Quick patch notes - have a larger Dev Log coming out right after this so make sure to read that!

• Credit History descriptions now show a preview of the attached generated image or event.

• Fixed an issue where GLM would sometimes generate blank responses.

• You can now bulk delete entities from the workshop by using command/control + click to multi select and then delete.

Hey adventurers,

Before we get into the Creator Spotlight winners, just wanted to let you know that we’re working on some big projects and updates that take some more time to cook to get right. We don’t have an ETA yet but will share some more news as soon as we can! Now back to the creator spotlight:

The gears have finally cooled on our January 2026 Creator Spotlight, and the results are in! This month’s theme was Steampunk, and wow—what a showing. From clockwork cities to smoke-choked skylines, all worlds that properly captured the pulse of industry have now been ranked. Judging was incredibly difficult thanks to the sheer creativity on display, but the winners have officially been decided!

Entries were judged on creativity, originality, visual presentation, and gameplay, with special attention given to the unique approach each world took to convey the pressure, progress, and spectacle of a clockwork age. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped make this event such a success!

1st Place

Blood Aria by Kewl

Excellent game! Loved playing as Seraphel Veyne. I played as a mole within the Ascendency who was doing what he could to take it down from the inside. I started off at the Rustbone Docks and saved a little girl from Dusters who were going to erase her for being hazardous. From there I began to build an organization outside the Ascendency to help me topple it. This game is easy to get lost in and I loved it so much that I almost forgot that I was playing it just to review it! All of the art in the game is beautifully made, and everything is so thematic. The characters are vibrant and give a lot of life to the game. This is definitely going to be a staple in the Friends & Fables featured worlds. Be sure to give it a play! You won't be disappointed!

2nd–5th Place Winners

Shout-out to the next four worlds that powered their way into the winner circle:

Otome Punk by solodit

Another beautiful world by Solodit! I love the art, it was so eye catching, and the story is so original it really caught me off guard. I started off the game as a cat and my goal from then on was to get a wedding ring from a lady or else I'd be stuck as a cat! It was a real trip! Unique landmasses floating in a sea of clouds, vibrant and diverse steampunk themed locations, and a wild storyline that's a romance adventure unlike any other you'll ever play anywhere else.

The Gilded Grove by areelu

The first thing that we all noticed was the map. Well done Areelu! The Spine Mountains are amazing, and pretty much the main destination I headed to when I started the game off in the Rig-Rafts. Franz was delightful in the play through. The Skimmer who took me to the Spine Mountains was named "Franz" solely because that name has been "floating around a lot lately."

The Clockwork Paradox by treedaddy

I love the story for this one! Your timeline has been erased because it's corrupted, and you are the only thing preserved. You are then left as the last remnant of your timeline to start a new life put to work in Prime Meridian. Unit 77-B was really fun to chat with, and I absolutely love his mustache. Definitely play this game if you want to have some fun starting a brand new life. It's easy to slowly pull yourself into the direction of a timeline bounty hunter or someone who wants to fix their timeline and bring everything back to the way it once was.

Steam Noir by canknightlife

A fun adventure where your job is to solve a Steampunk Noir mystery. Right from the start Franz guided Inspector Calder Vane towards a mystery and created a plot direction and clues to get the game rolling. If you need a break from normal action/adventure games, give this Steampunk Noir game a try, I'm sure you'll have fun! I can tell that the world builder put a lot of work into this game, as it is filled with art that follows a particular theme, as well as a wide range of items, classes, spells to pick from. When I saw almost 700 custom items, my eyes nearly fell out of my head. Great job on this one!

Thank you to everyone who entered!

Hofferson Empire by damien the malkav

Great game! I can tell a lot of work was put into this submission. Love the custom art, spells and monsters. This would have made it into the top 5 worlds, but I had to be fair for the world builders who only had a month to prepare since your game was 143 days old.

To Rule the Ashes by BCorrente

I love the world and the art, but unfortunatley there were so many missing descriptions that it wasn’t playable just yet. I can definitely see a lot of effort was put into this. I can’t wait to see how you finish this one!

The Land of Beautiful Corpses by AimlessGeeks

Love how you do your maps and the story was very unique for a steampunk adventure! I know you were sick this month, I hope you’re feeling better! Don’t push yourself too much!

Haven XVII by The Entire Population of Uranus

Great game, the art was very consistent and fun to look through. I also like how much effort you put into the lore. I think this one was very close to the top 5 pick.

Brassfeil by candyman7649

Lot’s of work was put into this one. I love how much thought was put into the map and locations. Starting off as a detective in the Police Station was a lot of fun, and I love how you set up the opening to get the player directly into the game. This one was another that was very close to the top 5. Great work!

