Free to use. Coins pay for the AI.
A Free D&D Campaign Manager, Where Paying Is For The AI
Using Realms of Shod costs nothing. Making a realm, playing in it, and building your world by hand are free for everyone, with no time limit, no cap on how much you put in, and no card required to start.
What costs money is AI. Recording a session and having it transcribed, summarised, and filed into your compendium runs on coins, because those actions cost real money per minute of audio and per thousand words. Running a chat channel, storing a compendium, and serving these pages do not cost anything like that, so they are not charged for.
That split is the principle the product is priced by, rather than a guarantee written into the terms. It is where the line sits today and where we intend to keep it: if a feature does not call a model, it should not need a coin. What follows is what that means in practice, including where free runs out.
The Quick Answer
| You want | What it costs |
|---|---|
| An account | Free, including a 100-coin signup bonus |
| A realm, and up to 48 people in it | Free |
| Video, voice, text chat, and dice | Free |
| The compendium: entries, links, notes, quests | Free, written by hand as much as you like |
| Reading everything you have already recorded | Free, with no time limit |
| The REST API and the MCP server | Free, no separate plan |
| Exporting the lot to JSON | Free, whether you have ever paid or not |
| Recording a session and everything AI does with it | Coins, from a subscription or a one-off pack |
The short version: one line runs through the product, and what sits on the free side of it is the finished feature rather than a sample of it.
What A Free Account Includes
The free tier is called the Squire's Way. It costs nothing, it does not expire, and it is not a trimmed-down version of the app: it is the same app with the AI features left switched off.
| Area | What you get without paying anything |
|---|---|
| The table | Realms with up to 48 members, live video for 8 at once, voice, text chat, dice, and image uploads |
| The compendium | Entries across 58 types, typed relationships, name variants, merging, images, and search |
| Notes and quests | Markdown notes shared per person, and quests with a hook, a goal, a reward, and a step timeline |
| Secrets | Per-entry and per-relationship access, private notes per member, and one-action reveals |
| The archive | Every transcript, summary, and entry you have ever made stays readable and editable |
| Going public | Publishing a realm, a creator profile, an audience, and a public compendium |
| Automation you write | The REST API and the MCP server, so your own scripts and assistants can read and write a realm |
| The exits | JSON export of the whole compendium, and import into another realm |
Nothing in that table is capped or counted. There is no limit on realms, entries, notes, or quests, and no ads. A group that never spends a coin can run a campaign for years in here and keep a campaign wiki as complete as anyone else's. They just have to type it themselves.
The Part That Costs Money
Coins are spent when a model runs. The charge is made by the code that calls the model, so the parts of the product that never call one have nothing to charge for. In practice, that is this list:
- Transcription. A live session as it happens, or an existing recording you upload, with speakers separated.
- Scenes and summaries. Finding where one scene ends and the next begins, then writing the recap and the session summary.
- Filling the compendium. Pulling the named people, places, factions, and items out of what was said, linking them in the transcript, and inferring the connections between them.
- Quests found in play. Noticing that a job was offered, and keeping its timeline in step with what happened.
- Rumors for absent players. Writing the in-world version of a session for members who were not there.
- Resyncing a description. Reconciling an entry with everything said about it since you last looked, when you ask for it.
Each of those has a free counterpart you do by hand, which is the point of the split. Coins buy the typing, not the feature. Writing the summary, filing the NPC, drawing the relationship, and keeping the quest log yourself all cost nothing.
For scale: transcription runs about 130 coins an hour of audio, so the 100 coins a new account starts with cover the opening half hour of a session, which is enough to see what the output looks like before deciding whether you want it. After that, coins come from a subscription or a one-off pack that does not expire. The pricing page has the tiers and the numbers.
One Person Pays, Everyone Plays
Per-seat pricing suits work software better than it suits a group of friends who play on Thursdays, so coins belong to people rather than to tables.
A player without a balance is a squire, and a squire is a full member of the realm: video, chat, dice, images, the whole compendium, every transcript they have access to, their own private notes, and the API. The one thing a squire cannot do is start a recording, since that is the action that turns the meter on. Anyone present who does have coins can start it for the party, and the session is recorded for everyone there.
If more than one of you has coins, it splits
The cost of each AI action on the realm is divided evenly across everyone present with a balance, worked out at the moment the action runs. Two subscribers at the same table each pay half. Three pay a third. Squires are not charged and do not change the split.
