Patch Notes

Updates scroll behavior of campaign messages (if a long message comes in, it will auto scroll to show part of the new message, but will not scroll all the way to the bottom) Fixes layout shift when new messages come in Removes “End Turn” option on the attack form in combat Added a delete button back to the memories that show up under Franz memories for easier deletion Adds Heal to the roll list Removes default DC on rolls Fixes bug where certain campaigns would crash Fixes data on over 40 SRD items Added new fields in the item form for armors. Fixes armor AC handling on SRD and custom armors. We backfilled values for custom armors, but if your custom armor AC is still being handled wrong you may need to go to the form and update it manually.

Combat V4

We’ve rewritten our combat system once again, and this time, it truly starts to feel like real D&D 5e combat. In our first few versions of combat, we were building on top of an older architecture with less intelligent language models. In order to make it work, we used more traditional code, and less LLMs. For example, Franz really only handled reading your attack and then doing the final narration. Everything in between, all the small decisions to make, were handled by traditional code. This made combat feel rigid and frustrating. In Combat V4, we’ve implemented an agentic system. Instead of a rigid system, Franz now has the tools to execute any type of roll, update characters or monster data, manipulate the encounter state, and more. This makes him much more flexible and allows him to run the encounter like a normal GM would. The result is that combat is now way more fun, flexible, and feels like real 5e. Let’s take a spin through some of the cool things in Combat V4! If you’ve had turn-based combat off, make sure to go back into your settings and turn it on! Summoning / Conjuring You (or your NPCs) can now summon or conjure familiars, elementals, and more. Franz has a tool to update the entities in the encounter, so he can add creatures when a summoning spell is cast. In this screen shot below, you see Opus (friendly NPC) casting Conjure Minor Elementals. He correctly summons 4 ½ CR Dust Mephits using a level 4 spell slot. Thrown Weapons Inventory now updates when you throw a weapon. To throw it again, you’ll have to pick it up! Picking up Items / Improvised Weapons Franz can now handle improvised weapons, and will update your inventory accordingly as well. Armor / AC AC was previously a number field you could edit yourself, but we have updated it to follow the 5e rules. Armors should now alter your AC as expected. Healing Spells Healing spells now work properly! If you have an NPC in your party who has healing spells, they may come to your aid and heal you. Spell Slot Tracking Spell slots are now accurately tracked in combat, and Franz will reject attempts to cast spells if you don’t have the spell slots to do so. Encounter Notes Encounter notes are a form of encounter specific memory for Franz to use. These notes are tagged with durations and conditions for when they are over. Franz will manage these notes himself, but you are welcome to edit them as well. Franz primarily uses these notes to track information of long lasting effects, environmental conditions, etc. Spells with lasting effects Franz now uses his notes to keep track of spells cast with lasting effects. You can see here that Captain Ironbeard cast Hunter’s Mark on the Wyrmling. When he gets around to rolling his attack, Franz correctly remembers the Hunter’s mark damage and doubles both for the crit. Other spells that affect rolls, like True Strike, should work as well. Class Features Class features are NOT officially implemented, but you can get some of them to work just by describing them to Franz. He’ll take note of things, such as Favored Foe, in the same way he would for spells. Grappling You can grapple now! Opportunity Attacks Franz will now automatically make opportunity attacks when one entity moves out of the reach of another. Reactions are also tracked per round via the lightning icon next to a character in the encounter panel. Updating / Fixing Encounter State Franz now has the following tools: Updating the turn order Adding/removing characters or monsters from the encounter Updating entity details such as HP, position, team, or size. You can see in the image below I ask him to add an adult dragon to the encounter, and he does! Encounter Balancing Encounters should now feel much more balanced. We included a deeper planning step and adjusted the way Franz thinks about encounter balance when generating net new encounters. If you walk into a dungeon with monsters a world builder placed, Franz will not adjust the difficulty of that encounter. New Roll Options (Manual rolling is here!) You can now change the way you input rolls, including rolling your own physical dice and inputting the roll through our UI. Just click the toggle in the top right corner of the roll modal. Upgraded Intelligence We’ve upgraded combat to use a better reasoning model, so you will see much improved reasoning behind his actions. You’ll find that NPCs and monsters feel much smarter and have some strategy behind their actions. Franz is also much smarter when it comes to getting things right when it comes to advantage/disadvantage, conditions, effects, immunities, vulnerabilities, etc. There’s still more to this update, but this changelog is already getting quite long so we’ll just leave it up to you to try out the new combat update and see what is possible now! The fastest way to test out combat is to play our new One shot: Sticks and Stones. We hope you like it! If you are currently in an encounter, we recommend ending it and starting a new one for best results. V4 is a huge upgrade over V3, but you should still expect Franz to get things wrong here and there. We did extensive testing with alpha testers, but combat is one of those things with a million variables. Different combinations of monsters, spells, etc may cause bugs we have not run into before. Please continue to report bugs and we will fix them as we go! Over the next week, we’ll continue to fix combat bugs and continue work on the upcoming Lore update. We’re going to close all of the old combat related reports as they should be addressed in this update. If you still have the same issue or if you have any combat related feature requests, please submit them after trying out the update. As requests come in, we’ll also start to update the combat roadmap. Hope you all enjoy!

