Published
Chapter 2: One Ember
A week into Chapter 2, here is the change we have wanted to make since the day we launched: every action in Fable Forge now costs one Ember.
Talk, travel, explore, fight - one Ember each, with every line of narration included.
The Short Version
- Every action costs one Ember - talking, travelling, exploring, fighting, and every line of narration. Pictures and spoken narration keep their current prices. For most of what you do, your Embers now go twice as far.
- Why we can - every decision the game makes about what you meant now runs on a purpose-built decision engine: faster, more accurate, and far cheaper to run. We are passing the saving straight on to you.
- The game understands you better - quest steps are caught when you earn them and almost never before, and how people feel about you never silently fails to update.
- Conversations know who is in the room - bring anyone present into the conversation, everyone who saw something remembers it their own way, and characters only know what their world would tell them.
- Stories that hold together - either/or choices that really are either/or, doors that open because of what you did and tell you why, and lives that move on for good.
- A Stranger Worth Following arrives on Friday 30 October - a city that sells the chance to be noticed, and a second form whose powers never fail.
- Free Embers for a vote - vote for Fable Forge on VibeTopList once a day for fifteen Embers, and your first vote ever is worth two hundred.
- And a stack more - a faster first load, Quick Start in four more worlds, a World Map badge, a new way to find a world you will like, and a long list of fixes from our playtesting.
One Ember
Until now, most things you did in Fable Forge cost two Embers. A line of conversation was the clearest case: one Ember for the reply, and one for the checks that ran on it - whether you had just done what a quest was waiting for, how the people around you felt about what you said, whether you had just started a fight.
Those checks are a big part of what makes Fable Forge more than a chatbot, and they were never free to run. But they were never the part you came for, and charging you a second Ember for them every time you spoke always sat badly with us.
So from this update, every action costs one Ember. Speaking, acting, travelling, exploring, fighting, leaving a conversation - and every line of narration the game writes for you. The only things priced differently are pictures and spoken narration, which keep the prices they have today, because making them still costs what it costs.
For most of what you do, that means your Embers now go twice as far. The pricing page has a new tab that lists every kind of action and what it costs, so there is nothing to guess at, and the playtime on every plan and pack has been updated to show how much further your Embers now stretch.
How We Can Afford To
Chat on Fable Forge has never been just chat. Every line you say or do is read for what you meant: whether you are getting ready to leave, whether you have just done what a quest was waiting for, whether you are starting a fight or saying something someone would start one over, and how each person present feels about it.
Until now, those decisions were made by the same kind of AI that writes the story. It is very good at writing. It is slower and costlier at deciding, and every so often it decided wrong.
Now every one of those decisions runs on a decision engine built to do nothing else. It cannot invent an answer that is not one of the options in front of it. It answers in a fraction of a second, and it costs a fraction to run. In an AI RPG, the hardest part was never writing the story - it was knowing what you meant. That is the part that just got sharper.
The difference shows up where it matters most. In our tests on quest steps, the new engine read the moment correctly ninety-two times in a hundred, against eighty-four before, and it moved a quest on when it should not have less than a third as often. How people feel about you got the same treatment: the check that weighs what you said against how each person sees you now runs in the background after the reply, tries again if it fails, and never quietly drops a change. A gang that should have turned on you will turn on you.
And the saving from all of it is exactly what pays for one Ember.
Conversations That Know Who Is in the Room
The people in a scene are now treated like people in a scene - which, in an AI RPG, is the whole point.
When someone chimes into a conversation, you can bring them into it and talk to them directly, instead of the person you walked up to answering for them. The storyteller now knows who else is present from the first line, so nobody describes an empty bench with someone sitting on it. And anyone who sees what you do remembers it - your companions, and anyone else in the room, each with their own reading of what happened, so a witness can tell you exactly why they think less of you now.
Characters also only know what their world would tell them. Some general knowledge about the wider All Forge had been reaching every character, whether or not they would ever have heard it. It no longer does.
A run of smaller fixes makes conversations read cleanly too. A quest hint is given once, not on every turn. A companion's instincts about you are no longer mistaken for memories of things that never happened. An opening scene no longer puts words in a character's mouth that they later deny saying. Speakers are always shown under their own names, never as "Someone". Leaving a conversation no longer adds a stray line to the story. And refreshing the page, using a bookmark or following a link to your game now takes you straight back to that game.
In a fight, the narration now knows everyone's pronouns, and a move the dice call a failure is told as a failure - never as a pin that landed anyway.
Stories That Hold Together
Some choices in a story are meant to close others. Now they do. Choose one side of an either/or, and the options it rules out are closed - your journal shows you which, and why - so nobody can collect two endings that were never meant to exist together.
Doors can now open because of what you did or who trusts you, not only because of a key you carry, and when one opens the game tells you why. Lives can also move on for good: when the story removes someone from their post, you find them somewhere new from then on, and the story remembers why.
The Ruins Still Obey gets a round of fixes as well: you carry exactly one Special Ability, a bad item can no longer push a stat below zero, implants can be fitted in the middle of a scene, doors and desks know whose body you are wearing, and examining a launch point shows the Flight routes it opens. And a handful of quest steps that were hard to complete by talking now complete the way they read.
A Stranger Worth Following
In a city that sells the chance to be noticed, you can put anyone in any seat, and nobody forgets who moved them.
You come to Lasting Applause in its great season, and in a quiet room someone who chose you offers a second form whose powers never fail. Make a host give your guest the Low Booth while the floor staff watch. Strike a name off the roll in front of its owner. Every seat you hand out was one somebody else wanted, and they were watching.
It brings a set of new systems with it, all of them ready for other worlds.
A second form you can take, with powers of its own, that ends when its strength runs out, when you rest, or when you choose. Five powers - Compel, Captivate, Delude, Terrorize and Enamor - that always work, with no dice, as long as you ask within their limits; ask for something they cannot do and you are told why before anything is spent. Enamor can bring anyone to your side for as long as the form lasts, and when the spell breaks they are still beside you, working out why. Your second form is a stranger to anyone who has not worked out it is you, with a history of its own, until they see you change, you tell them, or they recognise you. Its portrait is drawn from your own, changed. And the story knows which face you were wearing when it counts.
Seventy-two places and forty characters. It unlocks on Friday 30 October.
Free Embers for a Vote
Fable Forge is listed on VibeTopList, where monthly votes decide which games people find first.
Vote for us once a day and we will add fifteen Embers to your account. Your first vote ever is worth two hundred - and that goes for everyone, whether you joined this week or the week we opened the doors. They are yours to keep. You will find the vote button in the welcome window, your account menu, your Ember details, and on the screen that tells you you have run out.
Every vote also helps the next player find us. Thank you.
Everything Else
Starting a game is faster: it no longer downloads other worlds' content along with your own. Quick Start now reaches four more worlds - The Ruins Still Obey, Marrowgate, The Future Requires Maintenance and A Stranger Worth Following. The 3D map has its own World Map badge on every world that has one, and its own entry on the /systems page.
If you are signed in with no game on the go, a new home screen helps you find a world you will like and jump straight in: tick what you want in a game, and it shows you the newest worlds that have it. The roadmap's Revealed Soon tiles always show a date still to come. Signing in with Google brings you back to the page you were on. And if a Quick Start ever fails, you are now told so, with a way to try again.
Back to the Anvil
Chapter 2 began with combat and a map of every world. A week on, it gets cheaper to play, sharper at understanding you, and one world bigger by Friday.
One Ember, every action. We think that is how it should always have been.
More soon - one Ember at a time.