Familiar MCP Server

Bring your own AI, any of 25 providers. Built for D&D 5e (2024).

Your AI co-pilot for Foundry VTT.

You bought Foundry to run the game for everyone else. Familiar takes the dungeon master's side: the rules, the dice, the monsters, every NPC in its own voice. So you finally get to play. Solo, one on one, or a full group.

Install in FoundryJoin the Discord

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Install

Install Familiar in Foundry

Familiar ships directly from GitHub. Paste this URL into Foundry's Install Module dialog.

Manifest URL: https://github.com/Ryanjansen92/familiar-releases/releases/latest/download/module.jsonCopy manifest URL

1. In Foundry, open Configuration → Add-on Modules
2. Click Install Module
3. Paste the URL in the Manifest URL field at the bottom, then Install. Show the Install Module dialog

Foundry VTT

v13, v14

Game System

D&D 5e (2024 rules): full support. Other systems get the general features (chat, journals, scenes, audio) but not system-specific tools like character sheets or combat automation.

Out in the open. Published on npm and GitHub, with questions answered in Discord.

• npmfamiliar-vtt
• GitHubreleases
• Discordask anything

Bring your own AI

Connect the AI you already use.

Paste an API key, or point Familiar at the Claude or ChatGPT subscription you already pay for. Both paths reach the same 193 tools; the difference is where the model runs and who you pay.

Built-in chat

Paste an API key and start talking to your game.

No server, no terminal, no config files. The only path with voice, image generation, and transcription on top of chat, and the only one that runs fully offline through Ollama or LM Studio. A Thinking control lets you set how hard the model reasons, dialled up for hard fights, down for quick lookups.

Chat (16 providers)

• OpenRouter
• Anthropic
• OpenAI
• Google
• Groq
• Mistral
• Together AI
• DeepSeek
• xAI
• Cohere
• Perplexity
• Fireworks AI
• Cerebras
• SambaNova
• Ollama (local)
• LM Studio (local)

OpenRouter unlocks 300+ models on a single key.

Voice (3 providers)

• ElevenLabs
• Cartesia
• OpenAI TTS

Image (3 providers)

• OpenAI (GPT Image)
• fal.ai
• Leonardo AI

Transcription (3 providers)

• Gladia
• Deepgram
• AssemblyAI

Use your subscription

Already paying for Claude, ChatGPT/Codex, or have a Google account? Put it to work.

Connect through the Model Context Protocol and your existing subscription becomes a DM assistant at no extra API cost. The module ships with an MCP Setup Wizard that detects your client and generates the config to paste in. Best for long, multi-step chains. Your model and its reasoning effort are set in your own client, not here.

MCP clients (8 providers)

• Claude Desktop
• Claude Code
• Codex CLI
• Codex Desktop
• ChatGPT
• Antigravity CLI
• Antigravity Editor
• Gemini CLIdeprecated 2026-06-18

Google is sunsetting Gemini CLI on 2026-06-18. Migrate to Antigravity CLI (same Google account, free tier available) before then. The MCP Setup Wizard already supports it.

Your keys, your cost.

Most AI tabletop tools route through their servers, mark up the tokens, and meter you per turn. Run out of credits mid-session? Too bad. Familiar never proxies or marks up anything: your API keys go straight from your browser to the provider, and with MCP your subscription handles it. No middleman, no per-turn meter.

Combat & AI

31 tools manage encounters end-to-end: initiative, attacks, spells, damage, conditions, death saves, and XP. Familiar resolves each NPC action, multiattack and legendary actions included, from a battlefield snapshot with cover analysis.

• Initiative, turns, rounds: the whole encounter flow
• Attack rolls, saves, and damage, fully automated
• Conditions, death saves, XP
• Pilot NPC turns from a battlefield snapshot, when you want
• Scored movement with cover analysis
• Multiattack and legendary actions resolved

Roll initiative for all the goblins, have them attack the nearest player, and play battle music.

Hear a scene: every NPC in its own voice

NPC Voices & Image Generation

Give every NPC its own voice. Multi-voice TTS across ElevenLabs, Cartesia, and OpenAI, plus portraits, item art, and battle-map backgrounds generated mid-session.

• Give each NPC its own voice
• Multi-voice text-to-speech across three providers
• ElevenLabs, Cartesia, OpenAI TTS
• Generate character portraits on the fly
• Generate item art and battle-map backgrounds
• Scene art from text blueprints

Dim the lights, start rain and thunder, and have the innkeeper whisper a warning about the road ahead, in his voice.

