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Rolegend and RoleForge

Both products put fights on a map with fog of war. RoleForge puts a hand-drawn map under every scene and offers more than one system. Rolegend adds painted battle maps for its campaign, a game engine built apart from the AI, and a table your friends join, live or async.

Every claim about RoleForge 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 RoleForge is

RoleForge is a solo-first AI Game Master platform in open alpha. It runs two fantasy rulesets through a deterministic rules engine, renders play on hand-drawn tactical maps with fog of war, and keeps world state in a database rather than in conversation memory. Co-op multiplayer and further genres are announced but not live.

https://roleforge.ai

What we could verify

  • Its features page names the live rulesets as "D&D 5E and Basic Fantasy RPG, with more rulesets coming", played solo with a deterministic rules engine. (source, checked )
  • Its FAQ names the same pair differently: "RoleForge currently supports d20 Fantasy and Old School Fantasy rulesets, with Sci-Fi, Horror, and more genres coming soon." (source, checked )
  • Its attributions page publishes CC BY 4.0 notices for SRD 5.1, SRD 5.2 and SRD 5.2.1, and a CC BY-SA 4.0 notice for Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game 4th Edition, alongside OGL and ORC notices for systems it lists as supported. (source, checked )
  • The rules and the narration are separated the same way ours are: "The rules engine resolves every roll; the AI never overrides the dice." (source, checked )
  • The maps are the headline feature: hand-drawn art with 86 terrain types, 400+ objects and 28 location styles, three-state fog of war, and darkvision shown on the map. (source, checked )
  • Combat is positional. The homepage describes attack paths with distance calculations, cover objects and real dice on a tactical grid. (source, checked )
  • Play is solo today: a single hero, a multi-character party you control, or AI mercenaries. Co-op multiplayer with friends sharing the same world is described as coming soon. (source, checked )
  • It is free during the alpha. Three future tiers are sketched on the pricing page with no prices attached, under the note that "Tier names, features, and pricing are all subject to change." (source, checked )
  • Content settings run from Family to Mature, and the Family setting is described as a hard ceiling the system enforces even if a player tries to change their preference. (source, checked )

What RoleForge does better

  • Fog of war in every scene. Their hand-drawn grids keep fog of war and darkvision outside fights too.
  • Art without asking. Hero portraits in six styles, and scene illustrations that appear at story moments on their own.
  • More than one game system published today, and more genres announced.
  • Price, today. It is free during their alpha, with every feature included.

What Rolegend does differently

  • 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.
  • We implement the System Reference Document 5.1 under CC BY 4.0, with the attribution in full at /legal/attribution.
  • Rolegend's Keystone Engine can support any system. Fifth edition is the system it plays today, built from the System Reference Document.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • Async play-by-post. Write a turn, close the tab, come back when you have another fifteen minutes.

Pick RoleForge if

  • You want fog of war and darkvision on the map in every scene, not only the fights.
  • You want portraits and scene art generated for you, without asking.
  • You want old-school fantasy as well as fifth edition on the same platform today.
  • You want to play for nothing right now and you are comfortable on an alpha while pricing is undecided.

Pick Rolegend if

  • 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 read which rules are enforced before you start a character, published section by section and dated.
  • You want to play with friends who drop in whenever they want, or alone at your own pace.
  • 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 the licensing plain: SRD 5.1, CC BY 4.0, attributed on its own page.
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Rolegend is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by RoleForge. Their name is used here only to identify their product.