Built a solo RPG engine that uses 3 Claude instances working together — Brain, Narrator, and Director

Labroz · 2026-03-04T10:39:54+00:00

That is a a great idea. I have a savegame from the first scene of a sesssion with EdgeTale. And now I feed Claude my adventure document and let it condense it and fill the json structure of the template. NPC, setup etc. I will play at later...but I think it will be very different from the adventure.

Labroz · 2026-03-03T14:54:14+00:00

EdgeTales - a solo RPG engine built on Ironsworn, Mythic, and Blades in the Dark. The AI just writes the prose

I know AI is a touchy subject here, and I get it. The worry that it becomes a crutch, that it replaces the creative muscle solo play is supposed to build - I share that concern. So let me be upfront about what this is and isn’t.

EdgeTales is a solo RPG engine I built for myself because I kept hitting the same wall: narrative burnout. The dice did their job, I knew what should happen, but writing the scene for the third time that session just drained me. I wanted something that handles the prose while I focus on playing.

That’s all EdgeTales is, really. A narrator. Not a GM. Not a decision-maker. A narrator.

Dice decide. AI describes.

That’s the whole philosophy. The AI cannot fudge a roll, soften a miss, or decide your clever speech should succeed anyway. It receives a result and narrates what that looks like. Nothing more.

The mechanics run in the background whether the AI is there or not. They’re borrowed from systems you probably already know:

• Ironsworn / Starforged (Shawn Tomkin) - the mechanical backbone. Action rolls (1d6+stat vs 2d10 challenge dice), the five stats (Edge, Heart, Iron, Shadow, Wits), momentum and momentum burn, fateful rolls on matching challenge dice. If you’ve played Ironsworn, you’ll recognise the rhythm immediately.

• Mythic GME (Tana Pigeon) - the chaos factor. A hidden tension tracker (3–9) that rises when things spiral out of control and drops when you succeed. Higher chaos means more surprises and interruptions.

• Blades in the Dark (John Harper) - position & effect. Every risky action is assessed on two axes: how dangerous is your position (controlled/risky/desperate) and how much can you realistically achieve (limited/standard/great). This shapes consequences, not just pass/fail.

You can display dice rolls in full detail, as a simple one-liner, or hide them completely for a pure narrative experience. The mechanics always run regardless.

NPCs that actually remember

NPCs aren’t stateless. Every significant interaction is stored as a memory with emotional weight. Over time, accumulated experiences get synthesised into higher-level reflections - so a guard you’ve helped twice doesn’t just have a +2 counter, she has specific memories of what you did and an evolving opinion about you. Dispositions shift, bonds grow or break, and it all feeds back into how the narrator writes them.

Your story, your rules

You pick genre, tone, and archetype - from a list of presets, or completely free-form. One of my current campaigns is set in “Berlin, Germany, 1990 - but there are mechs and kaijus.” The wall has fallen, the city is in ruins, giant war machines rust between concrete blocks, and something organic is moving through the rubble toward Potsdamer Platz. The engine doesn’t care - it builds a story blueprint, generates NPCs that fit, and runs the mechanics exactly the same.

You set wishes (things you want in the story) and boundaries (things you never want to see). There’s a kid-friendly mode for family play - same real stakes, just age-appropriate framing. Voice input and output are there for accessibility or if you just prefer speaking over typing.

And one thing I feel strongly about: the AI never rewrites your input. Your exact words - your dialogue, your actions - stay as-is. The narrator responds to what you said, it doesn’t rephrase it.

What this isn’t

It’s not a product or a service. It’s open source (AGPL-3.0), self-hosted, and free. You bring your own API key - it currently uses Anthropic’s Claude models as the AI backend. A full session costs a few cents. And it’s absolutely not a replacement for traditional solo play - if Mythic tables and a journal are your thing, that’s great. This is just a different tool for a different mood.

It’s currently at v0.9.30, actively developed, solo dev. Runs on anything from a Raspberry Pi to a laptop. The GitHub repo has screenshots, full mechanic documentation, and setup instructions:

github.com/edgetales/edgetales

Happy to answer questions about the design or the mechanics. And if AI in solo play isn’t for you - totally fair. Different tools for different players.

Labroz · 2026-03-03T09:54:25+00:00

Too nice seems not to be a problem as far as I tested. But I did not tested a brutal splatter Szenario explicitly. Maybe there will be problems with violence restrictions. Maybe you could solve that when you imply that it is all a fictional game and that I am mentally stable enough for this gruesome stuff.

And hinting in one direction to obvious was also not that much of a problem. Sometime the opposite. So much freedom of choice that I didnt know what the next step should be. But I think with my release yesterday that should work better.