Scenes & Canvas

Build the whole scene by asking. Tokens, walls and doors, lighting, weather, fog of war, trigger regions, ambient sound. Familiar places it, you direct it.

• Create scenes and place tokens
• Draw walls, doors, and trigger regions
• Set lighting, darkness, and weather effects
• Configure tiles, drawings, and ambient sounds
• Fog of war and camera control
• Spawn tokens from any compendium

Spawn two Wolves from the compendium as reinforcements, place them near the forest edge, and add them to combat with initiative rolled.

Audio & Atmosphere

Play, stop, and manage playlists and individual tracks with volume and fade control. Cue battle music, build ambient soundscapes, or silence everything without touching Foundry's sidebar.

• Play, stop, and queue playlists
• Individual track control with volume and fade
• Crossfade between tracks
• Cue battle music on combat start
• Build ambient soundscapes
• Silence everything without touching the sidebar

Cue the tavern playlist, drop the lights, and let the bard play a soft lute track underneath.

Knowledge & Memory

Semantic search across all journals, characters, scenes, and items. A persistent memory bank stores important campaign facts that carry over between sessions, with full journal management for session notes and handouts.

• Semantic search across journals, characters, scenes, items
• Persistent memory bank across sessions
• Summarise sessions when you say you're done
• Full journal and handout management
• Map pin creation and editing
• Send and read chat messages from any source

We're done for tonight. Summarise what happened this session and save it.

Characters & Items

Inspect, create, update, and clone actors, inventory, spells, features, and active effects. Import from compendiums, apply custom buffs, and manage player ownership.

• Inspect, create, update, and clone actors
• Manage inventory, spells, and features
• Apply and toggle active effects (buffs and debuffs)
• Import from any compendium pack
• Configure player ownership and permissions
• Roll on tables for random encounters and loot

Find a CR 3 werewolf in the compendium, drop it into the scene as a boss, and give it resistance to non-silvered weapons.

Auto-Pilot

Click "Run NPC" and walk away. Familiar plays every enemy turn for you, with safety caps and optional turn-by-turn confirmation.

• One click runs every NPC turn in the encounter
• Safety caps prevent runaway loops
• Turn-by-turn confirmation when you want it
• Works alongside the standard combat tracker
• Battlefield snapshots inform tactical decisions
• Stops on the round or the turn you name

Run all the NPC turns this round. Stop after the dragon goes.

Live Transcription

Speak instead of type. Familiar transcribes your session in real time across three providers, colour-codes per speaker, and saves the transcript to a Foundry journal entry you can edit and search later.

• Speak instead of type in the middle of a scene
• Real-time transcription across three providers
• Per-speaker colour coding
• Saves directly to a Foundry journal entry
• Edit and search the transcript afterwards
• Gladia, Deepgram, AssemblyAI

Start transcribing the session. Save it to a journal called 'Session 12' when we're done.

Multi-Session Chat

Pin, archive, and switch between named campaign threads. Each thread persists as a Foundry journal entry with a full audit log, so you can return to any conversation later, even months apart.

• Pin, archive, and rename campaign threads
• Each thread persists as a Foundry journal entry
• Full audit log of every tool call
• Switch between threads without losing context
• Search across past conversations
• Re-open a paused side quest in seconds

Open the 'Stormpoint Castle' thread and pick up where we left off last week.

Browse all 193 tools across 24 domains

Works together

Built around the content you already have.

Familiar doesn't replace your modules, maps, or campaigns. It reads them, runs them, and stays out of your way.

• Premade campaigns

Open Ember, Dragon of Icespire Peak, or any published adventure. Familiar reads the journal entries, NPCs, and encounters that came with it, and runs them at the table without inventing contradictions.

• Battle maps you already use

Drop a Czepeku or Patreon map. Familiar fetches the tokens, lights, walls, and ambient sound you set up, and runs combat on top of someone else's craft.

• Compendia and your own homebrew

Your custom NPCs, your house rules, your D&D Beyond imports. Familiar reads what's already in your world instead of making things up.

Familiar doesn't ship its own adventures, maps, or compendia. The content is yours. Your AI tells the story you bring, it doesn't invent one, and Familiar runs the dungeon master's side of the table on top of it.

Plays at any table

Play D&D solo, duet, or with a full group.

