Friends & Fables vs Voyage (2026): The Deepest Ruleset Against the Highest Score
Access disclosure: Latitude provided beta access to Voyage for our review. We have never been given comped access to Friends & Fables. This page also mentions Craft, made by the same studio as Friends & Fables, whose developers provided beta access and a subscription for our coverage of Craft. No conditions were attached, and this comparison is independent and unpaid — we do not accept payment for coverage.
Friends & Fables and Voyage are the two AI game masters on our board where the dice are real and the outcome has to be earned, and the difference between them is that Friends & Fables has the deeper ruleset while Voyage holds a campaign together for longer.
Most comparisons on this site are between two different kinds of product. This one is not. Both of these run a tabletop-style game for you, both refuse to hand out rewards you did not earn, and both score 5 on Fairness. A player choosing between them has already decided what kind of game they want. The question is which one does it better for them.
The Short Version
| Friends & Fables | Voyage | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall | 3.9 | 4.4 |
| Memory & Continuity | 3.5 | 4.25 |
| Player Agency | 3 | 3.5 |
| NPC Fidelity | 4 | 5 |
| Mechanical Depth | 5 | 4 |
| Determinism & Fairness | 5 | 5 |
| Longevity | 2 | 4 |
| Signature Design | 5 | 5 |
Scores from each platform’s entry in our directory, on our seven-axis methodology. Voyage is first on our benchmark.
| Friends & Fables | Voyage | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | The studio that now also makes Craft | Latitude, the studio behind AI Dungeon |
| Rules | A tabletop ruleset close to D&D 5e | Latitude’s own ruleset, the World Engine |
| Battle map | Yes, hex map with turn order | No map or tactical grid |
| Free tier | Up to 25 game master turns a day | Unlimited public servers, one-time private demo |
| Paid plans | $19.95, $29.95, $39.95 a month | $14.99, $29.99, $49.99, $99.99 a month |
| Players per campaign | 3 to 6, by the host’s plan | Up to 8 on public servers, up to 4 in private co-op |
| Where it plays | Browser, at fables.gg | Browser, iPhone and Android |
| Development | Big updates on hold until 2027 | Open beta, in active development |
If you only read one line: Friends & Fables for the map and the rules, Voyage for the memory, the characters and a game still being built.
What Each One Is
Friends & Fables is a tabletop-style RPG run by an AI game master called Franz. You pick a world, make or choose a character, and talk to Franz. Behind him, several AI models work together: one step gathers the relevant lore and stats into a Working Context that you can read and edit, and other steps update character sheets, inventories and the map after each turn. Your sheet, the map, the world’s lore and your quests sit in a sidebar, and the studio’s own advice is that the sidebar is the truth: “regardless of what Franz says out loud, the data you see in the UI is the truth.” Our Friends & Fables review and guide cover it in full.
Voyage is Latitude’s second game. Where AI Dungeon lets the player decide every outcome, Voyage is built around consequences: skill checks, hit points, positioning and permanent character death are part of the game’s state, not facts the AI has to remember. You choose a game master personality, on a range from cozy and forgiving to hardcore and punishing, and that choice shapes the tone and the difficulty of the whole campaign. It is in open beta, which means anyone can play it with no invite code and no waitlist. Our Voyage review and guide cover it in full.
Rules and Combat: Friends & Fables’ Lead
Friends & Fables scores Mechanical Depth — 5, the top of our scale. Voyage scores Mechanical Depth — 4. This is the one axis where Friends & Fables is ahead.
Friends & Fables is the most mechanically complex game in the category: a real ruleset, run and not just described. It fights in one of two ways.
- Narrative combat goes through the same system as every other message. It is fast and loose, and the studio says plainly that “enemies and their stats may not be tracked accurately”.
- Turn-based combat is the real one: an encounter with a turn order, a battle map and dice. It is a setting called Include Combat Encounters in the campaign’s game master settings. Check that it is on before your first fight.
An encounter starts when someone rolls initiative. In a group, only one person needs to roll, and the game rolls for everyone.