Blasphemy! by RustyMart

Love the art, but the consistency could use a little bit of work. The map was excellent and I loved looking around!

Lurruna by chromaticchimera

Great effort, I can tell that you thought quite a lot about this world as you were building it, and that’s because I’m looking through the lore you put together! Well done!

Astron Cogsworks by Lord_Kaijin

Thank you for your submission!

Saccharum Crown by lovereid911

Excellent map, and very unique story idea.You did a great job with your world! Starting in the special cargo pens was a very fun experience.

Stranded by .snickt.

Love the map design with the area blocks, but because all the POIs were around the same area in Alpha town I wasn’t able to experience the blocks. It would have been awesome to see some lore for this game! Great job!

The Belldeep Coast by KingTrex101

Love the map, I saw that there were some missing descriptions for several regions, but the playable areas where you start are all in good zones. The Cog & Cauldron is a classic start in a bar.

This was our second Creator Spotlight Competition, and it really proved how much momentum this community has. If you built, played, liked, shared, or hyped up someone else’s world—thank you. That energy is what keeps the engines running.

If you haven’t already, jump into some of these worlds and show them some love. A single like can mean a lot to a creator.

Happy adventuring,
Friends & Fables

Creator Spotlight: Steampunk

The age of brass and breakthroughs is here! January 2026 kicks off Friends & Fables’ Creator Spotlight Competition with a Steampunk theme. The goal is for participants to create a world that captures the pulse of industry. Think hissing steam lines, clattering gears, smoky skylines, and bold invention. Whether your world is adventurous, mysterious, whimsical, or grim, it should make players feel the pressure, progress, and spectacle of a clockwork age as they play. Be sure to read the rules to make sure you qualify!

Contest Details

Theme: Steampunk / Clockwork Industry

Tone Keywords: Brass, Steam, Invention, Cogs, Wonder

Prizes

1st Place: 10,000 Credits, Top Creator Reddit Flair, Top Creator Discord Role & World Featured until Feb 28

2nd–5th Place: 2,000 Credits each, Creator Spotlight Winner Reddit Flair

All Qualified Entries: 100 Credits

Honorable Mentions

These are awards granted to participants who didn't place in the top 5, but still impressed the judges enough! Only a handful of worldbuilders will receive these awards, and only if you didn't place in the top 5!

Runner Up!: +900 Bonus Credits granted to participants who did such a good job that they almost made it into the top 5!

Aesthetics Award!: +150 Bonus Credits granted to participants who stunned the judges with beautiful and consistent art!

Map Design Award!: +150 Bonus Credits granted to participants with the most amazing maps and polygon lines!

Story Award!: +150 Bonus Credits granted to participants who created a unique and original story that impressed the judges!

Rules

• You must be part of the Friends & Fables Discord to participate.

• Your world’s theme must clearly fit the Steampunk / Clockwork Industry theme.

• Worlds must have a minimum of 10 Points of Interest.

• Worlds must have a minimum of 10 Characters (with at least 1 Featured Character.)

• No NSFW or copyrighted material.

• Collaboration is allowed (credits go to the listed creator).

• Worlds must clearly have been made for the purpose of this event. Submissions of older worlds or copies of other creator's worlds will not be considered in the judging.

Judging Criteria

Judging will begin on January 31st and will be based on:

1. Creativity & Originality [Is it unique and engaging?]

2. Visual Presentation [Is it consistent and appealing?]

3. Gameplay [Is it fun, clear, and playable?]

Submissions:

Submissions open January 2, 2026

Submissions close January 31, 2026 11:59pm EST

You must share your world on the Friends & Fables subreddit and complete the Submission Form below to enter. On Reddit, submissions should have the Event Submission flair so that they can be searched by the judges on January 31st.

Winners of the January 2026 Creator Spotlight will be announced on Friday, February 6, 2026.

Submission Form

Reddit Submission

Happy Holidays to everyone! This is patch notes 25.52. Can you believe we’ve put out 52 patch notes this year? That’s one per week! Friends & Fables is almost unrecognizable from where it was a year ago, and we’re so excited to put in the updates we have planned for 2026, but more on that later. For now, let’s get into the new updates!

New Narration Models: MiMo and GLM 4.7

First up, MiMo is a new lightweight model that is replacing Finch. It has similar speeds to Finch but it’s smarter with intelligence nearly on par with Fenix, and a fairly different narration style. We recommend using MiMo if you want to try a new narration style, or if you just want some quicker turns. MiMo is included in all subscription plans as an unlimited standard model and will cost 1 credit per turn for those on the free plan.