However many show up, you get to play. The fewer humans at the table, the more of the world Familiar runs, the rules, the dice, the monsters, every NPC. You take a seat at the game you usually run for everyone else.

• Solo

Just you
You play your character. Familiar runs everything around it: every NPC in its own voice, every monster's turn, the scene, with 2024 D&D 5e rules enforced. Campaign memory carries the world from one session to the next.

• Duet

You and one other
Neither of you has to be the DM. Familiar runs the world for both of you, the cast, the encounters, the rulings, so you stay players and the story still moves.

• Small table

You and a few
The supporting cast and the monsters' turns run for you, with the lighting, the music, and the rulings, so nobody steps out of the game to keep it moving.

• Full group

You DM for four or more
The tactical load comes off the GM. You run the encounter and tell the story; Familiar handles initiative, the monster turns, and the bookkeeping. You run the scene, not the spreadsheet.

A co-pilot, not a replacement DM. Whoever is at the table, you are still telling the story, and the dice and the math are always right. No "you rolled a 47."

How it works

One message in. Familiar runs the Foundry actions out.

No new app to learn, and no commands to memorise. Familiar works from its own chat inside Foundry, or from an MCP client you already use.

1. You talk

Type in Familiar's chat inside Foundry, or connect an MCP client like Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex. Your AI reads the scene and picks which of the 193 tools to call. 2. ### Over a secure socket
Tool calls reach your world over an authenticated WebSocket. Your API key goes straight from your browser to your provider. Familiar never proxies or stores it. 3. ### Familiar runs it
The module runs the same Foundry operations you would do by hand: roll initiative, place tokens, set lights, cue music. You stay in character.

Built-in chat needs nothing extra. MCP adds a small local server you start with one command.

Why I built this

A co-pilot for the game master who'd rather run the story than the spreadsheet.

I'm Ryan. Dad of two young kids, married to my favourite person, with the free time you'd expect.

My wife and I play D&D together, just the two of us, 1-on-1 campaigns. It's our thing. But solo DMing is a lot. You're the storyteller, every NPC, the rules engine, the sound guy, and the atmosphere all at once. Mid-monologue as a mysterious stranger, I'd have to break character to roll initiative, look up a spell range, adjust the lighting, and find that one tavern ambience track I swore I bookmarked. By the time I got back to the scene, the moment was gone.

I wanted something that could handle the mechanical side of the table so I could stay in the story. Not a replacement DM, a co-pilot. Something I could say "roll initiative for the goblins, dim the torches, and start combat music" to, and it would handle it. While I kept talking.

So I started building. First it was a handful of tools to move tokens and roll dice. Then I added combat tracking. Then scene management. Then "what if it could also generate NPC portraits on the fly?" and "what if it could voice the tavern keeper?" That's how you end up with 193 tools across 24 domains and 25 AI providers.

I took my time with this. I ran Familiar at my own table, session after session, before opening it up. I didn't want to ship another AI that turns your campaign into nonsense the moment it forgets last week.

It started as a personal itch-scratcher for a dad who wanted to run better D&D games for his wife. It turns out a lot of GMs have the same itch.

Ryan, working on Familiar

Pricing

One month free. Your keys, your cost.

$3 a month or $25 a year keeps Familiar maintained. Your AI provider bills you directly for the tokens you spend. No markup, no middleman, no per-turn limits.

Feed the Familiar$3per month

Run it for a year$25per yearsave $11

Free for the first month, then $3.

Billed monthly or yearly. Cancel anytime.

Install in Foundryor start your free month

• All 193 tools across every supported Foundry system
• Every update. Combat AI, voice, image, transcription, memory
• BYOK or MCP. Connect any provider on the list
• Bug reports and feature ideas welcome on Discord

What you pay your AI provider

Familiar never proxies or marks up tokens. Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Ollama, your MCP subscription: you set up the key, they bill you. A typical D&D session runs $0.50 to $3 in API costs, depending on the model. Or nothing: a subscription through MCP or a local model through Ollama costs you no tokens.

Common questions

Honest answers.

The questions players and GMs actually ask, answered straight. The full list lives on GitHub.

• What is Familiar?

Familiar is an AI co-pilot for Foundry VTT. You connect the AI you already use, such as Claude or ChatGPT, over the Model Context Protocol or an API key, and it runs the dungeon-master side of a published D&D 5e adventure you import: the rules, the dice, the monsters, and the NPC voices. You stay the player and keep the story; Familiar handles the table.

• How do I connect Claude or ChatGPT to Foundry VTT?