Voyage has real mechanics too. Dice decide outcomes, hit points and positioning are tracked by the game, and a party that walks carelessly into a fight gets wiped. What it does not have is a hex battle map or a tactical grid. That follows from its phone-first design, where a screen full of tokens costs more attention than it gives back.
The reason Voyage stops at 4 is that you build inside Latitude’s ruleset. Voyage has a world editor and you can make a great deal with it, but you cannot add a system the platform does not already have. In our own world we wanted income and expenses, and Voyage has no bookkeeping, so we made one from a resource bar renamed Copper. It worked, and it was a workaround. We also met inventory and equipment bugs often enough over a long campaign to count them in the score.
One more thing belongs here, since it is about how the fights feel and not how many rules there are. In our play, Voyage’s combat was the most enjoyable in the directory. Depth and fun are different things. Friends & Fables has more rules. Voyage’s fights were the ones we wanted to go back to.
If you want a map with tokens on it, the choice is made: Friends & Fables has one and Voyage does not.
Fairness: Level at the Top
Both score Determinism & Fairness — 5. Only a handful of platforms on our board reach it, and these two get there in slightly different ways.
On Friends & Fables, Franz treats the player fairly. You cannot talk your way into a reward you did not earn, and the system does not hand you a success because you phrased the request with confidence. Just as important, he does not refuse everything in order to be safe. A creative or unusual approach is allowed to be tried on its merits. Those two behaviours usually work against each other, and holding both is rare.
On Voyage, the combat will actually beat you. What you achieve feels earned because failure is real. The dice routinely force failure, and there is no way to talk your way out of a bad roll.
For a player this means the same thing on both: what you have, you earned. If that is the reason you are looking at these two and not at a freer story game, either will give it to you. Our guide to difficulty in AI RPGs explains why so few platforms manage it.
Memory: Voyage’s Lead
Voyage scores Memory & Continuity — 4.25. Friends & Fables scores Memory & Continuity — 3.5.
Voyage’s result is the best we have measured on any platform you can play today. It held a fact we planted early across an extended campaign: a detail introduced once, never mentioned again, and checked long after it should have been lost. It came back correct. Over the whole run, continuity slipped once or twice. Part of why it works is the design. Hit points, positioning and death are game state, so the AI does not have to hold them in its head.
One update matters if you are choosing a plan. When we scored Voyage, memory was the same on every plan. Its pricing page now sells “enhanced memory” on the Mythic plan and “max memory” on Ultimate, with core features below. Latitude does not publish numbers for either, so we cannot say how large the gap is. Our score did not change, since it measures what the engine did in our campaign and not what a plan costs.
Friends & Fables takes a different road, and a good one. Before Franz writes, a research step pulls the relevant lore, stats and memories into the Working Context, and you can see and edit what is there. Every plan, the free one included, gets long-term memories. You can also force a character, place or item into Franz’s attention with an @-mention: one per message on the free plan, up to five on the top plan. Where it falls short of Voyage is in very long campaigns, which is where its flaws show.
So the practical difference is this. On Friends & Fables you have more ways to help the memory yourself. On Voyage, in our play, it needed less help.
Characters and Freedom
Characters. Voyage scores NPC Fidelity — 5. Friends & Fables scores NPC Fidelity — 4.
A 5 on this axis is rare, and Voyage is the first platform to earn it with characters the game generates itself, inside a running campaign. What earned it is that characters stay themselves. They do not drift towards agreeing with you over a long session, and they do not become interchangeable once the plot needs them to cooperate. Friends & Fables is one point behind.
Freedom. Voyage scores Player Agency — 3.5. Friends & Fables scores Player Agency — 3.
Neither is at the top of this axis, and that is a fair price for a game with rules. On Voyage, railroading was not a problem: you can leave the path. What cost it points is puppeting. Your character speaks in a tidied version of what you typed, and now and then does small things you did not order. Most of the time that is cosmetic. It matters when you are trying to deceive someone: if you lie to a character without telling the game master that it is a lie, the engine can read your intention wrongly.
If total freedom is what you want most, neither of these is your game, and our guide to player agency in AI RPGs points to the ones that are.