Quest Sync & Toggle

Quest Syncs You can now sync quests just like any other entity. To sync quests in a campaign, go to the World Tab → Quests → Click on Quest Dropdown and Sync with World. Note due to their complex structure, if you’re the world builder and you’re pushing updates to the world, all your quests will show up in the Push tab even after they’re synced. Quest Campaign Toggle If you wish to disable quests, you can now toggle them off in the campaign settings. When off, Franz will not generate new quests and be less likely to provide quest hooks in responses. Other Changes Added a campaign setting to disable dice roll sound effects. Fixed an issue where the dice roll sound was playing every time a campaign was re-opened. Fixed an issue where undoing character sheet outcomes was not working. Fixed an issue where starting scene characters were not appearing for one shots. Fixed an issue where spells were duplicating when learned.

Narration 1.1.4, New Dice Roller, Quest Tags

Narration 1.1.4 We’ve been receiving some feedback about Franz’s narration feeling flat, as well as some other consistency issues so we took some time to tweak and upgrade the narration module. The following upgrades only apply to adventure mode: Increases forward momentum in Franz’s narration Added random tables for hooks. If you have not started a quest yet, you should notice increased variety in things that happen in the world to lead up to a quest The following changes apply to both adventure and downtime modes: Increases overall response speeds. You should notice Franz is a few seconds faster. Increases accuracy of movement/travel updates, quest step completions, and inventory transactions Updates Franz's "thinking" process. If you click on his "Thoughts" you'll see they are improved! Improves accuracy of skill checks - they should happen at more natural times New Dice Roller The dice roll UI we’ve had was quite old so we gave it a refresh. When presented with a skill check you’ll now see your bonuses automatically shown, and clicking on roll will now automatically roll for you. You can still click on the roll card itself to customize the roll if needed but for most cases this isn’t necessary. Here’s an example of the new roller where I roll with disadvantage: Quest Tags + Character Sheet Quests You can now add up to 3 tags for categorizing quests and one-shots. Use these to give players a quick sense of what to expect from the quest! NPCs also now show quests they have available on the bottom of their character sheets: Other Fixes and Improvements Free players in multiplayer games can now play TTS if the host has a subscription. Fixed issue where the page would always auto scroll to the bottom of the screen. If there is a long message that is longer than the height of the screen, the auto scroll will now stop at the top of that message.

