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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to A state-based narrative engine for tabletop RPGs

I’m experimenting with modeling tabletop RPG adventures as explicit narrative state rather than linear scripts. Everdice is a small web app that tracks conditional scenes and choice-driven state transitions to preserve continuity across long or asynchronous campaigns. The core contribution is explicit narrative state and causality, not automation. The real heavy lifting is happening in the DM Toolkit/Run Sessions area, and integrates CAML (Canonical Adventure Modeling Language) that I developed to transport narratives among any number of platforms. I also built the npm CAML-lint to…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    An RPG with random generated elements.

    2015 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Historical turn-based tactical RPG

    2017 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    An adictive roleplaying stacking puzzle

    2015 · gridland.doublespeakgames.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Like writing a series of adventure books

    2016 · gadgetsprimer.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5RA

    This is a project that I have been working on in my spare time for a while now. It's a new virtual tabletop for playing pen and paper role playing games online, but it takes an entirely different approach than anything out there right now. Rather than trying to turn pen and paper games into video games, with features centered around one-click damage calculations and detailed stats tracking, Roll20 focuses on storytelling. It has completely new features like background music, player journals, and an expansive art library with a built-in web search. The entire system runs on NodeJS, Padrino,…

    2012 · kickstarter.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Hi everyone! Want to share something I'm working on. Here is the brief description: From a single text prompt, craft dynamic worlds (both fictional and real-life, of any kind) filled with interacting NPCs pursuing goals, and control (human-in-the-loop) their behaviour and world state in real-time. Text-to-image to visualise every single step of change in the world's and NPC's state. My main goal was to check if it's possible to use LLMs (GPT-4 currently) to make characters interact with each other but in the end, it ended up with a neat little app where users can interfere with NPC's (and…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Hi I've created a text-based RPG game in which you can experience different adventures and play interesting characters while the AI acts as a real time DM/story teller. There are multiple ways to interact with AI: 1) Input free will move 2) Input default move (affects resources) 3) Post a question to DM Also one more cool feature is that you can create your own adventure via simple form. Add scenes, add characters and make it public so other players are able to test it. I also plan to have 'competetive' side where players will pay some small fee to creators in crypto depending on…

    2023 · landing.v3rpg.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8OS

    Hi HN! I'd love your feedback for this AI storytelling game. Remember when you used to read choose-your-own adventure books as a kid? We're trying to re-create that. The site lets you create adventures by seeding them with parameters that end up feeding LLMs: title, genre, writing style, etc. Once you've done that, you can play your book like a game: with custom chapters, illustrations, voice narration, choices, and dice rolls. We’re really into the idea of merging the open-ended generative AI with goal-directed story arcs that the game author can control. Everything is open source (links…

    2023 · ai-adventure.steamship.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9BA

    rts-blog : A blog about creating an RTS in WebGL

    2017 · emnh.github.io · its alternatives →

  10. 10ED

    This has been my secret pleasure for the past four years. Ever since I started playing D&D during the pandemic, I discovered my love for role playing and storytelling, but Beyond just wasn't cutting it for me. I wanted to make my own personal character creator and tracker that I could use for my games, so I set out to build Dwarven Academy (https://dwarven.academy/) and after two years of learning I decided to rebuild it all from the ground up, so The Elder Dragon's Tavern was born. Try it out at https://elderdragonstavern.com/ This is an app to build and track…

    2024 · elderdragonstavern.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Shape your own adventure with dynamic AI-driven storytelling

    2025 · expireddomains.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hello everyone! I've finally finished my latest side project - a RPG game made in Blazor. It started as a small project to learn some Blazor (I'm .NET dev but kept mainly to backend and ASP.NET). I had such a good time coding it that at some point I decided to make a full featured game out of it. I might've have bitten off more that I could chew as RPGs have so many systems and elements but overall I think it worked out well, especially for a single person project. I want to hop on the next project soon so any comments/questions/tips than can make me better really appreciated!