Longevity, and Who Is Still Building
This is the widest gap on the page. Voyage scores Longevity — 4. Friends & Fables scores Longevity — 2.
Voyage’s 4 ties the highest we have given, and the reason is simple: we kept playing after the testing was done.
Friends & Fables’ 2 is the lowest number on its own sheet. Franz has real flaws, and they show in very long campaigns, which is exactly where a platform this structured should be strongest. A 5 for depth and a 2 for longevity in the same column is not a contradiction. It is a system that does more than almost anything else in the category and holds it together for less time than its ambition deserves.
There is also a fact outside the scores that a buyer should know. On 4 September 2026 the studio behind Friends & Fables put big new updates on hold until 2027 while it works on Craft, its newer platform. Friends & Fables keeps running, and model updates have continued. But the game you see today is the game you should expect for the rest of the year. Our Friends & Fables pricing guide covers what that means for paying.
Voyage is at the other end of its life. It is in open beta, and Latitude’s CEO told us the full release is expected by early 2027. A beta has its own cost, and the inventory bugs above are part of it.
So one of these is finished for now, and the other is not finished yet. Neither is a reason by itself to choose. It is a reason to buy either one for what it is today.
What Each One Costs
Friends & Fables, from the studio’s pricing page:
| Free | Starter | Pro | Legend | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $0 | $19.95 | $29.95 | $39.95 |
| Turns | Up to 25 a day | Unlimited standard | Unlimited standard | Unlimited standard |
| Players per campaign | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Mentions per message | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Text to speech | — | Yes | Yes | Yes |
A turn is counted only when Franz sends you a message, so a free player gets 25 replies from Franz a day. Yearly billing is ten months’ price for twelve. On every plan your friends play for free: only the host needs a subscription, and the host’s plan sets the size of the table.
Voyage, verified on Latitude’s pricing pages on 12 September 2026:
| Free | Journey | Legend | Mythic | Ultimate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $0 | $14.99 | $29.99 | $49.99 | $99.99 |
| Voyage play | Unlimited on public servers, plus a one-time private server demo | Unlimited private and public, core features | Unlimited private and public, core features | Unlimited, including enhanced memory | Unlimited, including max memory |
| Weekly budget for premium features | — | 1× | 4× | 8× | 16× |
Voyage is not sold separately. One Latitude subscription covers both Voyage and AI Dungeon. Core play is unlimited and does not use the weekly budget. The budget pays for premium features such as voice narration and premium story engines, and if it runs out, play continues on your plan’s unlimited settings until it refreshes. Our Voyage pricing guide works through the whole choice.
Reading the two tables together:
- To try for free, both are generous in different ways. Friends & Fables gives you the full game for 25 turns a day. Voyage gives you unlimited play on public servers.
- The cheapest paid plan is Voyage’s, at $14.99 against $19.95.
- The most you can spend on the public plans is $39.95 on Friends & Fables and $99.99 on Voyage.
- On Friends & Fables, the plans differ mainly by party size and by how much you can pin by hand. On Voyage, they differ by the premium budget, and the top two by memory.
Playing With Friends
Both are built for groups as well as for one player, and they organise it differently.
Friends & Fables seats three players in a campaign on the free plan, and four, five or six on Starter, Pro and Legend. The campaign lobby has an invite link. Friends do not need a subscription to join.
Voyage runs multiplayer in two ways. Public servers, hosted by Latitude, are free for anyone to join, with parties of up to eight. Private co-op lets a host invite up to four players into a persistent campaign, and only the host uses usage.
If you are choosing for a group, our guide to playing an AI RPG with friends covers the whole field.
Which Should You Choose?
Choose Friends & Fables if:
- You want a hex battle map, a turn order and rules close to D&D 5e.
- You want to see and edit what the game master knows.
- Your table is five or six people.
- You are happy to buy the game as it stands, with big updates paused until 2027.
Choose Voyage if:
- You want a long campaign that remembers, with characters who stay themselves.
- You want fights you can lose, and permanent death that means it.
