A plump frog wizard in a hooded robe sits on a mossy log in a drowned swamp at dusk, holding up a lantern on his staff. Behind him, a colossal moss-covered statue of a crowned king rises out of the fog.
In the game’s art style

For Tales Under the Oak

A realm beneath the oak

An invitation from undreamedof.ai: a Tales Under the Oak realm in our game, written by you, where players gather in parties and an AI game master tells your tales.

Read on

Dear Tales Under the Oak,

We love Tales Under the Oak and look forward to each new post. We think the music is the best in the dungeon synth genre, and the videos that include storytelling blew us away. The vibe and narration are perfect.

We’re making undreamedof.ai, a tabletop-style role-playing game where an AI game master guides players through realms and campaigns written by creators. We think your stories and music could be a perfect fit for a realm of their own.

So here is our question: would you be interested in creating a Tales Under the Oak realm for the game, and writing campaigns set within it?

This page is the longer version of our note: what the game is, how realms work, what yours could be, and how you would share in what it earns.

Why your work fits

Your tales, made playable

The game already speaks in many voices, plays ambient and music tracks beneath every scene, and paints what the players see. What it needs are worlds with a soul. Yours already has one.

An old grey field mouse in a bark-cloth robe sits on an oak root, telling a tale to a huddle of tiny toad-folk adventurers by a smouldering fire, as glowing forest sprites drift in the dappled light.
Concept painting

  • Mood

    Your music sets a mood that people come back to. In a realm, that mood becomes a place: its weather, its quiet, the light in its lanterns.

  • Narration

    The way your stories are told is what people remember. Here, a narrator voices every scene and character, and the telling follows what you wrote.

  • Story

    Your tales already hold lands, folk and legends. In a realm, players can walk into them, and every party’s path through them is its own.

Seen from behind, a party of tiny toad-folk adventurers stands among ancient worn boundary stones at the forest's edge, gazing out over a vast river glittering in golden evening light, with two glowing sprites hovering by the stones.
Concept painting

What undreamedof.ai is

A tabletop game, with an AI at the head of the table

A frog wizard in a pointed hat and red cloak crosses a huge fallen log spanning a deep river gorge at night; a full moon and a stone arch bridge glow through the mist beyond.
In the game’s art style

undreamedof.ai is a tabletop-style role-playing game. An AI game master guides players through realms and campaigns written by creators, using the full D&D 5e mechanics and character sheets.

It plays like a night at the table, with everything a good table brings: friends, voices, music, maps, and a story that answers back.

  • An AI game master

    It runs the game from the campaign a creator wrote: it describes, voices, rules and reacts to whatever the players try.

  • Full D&D 5e

    The complete fifth-edition mechanics, with real character sheets: dice, stats, spells and all.

  • Multiplayer parties

    Friends adventure together as one party around the same table, wherever they are.

  • Many voices

    Multi-voice narration gives the story’s narrator and characters distinct voices, and players talk with each other over voice chat.

  • Live images

    Scenes are illustrated as they happen, in the game’s own painted style, the style of the pictures on this page.

  • Sound, ambience and music

    Sound effects, ambient soundscapes and background music tracks play beneath the story.

  • Scene maps

    Scene maps help the party see where they are and what lies around them.

Painted as you play

Live images are made in the game’s own art style. A few of our illustrations in that style:

  • Under a full moon among ruined columns, a frog wizard in a purple hat swirls sparks from his staff over frogs in party hats gathered round a candlelit cake.
  • Among giant mossy toad statues in a misty swamp, a frog wizard dances on a lily pad casting glowing pink orbs for a birthday party, a cake waiting on a log.
  • By moonlight in a ruined garden, a tiny frog knight flees past a fountain as a kingfisher dives at him, beside the colossal stone foot of a fallen statue.

How realms work

From genre to adventure

The game is built to hold many genres, worlds, realms and adventures, and players browse them like branches of a tree. A Tales Under the Oak realm would sit like this:

  1. Genre Fantasy The broadest branch. The game is designed for many genres.
  2. World Sword & Sorcery A world within the genre, home to many realms.
  3. Realm Tales Under the Oak Yours: its lands, folk and lore, written by you.
  4. Adventures Your campaigns The campaigns you write, set within your realm, for parties to play.
A moss-roofed toad-folk village of round huts glows with lamplight under a crescent moon and towering moonlit clouds.
Concept painting

Only a few sketches

What a Tales Under the Oak realm could be

We painted these while dreaming about it. They are possibilities, nothing more: the realm would be yours to shape, its lands and folk and tales, and we would follow your lead.

In a cosy clay-walled burrow lit by a root chandelier, a portly elder toad in a red ceremonial sash and acorn-cap chain sits behind a stone desk, receiving four tiny toad-folk adventurers.
Concept painting

The Hall Beneath the Roots

Deep under the oak, an elder toad keeps court by the glow of a root chandelier. Every tale needs someone to hand out the quest. What would he ask of a party?