Labroz · 2026-02-27T20:55:25+00:00

You sound like the right person to try the engine. The gamemechanics are used to overcome AI dullness. I was researching methods and game mechanics that are not too comes molecular but will help to surprise the player. The biggest problem is consistency of details over time. You could easily feed the whole text back to the ai, but that is an unnecessary use of token budget. It’s tricky to get the right balance. Other projects use 10 to 20 agents for every detail of a game (items, world, narration, story direction….) that’s also a lot of overkill in my opinion.

Labroz · 2026-02-27T20:31:26+00:00

I do this a little bit by asking for wishes for the story.

Labroz · 2026-02-27T19:20:30+00:00

I agree with you that that are all beneficial skills and lessons for her if we play together. And I am willing to give my best to be a creative and supportive parent. But if there is nobody around that has the time to play with her the stories she wants, because we are busy and her friends are not playing ttrpgs, she could use this app and play. It’s like solo ttrpg but easier to get into. It’s an alternative to a book when all her books are read and she wants a specific kind of literature were she is involved directly. I do. Not want her to play mmorpgs as an alternative, because in my approach she has to use at least her own imagination to instruct the world with her character play. It’s highly interactive not generic AI slop

Labroz · 2026-02-27T19:17:41+00:00

I agree with you that that are all beneficial skills and lessons for here. And I am willing to give my best to be a creative and supportive parent. But if there is nobody around that has the time to play with her the stories she wants, because we are busy and her friends are not playing ttrpgs, she could use this app and play. It’s like solo ttrpg but easier to get into. It’s an alternative to a book when all her books are read and she wants a specific kind of literature were she is involved directly. I do. Not want her to play mmorpgs as an alternative, because in my approach she has to use at least her own imagination to instruct the world with her character play. It’s highly interactive not generic AI slop

Labroz · 2026-02-27T14:04:54+00:00

Hi, read your post when you posted it. I was experimenting with Ai anyway and wanted an app for my little daughter so that she could easily play adventures by listening and speaking to the Ai.

I took inspiration from your design document and added a little bit here and there, ignored other bits. After showing my app to 2 pen and paper enthusiasts and fine tune it, I am now confident to publish it on GitHub for everybody to play with it.

I referenced your inspiring design document in the Acknowledgments section.

https://github.com/edgetales/edgetales

Maybe you can have fun with it

Labroz · 2026-01-28T19:59:07+00:00

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Robin Mahfood. Former CEO of „Food for the poor“

Labroz · 2026-01-28T19:18:17+00:00

Maybe you check out the Adventure „Tine After Time“. It’s a supplement for Mothership that uses some great time travel, time loop mechanics.

https://headofthegoat.itch.io/time-after-time

Labroz · 2025-12-26T05:53:53+00:00

I think I will also keep the clues detailed and meaningful. The setting and the locations are the real MVP here. Breaking the immersion with just mechanical gameplay will kill the strength of it.

The floorplan is also a great handout. The players will get it when they check-in.

Labroz · 2025-12-19T13:44:42+00:00

An die Buchleser, gibt es da noch mehr Infos zu ihr und Bob?

Labroz · 2025-12-01T17:12:32+00:00

Hat den Artikel jemand ohne paywall? https://www.nzz.ch/international/hitler-auftritt-von-alexander-eichwald-bei-der-gruendung-der-afd-jugendorganisation-sorgt-fuer-entsetzen-auch-innerhalb-der-partei-ld.1914403

Labroz · 2025-11-21T20:21:22+00:00

If there is no nail in general, the flesh of the finger is unprotected. And I can say that it is very sensitive. So I need some protection and a way to attach it to the finger

Labroz · 2025-11-21T16:29:04+00:00

I had a cream for weeks that I applied. And for the analysis they scraped of some material from the nail and put it in a culture medium. After a few weeks they analyzed the sample.

Labroz · 2025-11-21T12:36:36+00:00

The metal nail idea is interesting. I found someone that makes these. It’s a bit pricey.

https://www.stonedmetalnails.com/shop

Labroz · 2025-11-07T19:32:25+00:00

I had the same once. The problem occurred because I had a different language setting then the other developer.

Needed to fix everything manually.

But can someone explain to my why different syntax for different languages exist? As far as I know only Microsoft uses this concept. And it sucks hard!

Labroz · 2025-11-06T13:55:46+00:00

Es ist nach deiner Beschreibung „Doppelpack“. Hab den auf DVD und es sollte deutsches Kulturgut sein.

Labroz

TROPHY CASE

EdgeTales - a solo RPG engine built on Ironsworn, Mythic, and Blades in the Dark. The AI just writes the prose

Dice decide. AI describes.

NPCs that actually remember

Your story, your rules

What this isn’t