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Familiar ships zero AI-generated content: all code, UI, and docs are authored, understood, and maintained by the developer. It is AI-integration software. At runtime it connects the user's own AI (BYOK, via MCP or direct provider APIs) to their Foundry world, which generates chat replies, NPC voices, and images live and improvisationally in response to the user's prompt. Nothing AI-generated is pre-bundled or pre-created. Keys travel browser to provider directly across 23 providers: no proxy, no metering, no telemetry, no data collection.
Your AI co-pilot for Foundry VTT
You bought Foundry to run the game for everyone else. Storyteller, every NPC, the rules engine, the sound board, the atmosphere, all at once, all night. Familiar takes the dungeon master's side: the rules, the dice, the monsters, and every NPC in its own voice. So you finally get to play. Solo, one on one, or a full group.
193 tools across 24 domains. 23 AI providers. A co-pilot, not a replacement DM. You stay in the story, Familiar runs the table, and the dice and the math are always right.
Say it, and it happens
Type "the goblins ambush the party from the treeline" and Familiar rolls initiative, drops the goblin tokens into cover, dims the lights, cues the forest ambience, and gives each goblin its own voice. One sentence, half a dozen domains, no sidebar-hopping. You describe the moment; Familiar builds it and runs it while you narrate.
Most AI tools narrate combat. Familiar referees it.
A deterministic rules engine sits between the AI and your game. Every attack, spell, and move is checked against D&D 5e (2024) rules before it lands. Out of range, out of turn, no spell slot left, action already spent: the move comes back refused, with the reason. The AI reads the error and picks a legal move. Foundry's own dice roll every result. Narrative overrides exist for edge cases, and each one is written to the chat log.
What runs today
- Full turn loop: initiative, movement checked against speed and walls, multiattack, legendary actions
- Reactions that fire themselves: opportunity attacks, Shield, Counterspell, Uncanny Dodge, Hellish Rebuke, Legendary Resistance
- Weapon-mastery riders, grapple and shove as the 2024 contest, concentration checks at the real DC
- Persistent zones like Spirit Guardians, summons that join initiative, Polymorph as a real transformation
- Death saves, massive-damage instant death, and an undo that survives a page reload
Combat and Combat AI are 32 of Familiar's tools, and the automation layer is built in. No separate combat, effect-tracking, timing, or premade-spell modules to install and version-match. Familiar runs standalone. Every rule is verified in a live Foundry game before it ships.
Auto-Pilot: click Run NPC and walk away. Familiar plays every enemy turn. It resolves each from a battlefield snapshot that scores movement and reads cover, with safety caps and optional turn-by-turn confirmation.
Watch a full enemy turn play out, unattended, at familiarvtt.com.
The whole DM side of the table
- NPCs and narration: plays every NPC in character and in voice, and runs the published adventure you bring. The story is yours; it does not invent one.
- Live transcription: speak instead of type. Real-time transcription with per-speaker colour-coding, saved to an editable, searchable Foundry journal. Broadcast a read-only transcript, export to SRT or Markdown, and the AI remembers what was said.
- Scenes and canvas: create scenes, place tokens, draw walls and doors, set lighting, darkness, and weather, and control tiles, ambient sound, fog of war, and camera.
- Voices and images: a distinct voice per NPC, plus character portraits, item art, and battle-map backgrounds generated inline, mid-session.
- Audio and atmosphere: play, stop, and crossfade playlists and tracks with volume and fade, without touching Foundry's sidebar.
- Knowledge and memory: full-text search across every journal, character, scene, item, and transcript, plus a memory bank that carries campaign facts between sessions. All of it from your own world content.
- Multi-session chat: pin, archive, and switch named campaign threads, each stored as a Foundry journal entry with a full audit log.
- Characters and items: build NPCs, manage inventory, apply effects, and clone monsters from any compendium, with ownership and permissions wired up.
193 tools across 24 domains
Every capability is a tool the AI can call over the Model Context Protocol. Optional bundles load on demand, so only the tools in use are ever in play and the context window stays clean.
