August 6th, 2026
We’ve refreshed some of the models being used in the backend for newer more intelligent models, a few in particular to note:
Gemini 3.1 Pro has been replaced by Grok 4.5: The Gemini Pro models have been underperforming lately after some changes from Google. Grok 4.5 is more intelligent, better suited for role-play, and slightly cheaper at 5 credits a turn compared to 6.
DeepSeek V4 Flash has been refreshed to the latest V4 Flash-0731. The latest V4 Flash is much smarter than the previous version and is on par with DeepSeek V4 Pro. Give it a try if you typically use Fenix, this may be your new go to standard model.
The models behind turn based combat have been upgraded to newer, smarter models; the combat harness is still the same, but things should run a little bit more smoothly with fewer AI logic errors.
August 5th, 2026
Hey Friends,
We’ve had our heads down working nights and weekends for the last six months to get here, but the day is finally here. Craft is now in open beta! We know many of you have been sitting tight, waiting for a F&F update, and we just want to thank you for your patience and understanding.
Craft is in Open Beta!
For those who are hearing about Craft for the first time, we recommend reading the blog article that goes in depth over the improvements and differences here: https://www.craftrpgs.com/blog/craft-a-new-approach-to-ai-rpgs. The tl;dr is that we set out to solve many of the problems that we faced in F&F, but realized to solve those problems, we needed to build from the ground up - solving them inside of F&F first would be too slow as we’d be encumbered by existing data and architecture.
We’re happy to say that we think we’ve done it. With Craft, we’ve built an AI RPG platform where you can create and play any kind of game system you could imagine. Memory in Craft is practically unlimited, and your context can go up to the LLM’s theoretical limit. You can expect the GMs in Craft to behave the way you’d expect them to, and it’s much easier to correct or change their behaviour if you need to. If you hop in the Discord, you’ll see that most players are very happy with the narrative performance in Craft. If you find something isn’t running the way you want it to, the GM’s prompts are fully customizeable. We also think 5e games already run much better in Craft than they do in F&F right now. Worldbuilders from F&F that have moved over to Craft have been loving the new tools in Craft and have been blowing our minds with the content they’ve created. Check out Koinonia’s Skybride, or Pollution’s new official game, Project Sable, or browse all of the worlds here: https://www.craftrpgs.com/worlds.
As part of the open beta launch, we’re also giving away unlimited DeepSeek V4 Flash for free on Craft for everyone until August 15th! If you gave Craft a shot earlier on, we invite you try it again. It has gotten a LOT better in the last month. Give it a try and let us know your feedback in the Discord and subreddit.
Transferring Credits to Craft
For those who wish to transfer their credits to Craft, you can now do so from your F&F account settings. Credit transfers are 1:1, are available until August 31, 2026, and can only be done one time. Only F&F accounts created before August 1, 2026 are eligible for a credit transfer.
To transfer your credits, go to your Friends & Fables account settings and you'll see an option to transfer your credits. Put in your selected amount of credits and your Craft username to transfer them.
So what’s going to happen with F&F?
tl;dr - F&F is staying alive and we’re going to give it a really good update, but we’re cutting the overall vision down to something more manageable.
Part of what makes this tricky is that Craft was born out of the problems and frustrations people had with F&F. The whole reason we built Craft was so that we could deliver on the roadmap that we had originally set out to do with F&F, and to do it in less time. And we think we’ve pretty much done it. But now we have to grapple with the question of where F&F fits when Craft can already do what F&F was supposed to do - there’d be no point in making it just like Craft, because at that point you might as well play Craft.
So we’ve decided we’re shifting the vision of Friends & Fables - rather than aiming for a perfect replica of 5e, we’re thinking of it as more of a 5e-like experience. And instead of thinking of all these new features we could add, like music or a mobile app, we realized that many of you are already playing it for what it is today and just want the campaign experience to be better. So we’re going to focus on the feedback we’ve gotten from all of you and focus on making the memory, storytelling, and state updates better by bringing over what we’ve learned from building Craft. Brand new features that go beyond improving what already exists, like music or an AI world building assistant are unlikely to be coming to F&F - if you want those, we recommend you check out Craft because those features are already implemented there. As for timeline, we need a few more weeks to wrap up some things with Craft and then we’ll be turning our attention back to F&F - it is hard to say how long it will take for us to implement the update but we’ll let you know once we have a better idea.