Two ways, and you bring your own AI for both. Use the Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex subscription you already pay for over the Model Context Protocol, and Familiar runs as an MCP server those clients connect to. Or paste an API key into the built-in chat. The same tools work either way; the difference is where the model runs and who you pay.
Read the connect guide

• Does Familiar collect my data?

No telemetry, no analytics, no calls home. Familiar runs inside your Foundry world; data only leaves when you message your chosen AI provider. Use Ollama or LM Studio for fully offline play.

• Can the AI break my world?

Document updates are sanitised, so the AI can't change ownership, permissions, or internal IDs. Destructive operations require confirmation, and the WebSocket connection is authenticated with a shared secret. Keep backups anyway: good practice with or without AI.

• Does it work with game systems other than D&D 5e?

Full support is D&D 5e (2024 rules) only. Generic features like dice, journals, scenes, and audio work everywhere, but system-specific tools (character sheets, combat automation) are built around the dnd5e data model. Pathfinder 2e, Call of Cthulhu, and Savage Worlds are on the roadmap.

• Which AI models work best?

Any current flagship from Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google handles tool-use best; see the "Choosing an AI model" guide for the named tiers. Bring whichever key or subscription you already pay for. Reasoning headroom is what carries a hard combat or a tangled scene: the built-in chat has a Thinking control you can turn up when a moment earns it, and over MCP that dial lives in your own client.

• Can an AI help me run D&D solo?

Yes, that's a main reason it exists. Most people who own Foundry are the GM, the one who never gets to play. Familiar runs the rules, the monsters, and the NPCs, and remembers your campaign across sessions, so you can take a seat at your own table, solo or one on one. It's how Familiar started: 1-on-1 D&D with my wife.

• Do I need my own campaign to start?

No. Buy a Foundry-ready adventure (official D&D modules run about $20 to $30, with the maps and lighting already built), drop in a battle map or two, enable Familiar, and you're playing. Familiar reads the adventure's journals so it knows the story you're about to discover, and pulls monsters and items from your compendia as you go.

• Does the AI play a character on my side?

Not yet. Familiar runs the DM's side, the rules, the monsters, and the NPCs, so you play your own character. Letting the AI run an ally's turns beside you is on the roadmap, not shipped. The surprises come from the adventure and Foundry's own fog of war, not from the AI keeping secrets. An AI can't hide what it can read.

• Can an AI run my game as the Dungeon Master?

Yes, with one honest qualifier. AIs are poor at inventing a story, so Familiar doesn't ask them to. You bring a published adventure with its maps and NPCs, your AI reads it and runs it, and a human can take over anytime. Connect your own AI and it runs the whole DM side with a memory of your campaign across sessions.

Roadmap

Things I'm working toward.

No promises on timelines. Roughly in priority order.

Better solo and duet play.

For the GM who runs the table for everyone else and wants to play for once. Familiar already runs the DM's side; these sharpen it for a table of one or two.

• Companion party-fill: let the AI run a designated ally's combat turns
• Encounter scaling: balance a fight for a solo or duet party
• Solo mode: a one-click preset for the rules, the monsters, and the NPC voices

Talk to the modules you already use.

Let Familiar drive the rest of your Foundry stack: automated rolls, animations, loot, effects.

• Midi-QOL: automated attack rolls and saves
• Sequencer + JB2A: orchestrate spell animations
• Token Magic FX: shader effects on tokens and tiles
• Item Piles: loot drops and merchants
• DFreds Convenient Effects: status effects and buffs

More systems, beyond D&D 5e.

Full system-specific tools: character sheets, combat automation, spell resolution.

• D&D 5e (2024)Shipped
• Pathfinder 2ePlanned
• Call of CthulhuPlanned
• Savage WorldsPlanned

Plug-and-play campaigns.

Import a published adventure and Familiar already knows the story, NPCs, maps, and encounters. Starting with Ember.

Ember is Foundry's official 500-hour sandbox campaign. More published adventures to follow.

Sharpening what already ships.

• Combat AI: retreat, morale, group coordination
• Voice: emotion control, more natural multi-voice scenes
• Image: consistent character portraits across sessions
• MCP: richer real-time tool-progress feedback for external clients

Got an idea? The Discord is the best place to push something up the list.

Ready to play for once?

Install Familiar in Foundry and your first month is on the house. Cancel anytime, your world stays yours.

I'm Ryan, I built Familiar. Join the Discord and I'll personally help you get going.