A New Creative Medium: Friends & Fables Quests & One-Shots

Hey Friends! I know we’ve been quiet for a little bit, but that’s because we’ve had our heads down working tirelessly on this new update. It went through 3 big rewrites while in alpha, but we’ve finally gotten it to a point where we’re happy with it, and we think you will be too. This Quests and One-Shots update completely reshapes how you and Franz build adventures together. Previously, if you wanted to share the adventure in your head, you could only do it at the table you GM, or you’d need the resources to write, publish, and distribute a book. The new Friends & Fables Quest system is a familiar, but completely new way for you to create, share, and experience stories. Our new Quest Editor allows you to build complex quests, with scenes, paths, and outcomes, giving you granular control of which characters are in each scene and what happens. It allows you to plan for various scenarios and branch your quest depending on what the players do. Quests in Friends & Fables have gone from being simple structured context for an LLM to being a new creative medium for storytelling. We hear from a lot of people about how AI is diminishing human creativity, but in our experience, giving people tools like this just empowers them to create even more. We’re excited to experience all of the amazing stories you all have to tell! We’ve also put together a Youtube video in case you prefer that: Quests The big problem with our previous quests system was that it left little room for player agency. This new system allows you or Franz to script must-hit beats, decide when and where to reveal key information, and give players ways to solve things in their own creative ways. Franz can still fill in the gaps and improvise when players try to go off the rails, so quests feel flexible and natural instead of rigid. The other issue was that world builders and players could not edit or create their own quests. Now, world builders can plant quests throughout their world. You can level-gate quests, so the same NPC will give you one quest at level 3, and another at level 5. You can also chain a series of quests together with quest prerequisites. A Brand New Quest Editor - Unleash your imagination! At Friend & Fables, we’re all in on our World Builders. Despite how amazing we think AI is, to us it is just a tool to help support and share human creativity. With all of the work we’ve put into this quest editor, we think we’re putting our money where our mouth is. This new quest editor is made for you to plan out and author complex quest lines, so you can easily see the shape of your quest, as well as easily rewire steps and paths as you see fit. We really can’t wait to see all the crazy stuff you guys will make. Anatomy of a Quest Steps Steps are the main building block of a quest. Think of a step as the main scenes, objectives, and plot points of a quest. A step contains the following pieces: GM Instructions: These are instructions for how Franz should run this step of the quests. i.e “Describe how the room is made of stone and is quite cold. There is a circle of stones in the center of the room. If a player decides to touch a stone, it should burn them and then blink with a red glow 3 times” Location: Select a location for the quest Scene information: You can update a POIs images and descriptions, as well as set NPCs, monsters, and items. When a player arrives at the selected POI, the scene will be set according to how you set it up. Paths Paths are associated with steps, but have their own distinct properties. Paths are ways for quest authors to give players choice, resolve steps, and help determine what the next step should be. Each path has the following: Trigger: This is the condition or trigger. If the campaign engine determines that the trigger was met, it will take you down that path. Outcome: What should happen if the player triggers or chooses this path. Scene information: You can also set the scene on completion of a path. With paths triggers and outcomes, you can do interesting things like: Player Choice: Which starter Pokemon do you want to choose? (Your starter might lead you down a different path). Path A: Charmander, Path B: Squirtle, Path C: Bulbasaur. Skill Checks and state updates: You can set the triggers of paths to things like “Path A: Succeeds check - Players find a silver locket” “Path B: Fails check - NPC tells players to get out, players accidentally drop 5 gold as they are rushed out”. Traps / Secret Passage Ways: Path A: … the main quest line, Path B: If the players touch the green book, a door handle reveals itself from the wall. Scripted Dialog and Character Development: Write a clever zinger for an NPC to say at the perfect moment or have them reveal something about their past. You now have the tools to make NPCs feel very real. Make them lovable, helpful, or murderable! and much more! We’ve designed this system to be flexible, so we’re actually not even sure of all the different techniques that will be invented. Once we’re learn more about how you all will use the system, we’ll