- You play on a phone, in short sessions.
- You want a game that is still being built, and can live with beta bugs.
A simple test: picture the moment a fight starts. If you want to look at a map and count hexes, that is Friends & Fables. If you want to read what happens and fear for your character, that is Voyage.
If Neither One Fits
If you want to write your own rules and not play inside someone else’s, neither of these will let you. That is what Craft is for, and Craft vs Friends & Fables explains the move. If these two have too many rules for your taste, Voyage vs AI Dungeon shows the freer side of Latitude’s own range. For campaigns in particular, see our ranking for long campaigns.
Checklist
- Want a battle map? Friends & Fables.
- Want the strongest memory and characters? Voyage.
- Playing on a phone? Voyage.
- On Friends & Fables, check that Include Combat Encounters is on before your first fight.
- On Friends & Fables, trust the sidebar over what Franz says.
- On Voyage, choose the game master personality with care. It sets the difficulty of the whole campaign.
- On either, pay monthly for the game as it is today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Friends & Fables or Voyage better?
Voyage scores higher on our seven-axis methodology, 4.4 against 3.9 for Friends & Fables, and it is first on our benchmark. Voyage is ahead on Memory, Player Agency, characters and Longevity. Friends & Fables is ahead on Mechanical Depth, and the two are level at the top of the scale on Fairness and Signature Design. If you want a hex battle map and tabletop rules close to D&D 5e, choose Friends & Fables. If you want a campaign that remembers and characters who stay themselves, choose Voyage.
Which has the better combat?
They are built differently. Friends & Fables has turn-based combat with a turn order, a hex battle map and dice, and it scores 5 on Mechanical Depth, the top of our scale. Voyage has dice, hit points, positioning and permanent death, but no hex map or tactical grid, and it scores 4. In our play Voyage’s fights were the most enjoyable in the directory. If you want to move tokens on a map, Friends & Fables is the one with a map.
Which has the better memory?
Voyage, 4.25 against 3.5 on Memory and Continuity. Voyage held a fact we planted early across an extended campaign and slipped only once or twice over the whole run. It is the best memory result we have measured on a platform you can play today. Friends & Fables keeps a Working Context that you can read and edit, which is a real strength, but its flaws show in very long campaigns.
Which is cheaper, Friends & Fables or Voyage?
Voyage starts lower. Its paid plans are $14.99, $29.99, $49.99 and $99.99 a month, and the same subscription covers AI Dungeon. Friends & Fables costs $19.95, $29.95 or $39.95 a month. Both have a free tier: Friends & Fables gives up to 25 game master turns a day, and Voyage gives unlimited play on public servers plus a one-time private server demo. Friends & Fables has the lower top price, and on Voyage the top two plans are the ones sold with enhanced and max memory.
How many people can play together on each?
On Friends & Fables a campaign seats three players on the free plan and four, five or six on the paid plans, and only the host needs a subscription. On Voyage, public servers hosted by Latitude are free to join with parties of up to eight, and private co-op lets a host invite up to four players, with only the host using usage.
Is Friends & Fables still being updated?
Only lightly. On 4 September 2026 its studio said it was putting big new Friends & Fables updates on hold until 2027 to work on Craft, its newer platform, while keeping Friends & Fables running. Voyage is in open beta and under active development, with full release expected by early 2027 according to Latitude’s CEO. If you pay for either, pay for the game as it is today.
Can I play them on my phone?
Voyage was designed phone-first. It has apps on the App Store and Google Play and also runs in a browser at voyage.io. Friends & Fables is played at fables.gg. Voyage is the one built around short sessions on a phone.
Both platforms are scored on Arcanum’s seven-axis methodology; the axis values quoted here are the published scores on each platform’s entry as of 8 October 2026. Latitude provided beta access to Voyage for our review; no conditions were attached, and Arcanum is independent and unpaid. Friends & Fables and Voyage are third-party platforms and all names are used nominatively. Arcanum is not affiliated with Latitude, the makers of Friends & Fables, or Wizards of the Coast. Dungeons & Dragons and D&D are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast.