Can an AI Be a Good Game Master?

An AI game master can run a good campaign, but in my experience a frontier model left to run a game on its own forgets the campaign, gives its secrets away, lets every plan work and starts playing your character, however often you tell it to stop. The facts of a campaign fit easily in what a model can read at once. The hard part is judging turn after turn what matters most right now. That's why we built Fable Smith. Fable Smith is vivid where it matters: a world that moves, and a GM who knows what to show you.

I play tabletop games, I spent a long time trying to make an AI GM work, and I built Fable Smith out of what went wrong. Help a smuggler out of a tight spot in Fable Smith, and if she turns out to have the only boat out of the city three sessions later, she remembers what you did for her.

• What Does a Tabletop Game Master Give You?
• Why Does Your Own Hero Get the Least Story in Baldur's Gate 3?
• Why Ask an AI to Be the Game Master?
• Why Do AI Game Masters Forget Your Campaign?
• Can an AI Game Master Keep a Secret?
• Why Does an AI Game Master Lose Track of the World?
• Why Does an AI Game Master Play Your Character?
• What Do Existing AI GM Tools Do About It?
• What Should a Good AI Game Master Give You?
• Can an AI Game Master Let You Fail?
• How Should an AI Game Master Handle Pacing?
• Why Do AI Game Masters Get the Rules Wrong?
• Further Reading
• What Is Fable Smith Like to Play?
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Does a Tabletop Game Master Give You?

A tabletop game master gives you a world that reacts to who your character is. A good GM shapes what happens next around what your character wants, fears and owes, so the story could only have happened to that character. A video game RPG, however rich, is what I'd call "really just a tree of choices": you pick among branches someone wrote in advance, and the game never shapes itself to who your character is.

At a table, a throwaway line in your backstory can become what a campaign is built around. Your character mentions a brother who went missing, and three sessions later a stranger in a tavern knows his name, because the GM noticed it mattered to you.

Why a Video Game RPG Can't Tell Your Character's Story goes through this in more depth.

Why Does Your Own Hero Get the Least Story in Baldur's Gate 3?

In Baldur's Gate 3, a hero you make yourself gets the least story of anyone in the party, unless you take the story Larian wrote for the Dark Urge. The seven Origin characters, Astarion and Karlach among them, come with written backstories and personal quests, and any of them can be played as the main character. A custom hero, whom players call Tav after the default name, has no quest of their own.

The richest characters are the ones the writers invented, because the writers could plan around them, and the hero you build has no history the game knows about. As I see it, "the player can never really make their own character" in a video game, because the story can only be as deep as what was written before you showed up.

Larian's answer is the Dark Urge, a customisable Origin with its own story, and it still hands you a story someone else wrote.

Why Ask an AI to Be the Game Master?

Asking an AI to be the game master looks like the obvious bridge between a tabletop game and a video game. A language model can improvise around anything you write, play any number of characters and answer at any hour, so it seems able to give you the responsive world a table gives. I tried it myself for a long time, and it works for an evening and breaks over a campaign.

The first session was often good. Then the cracks showed: a name changed, a twist arrived from nowhere, my character said something I never wrote. When I corrected the model, it apologised and did better for a while.

To spot these failures in any tool, use our checklist, Can an AI Run Your Solo Campaign? Here's What to Look For.

Why Do AI Game Masters Forget Your Campaign?

AI game masters forget your campaign for two reasons, and only one of them is about memory. A model can refer back to a limited amount of text at once, and Anthropic's own documentation says its accuracy and recall degrade as that text grows. The second reason matters more in my experience: even with every fact in front of it, the model has to judge which fact matters most right now, and that judgement slips.

Players report the forgetting plainly. PC Gamer's report on AI GMs quotes one account of an AI that "would forget what had happened if you played for too long". A thread on the EN World forums describes cyclical story beats, where the same kinds of scene keep coming round.

The skill is what a good GM does with the facts: the blacksmith who owes you a favour should come to mind when you need a blade mended, and stay out of the way when you don't. A model makes that judgement afresh every turn with nothing to steady it.

The habit any GM can borrow is to keep notes between sessions and read them before the next one. Why AI Game Masters Forget Your Campaign goes into both halves.

Can an AI Game Master Keep a Secret?