Next up is GLM 4.7. We’ve been looking for a model that fits in between Fenix and Gemini 3 Pro. We had tested a few models with alpha testers, but none seem to really fit. We’re still not quite sure about GLM 4.7, but the reaction in alpha has been good enough that we’re going to roll it out to everyone to get more feedback. Depending on the feedback, the model may stay or be removed in a future update. So far it seems GLM is smarter than Fenix, but is also more cost efficient than Gemini 3 Pro. It costs 2 credits per turn as a premium narration model.

Please give both of these models a shot and let us know what you think!

New Image Models: GPT-Image-1.5 and Flux-2

We’re also rolling out two new image generation models! GPT-image-1.5 is a fantastic image model that is really good at consistent characters and styles. This makes it really good for scene generation! Quality is close to Nano Banana Pro but at 1/3rd of the cost! GPT-Image-1.5 costs 9 credits per use.

Here’s an example of gpt-image-1.5’s scene generation in Shifting Sands by Angusi.

There are a variety of Flux-2 models, but we found Flux 2 Flash to be a great option to efficiently edit images. It’s great for simpler tasks, such as replacing hair color or adding a weapon, etc. In edit mode, it costs only 3 credits to use, making it the most affordable model for editing. We’ve also included Flux 2 Pro for when you need a little more fire power.

Other Fixes and Improvements

Image Studio

• You can now generate more images while waiting for an existing one to generate in Image Studio

• Added aspect ratio pickers to image to image tabs in Image Studio

• Image model pickers will remember the last one you used

• Adds premium image generation to all forms and Generate with AI

Other

• Fixed an issue where updating a character with OOC mode would reset other non specified values.

• Fixed an issue where syncing classes with resources was failing.

• Fixed an issue where you could not remove an equip slot from an item.

• Fixed an issue where you could not two hand equip versatile weapons from the inventory screen.

• Fixed an issue where subclass features were displayed out of level order.

• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t edit the level required on features.

• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t remove a feat from a character.

• Fixed an issue where some players could not save workshop class resources.

• Fixed an issue where moving the party to a location was not refreshing the POI map view.

• You can now click cmd/ctrl + z to undo a point when drawing areas in the map editor.

• Made errors in the quest form more specific.

• Updated SRD item, monster, and spell art.

• Improved accuracy of AI spell slot consumption when casting a spell.

What’s Next

In 2025, our goal was to build the V1 of the platform. We set out to get early versions of every major piece in place so we could establish a strong foundation and understand how everything fits together. Building out world-building tools, feats and features, the image studio, and more meant that we had to split time on building the platform and building out Franz.

Going into 2026, we’ve got the foundation in place, tons of valuable feedback from you all, some new tech to play with, and the room to truly focus on making the game master experience the best it can be. Our goal for 2026 is to get Franz to a place where everything just works and feels intuitive. Core interactions—like HP updates or NPC combat turns—should be clear and reliable, leaving room for debate only on subjective, creative decisions. From both a narrative and combat perspective, we want the experience to feel seamless, grounded, and satisfying.

None of this would be possible without this community. The passion, creativity, and support you’ve shown truly mean the world to us. We’re constantly in awe of what you create, and we only wish we had more time to build even more for you. Thank you for being part of this journey.

Wishing everyone a happy new year—we’re incredibly excited to show you what’s coming in 2026.

Hey adventurers,

The snow has finally settled on our Winter Creator Spotlight event, and the results are in! This month’s theme was the Winter and Christmas Season. All worlds that properly represented the theme have been ranked.

It was a very difficult decision because we saw so many beautiful entries, but we have officially crowned our first-place winner! Our judging was based on creativity, originality, visual presentation, and gameplay.

Thank you to everyone who participated!

🥇 1st Place (10,000 Credits)

Huge congratulations to:

Hizume — Christmas Eve 1987
Play the world

An absolutely beautiful world. What stood out most to the judges was the consistent art and the unique game concept that fit the theme. It was a lot of fun to playtest, and it was clear that Solodit went above and beyond the base participation requirements.

The starting location scripts and lore also helped Franz set the scene very well. This was a very impressive world!

🥈 2nd–5th Place Winners (1,000 Credits)

Shout-out to the next four worlds that landed in the winner circle:

❄️ Winter Reverie

Play the world

Loony's Winter Reverie was a serious contender for 1st place. It was absolutely beautifully done! The art just screamed Christmas and Winter.

The simple Custom Instruction helped keep the gameplay feeling jovial and festive. It was clear that a lot of work was put into this game!

If you come across the mayor, be sure to check any nearby trees for Christmas Day sabotage!

