// the independent publication for AI RPGs
Arcanum is an independent publication covering AI RPGs — the platforms that turn a language model into a real game master. We play every one of them first-hand and score it on a single published rubric, so you can tell which ones hold up over a long campaign, and which quietly fall apart.
In October 2026 the hosting company Railway was breached, and four AI RPGs we cover said they were affected or moved off it. What Railway itself says happened, why a game's secret keys are the target, what the games said, and a short checklist for players, including what to do if you gave a game your own AI key.
A player's guide to Worldtable, the AI game master we rate 4.5: signing up for the 50 free turns, getting into a world, making a character, writing an action the engine can rule on, undo and death rules, what every turn and picture costs, who pays in a group, and what our own play found to watch for. From Worldtable's docs and our Extended review.
Craft rebuilt its game master on 29 October 2026. What Harness 2 changes for players and world builders, the Inspect turn and What changed card, the 15 November V1 deadline and why Craft pulled back from it on 2 November, and the new key fields and procedures. From Craft's own patch notes B0.050 to B0.053, not from our own play.
A hosting breach hit RPBuddy, Craft, Friends & Fables and Isentroth, Craft rebuilt its game master, Worldtable shipped four big updates, Tabled made refusals stick, and Fable Forge cut the cost of every action. The two weeks in AI RPGs for players, 20 October to 3 November 2026.
Worldtable is an AI game master that gives the dice, the map, the money and the fights to ordinary game code, and keeps the AI for the story. It is the most ambitious platform we have reviewed, with a fifth Signature Design, Mechanical Depth and Player Agency, and a Longevity above anything we have scored. Its weak side is item bookkeeping: a sold item came back, and loot could be paid twice. Our Extended review. Rated 4.5/5.
SillyTavern is a roleplay front end, not a game engine, but it has the parts for a game master setup: a narrator card, dice, objectives, an Author's Note for the current scene, variables and group chats. What each one really does according to SillyTavern's documentation, the three ways a dice roll can reach the AI and the one way that does not, what no setting can enforce, and what we did not test. Read from SillyTavern's documentation and the D&D Dice extension's README on 31 October 2026.
SillyTavern can turn a plain chat into a visual novel screen with character sprites that change with the mood of each reply, and it can go further with animated Live2D and 3D VRM models. What each of the four features does, where the files go, how sprites are named, how the mood is detected and with which 28 labels, what the documentation warns about, and what we did not test. Read from SillyTavern's own documentation on 31 October 2026.
// the benchmark
Every AI RPG platform you can actually play, scored on the same seven axes from first-hand play — not from marketing copy, not from a press kit. 31 platforms, one rubric, every score published with its working. How we count platforms, games and products.
Two of the seven axes have no top score anywhere in the field. Nobody has solved Memory & Continuity and Longevity — not one platform on the board.
| Axis | Field average | Highest reached |
|---|---|---|
| Signature Design | 3.37 | 5 |
| NPC Fidelity | 3.19 | 5 |
| Memory & Continuity | 2.93 | 4.25 · unclaimed |
| Player Agency | 2.89 | 5 |
| Longevity | 2.74 | 4.5 · unclaimed |
| Mechanical Depth | 2.71 | 5 |
| Determinism & Fairness | 2.71 | 5 |
field average · ceiling reached · outer ring = 5
// how these numbers were made
News, features, guides and interviews — what launched, what changed, and how to get the most out of the games you play.
324 articles →Janitor, Friends & Fables, AI Dungeon and the rest — every roleplay platform played and scored, so you know what's worth your time.
45 platforms → Compare them side by side →The best AI RPGs you can play right now — published GPTs, Gems, and Claude projects — rated and sorted by model and genre.
16 games →Free browser tools for running better campaigns — prompt builder, character cards, context budget, campaign memory. No signup, nothing sent anywhere.
4 tools →// from our workshop
Besides the coverage, Arcanum builds two things: open research on the field, and free tools that run entirely in your browser.
Arcanum RPGs is an independent publication about AI roleplaying games — the platforms and games where a language model runs the story as your game master. We publish news, hands-on reviews, guides and features, and we maintain the Arcanum AI RPG Benchmark, which scores every released platform we have played on the same seven axes. Every rated platform is played first-hand, commercial relationships are disclosed, and scores are never sold.
Arcanum also builds research and tools: the benchmark is published as an open dataset with a permanent DOI, and our free tools help players run better campaigns without sending anything anywhere. Browse the complete AI RPG directory to see every game and platform in one place.