An AI game master left to itself struggles to keep a secret, because it often has no secret to keep. A mystery needs its answer decided first and its clues placed working backwards from that answer. A model asked to GM tends to make the plot up as it goes, so your deductions can't be right or wrong, and when it does know a secret, a well-placed question can talk it out.

TechRadar's Matt Evans makes the first point: a mystery's clues have to be seeded backwards, and "ChatGPT does not do this". On the second, Shiomi and colleagues have written a paper asking whether language-model characters can be tricked into spilling the secrets they were told to keep.

Preparation helps any GM here: decide the answer before play and place the clues working backwards from it. Why AI Game Masters Can't Keep a Secret goes into how a mystery has to be built.

Why Does an AI Game Master Lose Track of the World?

An AI game master loses track of the world because nothing holds its earlier answers in place. The guard captain was stern on Monday and friendly on Thursday, the bridge you burned is standing again, and a town's name has drifted by a letter. PC Gamer's reporting describes a chatbot GM whose actions "flip-flop back and forth".

A consistent world is what makes your choices feel real: if the bridge comes back, burning it was only a sentence.

The habit that helps is the one that helps with forgetting: keep notes on people and places between sessions, and read them before you play. Why AI Game Masters Forget Your Campaign goes into it.

Why Does an AI Game Master Play Your Character?

An AI game master plays your character because, as I've seen it, a language model is built to continue the story, and your character is part of the story. Left alone, it writes your character's next line, move or feeling along with everyone else's. A player in a forum thread called ChatGPT is not a Good DM put it simply: "the AI to some degree took control of my character". PC Gamer reports a chatbot GM trying "to wrap up an entire combat in a single reply".

This is the failure that does the most damage, because your character is the only thing in the game that's yours. Once the GM decides what you say and do, you're reading a story about someone else.

In my experience, "if you keep telling it not to do these things, it'll obey for a while, but then it starts breaking again."

You want a reply that stops where your character would decide and leaves the deciding to you. Why Your AI Game Master Keeps Playing Your Character looks at how to hold that line.

What Do Existing AI GM Tools Do About It?

Existing AI GM tools answer these failures in different ways, and they differ most in how much of the GM's job they hand to the player. Friends & Fables hands over a good part of it: since Franz 2.0, its players can open and edit the working context of Franz, its AI game master, including a running plot summary, and when a player corrects Franz, he saves the instruction for the future. Play centres on worlds that players write, and quests come from those world builders.

Friends & Fables calls the working context "a shared notepad between you and Franz" and shows Franz's plan for each turn in the message's thoughts. It says Franz remembers long-term details, and its own feedback note says players' complaints are mainly about memory and planning. Its later patch notes also warn that "prolonged arguments and corrections will tend to make the experience worse". We found no mention of a GM-only layer of secrets in its docs.

That design gives a player real control, and some players will want exactly that. My own view is that when you're the one editing the GM's notes and correcting its mistakes, you're doing the GMing, and the tool becomes "an AI that's pretending to GM". A GM that runs adventures others wrote also skips what I see as the hardest part of the job, which is designing an adventure around you.

Two newer tools take other routes. Aeveth, formerly Taleweaver, is an AI game master built on Anthropic's Claude, in early access for adults, and its How It Plays page says it rolls from a true randomness source, reads the rules live and keeps a persistent memory. Soliloquest, formerly Mythmaker, has you steer with oracle rolls and moves from the Ironsworn family of oracle tables while its AI Storyteller writes the campaign up as prose you can download.

AI GM Tools Compared: Who Does the GMing? compares the tools side by side, from their own pages.

What Should a Good AI Game Master Give You?

A good AI game master gives you what a good table GM gives you: an adventure made for you, a world that remembers, secrets you find by playing and a character left entirely to you. You shouldn't have to do the GM's job for it by editing its notes or correcting it as you go, however long the campaign gets.

That's what we built Fable Smith to give you. Each adventure is made around what you told it you enjoy and what you want less of, and there's still surprise in it. You rarely need to correct the GM, and when it does slip, it owns the mistake in the game and puts it right.

Can an AI Game Master Let You Fail?