Given these updates in direction, for anyone who purchased an annual subscription to F&F, we’re offering prorated refunds for any remaining unused months so you are not locked in to the year. Just email support@fables.gg and we’ll get you taken care of.
All that being said, our ultimate goal is to deliver the best AI RPG experience possible. The reason we made Craft is because we heard so many issues, not just with F&F but with other AI RPGs and we thought we could solve them. Craft isn’t perfect yet, but feedback from our current players indicates that the experience is much better than F&F and anything else out there. If you’ve had frustrations with F&F, we highly recommend you give Craft a shot.
Updates to the Feedback Portal
As a company, we’ve been reducing our use of third party software as it’s expensive and we weren’t getting much value out of it compared to in house solutions. So please don’t be alarmed as we turn off the Featurebase feedback platform which hosts the portal and the roadmap. Please use Discord for any feedback or bug reports. This is how we’ve been doing it within Craft and it has been going well so we’ll do it for F&F as well.
May 23rd, 2026
TLDR: Craft is entering into Closed Beta today and players will be allowed in waves into the beta. If you are an active Friends & Fables subscriber or ever subscribed in the past, go to your account settings and join the Craft Subscription code list by June 7, 2026 to ensure you get access to your 1 month free promo code on Craft! Read below for more details.
Today, we’re excited to announce that Craft is officially entering closed beta, and we’re inviting the first wave of beta users.
Here’s what you can expect:
Invites will roll out gradually. We’re starting with an initial wave of ~50 players, and each wave will get larger from there. Over the coming weeks, we expect to be inviting hundreds of players at a time.
You must be on the waitlist to receive an invite. This means joining either through your Friends & Fables account settings or through the Craft landing page at https://www.craftrpgs.com.
Closed beta is meant for early adopters. Craft is still an early beta product, so you should expect bugs, rough edges, and things that may not work perfectly yet.
Multiplayer will not be available during beta. We plan to add multiplayer later.
Other core systems should be operational. Aside from multiplayer, the systems we’ve discussed in previous posts should be available in beta.
The platform will favour builders at first. In these early days, Craft will be best suited for people who are excited to roll up their sleeves, experiment, and figure things out. Players who prefer jumping into polished, existing content may find that the platform has limited content for now.
Games may need tuning. Some games may not behave correctly right away, and builders may need time to adjust their game master instructions before things feel smooth.
The alpha NDA is lifted. We will not be using an NDA for closed beta. Players are free to talk publicly about Craft.
Guides and tutorials are coming. For builders and players diving in headfirst, things may feel challenging at first as we all learn the platform together. We’ll be adding more guides, tutorials, and documentation in the coming days.
Craft Pricing Plans
As we explained in the previous blog, Craft will not have an unlimited plan. Please read through the previous blog for all the details if you haven’t yet, but a summary is provided below.
In Friends & Fables, we were able to offer an unlimited plan because we controlled which LLM you could use and how much context was sent with each turn. Craft works differently. We give you the freedom to choose from a wide range of LLMs with very different costs, and you also have control over how much context you send each turn.
If we offered that level of flexibility with unlimited usage, we would not be able to run Craft sustainably.
That said, our goal is to be as generous as possible with AI chat while still building a sustainable business. We’re making a game, and we want people to actually be able to play it. A plan would not feel good if you paid $20 and could only play once a week.
Over time, we expect these plans to feel better and better. As models become better and cheaper, our goal is to make it so that daily usage limits become something most players barely have to think about.
Energy and Credits
Craft uses an energy and credit system. Energy and credits can be used interchangeably for AI generations but they accrue differently.
Energy comes with your subscription. Subscription plans give you more total monthly usage than buying the equivalent amount in credits. For example, the $20 credit pack gives you 2,050 credits, while the $20 subscription gives you a monthly maximum of ~ 3,000 daily energy (~50% more!).
Energy usage resets daily. Your subscription energy is divided into a daily allocation. On days when you are unable to play, a portion of your unused energy, up to a percentage of your daily allocation, will roll over to the next day.
Credits are stackable and do not expire.
For daily play, we recommend a subscription. If you expect to play regularly, the subscription will usually provide better value.
