managed by the AI. It runs 5e-style mechanics, which include skill checks, saving throws, attacks, and spells. Franz actually cares about your character sheet. It uses maps and tokens, so you can move your character around battle maps and world maps instead of just imagining it in your head. It also reads your world more. With Franz 2.0, he's able to pull in context blocks from your lore pages, memories, and entities so that the story stays consistent.
On top of all that, Friends & Fables also gives you a full AI-powered worldbuilding suite, unlike any other. This includes AI character generators for full character sheets, portraits, and backstories, and AI generators for spells, monsters, items, and locations, all of them are balanced for gameplay. Interactive map tools so your world isn't just a wall of text. All of these worldbuilding tools are also free to use, even if you never start a paid campaign. Friends & Fables isn't just a pure story-based AI RPG. If you want an AI game master who will actually run a game with rules, a board, character sheets, and dice rolls, then this is the perfect pick for you.
I'm going to start off with AI Dungeon. You want to play AI Dungeon when you want pure story play with almost no friction. If you want a grand adventure where you're writing a story without any interruptions about probability or whether something can or can't be possible. If you're in the mood for some kind of short, weird, or experimental one-off that would make zero sense as a serious campaign. Or if you're testing character ideas and vibes without any builds or stats. When you don't want to track inventory, rests, or any kind of crunchy progression. If you're okay with the AI being loose on continuity and rules, because there aren't any real rules in the first place. AI Dungeon is great for what-if scenarios. It's also great for genre mash fanfics and story nights where you just want text and you don't really want tools or rules to slow you down. Think of AI Dungeon as a game you play when you don't want to force yourself into a rules-heavy experience that'll feel like homework.
Now I'm going to talk about Friends & Fables. You want to play Friends & Fables if you want a true tabletop roleplay game-style experience. Something with stats, progression, real fights, and real consequences. If you want a campaign that remembers what happened three sessions ago, because Fronds is using plot, long-term memories, and lore research to keep things coherent. If you want maps and tokens and not just theater of the mind. If you want multiplayer campaigns with your friends where the AI does the heavy lifting. If you want a place to build a world once and then run multiple campaigns inside of it. Honestly, Friends & Fables shines even before you ever hit start campaign. This is because of the free world-building tools that help you create hundreds of NPCs, monsters, items, spells, and locations. These world-building tools also help you create huge worlds with hundreds of areas, factions, spells, and more organized in one place.
There will always be a place for both, for anyone who enjoys roleplay games. This isn't an either/or forever thing. You can absolutely play both. Some days you're brain-fried on a Tuesday, and you just want to open up AI Dungeon and do something unhinged for 30 minutes and log off. Other times it's a Friday night, and you have a group of friends that are scattered across different time zones, and your game master is feeling sick that day. Well, look no further, because Franz is there to save the day and run a tabletop-style RPG when your game master is sick. Maybe you want to scratch that TTRPG itch because your D&D or Pathfinder game was cancelled this week, and you at least want to play something during that free time.
You don't really have to pick a winner between AI Dungeon and Friends & Fables. They're built for completely different cravings. Neither will replace any human DMs, game masters, or storytellers. Together, they can fill in a lot of gaps in your schedule and your creativity.
The real question isn't really "Which is better?" It's "What kind of fun do you want tonight?"
When you ask the questions that way, it makes it a whole lot easier for you to enjoy both.