An AI game master finds it hard to let you fail, because the models underneath lean towards pleasing the person they're talking to. One player on the EN World forums found that "whatever I came up with worked perfectly", and TechRadar's Matt Evans found that with Gemini running his game, all his rolls succeeded. Anthropic's research finds that leading AI assistants "consistently exhibit sycophancy", and OpenAI rolled back a GPT-4o update for being "overly supportive but disingenuous".

At a good table, failure is where the interesting part starts: the lock holds, the guard turns, and now you're somewhere you didn't plan to be.

In Fable Smith you roll your own dice, the result is judged by the rules, and it isn't softened. One failed roll or missed clue doesn't stop the story, and failure leaves you somewhere new. Why Your AI Game Master Lets Every Plan Work covers failure as story in full.

How Should an AI Game Master Handle Pacing?

An AI game master should give each moment the space it earns and let the player decide when to move on. A GM that rushes skips the scene you wanted to play, and a GM that dawdles buries the next decision under paragraphs. Good pacing at a table comes from reading the player, so an AI GM has to be told plainly or be built to ask.

In Fable Smith, the GM keeps each post as long as the moment earns, and journeys or waits you start are summed up quickly and stop at the next decision. You set the pace with plain signals, such as "skip to the gate" or "slow down", and the GM follows them. It asks before it skips ahead, so you don't lose a scene you wanted to play.

Pacing: When a GM Should Cut to the Next Scene covers when to cut and when to linger.

Why Do AI Game Masters Get the Rules Wrong?

In my experience, AI game masters get the rules wrong because a model answers from a blur of everything it has read, across editions and house rules, unless the right rules are put in front of it. A forum thread called ChatGPT is not a Good DM describes an AI that settled everything with a bare d20 roll, and a player on EN World found an AI using a 2014 wording of a rule in a 2024 game.

Rules are the guardrails of a game. They tell you what a roll means before you make it, and they stop the GM deciding each outcome by feel. As I put it, "we do run games by the book because we need to have those guardrails."

By the book is our aim in Fable Smith, in fifth edition (5e) and Draw Steel alike. You roll your own dice, and the result is judged by the rules. The GM still makes mistakes sometimes, and when it slips on a rule, it owns the mistake in the game and puts it right.

Why AI Game Masters Get the Rules Wrong goes into the common mistakes.

Further Reading

• Why a Video Game RPG Can't Tell Your Character's Story compares a tabletop GM with a video game RPG.
• Why AI Game Masters Forget Your Campaign explains memory, judgement and keeping notes.
• Why AI Game Masters Can't Keep a Secret explains how a mystery has to be built.
• Why Your AI Game Master Keeps Playing Your Character explains how to keep your character yours.
• Why Your AI Game Master Lets Every Plan Work explains why failure makes the story.
• Why AI Game Masters Get the Rules Wrong explains what running by the book takes.
• Pacing: When a GM Should Cut to the Next Scene explains when to cut and when to linger.
• AI GM Tools Compared: Who Does the GMing? compares the tools from their own pages.
• Will AI Replace Human Game Masters? compares a live GM with play-by-post.
• Can an AI Run Your Solo Campaign? Here's What to Look For gives six questions to test any AI GM.
• Solo Play-by-Post on Discord: A Campaign in Your Own Time covers playing at your own pace.
• Solo Roleplaying With Almost No Rules: MUNE and Freeform Play covers games that are mostly story.

What Is Fable Smith Like to Play?

Fable Smith is vivid where it matters: a world that moves, and a GM who knows what to show you. Ignore a lead and the world carries on without you, so the trouble you walked past has moved on when you come back. Ask the innkeeper about a missing courier, and he answers as a man who remembers you paid his debts last winter. You play your character, and the GM runs the rest.

Fable Smith runs your campaign in Discord, in fifth edition (5e), Draw Steel, MUNE or a freeform story with no rules system, and you play by posting, like play-by-post.