| Domain | Tools | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Scenes & Tokens | 19 | Build scenes, place and move tokens, configure vision and movement |
| Canvas Environment | 18 | Walls, lights, weather effects, fog of war, darkness levels |
| Combat & Initiative | 17 | Start encounters, roll initiative, advance turns and rounds |
| Characters & Actors | 16 | Create, inspect, update, and manage player characters and NPCs |
| Combat AI | 15 | NPC tactical decisions, target selection, ability usage, positioning |
| Audio & Playlists | 14 | Play, stop, and crossfade music and ambient sound |
| Journals & Notes | 10 | Create and edit journal entries, map pins, and handouts |
| Card Decks | 9 | Create, draw, shuffle, and reset card stacks and decks |
| Canvas Drawing | 8 | Draw shapes, text, and freehand annotations on the canvas |
| Rollable Tables | 7 | Create tables and roll on them for random encounters or loot |
| Macros | 7 | Create, edit, and execute Foundry macros |
| World & System | 7 | World info, system settings, time, pause, and user management |
| Items | 6 | Create, update, delete, and search world-level items |
| Ember Events | 6 | Quests, story events, and hex-crawl exploration via the Ember module |
| Active Effects | 5 | Apply, remove, and toggle buffs, debuffs, and status effects |
| Folders | 5 | Organise documents into folder hierarchies |
| Regions | 5 | Define map regions with triggered behaviours |
| Knowledge & Memory | 5 | Campaign knowledge base, session memory, context retrieval |
| Compendium & Rules | 4 | Search and import from compendium packs and rule references |
| Voice Generation | 4 | Generate NPC speech audio with distinct AI voices |
| Chat Messages | 2 | Send and read chat messages in the Foundry sidebar |
| Scene Generator | 2 | Generate AI battle-map backgrounds from a text description (image only) |
| Dice | 1 | Roll any dice expression with full Foundry roll parsing |
| Image Generation | 1 | Generate character portraits, item art, or concept art on demand |
How it works
You talk to your AI. It reaches Familiar over a secure local link, and Familiar runs the Foundry actions.
| You say it. "Roll initiative, dim the lights, start battle music." | → | A secure local link. A GM-gated WebSocket on localhost, shared-secret auth. | → | Familiar runs it. Tokens, dice, conditions, and audio, all in Foundry. |
Bring your own AI, any of 23 providers
Fourteen chat providers drive the conversation and the combat AI: OpenRouter (one key, 300+ models), Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Groq, Mistral, Together AI, DeepSeek, xAI, Cohere, Perplexity, Fireworks AI, Cerebras, and SambaNova. Add three for NPC voices (ElevenLabs, Cartesia, OpenAI TTS), three for images (OpenAI GPT Image, fal.ai, Leonardo AI), and three for live transcription (Gladia, Deepgram, AssemblyAI). Your key travels from your browser straight to the provider. Familiar never proxies, meters, marks up, or phones home. No telemetry, no data collection.
Two ways to connect
Built-in chat talks directly to any of the 14 chat providers. Nothing else to install. Or point your own MCP client at Familiar. Sevent work out of the box: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex CLI, Codex Desktop, Antigravity CLI, Antigravity Editor, and LM Studio run locally. An in-app Setup Wizard writes each client's config, including the auto-generated connection secret, so you never hand-edit JSON.
Pricing
$4 a month, or $36 a year. The annual plan saves you three months. Every feature is unlocked on a free one-month trial, and you can cancel anytime. Because Familiar is bring-your-own-key, your AI provider bills you directly: roughly $0.50 to $3 per session, or $0 on a flat-rate subscription or a local model. Familiar never marks up or meters that usage.
Compatibility
Foundry VTT v13 minimum, v14 verified. The MCP server needs Node.js 20 or newer. System automation for combat, character sheets, and spells targets D&D 5e (2024 rules). Other game systems still get the general features: chat, journals, scenes, audio, and dice.
Safe by design
- All world access is GM-only.
- The WebSocket bridge runs on localhost with shared-secret authentication.
- Every input is sanitised against document-update tampering and prototype pollution.
- The AI cannot author or run script code. It calls predefined, GM-gated tools and plain chat macros only, and code-executing region behaviours are blocked.
Licence checks send only your licence key, never your world content. Familiar ships as a compiled build under the PolyForm Shield 1.0.0 licence. Use it and self-host it freely for any purpose except building a competing product.
Who built this
I'm Ryan, a solo developer, dad of two young kids, married to my favourite person. My wife and I play D&D one on one, just the two of us, and solo DMing is a lot to hold at once: storyteller, every NPC, the rules engine, the sound, the atmosphere. I wanted a co-pilot that handled the mechanical work so I could stay in the story. One year of full-time development later, this is what I have.
Built for the DM who has more ideas than free time, and wouldn't mind playing for once.
Install
In Foundry, open Add-on Modules → Install Module and paste this manifest URL:
https://github.com/Ryanjansen92/familiar-releases/releases/latest/download/module.json
To drive Familiar from an MCP client, run the server with npx familiar-vtt and use the in-app Setup Wizard to connect your client.
Links
- Website: familiarvtt.com
- Guides and setup: familiarvtt.com/guides
- npm: npmjs.com/package/familiar-vtt
- Releases (manifest): github.com/Ryanjansen92/familiar-releases
- Discord: discord.gg/UZuqaUt6h9