For occasional play, we recommend credit packs. If you only play one or two sessions a week, credits may be the better fit.
So how much usage do energy and credits actually get you?
It depends on the models you choose, how much context you use, and what you are doing in the app. We’ll have more accurate numbers once more beta testers are using the platform, but based on alpha, here is what we currently estimate for the $20 Starter plan:
Around 100 images per day, or about 3,000 images per month, on z-image-turbo at 1 credit per image.
Around 50–100 turns per day on Minimax 2.7, our default model. Alpha testers have reported being able to play for at least a few hours per day on this model.
Subscriptions
These will be the Craft subscription plans at launch in the beta. These may be subject to change and be adjusted as we learn more throughout the beta period and additional plans may be introduced in the future.
During the initial Beta period there will be no free tier since F&F subscribers will get a free month, but a limited free tier will be introduced later in the future.
Credit Packs
Free 1-Month Subscription for Friends & Fables Subscribers
In many ways, Craft is the spiritual successor to Friends & Fables and wouldn’t be possible without the support of F&F. As a thank-you for your patience and support, we’re giving every eligible Friends & Fables subscriber a free one-month subscription to Craft.
Here’s how to redeem it:
Sign into your Friends & Fables account and go to your account settings.
If your account is eligible, meaning you currently had an active subscription as of May 22 2026 or ever had one in the past, you’ll see a section about Craft promo codes and a button to join the code waitlist. Friends & Fables subscriptions activated on May 23 2026 or later will not be eligible.
After clicking join, or if you already signed up for the Craft waitlist on the Craft site, you will be on the list and will be later notified by email when your subscription code is ready.
When your code is available, you’ll receive an email to come back to the account settings and redeem your code. You can choose to redeem this code at any time, but once you click “Redeem” it will generate a code that is valid for only 30 days. You can then use this promo code at checkout on the Craft site for 100% off your first month.
Since this is a subscription, please make sure to cancel after checkout if you do not want it to renew and charge you the following month.
One other important heads-up: if you choose to upgrade while a 100% promo code is active, Stripe charges the full cost of the new plan instead of only the difference between your old and new plans. Unfortunately, this is how Stripe handles upgrades, and it is not something we can adjust on our end.
Here is how the Craft codes are assigned:
If you are a Friends & Fables Starter subscriber, you will receive a code for Craft Starter.
If you are a Friends & Fables Pro subscriber, you will receive a code for Craft Starter plus a code for a 1,000-credit pack to make up the $10 difference between plans.
If you are a Friends & Fables Legend subscriber, you will receive a code for Craft Plus.
If you are not currently an active subscriber but subscribed at any point in the past, you will receive a code for Craft Starter.
To receive a code, you must join the waitlist before June 7, 2026.
Thank you again to everyone who has supported Friends & Fables and Craft. We’re excited to finally start bringing players into the closed beta and to keep building this with you.
May 15th, 2026
Hey Friends,
We have a quick update for you — we've updated the model mix of Fenix and we're releasing it as Fenix 1.1. You should notice some slight improvements in narration quality but nothing drastically different. Plot updates have been bumped from every turn to every 3 turns. We’ve also deprecated Mimo and replaced it with Hy-3, which should be much better than MiMo.
Additionally, we've found the planning step to negatively impact performance lately, so we've toggled it off for now. You should also see improved response times from that change.
We do want to apologize for the lack of updates to F&F recently. As you all know, we're a small team and have been working nonstop on Craft, which is getting really close to being ready for beta. We'll have a lot more detail in upcoming posts, but here's a little teaser of some of the features that will be available at launch:
Completely customizable character sheets
AI worldbuilding assistant + seriously upgraded world building UI
Fully customizable entities — add mounts, trackers, superpowers, or anything else you can think of!
No character limits on your pages or text fields
Hierarchical map system, with configurable map options like scale, grid types (square, hex), and more
Music + video generation
There's a lot more, but we'll save it for future posts!