• Your character is yours. The GM never speaks, acts, thinks or feels for your character, and each post stops where you'd decide.
• Adventures are made for you. Each one is shaped by what you told it you enjoy and what you want less of, and there's still surprise in it.
• Secrets stay secret. The adventure has real secrets and a real answer, and you find them by playing, because the GM doesn't give them away.
• It remembers. The people you've met remember you, what you promised and what you owe, and the next session picks up where you left off.
• The world holds together. Names, places and facts stay put, and the world moves: people want things, and what you do has consequences.
• You rarely need to correct it. You shouldn't have to correct the GM, and when it does slip, it owns the mistake in the game and puts it right.
• You roll, and the roll stands. You roll your own dice with the Roll button under the GM's post, the /test command or the Discord dice bot you already use, and the result is judged by the rules and isn't softened.

Today you play on your own, with the GM in your own Discord channel. Fable Smith is in a free closed beta. It's slow, since a turn can take minutes, and it still makes mistakes sometimes, which is part of why it's a beta.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can an AI be a good game master?

Yes, though a model left to GM on its own tends to drift over a long campaign. A good one remembers, keeps its secrets and leaves your character to you.

Why do AI game masters forget things?

A model's recall fades as a chat grows, and it must judge what matters most each turn. That judgement is the hard part.

Why does my AI GM control my character?

A language model continues the whole story, your character included. A good GM stops each reply where your character would decide.

Can an AI game master run a mystery?

Yes, if the answer is decided before play and the clues are placed working backwards from it.

What makes Fable Smith different?

Fable Smith is vivid where it matters: a world that moves, and a GM who knows what to show you.

Is Fable Smith free?

Yes, the closed beta is free. You can join the waitlist on the Fable Smith page.

Which games does Fable Smith run?

Fable Smith runs fifth edition (5e), Draw Steel, MUNE, or a freeform story with no rules system.

How many players does Fable Smith take?

Today you play on your own, with the GM in your own Discord channel.

Want a GM whose secrets are yours to find, whose world doesn't go easy on you, and who leaves your character to you? Join the waitlist for the free closed beta on the Fable Smith page.

Sources

• Anthropic, Context windows, for how much text a model can refer back to and for its accuracy and recall degrading as that text grows.
• bg3.wiki, Tav, for Tav as the default name of a custom character and for a custom Tav having no quest of their own.
• Larian Studios, About, for the Origin characters, their backstories and personal quests, and for playing any Origin as the main character.
• PlayStation Blog, Introducing fully customizable Origin character The Dark Urge in Baldur's Gate 3, for the Dark Urge as a customisable Origin with its own story.
• PC Gamer, Jody Macgregor, Generative AI is dividing RPG fans, 25 October 2024, for reports of AI GMs forgetting, flip-flopping and trying to wrap up a combat in one reply.
• EN World forums, AI GMs, for reports of cyclical story beats, every plan working and the wrong edition's rules wording.
• TechRadar, Matt Evans, As a human D&D Dungeon Master, AI will never replace me, 2 August 2026, for mysteries needing clues seeded backwards and for every roll succeeding.
• arXiv, Shiomi et al., Tricking LLM-Based NPCs into Spilling Secrets, for research asking whether language-model characters can be talked into revealing secrets.
• D&D Beyond forums, ChatGPT is not a Good DM, for an AI taking control of a player's character and settling everything with a bare d20 roll.
• Anthropic, Towards Understanding Sycophancy in Language Models, for leading AI assistants consistently showing sycophancy.
• OpenAI, Sycophancy in GPT-4o, for an update rolled back for being "overly supportive but disingenuous".
• Friends & Fables, home page, for Franz as its AI game master.
• Friends & Fables, What makes the Friends & Fables AI game generator so good, for its claim that Franz remembers long-term details.
• Friends & Fables, Franz 2.0 patch notes, for the editable working context, the running plot summary, saved corrections and quests written by world builders.
• Friends & Fables, Patch Notes 25.39, for Franz's plan shown in each message's thoughts and players' complaints centring on memory and planning.
• Friends & Fables, Franz 2.0.1, for the warning about prolonged arguments and corrections.
• Friends & Fables help centre, Introduction, for play centring on user-created worlds.
• Aeveth, How It Plays, for Aeveth as an AI game master built on Anthropic's Claude, in early access for adults, with dice from a true randomness source, rules read live and persistent memory.
• Soliloquest, home page, for oracle rolls and moves from the Ironsworn family of oracle tables and an AI Storyteller that writes the campaign up as downloadable prose.
• The Forge & The Fable, Fable Smith, for every claim about Fable Smith.