About This Game

About This Game

Gather your friends (or just yourself) and step into a world without a script. Skaldsong is a multiplayer RPG platform that combines the deep mechanics of classic CRPGs with the narrative freedom of tabletop role-playing. Here, the story is not pre-written. It's generated live, guided either by a human Game Master using our toolset, or by an advanced generative AI that acts as your Game Master.

Stuck as a forever DM? Lacking friends but want to play a TTRPG? Have friends but nobody wants to be the one to run the game? Just want to see what AI can do?

Then this game is for you.

A True RPG Engine

Skaldsong is not another hastily thrown together AI chatbot. It is a complete game engine with robust, underlying systems that feel like a modern evolution of classic MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). The AI's role is not to solely run the game, but to create content for it.

You are not limited to pure adventure games, using custom Game Rules, you can play all sorts of games- Slice of Life school romance? The management of a mercenary company? Fight in the gladiator pits? Interstellar Empire management? With the right ruleset, the AI can smoothly run about any game you can define.

When the AI responds to your actions, its narrative is embedded with special [Tags]. Our custom parser reads these tags and translates them into mechanical changes within the game state. If the AI describes you finding a sword, a [Create_Item] tag mechanically adds that sword to your inventory. This system ensures that the story and the game mechanics are always perfectly in sync.

While the interaction is text-based, the world is fully visualized. You are not just reading text; you are interacting with graphical character sheets, inventory windows, a world map, quest logs, and more.

I'm tired of hastily put together AI games that look like, frankly, dogwater. Skaldsong is a demonstration of how you can truly use AI not to replace the game, but enhance it.

Free-to-Play and Paid Content

Skaldsong is free to download and play. The core software, including the multiplayer framework and all non-AI GM tools, is available to everyone at no cost, meaning if you join a friend or public lobby, you will have to pay nothing to play with them.

But as a host, to enable the AI-powered features (AI Game Master, AI content generation, AI image generation), these all use credits which can be purchased through Steam. Credits are spent as used. The cost of AI features depends on factors such as the size of your game world, how many characters are in your game, and various other settings you can tweak to meet your cost threshold. Tips on managing cost and other helpful information can be found on the Skaldsong Discord.

The AI as a Creative Partner

When you play with the AI GM, you just tell it what genre, setting, and type of game you'd like to play. Guided by those, the AI's responsibilities include:

• Reactive Storytelling: Generating narrative outcomes, NPC dialogue, and environmental descriptions based on your party's specific actions.

• On-Demand Content: Creating new characters, items, quests, and locations as the story demands them.

• AI-Powered Art: Generating images based on your characters and locations. Generally, if a character is wearing something, the image will show it. If you see an object in a scene? You can interact with it. Create character portraits, item icons, and stunning location art on the fly. These assets are then automatically shared with all connected players, bringing your shared world to life visually. You can select from a list of pre-written art styles or create your own.

• Built-In Text-to-Speech with Custom Voices: If your computer can handle it, you can use our built-in TTS system to generate voice overs for your game using custom voices. You can use one of the preset ones or add your own!

Seamless Multiplayer & Asset Sharing

Built on Steamworks, Skaldsong is designed for a hassle-free multiplayer experience. The host controls the world, and clients connect to share in the adventure. Our system automatically synchronizes all necessary game assets, including any AI-generated images or custom music tracks the host chooses to use.

When using the AI, only the lobby host needs to have credits. If you're playing as a player, there is absolutely no cost associated with AI usage.

A UI That Does Not Make You Puke

Designed to work with all your information being in windows you can scale, resize, and reposition. Use one of the pre-built color themes or make your own. Use a custom background or let the game set the background based on the location your party is in. Change to a favored font even.

You can even drag 'stickers' of your characters and items onto the screen to place them directly in the location as you play.

But the most important thing, is that the UI won't make you want to puke!

A Powerful Tool for Human Game Masters

The AI is completely optional. Skaldsong can be used as a powerful platform for running your own TTRPG campaigns with friends. As a human GM, you can ignore the AI entirely and use the game's systems to:

• Track character stats, health, and inventories for all players.

• Manage a world map with custom locations.

• Create and assign quests through the built-in quest log.

• Distribute loot and currency mechanically.

• Keep a persistent, savable record of your campaign world.

• Play included or custom music or other .mp3s to all of your players at once

• Future tools (Battlemap) in the roadmap

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

A built-in AI Game Master generates text content based on the story and events of the player's actions and generates images that correspond to characters, locations, and items in the game. A local AI voice model is used to generate Text-To-Speech of the AI model's response.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Depending on the player's chosen scenario, players may engage in combat with other characters or creatures, resuilting in text depictions of violence and gore. Players guide the actions of the characters, meaning characters may use drugs or alcohol based on player action or setting. Players may also encounter non-explicit sexual content such as sexual langage or innuendos. Google's Gemini AI prevents explicit sexual content, but upon player bruteforcing actions may lead to 'Fade to black'-esque text depictions. The Image generation does not produce any explicit sexual content and prevents most violent/gory content, usually amounting to not more than depictions of blood.