The v1 features for beta launch are pretty much settled now, and we're in the last stretch polishing out bugs and setting up onboarding guides for the upcoming waves of beta testers. We expect codes to start coming out in the next couple of weeks. Our hope is that once you see Craft, you'll understand why we chose to focus our time on it. We truly believe that it will go far beyond what Friends & Fables is capable of, and we think it will become the home for the next generation of RPGs. We can't wait to get it into your hands! Here are some teaser screenshots we pulled from alpha:
April 10th, 2026
Hey adventurers,
Big congratulations to our winners for this month's contest! Entries were judged on creativity, originality, visual presentation, and gameplay, with special attention given to how well each world conveyed ancient entities slumbering beneath reality, forbidden tomes, warped cults, hostile stars, and truths the mind was never meant to grasp. Worlds that were subtle and unsettling, bleak and oppressive, or utterly alien, they made players feel small, uncertain, and afraid of what lies just beyond perception as they play. @friends
1st Place
The Shadow over Olympic Solodit
Love the game, all the art is excellent and follows a clear theme and pattern. Everything is consistent, and I love the trapped cruise liner storyline. The story is unique, which makes playing it a fun experience. I have yet to play a game where the entire story takes place on a boat ravaged by horrors from the abyss. This was definitely to be expected from another one of Solodit/ConsoleX’s games! Well done!
2nd–5th Place Winners
Blackwood Arms Lovereid911.
I love this game, and I think you will too. Be sure to check the lore, I love how so much of it is written out like letters or self written notes. I love how everyone is weird except for Henry Whitlock, which makes him the weirdest one in Blackwood Arms. Definitely give this game a play, it’s a lot of fun to go around and meet the different NPCs, check out their weird rooms, and order pizza from Dominos.
The Sunken Meridian Nihilkether
Sol Invictus was a fun game to try. It felt like a fusion of the last world building contest and the current one. Bjorn was my go to choice when playing because it’s hard to resist playing a paladin with a lion companion named Mufasa. The map was very well done and I love how the districts were oraganized for the city.
Sol Invictus: Shadows of the Golden Age Treedaddy
The art is great and I love the theme! Great game, but while exploring I noticed that monsters spawned during travel almost 100% of the time. Be careful when you play this one, it’s dangerous! The Rholvast is pretty dangerous, but slow, so if you come across one, just remember that you cna run!
Gnossienne: Lovecraftian Survival Horror Onrelas
I enjoyed playing this game because Derrick Quarantasette reminded me a lot of John Wick. I also like the variety of items and equipment available in the game. It was nice to scroll through them all and add some gear to help me when I started my journey. Derrick had been trapped in the city for about a month, so it was fair for me to give him a first aid kit and a few more guns.
Thank you to everyone else who entered!
The Shadow over Olympic Solodit
Blackwood Arms Lovereid911
The Sunken Meridian Nihilkether
Sol Invictus: Shadows of the Golden Age Treedaddy
Gnossienne: Lovecraftian Survival Horror Onrelas
Architect of Chaos Vgarn
The Deepwell Facility Kingtrex101
Nighten-Grapht RazTheRealmweaver
Landing of the USSF Eden Aedesaegypt
This was our third Creator Spotlight Competition, and we're thankful to all the participants! If you haven’t already, jump into the winning worlds and show them some love. A single like can mean a lot to a creator.
Happy adventuring, Friends & Fables
April 5th, 2026
Hey friends,
We’re finally ready to share more about Craft with you all! If you didn’t see our last announcement, I recommend you read that first. We’ve been making great progress on Craft, so we decided this month to start devoting 100% of our time to get it launched. Starting today, you’ll be able to sign up for the waitlist for the closed beta here: https://craftrpgs.com/.
We want to reward everyone who has been paying attention and being here early with a Founder’s edition dice skin and profile badge, so make sure you get on the waitlist before April 9th! Soon after that, we’ll begin letting in small waves of people into the closed beta. Friends & Fables subscribers will be prioritized on the waitlist (please use the same email as your Friends & Fables account when signing up). The timeline for a public launch is still TBD but internally we’re aiming for the end of April.
So what is Craft?
Craft is the culmination of everything we’ve learned in our time building Friends & Fables, bolstered by some amazing advancements in AI that we’ve seen in the last six months. While in Friends & Fables you’re locked into building settings on top of 5e, in Craft you’ll be able to customize and create any game system you desire. This includes customizing things like the GM’s personality, memory systems, custom mechanics, and more. Some things you can expect to see in Craft are:
A world building assistant that can draw maps and help you bring your ideas to life faster than before
A layered hierarchical map system
Fully customizable sheets - create characters with any kind of stats or fields (with no limits on description fields)
Modular content marketplace: share and install packs of items, characters, or rules.