    2024 · whimsicalwyrm.itch.io · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Hey everyone, I built this project because I always wanted to try playing D&D but couldn’t find a group of friends or a DM to play with. It’s still early stages and not meant to be a complete replacement for real DMs or IRL sessions, but it’s a good way to dip your toes into DnD or to play on your phone between your IRL sessions. I tried playing D&D with ChatGPT but the overall experience was lacking, so I built this site & Discord bot that has a character sheet tool, better memory management, support for multiplayer, and automatic tracking for things like spells, HP, and encounters. Try it…

    2023 · fables.gg · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Text-based D&D you can play solo, online, or by post

    Jun 2026 · realmofeverdice.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15EA

    Hey HN, Endless Adventure is a DOS-style text adventure game that lets you explore any story you can imagine. It should feel like it came from an alternate universe where we developed LLMs in the 80s. No login needed so you should just stop reading this and go play with it yourself! I’ve poured a lot of love into both the UI and the storytelling engine that powers it. Everything looks simple, but behind the scenes there is a lot of work to keep context, move the story forward, and maintain state for things that are never explicitly exposed (e.g. inventory, karma, quests, NPCs, etc). I…

    2025 · endlessadventure.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    The RPG that writes itself.

    Jul 2026 · enter-nexus.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    I wanted to learn more about RAG implementations, so I built something to solve the constant digging through manuals whenever we play a game. It's fairly simplistic, but actually has worked pretty well for some of these conflicts. Everythings Open Source on GitHub if you're curious (or have ideas), and I'd love to hear feedback from fellow boardgamers!

    2024 · gamegame.ai · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Hi, I’ve been working on Artifacts for the past 2 years, and it’s now ready to try. It’s a sandbox MMORPG where every action is done through a REST API. Instead of clicking to move, fight, gather, craft, or trade, you write code to control your characters. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, I’d be happy to hear them.

    Jun 2026 · artifactsmmo.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    I'm working on the Survival Crafting RPG that you would have played on your Apple II back in the '80s. You can think of it as Valheim's gameplay crammed into the tile-based UI of the old Ultima games. It has a procedurally-generated open world with towns and NPCs to talk to, all the resource gathering, mining, crafting stuff you'd expect in a modern survival game, and some good old fashioned dungeon crawling to boot. I've been working on it off and on for the last several months. It's complete up through the Bronze Age (in Valheim terms). Let me know what you think!…

    May 2026 · stravaeger.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Infinite AI RPG adventures shaped by your choices

    Jul 2026 · endlessfantasyapp.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    AI-powered solo RPG where your dice rolls shape the story

    Nov 2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Vampiro Life is a dedicated AI Storyteller for Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. Play rules-true chronicles with Hunger, Humanity, dice pools, persistent memory, and a living World of Darkness. Start your dark story tonight.

    Jul 2026 · vampirolife.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    I've been working on a browser-based programming game where you write bots to explore procedurally generated dungeons in any WebAssembly-compatible language. It's like a minimalist roguelike where your character's brain is a program you write. There are pre-made libraries for C, Rust, Zig, Go, and AssemblyScript. The game mechanics are intentionally simple for now, but the challenge comes from building up your bot's understanding of the world from limited local information. Your code needs to handle mapping, pathfinding, and strategy while dealing with monsters and potentially hostile other…

    2025 · shaneliesegang.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    I’ve been building LLM tooling for a small VC fund and found myself explaining the same mental model over and over to non-technical people around me: how a stateless LLM becomes a chatbot, how tool use works, what an agent is mechanically, and why context windows shape all of it. I never found a guide that covered that full chain at the level I wanted, so I wrote one. It’s nine short chapters, each building on the last. Deliberately simplified: the goal is a useful mental model, not a textbook. Feedback, corrections, and contributions welcome: github.com/ymyke/aiaiai

    Apr 2026 · aiaiai.guide · its alternatives →

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