AI Dungeon alternatives: seven options and how to choose
Published
There are more options than it looks, and the choice is not about “which AI is better”. It comes down to three dull questions: where it runs, who holds the rules, whose API key.
Three questions instead of arguing about which model is smarter
Models change every few months, and ranking tools by them is fortune-telling. Three things change far more slowly, and they are what decides whether a tool fits you.
Where it runs. In the cloud means nothing to install, but your text goes to someone else's server and lives by their rules. On your machine means it stays with you, but you need a graphics card, disk space and the patience to set things up.
Who holds the rules. Some tools have no rules at all: the model writes a continuation, and whether you succeeded is for you to decide. Others keep rules the program enforces — rolls, resources, wounds, death. This is not about quality, it is two different activities: writing a story, or playing a game you can lose.
Whose key opens the model. Some tools are only an interface: you bring your own API key and pay whoever owns the model. Others sell the whole thing as one subscription.
Seven options
NovelAI
A cloud service with its own models, built for writing: text continuation, lorebooks, illustrations. No rules, no rolls — it is an editor for a story, not a game. Fits people writing prose who want a co-author that never argues.
SillyTavern
A free, open-source interface you install on your own computer. It writes nothing by itself: it is a shell you connect a model to — local, or cloud through your own key. In return it gives you what almost nothing else does: full access to the prompt, character cards, lorebooks, dozens of settings. The price is setup time. If you decide to try it, we wrote a step-by-step guide.
A local model: KoboldCpp and friends
An engine that runs a model on your own machine and serves it over an API — to its own interface or to SillyTavern. Nothing leaves the house, it works without internet, and nobody can cut off your access. In return you need a graphics card: it decides both the size of model you can run and how long you wait for every reply.
Character.AI
A cloud service built around characters: pick someone and talk to them. Nothing to install, no keys, no barrier at all. The filters are strict, and stories with rules and consequences are not what the place is for — it is conversation, not a session.
RisuAI
Another open client for character cards — runs in the browser and as a desktop app, with your own key for the model. Close in spirit to SillyTavern, easier to start with, thinner on the fine settings.
Card catalogues
A genre of its own: sites holding thousands of character cards with a chat built in. The fastest way to try something right now, and the furthest from a game — a card sets who you are talking to, not the laws of the world or the price of failure.
Games with rules
This is where our own Banshee sits, so read this paragraph knowing whose article you are in. The difference from everything above is one thing: the narrator does not decide how your roll turned out. A declared action goes to a judge, the judge sets the stake and the price, dice decide the outcome, and only then does the text describe what happened. Wounds stay on the sheet, ammunition runs out, a hero can die for good. Nothing to install and no key needed — but the text goes to the cloud, like every service in the first half of this list.
The ready-made worlds, if you are curious, have a page of their own.
What to pick for what you want
“I want to write a novel with the AI as co-author.” NovelAI, or SillyTavern with a cloud model. Rules would only get in the way.
“I want nothing leaving my machine.” A local model plus SillyTavern. It is the only option where privacy is not a promise but a property of the setup: unplug the internet and it still works.
“I want to try something in a minute, configuring nothing.” Character.AI or a card catalogue. If it takes hold, people usually move on from there — to SillyTavern for freedom, or to a game for rules.
“I want to play, not to exchange messages.” Look for tools with dice and a character sheet. The tell is simple: if nothing anywhere says what happens when you fail, there is no such thing.
“I want what AI Dungeon was, but working.” SillyTavern with a model on your own key is the closest match: the same second-person adventure, with the prompt and the memory in your hands.