Improved memory
A larger selection of powerful models to play with
And much more!
We’ve been working hard on Craft and it’s looking really promising. We think it solves a lot of the frustrations that we’ve heard from you all about F&F and other AI RPGs today. In particular, we believe that RPGs need more personalization and flexibility in terms of platform constraints and mechanics - no one system, even if it’s pretty customizable, will work for everyone. So Craft is our attempt at providing the foundation for you all to be able to create the systems that match your needs.
Some quick FAQs:
Will I be able to sync my content from F&F to Craft?
Partially. We know that everyone has worked so hard on their worlds in F&F, so we are going to support syncing worlds over to Craft. Unfortunately, the map systems are incompatible. So while you will be able to sync areas, characters, and everything else in the world, you will not be able to sync all of the map data. Campaigns will be incompatible for sync.
Will my Friends & Fables subscription work on Craft?
Unfortunately due to the incompatibilities with the subscription models, we can’t share subscriptions across the two platforms.
Craft is only possible from all of your support, so we will be giving any Friends & Fables subscriber (past or present) a full free month of Craft to try at no cost. Additionally, anyone who has an annual subscription and would like to end it early to switch will be eligible for a refund for any remaining months of the subscription. This way anyone who ends up preferring Craft will be able to switch to it without any additional cost.
When will Craft launch?
TBD - this will depend on how the closed beta goes, but internally we’re aiming for the end of April. We’ll let you know as soon as we know more as the beta progresses.
March 4th, 2026
Some quick model updates,
Text
Gemini 3 Pro has been upgraded to Gemini 3.1 Pro. More intelligence at the same price point.
Images
Grok Imagine has been added with a cost of 6 credits per generation / edit. This is a very capable image model worth trying out for both generations and simple edits.
Nano Banana 2 was added to the image studio and has replaced Nano Banana Pro in the scene image generator. Nano Banana 2 outputs images with quality on par or better than the previous Pro version, with faster image generations, and at half the cost at 15 credits. If you were previously using NBP, we recommend using the new Nano Banana 2 instead.
March 2nd, 2026
Creator Spotlight: Lovecraftian Horror
The veil is thinning. March 2026 ushers in Friends & Fables’ Creator Spotlight Competition with a Lovecraftian Horror theme. The goal is for participants to create a world steeped in cosmic dread and unknowable truth. Think ancient entities slumbering beneath reality, forbidden tomes, warped cults, hostile stars, and truths the mind was never meant to grasp. Whether your world is subtle and unsettling, bleak and oppressive, or utterly alien, it should make players feel small, uncertain, and afraid of what lies just beyond perception as they play. Be sure to read the rules to make sure you qualify!
Contest Details
Theme: Lovecraftian Horror / Cosmic Dread
Tone Keywords: Insignificance, Madness, Forbidden Knowledge, Ancient, Unknowable
Prizes
1st Place: 10,000 Credits, Top Creator Reddit Flair, Top Creator Discord Role & World Featured until April 30
2nd–5th Place: 2,000 Credits each, Creator Spotlight Winner Reddit Flair
All Qualified Entries: 100 Credits
Honorable Mentions
These are awards granted to participants who didn't place in the top 5, but still impressed the judges enough! Only a handful of worldbuilders will receive these awards, and only if you didn't place in the top 5!
Runner Up!: +900 Bonus Credits granted to participants who did such a good job that they almost made it into the top 5!
Aesthetics Award!: +150 Bonus Credits granted to participants who stunned the judges with beautiful and consistent art!
Map Design Award!: +150 Bonus Credits granted to participants with the most amazing maps and polygon lines!
Story Award!: +150 Bonus Credits granted to participants who created a unique and original story that impressed the judges!
Rules
You must be part of the Friends & Fables Discord to participate.
Your world’s theme must clearly fit the Lovecraftian / Cosmic Horror theme.
Worlds must have a minimum of 10 Points of Interest.
Worlds must have a minimum of 10 Characters (with at least 1 Featured Character.)
No NSFW or copyrighted material.