publish an official guide. Here’s an example of Franz running scripted dialog: Franz Generated Quests While our main focus in this update has been making it easy for world builders to create interesting quests, we still want Franz to be able to generate quests on the fly. This is important so that sandbox campaigns still feel cohesive, and things make sense when you run into an NPC who needs you to save their cat. Franz generated quests are functional, but the feature is still WIP. We wanted to get this update out first so world builders can begin working on their quests. Expect Franz generated quests to improve in future updates. To have Franz generate a quest on the fly, you need to find yourself in a situation where an NPC offers you a quest or job. Once you confirm with the NPC that you are willing to take on the task, Franz should generate a quest on the fly and you will see a notification that the quest has been accepted. One-Shots: Highly Crafted Adventures Where Quests give you an open canvas that any party can encounter in a world, One-Shots are your chance to deliver crafted stories around specific characters. One-shots are designed to be a great way to drop players into an exciting story and get them immersed in the world. Under the hood, a One-Shot is a Quest, except for a few key differences: Fixed Party Characters - One-shots are designed to be stories crafted around specific characters. For one shots, players are limited to choose from characters that the author selected. Special Packaging - One-shots get special display pages and sharing links (similar to worlds). Briefings - One shots also get a UI layer when someone starts the quest, to quickly brief players on the characters and world they are playing. One-shots offer players an easy way to jump into a game and play a complete story. These adventures also do not need to be the end of a story, but can be the start of a one. For a world-builder, one-shots are a fun way to incorporate your vision into the game you've created. Instead of hoping for a player to stumble across a storyline you've built, you can feature it. One-shots can also allow world-builders to set up a game that is meant to revolve around a single character or group of characters in order to build a world crafted to tell a single epic tale. I think one-shots are going to be a great way to onboard new players into Friends & Fables, as well as your worlds. I also think it’s going to be very fun for you all to create and share one-shots with each other! A Glimpse at Our First Official One-Shot: Scent of Ruin Set in our original world of Odrun Fell, this one-shot tells a tale of crisis, pursuit, and retribution for deals made in the dark. Say hello to Cassian Virelle, the illusionist, heartbreaker, and scene-stealer. Once a rising star in the velvet-draped theaters of the Sprigs, Cassian spent years memorizing monologues and basking in glamour-charmed light. But somewhere between the ghost lights and the scripted drama, he uncovered a truth the Promissory never meant for him to see. The real stage was the city itself—its streets, its secrets, its shadows. So he stepped past the velvet curtains and began chasing something unscripted. Something real. Now, his story turns personal. Fresh from a grueling delve into the Greatclub tunnels, Cassian returns to the Bentroot Exchange for a quiet visit only to find smoke curling through the air, glass shattered underfoot, and his sister bleeding beside her ruined stall. The scentcase she carried, strong enough to draw tunnel horrors from the depths, has been stolen. She needs him. And someone is going to pay for what they’ve done. Play it here! Fixes and Improvements Improved performance when cloning or starting campaigns from large worlds to fix time out errors and reduce time. Fixed an issue in combat where NPCs were not using their cantrips. Reduced false positive block messages on mature content. Fixed an issue in combat where health reductions were not applied correctly, leading to ‘dead’ NPCs taking turns. Fixed an issue in combat where surprise rounds where incorrect. Fixed an issue in combat where sometimes damage was not applied on hit. Fixed an issue in combat where damage roll modifiers from custom attacks were not applied. Fixed an issue in combat causing incorrect modifier values when rolling for initiative. What’s next? If you’re still reading, thanks for making it through this huge post! While we’re really excited about Quests and One-shots, there is still a lot of work to do. We still need to put in quest syncing and a handful of small updates. We’ve gone through a good amount of alpha testing, but I’m sure you we’ll have a lot more things to update once you all start taking cracks at it. We’ll be spending the next couple of weeks tuning quests and fixing some other bugs that have piling up. Once that is done, we’ll finally turn our attention to the lore update. We know you guys are eager for that one, so we’ll get to it as fast as we can! Thank you so much for playing Friends & Fables, we can’t wait to see what you guys create. — Will