⚙️ The Aether-Yule Spire

Play the world

A Winter/Christmas-themed steampunk world built by Areelu! This one was released early, and I remember looking through the map and early art — it was stunning.

I loved the idea and the unique setting! When playing, I chose to be the Winter Baron, but instead of punishing the naughty, I went around giving gifts and fixing problems around the Steam Slums.

🏔️ Niflheimar

Play the world

Frozz really shocked the judges with the art in Niflheimar. It looked like everything was made using the free in-game art generators and really showed off what the base Friends & Fables generators can do.

I was personally blown away when I realized that everything — even the spell art — was made in the same theme! The map was very well put together, and playing as a giant was definitely a lot of fun.

🍪 Knights of Xmas

Play the world

Knights of Xmas was created by TheScryer, and their characters were some of the best. Aaron Yogurt was my favorite — not just because he was a front-facing featured character, but because he looked like a classic hero… if that hero were a gingerbread cookie.

When playing Knights of Xmas, look for Sora if you want to adopt a cat. You won’t be sorry!

🎁 Participation Rewards

All other participants received 300 credits for entering!

Thank you to everyone who entered!

This was our first-ever Creator Spotlight Competition, and the creativity on display was seriously inspiring. Whether you played, built, liked, shared, or cheered people on — thank you. That’s how a community stays warm, even in winter.

We’ve featured all of the winning worlds on the home page! If you haven’t yet, hop into the winners’ worlds and drop some love. A quick like goes a long way.

Happy holidays! ❄️🎄

Happy adventuring,
Friends & Fables

• When in continue mode, you can now click cmd/ctrl + enter to trigger Franz’s next response instead of clicking the send button.

• Fixed the sorting for popular and new spells on the discover page.

• Added being able to mention @resources, feats, subclasses, and features in world lore pages.

• Fixed an issue where the DC of the skill check roll could be different than the DC Franz mentioned in text.

• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t delete campaigns that had hidden extra spaces in their titles.

• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t clone the SRD fighter or rogue classes from the discover tab.

• Fixed an issue where the next credits date on the account page could be off by one due to time zones.

• Fixed an issue where ending encounters were hitting errors.

• Fixed an issue where in some previously created worlds you couldn’t add new POIs.

• Fixed an issue where sometimes Franz would fail to create context blocks after performing research.

• Fixed an issue where Franz would sometimes not correctly reference research in OOC mode.

• Fixed an issue where you could not see form errors in certain cases when generating spells with AI.

• Fixed an issue where you could not export SRD items from a world to your workshop.

• Fixed an issue syncing classes or characters to campaigns with the same existing feature names or resources.

• Added better error messaging for when a lore sync would exceed the maximum page limit.

• Updated memory creation to truncate and create partial memories for when AI tries to create memories that would otherwise fail due to exceeding limits.

• Fixed bug where cover images are replaced by map images when editing the shape of an area via the map editor.

Group Rolls

We know this has been a problem for a while, but we have finally gotten around to improving group rolls. When Franz requests rolls from you and other characters in your party, you can now click “Roll All” or handle individual rolls for NPCs. Franz will continue once all rolls are pressed or dismissed.

Profile Bio, Follows, and Notifications

As we continue to grow the platform, a big part of it will be improving the ways new published content is surfaced and awarding and recognizing creators who contribute and make it all possible. This update is a small one that sets up some of the foundations for that in the future.

In your public profile, you can now add a bio and see your total likes across all published content. You can now also follow and unfollow other players. For now, following is only used to show support for your favourite creators, but in the future will be used so you can get notifications whenever they publish new content or make updates to your favourite worlds.

In app notifications are now also viewable. For now this supports notifying you when your content was liked, when you got new followers, or when you received credits. We’ll be adding more notification types and controls in the future.

Image Studio

• You can now bulk select to download and delete multiple images from the image gallery. To select multiple images hold down the shift button while clicking or tap and hold on mobile.

• You can now browse your image studio generations via any form by clicking the “Browse” button from the image picker.

Other Changes & Improvements

• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t remove the last monster spawn in an area.

• Fixed an issue where SRD monsters where showing in the area monster select when SRD defaults were turned off.

• Fixed an issue where SRD feats were showing up in the workshop.

• Fixed SRD Armors granting double dex modifier bonuses.

• Improved the spell selector in the class form. You can now preview the spells and more easily view and select many spells at a time.

• Sorts and filters were added to the discover tabs and other grids in game, so you can now quickly filter worlds by theme or popularity. Items and monsters can be further filtered by their types, sizes, or rarities.