At twilight, a water-rat ferryman poles a dried-lily-pad raft carrying a stout toad adventurer and three small companions toward a village of reed huts hung with glowing paper lanterns.
Concept painting

The Lantern Ferry

A water-rat poles a lily-pad raft through the dusk toward a village of paper lanterns on the ponds. Who waits on the far shore, and what did they send for?

A tiny frog fighter with a needle for a sword and an acorn-cap helmet leaps across a misty river among mossy boulders, as a kingfisher swoops at him.
In the game’s art style

Kingfisher Season

Knights the size of a thumb, with needle swords and acorn helms, in a world where every bird is a dragon. Small heroes, enormous dangers.

Beneath arching oak roots in a mossy grove, a stout toad paladin in dented green chainmail sits among glowing blue-green mushrooms before a rune-carved stone arch lit from within.
Concept painting

The Door in the Old Grove

A carved stone glows where the oak roots arch over the moss, and a tired paladin sits down before it. Where does it lead? Only the realm’s author knows.

In a cramped clay burrow, a small toad-mage in a red robe swings a spear as a huge white polar bear bursts up behind him, shattering the root beams, while tiny guards scramble away.
Concept painting

A Spell Gone Gloriously Wrong

Not every tale is grim. Sometimes a toad-mage reaches for a small transformation and fills the whole burrow with polar bear. A little whimsy lights the dark.

  • Seen from behind, a party of four tiny toad-folk heroes in beetle-shell armour and reed cloaks stands on a mossy rock at the glowing mouth of a cave.
  • A frog-folk warlock in a ragged black coat kneels in a mossy grove beside a grey standing stone, glowing mushrooms and great gnarled oak roots all around.
  • A hooded frog-folk rogue in worn leather armour crouches warily beside a moss-covered stone carved with faintly glowing runes, under arching oak roots.

  • Or none of these. Your realm, your tales. We would love to see what grows under your oak.

Paintings marked “concept painting” are concept paintings by the undreamedof.ai team. Those marked “in the game’s art style” are our own illustrations made in the style the game uses for its live images. All of them are here to spark ideas, not to decide anything.

The creator split

Half the markup on your content is yours

We have a content creator agreement that splits the markup on a creator’s content evenly between the creator and us.

Whenever your campaign is played, every charge in that session (AI turns, speech, images, music, the table’s hosting, voice chat minutes and web search) is billed at what it costs us plus our markup: the same price players pay for our own content. That markup is split 50/50 between you and undreamedof.ai.

How the money flows Per one dollar of cost at a 50% markup: the player pays $1.50, the same as for our own content. $1.00 is the cost, paid to the vendor (an API service or a physical good). The $0.50 markup is split in half: $0.25 to the creator and $0.25 to undreamedof.ai. Player pays Goes to Price $1.50 the same as for our own content Markup $0.50 50% of cost Cost $1.00 to the vendor: an API service or a physical good Creator $0.25 half the markup undreamedof.ai $0.25 the other half How the money flows Per one dollar of cost at a 50% markup: the player pays $1.50, the same as for our own content. $1.00 is the cost, paid to the vendor (an API service or a physical good). The $0.50 markup is split in half: $0.25 to the creator and $0.25 to undreamedof.ai. Player pays Price $1.50 the same as for our own content Markup $0.50 50% of cost Creator $0.25 half the markup Us $0.25 the other half Goes to Cost $1.00 to the vendor: an API service or a physical good
Per $1.00 of cost at a 50% markup; band widths are to scale. The cost is what the vendor charges us: an API service (AI, speech, images, music, hosting, voice, search) or a physical good. “Us” is undreamedof.ai.

  • Same price for players

    Your content costs players the same as our own. We give up half of our markup to pay creators.

  • Your half follows our markup

    Your share is always half of whatever markup we set.

  • You own your campaign

    Our license to it is non-exclusive, so you may publish or sell it anywhere else too.

  • Merch, too

    The same split covers merch made from your campaign once we offer it: books of its lore or of a session’s story, and miniatures of your own characters and creatures.

Purchases outside a campaign’s content, such as custom dice appearances or credits, aren’t shared. We’d be happy to explain exactly how it all works.

Where we are

Early, and that’s the good part

  1. Now

    Alpha testing

    undreamedof.ai is in alpha testing today.

  2. Next 3–4 months

    AI costs come down

    Public release waits until AI API costs come down a bit, which we expect in the next three to four months.

  3. Then

    Public release

    The doors open to players.

You would be one of our very first creators, with time to shape your realm before the doors open.

Shall we talk?

If the idea interests you, we would love to connect and chat about it online, whenever suits you.

Write to us REPLY-ADDRESS-TBD

With warm regards,The undreamedof.ai team