Collaboration is allowed (credits go to the listed creator).
Worlds must clearly have been made for the purpose of this event. Submissions of older worlds or copies of other creator's worlds will not be considered in the judging.
Judging Criteria
Judging will begin on January 31st and will be based on:
Creativity & Originality [Is it unique and engaging?]
Visual Presentation [Is it consistent and appealing?]
Gameplay [Is it fun, clear, and playable?]
Submissions:
Submissions open March 2, 2026
Submissions close March 31, 2026 11:59pm EST
You must share your world on the Friends & Fables subreddit and complete the Submission Form below to enter. On Reddit, submissions should have the Event Submission flair so that they can be searched by the judges on March 31st.
Winners of the March 2026 Creator Spotlight will be announced on Friday, April 10, 2026.
Submission Form
Reddit Submission
February 25th, 2026
Hey Everyone,
It's Will here. It's been a little while since our last announcement, so I wanted to check in with a status update and share some news.
What we're building for F&F
I know a lot of you are expecting the next F&F update to be combat, so I want to be upfront: before we can build combat the right way, we need to rewrite the narration engine and state update system that everything else sits on top of. Combat will be built on that new foundation, but it may be some time before we get there.
I know you are all looking forward to the combat update, but I hope you’ll understand that combat is built on top of some core pieces that need to be reworked first. A lot of F&F's core architecture was built for older AI models, models that needed much more hand-holding and rigid structure to get things right. That rigidity served us well early on with the models available at the time, but it's now the biggest thing holding Franz back. It limits how well he can handle situations we didn't specifically design for, and it's an architecture that makes future updates slower and limits the emergent capability of stronger models.
While we could add some patches to the current architecture, it would result in a worse experience in the long term that delays and takes up time and resources from building the stronger foundation for the future. In the earlier stages of the platform, we could push updates quickly because we were building just on top, but now that there’s so much interconnected, making changes and updating the core of it is a process that naturally takes longer, but one that we think will result in a better experience for everyone in the long term.
Something New
We want to be transparent and share a bit more about the development process behind the scenes. The F&F codebase has evolved into something like a container ship: large and powerful, but slow to steer. Rather than risking months rewriting F&F around an unproven architecture, we started iterating on standalone prototypes where new ideas could be tested and proven much faster. By the end of January, one of those prototypes had grown into something with a lot of potential and one that we realized makes more sense as its own separate application. We’re calling this new app Craft.
When we reflect on our roadmap and the user feedback we’ve heard over the last few years, a couple common themes emerge. Some of you want a deep, focused D&D experience, and some of you want something that’s much more general, supportive of other rulesets, customizable, and not constrained by the D&D mechanics. Those are two different audiences, and trying to stretch F&F to serve both means neither gets the peak experience they really want.
With two applications, each one can excel at what it does best. The scope of F&F can narrow and stay focused on trying to be the best AI D&D 5e experience, and the Craft can go much broader, better supporting other systems and genres.
The two applications also inform each other. Everything we’ve learned about what players want from F&F is informing the design process of the Craft, and Craft is a more nimble ship where ideas can be validated much faster and then integrated back into F&F. Many of the ideas that we’ve seen proven from early alpha testing are actively being brought into and informing the upcoming F&F updates.
So, are we just focusing on this new app and putting F&F off to the side? No.
We plan to support both apps, and we’ve debated over whether we should prioritize one over the other. Ultimately, we decided that working on both in parallel is the best approach because we believe it will actually help us get the right F&F updates out sooner than going 100% on FnF would and also create something new for those who have always wanted a more flexible system than what F&F can offer.
What's next
We can't promise exact dates yet or what will be released first, but we're heads-down and making great progress on both fronts. We’ll keep you posted as things come together and we expect to have more information to share within the next few weeks.
Thank you for sticking with us. We hear you and know that some have felt a bit frustrated lately, and we’re actively working on getting these core updates out to you. We’re more excited than ever about where this is all heading and can’t wait to share more with you.
February 25th, 2026
Quick patch notes - have a larger Dev Log coming out right after this so make sure to read that!
Credit History descriptions now show a preview of the attached generated image or event.
Fixed an issue where GLM would sometimes generate blank responses.
You can now bulk delete entities from the workshop by using command/control + click to multi select and then delete.