• Added quick background removal on images across all forms

• Improved Franz’s contextual understanding of how to handle failed rolls

• Added a requirement for host to roll initiative, this prevents the encounter from being generated twice when multiple players click it at the same time

What’s coming Next

We’ll continue fixing issues and adding QoL features in upcoming patches but this will probably be the last big “platform” type update in a while as we focus on improving the campaign experience in the next big updates.

Now that the fundamental pieces of the platform are mostly there, we’ll really be able to turn our attention back to the core experience: Combat, narration, memory. We’ve been making steady updates over the years, but they’ve always been a bit rushed as we’ve had so many other features to build. We’ve learned a lot from past iterations and this time we’re going to take our time and really try to nail these aspects of the game for you all. Please stay tuned. As always, thank you all for playing and supporting friends & fables!

Hey Friends,

We're kicking December off with another big update! In this one we're releasing credit packs, background removal, a brand new image to image model, and have some QoL updates you all have been asking for.

Credit Packs

Early feedback on our premium features has been really great. We know many of you want to keep using these features, so we're making credit packs available to purchase! You can see the pricing below.

We know some players don't like additional in-app purchases (we don't like them either), but we decided to use this system for three main reasons:

• People who want to access stronger and more expensive models that would otherwise be completely unavailable on F&F can do so without raising subscription prices more for everyone. The premium models and features we are offering are really expensive to run at scale.

• People who play periodically now have an option to play without a subscription.

• It allows us to provide new features that would otherwise have been too expensive to include like scene generation and image editing. The credits allow us to provide limited usage to all players rather than these features being completely non-existent otherwise.

The standard Friends & Fables experience is unchanged and will only keep getting better, even if you never buy any credits! AI is getting smarter, faster, and cheaper very quickly. Gemini Pro 3 might be too expensive right now for us to include in standard, but over time it's likely we'll be able to include it or something just as smart in standard.

Lastly, don't forget that subscriptions come with monthly bonus credits that stack. From your profile page you can now see when you’ll receive your next batch of credits on your renewal date. These monthly credits gives everyone some room to try out the latest and greatest!

Background Removal

You can now use Image Studio to remove backgrounds! We've added a new tab to the Image Studio where you can upload an image, or just click the button in the top right of any existing image to remove the background! Your original image will stay intact and a new image with the background removed will show up. This feature costs 1 credit.

Seedream 4.5

We're introducing another premium image model you can start using today! We've found Seedream 4.5 to be incredibly capable when it comes to image to image tasks like Scene Generation. It's almost as good as Nano Banana Pro, but at 1/3rd of the price (12 credits)! It's a great option that sits in between the two Nano Banana models.

It’s really good at bringing over character and location details from reference images, but it has a tendency to look a little more video-game / realistic with its depth of field. Here’s an example of Riven Thatchmere from Odrun Fell in Crackline Alley.

It is now the new default for scene generation and also available in Image Studio for text to image and image editing.

Area and Point of Interest Tabs are Back!

We promise we're still looking at older requests in our feedback portal! It's been harder to do that the last couple of months with some of these bigger updates, but we're getting back into the swing of doing more QoL updates. Anyway, by popular request, we are bringing Areas and Points of interest tabs back in the World/Campaign screens!

Changes to our Referral Program

Unfortunately we’ve found that the sign up referral system has kept being abused since we’ve been rolling out premium generation features, so as of today we are no longer granting sign up referral credits.

However, the 1,000 credit subscription referral is still in effect and should still be a great incentive to share Friends & Fables. Post a link to your world somewhere and who knows, someone might subscribe after clicking it!

You can read more about the referral program here.

Bug Fixes and QoL Updates

• Fixed an issue where you were unable to save SRD classes exported to the workshop after the class features update. If you exported an SRD class to the workshop, please delete it from your workshop and then re-export it. Updating will work again after re-exporting.

• Fixed an issue where all the SRD class hit dice were displaying as 8 in the discover page.

• Fixed an issue causing deletion errors on worlds with many lore pages.

• Fixed an issue causing exporting to workshop to fail on some entities like SRD classes.

• Optimized and made cloning worlds faster, also increased the timeout limits for very large worlds which were previously causing clone errors. We want to optimize this even more in the future, but for now it should be faster and workable again for the largest of worlds.

• In the lore page editor you can now mark text as spoiler text so it's not immediately visible to players. Franz can still read text marked as spoilers.

• Improved form error messages when fields are missing or incomplete.

• Increased the time out limit on Gemini 3 Pro since it's a slower model. If there's heavy load, you can expect for the response to take up to a minute before it may re-route to Fenix if it completely errors out.

• Fixed an issue where grid cards would have weird widths or overlap.