AI Dungeon Master: how to play D&D with an AI DM and your friends

The most complete AI Dungeon Master for playing D&D with friends in 2026 is Friends & Fables: its AI game master, Franz, runs fifth-edition rules for parties of up to six, live or taking turns over days, with maps, battle maps, images and long-term campaign memory. It's free for 25 turns a day in a three-player campaign, and $19.95 to $39.95 a month for bigger parties. AI Dungeon is the famous name, but it's freeform storytelling rather than D&D rules, and Latitude's newer Voyage tracks game state for a more structured game. General chatbots can run a session too, but they forget details and fudge dice, and the group options are thin: ChatGPT stopped new group chats in July 2026 and Claude has none. Whatever you use, real dice and a written campaign log fix most of what goes wrong.

Key takeaways

• For D&D with a group: Friends & Fables, up to six players, built on the 5e rules.
• For freeform adventures: AI Dungeon, where a host shares a code and everyone plays on the host's model.
• Newer: Voyage, from AI Dungeon's maker, with a "World Engine" that keeps track of the game separately from the story.
• Chatbots as DMs: fine for one player; weak at keeping state and honest dice.
• The rules an AI may use: D&D's System Reference Document 5.2.1 is CC-BY-4.0, so rules text is free to use with credit; named monsters, places and characters outside it are not.

Sources: Friends & Fables pricing, AI Dungeon multiplayer help, Voyage, AI Realm, Hidden Door, the D&D SRD, opened October 30, 2026.

What is an AI Dungeon Master?

An AI that does the Dungeon Master's job: describes the world, plays every character the party meets, decides what happens when players act, and runs combat. The good ones add what a chatbot lacks: the actual game rules, character sheets, dice the AI can't overrule, maps, and a memory of the campaign that survives between sessions.

The best AI Dungeon Masters for playing with friends

• Friends & Fables (web, on desktop, tablet and phone): the closest thing to a full D&D table. Turn-based combat on 5e rules, the 5e SRD built in, top-down maps and battle maps, generated images, long-term memories on every plan and narration read aloud on paid ones. Parties of up to six can play live or asynchronously, and friends play free; the host's plan sets the size: Free (25 turns a day, three players), Starter $19.95 a month (four), Pro $29.95 (five), Legend $39.95 (six), with two months free on yearly billing. Its old Discord bot is no longer developed.
• AI Dungeon (Latitude; web, iOS and Android): freeform text adventures in any genre, not a rules engine. In multiplayer the host shares an eight-digit code, there's no hard player limit, and everyone gets the host's AI model and benefits. It has a free tier; Apple's App Store lists paid tiers from $9.99 to $49.99 a month.
• Voyage (Latitude, open beta since April 2026; web, iOS and Android): an RPG platform whose "World Engine" tracks the game's state separately from the narration, aimed at the forgetfulness of plain storytelling AIs. Public multiplayer is free.
• AI Realm (web, installable on phones): a 5e game master built on the 2014 SRD, with character creation and campaign tracking. Its roadmap mentions bringing multiplayer up to par with single-player, so check how well group play works before a session night.
• Hidden Door: free story worlds based on public-domain books, with social games, rather than D&D.
• Character.AI group chats: several people and several AI characters in one chat. Good for role-play; no rules or dice.

Can ChatGPT or Claude be your Dungeon Master?

For one player, yes: give it the setting, your character sheet and the rules you want, and it will run a scene. For a group it's harder. OpenAI stopped new ChatGPT group chats on July 9, 2026 (what happened to ChatGPT group chats), and Claude has never had one, so one person ends up typing for the table. Other places a group can talk to one AI are in how to group chat with AI and your friends.

What goes wrong with AI Dungeon Masters?

Players report the same three problems:

• It forgets. A character's race changes, an item vanishes, a villain's motive drifts between sessions. Fix: keep a campaign log the AI rereads each session (party, inventory, open threads, what each NPC knows), and end each session by asking it to update the log.
• It says yes to everything. AI models are trained to be agreeable, so players invent items and the world bends. Fix: tell it plainly that it should refuse impossible actions and that failure is part of the game.
• It fudges the dice. Models invent rolls, skew them in the players' favor and forget modifiers. Fix: roll real dice, a dice app or a bot like Avrae and type the result in, or use a tool whose dice run in code, as Friends & Fables' do.

What can an AI Dungeon Master use from D&D?

The rules in Wizards of the Coast's System Reference Document 5.2.1 are licensed CC-BY-4.0: anyone may use them, commercially too, with attribution (D&D Beyond). The SRD leaves out some of D&D's own creations, such as the Beholder and characters like Strahd and Tiamat, and the D&D Beyond Basic Rules aren't licensed for reuse. So a tool can run the rules; your table can bring whatever it likes from books it owns.

Wizards itself offers no AI Dungeon Master. Its 2023 policy asks artists not to use generative AI in D&D products, and D&D staff who began unionizing in October 2026 asked leadership to keep generative AI out of the creative work.

Playing in a Poly room

Poly (usepoly.co) isn't a D&D app, but it solves the group problem the chatbots have: friends share one room with one AI, Claude, GPT, Grok or Muse, everyone sees every message as it happens, and anyone can speak to it. A group chat beside the conversation is for table talk the AI never reads. Because the AI works in a shared workspace, it can keep the campaign log as a file it rereads every session, draw scenes and portraits, and build the party a dice roller or character sheets they all use in the live preview. Free to start, and only the people who prompt the AI pay. Poly for friends.

Which should you use?

• A D&D campaign with friends, rules and all: Friends & Fables.
• Freeform stories in any genre, any group size: AI Dungeon.
• A structured game that remembers more, on your phone: try Voyage's beta.
• Your own homebrew, with an AI everyone can talk to and tools you build together: a Poly room.
• A human DM who wants help: any chatbot for prep, NPC voices and descriptions, with the dice and decisions kept at the table.