Friends & Fables Updates Are on Hold Until 2027 — Where Groups Can Play Now

What did Friends & Fables announce?

Friends & Fables paused big new features until 2027. In the studio's words: “We've decided to keep the development focus on Craft and put big new F&F updates on hold until 2027.” The announcement landed alongside patch notes 26.05 on September 4, 2026.

This is not a shutdown. Friends & Fables keeps running, keeps selling subscriptions and still gets AI model updates. The studio also said it would refund anyone the pause changed things for; according to Arcanum RPGs, that means a full refund of the last month for monthly subscribers and refunds within 30 days of purchase for annual plans.

What changes is the direction of travel. Anything your group was waiting for — a fix, a feature, the finished combat revamp — is now a 2027 question at the earliest.

Why doesn't Craft solve it for groups?

Craft has no multiplayer gameplay. It reached open beta on August 5, 2026 and is a ground-up rebuild aimed at power users: you define the rules, the narrator, the memory structures and even new game systems written as code. For a solo creator who wants full control, that is an interesting product.

For a group, it is a dead end. The studio's development effort now goes to a platform your party cannot play together, while the platform you can play together stays as it is until next year. Neither of those is a bad decision for the studio. It just means a group that wants a product still moving forward has to look elsewhere.

What does a group actually need from an AI Game Master?

Solo play forgives a lot. With four or five people at the table, an AI Game Master has three jobs it cannot fudge:

• Fair rules for everyone. When dice results are resolved in code, nobody argues about whether the AI “let” one player hit. When the model invents the numbers, groups notice fast.
• Turn coordination. Five players typing at once need a round structure that collects every action and resolves them together, not a chat where the fastest typist runs the game.
• Shared memory. Every player remembers something different about last session. The Game Master has to keep the canonical version — who is poisoned, which NPC was insulted, which door is still locked.

The rest — maps, voices, images — is nice to have. Those three decide whether the group comes back next week. We cover the mechanics side in depth in how AI Dungeon Master multiplayer works.

What does playing as a group on LoreKeeper look like?

LoreKeeper was built mechanics first, narrative second: the rules engine resolves every roll server-side, and the AI narrates a result it never got to decide. For groups, the parts that matter are these:

• Up to 6 players in real time on every plan, free included. Everyone sees the narrative and the rolls as they land.
• Nobody has to subscribe. The free plan gives each player 20 daily turns with no credit card. Paid plans are EUR 7.99, 9.99 and 19.99 per month.
• D&D 5e-inspired rules in code: attack-versus-AC, saving throws, advantage and disadvantage, conditions, spell slots, initiative and death saves.
• Persistent campaigns. Characters, NPCs and world state live in the campaign, not only in the chat history, so session twelve still knows what happened in session one.
• Four languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan, for groups that do not all play in English.

For a full side-by-side on pricing, combat and world building, see LoreKeeper vs Friends & Fables and our pick of the best AI Dungeon Masters for groups.

Where does Friends & Fables still win?

Friends & Fables still has a tactical map with token movement, which LoreKeeper does not offer in the standard session. If your group plays for grid positioning, that is a real reason to stay. It also has a large, established community and a product your group already knows, and a frozen roadmap does not break anything that works today.

If your group is happy with Friends & Fables exactly as it is, there is no urgency to move. If you were waiting on something, or you are about to start a months-long campaign and want a platform that is still shipping, now is a reasonable time to try an alternative — the free plan costs nothing for anyone at the table.