Memories V2

Hey friends, today we’re announcing V2 of the memories module which comes with some big changes to both short term and long term memory! Before we dive into the details, here’s the TLDR of the highlights: Memory formation has been improved to focus on the most important details in an event. Fewer but larger memories are created per event, extending the available short-term memory. Infinite long-term memories: memories outside the short-term memory slots are now searchable by Franz and can be pulled in at any time they’re deemed relevant. Memories have been simplified to no longer include type, importance, and are no longer editable or lockable. Memories are now also attached to characters and locations, further extending long-term memory. Memory Formation & Short-term Memory In the previous V1 memory module, each memory formed was the smallest unit of knowledge with an assigned type and importance. ACE would prioritize the memories in the memory slots based on the type, recency, and importance. One problem with this was that in many cases, too many memories with too few or irrelevant details were created per event which consumed a lot of the short-term memory. In V2 the system has simplified so there are no longer any memory types or importance. Memories now focus on capturing only the important details in an event, and fewer but larger memories are now preferred. This extends the available short-term memory by increasing the amount of information in fewer memory slots. Memory slots now specifically refer to ‘short-term’ memory slots, as these slots contain the memories that are guaranteed to be in context for the next response. The system that determines short term memory slots in context is is now simply based on the most recent X amount of memories not covered by the recent campaign messages. Each memory is now also attached to the related Point of Interest it occurred in and the related characters. ACE can use these character and location relations to pull in relevant memories when re-visting locations and characters. Infinite Long-term Memory By far the biggest update is that Franz can now search and retrieve old relevant memories. In V1, once a memory got too old and it was not locked, it would fall out of context entirely with no way of coming back in. Now, when a memory is no longer recent, it is stored in long term memory. Franz can search across all the memories in your campaign to pull in the most relevant ones for the next response. You can see the searches performed by Franz with the relevant memories retrieved by clicking on ‘View’ on the Search Memories action: To enable this search, behind the scenes each memory has an associated vector and text embedding which is a numerical representation of the text that allows for fast searches related to the meaning and keywords of the query. In the future, this search capability will also power the custom lore entries so that relevant lore can be retrieved when appropriate. Please note: we’re still in the process of backfilling old campaign memories with embeddings which improve the search quality and expect this to take a few days. Only campaigns that have been played within the last month will have their previous memories backfilled. Existing campaigns will still be able to retrieve their archived memories, but the memory and search quality will be better on new campaigns. Simplified Management A guiding principle for us as we build Friends & Fables is to make everything as simple as possible over time, so that it’s easy for you to just focus on having fun and playing. Ideally you shouldn’t have to worry about things like memory at all and it should just work. With that principle in mind, we’ve simplified memory management so that memories are no longer editable or lockable, but can still be forgotten. With improved memory formation and the ability to retrieve any memory, we think there’s no longer a reason for editing and locking memories. That being said, we do know the systems are still early and not perfect. If you’ve encountered a situation where a created memory is missing an important detail, or if the search was unable to retrieve an important memory, please feel free to drop a comment with an event id in these posts so we can improve the memory module over time: @Created Memories @Memory Search We also know that some players like to edit and lock memories as a short-term fix for providing lore — there’ll be a gap for a while until the lore update is out, but lore entries when released will be editable and lockable to fill this gap. Feedback Welcome We think this update is a big step in the right direction, but there’s still more that we can do to improve memories in the future. There’s also only so much testing we can do internally for features like this that depend on very long campaigns, so if you run into an issue where a created memory is missing an important detail, or if the search was unable to retrieve an important memory please drop a comment with an event ID in the feedback posts: @Created Memories @Memory Search Other Fixes and Improvements Memory Guide Article has been updated. We have a new support bot (Finn, Franz’s apprentice/assistant) on the Feedback portal. He’ll automatically reply to posts answering questions or asking for more information when needed so we can solve issues faster. Fixed issue where mentioning areas was not working Fixed issue where the Trope Reduction System was allowing names like Elara / Grimbold Ironfist to be generated in specific circumstances You can now search for worlds in the Discover tab via URLs or IDs Added a button in the Campaigns tab to join a campaign (For you PWA users!) Fixed issue where movement within a POI was being shown as a character sheet X, Y update Reduced refusals in OOC mode Reduced errors occurring in campaigns overall Fixed issue where DC on skill checks is consistently set at 15, you should see more variation now Fixed issue where an encounter from one of your campaigns would show up on the screen of another if you switched between campaigns Fixed area generation in OOC mode Fixed auto scrolling when new messages come in What’s Next Besides fixing bugs, the next two big features we’ll be focused on in the next month will be re-introducing interactions with improved planning + quests, and lore entries. We know that in the current state of things the narrative gameplay can be quite slow paced without much happening unless player initiated, which is great for downtime mode but leads to a boring experience when you want adventure. We think giving world builders the ability to set up their own hooks and triggers for things that happen in their world will unlock a lot more fun for both builders and players. The AI will also get improvements so that without these triggers the adventure mode will become more lively again. Thanks everyone for playing and supporting Friends & Fables!

Introducing Odrun Fell

Hey friends, now that we’re further along with our new world building tools, we’ve begun investing in creating some serious official Friends & Fables content. Introducing Odrun Fell! Step into the city carved from the shattered remains of an ancient titan's god-weapon, where masked face stealing beasts haunt the woods, giant insects fuel the economy, and every action you take is tangled in guild politics and tunnel-born danger. From gilded towers to chitin-forged slums, Odrun Fell is a place where your choices carry weight, your allies might be monsters, and every delve could be your last. Give it a play and let us know what you think!