Grimoire

Grimoire is a work-in-progress fantasy role-playing game that runs in a web browser. One person hosts the game on a Windows or Linux computer, and friends join the same journey by opening a link.

Create a hero, explore new places, speak with characters, choose what to do, and make dice checks. The game writes and speaks the story as you play, with changing scene art, portraits, music, and sound effects.

Work in progress: Grimoire is playable, but it is still being actively developed. Some systems are incomplete, features may change, and you may find rough edges. Anyone is welcome to try the current build and report a problem.

See the current build

These screenshots come from a real five-minute play session in the current development build. The places, characters, and story can be different in every journey.

Create your hero

Build a complete level-1 character with guided tabs, or use Randomize Everything when you want to begin quickly. The Review tab shows the final abilities, skills, languages, features, spells, and equipment before the adventure starts.

Explore and choose what happens

Write any action you can think of, or select one of the suggested choices. Use Act for actions, Speak to address a character directly, and Ask DM when you want information about the world or the rules.

Speak with characters

Named people and creatures can have their own portrait and voice. Their relationship with each hero can change as the story continues.

Keep playing while checking your character

The character sheet, map, quests, and settings open beside the story. You can still type and continue the journey while a panel is open.

What can you do today?

• Create a level-1 hero using races, classes, abilities, backgrounds, skills, languages, and equipment from the included 2014 SRD rules.
• Randomize a complete legal character.
• Type your own actions or use suggested choices.
• Explore generated locations with spoken narration, scene art, portraits, music, and sound effects.
• Speak directly to named characters and build friendships, rivalries, or relationships over time.
• Make character-based skill checks when an action has a meaningful risk.
• Follow quests and inspect the party, map, character sheets, inventory, and settings.
• Save journeys on the host computer and load them again later.
• Play alone or share one journey with friends.

The current rules implementation is not a complete tabletop ruleset. More combat, progression, spells, items, quests, and open-world systems are still being built.

Start on Windows

The first start installs the required tools and downloads the game models. This may take a while, uses several gigabytes of data, and needs at least 15 GB of free disk space; 20 GB leaves room for new models and generated images.

Automatic installation is tested on Windows 11 with winget, which is normally included. If winget is missing, install App Installer from Microsoft first and then run the start script again.

Download without Git

1. Download the current Grimoire ZIP.
2. Extract the ZIP into a normal folder.
3. Open that folder, click the File Explorer address bar, type powershell, and press Enter.
4. Run:

.\start.ps1

Follow any Windows installation or firewall prompts. When startup finishes, open http://localhost:8786 in your browser.

If Windows blocks the script, run this instead:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\start.ps1

Clone with Git

If you already use Git:

git clone https://github.com/T0M13/grimoire.git
cd grimoire
.\start.ps1

If npm is already available in your terminal, you can also use:

npm start
npm stop

Start on Linux

Grimoire supports current Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch-family distributions. Install Git with your distribution's software manager first, then run:

git clone https://github.com/T0M13/grimoire.git
cd grimoire
chmod +x setup.sh start.sh stop.sh
./start.sh

Open http://localhost:8786 when startup finishes. See the hosting guide for persistent server mode and systemd setup.

Play with friends

Friends do not need to install the game. The host starts Grimoire, and everyone else opens the host's address in a browser.

On the same network

1. Start Grimoire on the host computer.
2. On Windows, run ipconfig and find the IPv4 Address under the active Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection. On Linux, run ip a and find the active connection's IPv4 address.
3. Friends open that address with port 8786, for example http://192.168.1.25:8786.
4. They choose Join Current Journey, create a hero, and join the party.

The host may need to allow Node.js through the firewall on private networks.

Across the internet

Use a private network such as Tailscale, or put Grimoire behind an authenticated HTTPS proxy. Do not expose ports 8786 and 8787 directly to the internet. The hosting guide explains the options.

Grimoire does not yet have host permissions or its own sign-in screen. Anyone who can reach the address can interact with the shared campaign, so protect any public address.

How multiplayer works today

The current version has one shared journey on each host:

• Everyone sees the same location, story, quests, dialogue, images, and dice results.
• There is no fixed turn order during exploration. Anyone may act when the game is ready.
• The game resolves one player action at a time.
• Only the named hero can complete a pending dice check.
• Dialogue and narration are visible to the whole party.

Private conversations, separate locations, parallel activities, and personal side quests are planned, but they are not part of the current build yet.

Stop or keep the host running

A normal start shuts down the game services about 15 seconds after the final browser tab closes. To stop immediately on Windows:

.\stop.ps1

To keep a Windows host running after everyone closes their tabs:

.\start.ps1 -Persistent

On Linux, use:

./stop.sh
./start.sh --persistent

Hardware notes

A modern NVIDIA GPU gives the best narration and image-generation speed. Grimoire selects a smaller model for weaker GPUs or CPU-only systems, but generation will be slower and some media features may take longer or temporarily fall back to text.

More information

Guide	What it covers
Hosting and multiplayer	Networks, servers, hardware, and security
Current implementation	What is finished and what still needs testing
Game design	The intended player experience
WebSocket API	The autoplay tool and custom clients
Ideas and planned work	Features being considered

The included 2014 SRD rules content is used under CC BY 4.0. See NOTICE.md.