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Rolegend and Old Greg's Tavern

Old Greg's Tavern is the faster, looser product: a one-line start, phone apps, friends for free, and an original rules system with no books behind it. Rolegend goes deeper, with fifth edition, a Virtual Tabletop, written campaigns, and a game engine that handles the dice and the game state.

Every claim about Old Greg's Tavern below links to the page it was read on. Most recent check: .
Vaelantir: the timbered inn and walled gate of Karth's Hold on a rocky bluff, torches lit at dusk, with travelers and pack mules at the door. To the left, ivied imperial ruins rise from a misted valley, and a dragon crosses an overcast sky.

What Old Greg's Tavern is

Old Greg's Tavern is an AI-run text roleplaying game playable in a browser and as native iOS and Android apps. Old Greg is the in-fiction Game Master, and the pitch is that you type one sentence and you are playing, solo or with up to five friends who pay nothing. It runs on its own original mechanics rather than a published ruleset, and sells credits and rounds rather than a monthly turn allowance.

https://www.oldgregstavern.com

What we could verify

  • Their homepage pitch is 'No DM needed. No scheduling. No rulebooks. Start a solo adventure in seconds or invite up to 5 friends for free.' (source, checked )
  • The homepage call to action reads 'Your first hour is completely free, no credit card needed'. (source, checked )
  • Their FAQ says the tavern is open 24/7 with no scheduling, that a campaign is still waiting if you return a month or a year later, and that you can play on a phone, pause mid-sentence and come back hours later. (source, checked )
  • Their terms describe the product as an independent, original digital fantasy role-playing game platform, disclaim any affiliation with Dungeons & Dragons or its rights holders, and add that 'All content, mechanics, and systems are original creations.' (source, checked )
  • Pricing is in credits and rounds: Adventurer is a $5 one-time purchase for 5 credits and 50 rounds, Hero is $15 per month for 20 credits and 200 rounds a month, and Legend is $25 per month for 45 credits and 450 rounds a month. (source, checked )
  • Their terms say credits are non-refundable except as required by law, with no refunds for partially used credits, and that credits are tied to one account and non-transferable. (source, checked )
  • Their terms take a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable licence over the content you create in the service, while you keep ownership of it. (source, checked )
  • Their safety page says the service is for players aged 18 and over, that they may ask for a date of birth to confirm it, and that sexually explicit content is prohibited. (source, checked )
  • The App Store lists the app as free to download from Old Greg's Tavern, LLC with in-app purchases from $3.99 to $49.99, including Hero at $14.99 and Legend at $24.99, and describes solo or multiplayer campaigns for up to six players with persistent NPCs and a community world browser. (source, checked )

What Old Greg's Tavern does better

  • Free seats for friends. Up to six in a campaign, and the five you invite pay nothing.
  • Native phone apps on iOS and Android.
  • Paying once. Five dollars buys 50 rounds outright.
  • Getting out of the way of the rules. If the mechanics are the part you never enjoyed, an original light system is a feature.

What Rolegend does differently

  • Play with friends or solo. A paid host seats up to 6 players at one table, the host included, and friends on the free plan can join. Each player plays their own character. When everyone is online you can play live, and the table updates every few seconds. When they are not, play async play-by-post and drop in whenever you want. In a fight each player acts on their character's turn, and an email says when the table waits for you. Alone, the paid party holds up to 6 characters that you play yourself, and the Game Master plays the companions who join you on the road; the free plan is a single character. The host picks the language that the Game Master narrates in, its tone and the length of its replies.
  • D&D 5e, named as such. The game runs on the D&D 5e SRD rather than on an original system, so a character sheet, a spell slot and a saving throw mean what they mean at a table.
  • Keystone Engine is a game engine, built apart from the AI. It handles the dice and the game state. Every roll, modifier, hit point, condition, spell slot and item is settled before ROWAN writes a word, and ROWAN gets on with the story. ROWAN cannot change a number or roll again. When your character acts, the game hands you the die to roll, and Keystone Engine adds the modifiers from your sheet.
  • Your character sheet and the world are stored as structured data, not text the model has to remember, so nothing drifts over a long campaign.
  • Async play-by-post. Write a turn at lunch, read the answer at midnight, leave it a week and pick it up mid-scene.
  • Authored campaigns with acts, beats and quests, and an ending to play toward.
  • Rolegend's Virtual Tabletop puts a fight on a battle map, with a token for every hero and every enemy, and you drag yours to move. Keystone Engine enforces movement, difficult terrain, cover, line of sight, opportunity attacks, flanking, weapon ranges and light there, and the fog of war hides anything your character cannot see. Every player at the table moves on the same map. Between fights, the map shows the region and the lay of the land in each place. A quick scuffle can also stay in the story, with no map at all.
  • On the paid plan, any Game Master turn can be read aloud, with a narrator voice and a voice of its own for each character who speaks, and you can turn on reading each new reply aloud. One click paints a scene image for a turn or a portrait of your character. You can dictate your own turn on either plan, in a browser with speech recognition (Chrome, Edge and Safari).

Pick Old Greg's Tavern if

  • You want your friends to play for free on your plan.
  • You want a native app from an app store.
  • You would rather pay five dollars once than start any kind of subscription.
  • The rules were never the appeal, and you want the story with none of the arithmetic.

Pick Rolegend if

  • You want D&D 5e itself: the SRD, with the rules enforced and the coverage published.
  • You want a game engine, built apart from the AI, to handle the dice and the game state, so a roll is never shaped by the story.
  • You want to see the battle on a Virtual Tabletop, with fog of war that follows what your character can really see.
  • You want to play with friends who drop in whenever they want, or alone at your own pace.
  • You want a written campaign with acts and an ending, rather than a scene that runs until you stop.
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Rolegend is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Old Greg's Tavern. Their name is used here only to identify their product.