If everyone present runs out mid-session, the recording stops, in the web app and in Discord alike, and everything captured up to that point stays saved. The table keeps playing; it is back to taking its own notes.
Your Data Does Not Depend On Paying
One way to build a freemium product is to make the software free and the exit expensive. Campaign records are a natural target for that, since two years of them are hard to walk away from.
That is not how this works. Whether you subscribe, cancel, or never pay at all, every transcript, summary, entry, relationship, note, and quest stays readable, searchable, and editable. Cancelling stops new AI work and leaves the rest alone. There is no read-only mode and no archive paywall.
The way out is open on the free tier too. Export the whole compendium as JSON, with relationships, notes, quests, and access lists included if you want them, and import that file into another realm. The REST API and the MCP server are not a separate plan either: any account can point its own scripts, or its own AI assistant, at a realm and read what it is allowed to see. Paying changes what gets written for you, not what you can take with you.
Where Free Stops
A free tier is only worth anything if somebody tells you its edges:
- No coins, no recording. Starting a recorded session needs a balance. A squire with an empty wallet plays normally and takes their own notes, but somebody at the table has to have coins for anything to be transcribed.
- The signup bonus is small. A hundred coins covers roughly the first half hour of recorded audio, enough to judge the output. A weekly three-hour game goes through several times that.
- Subscription coins do not survive a cancellation. Coins granted by a subscription are cleared when it ends. Coins from a pack are yours and do not expire, which is why packs suit tables that play in bursts.
- AI is metered, not throttled. There is no slower free lane for transcription. It either runs and costs coins, or it does not run.
- Free does not mean self-hosted. This is a hosted service. What free covers is the product, not a copy of it you run yourself.
- The split is a principle, not a contract. Charging for AI and nothing else is how the product is priced today and how we plan to keep pricing it, but it is a guideline we hold ourselves to rather than a term of service. If it ever has to change, this page should be the first place that is written down.
What is not on that list: no member cap tied to money, no limit on how many realms you run, no feature withheld to make a paid tier look better, no ads, and no expiry on the account itself.
Free Tier FAQ
Is Realms of Shod free?
Yes. The free tier is called the Squire's Way, it costs nothing, and it does not expire. Realms, members, video and text chat, dice, image uploads, the whole compendium, notes, quests, public realms, the REST API, the MCP server, and JSON export are all included. Coins, from a subscription or a one-off pack, are what pay for AI: recording and transcribing a session, and what gets generated from that recording.
Can I use the whole platform manually for free?
Yes, and it is a supported way to play rather than a reduced one. Every entry, relationship, note, and quest that AI would create can be created and edited by hand at no cost, and a realm that never records a session works normally. Paying replaces the typing, not the features.
Do all my players need to pay?
No. Only one person in a session needs coins to start a recording, and it records for everyone present. Players without coins are squires: full members with full access to chat, video, dice, the compendium, and the transcripts they can see. If several people at the table do have coins, the cost of each AI action splits evenly across them, and squires never affect that split.
What happens to my campaign if I stop paying?
Nothing is taken away. Every transcript, summary, entry, relationship, note, and quest stays readable, searchable, and editable, and the whole compendium can still be exported to JSON. Cancelling stops new AI work and nothing else. Coins granted by the subscription are cleared when it ends; coins bought in a pack never expire.
What do coins actually get spent on?
Transcribing a live or uploaded session, splitting it into scenes, writing scene recaps and the session summary, extracting compendium entries and linking them in the transcript, inferring relationships, tracking quests found in play, writing rumors for absent members, and resyncing an entry description when you ask for it. Those are the actions that draw on a balance; the charge is made by the code that calls the model.
Is there a free trial?
The free tier is not a trial and has no time limit, so there is nothing to expire. New accounts also get a 100-coin signup bonus, worth roughly the first half hour of recorded audio, so you can see what the AI produces before deciding whether it is worth paying for. There are no ads.
Is the API free?
Yes. There is no separate API plan and no separate MCP plan. Any account can create a bearer token and read or write realms, sessions, transcripts, entities, relationships, notes, and quests within its own permissions. Coins pay for recording and processing sessions, not for reading them back.
How does this compare to other free D&D campaign tools?
Most free tiers limit the thing you accumulate: campaigns, pages, storage, or members. This one meters a single action, running an AI model, and leaves the accumulating parts uncapped. If you were always going to write your own notes, the free tier covers what you need. If you would rather not write them, that is what the coins are for.
Free Is The Rule, Not A Trial
Hosting software is cheap and running models is not, so the software is free and the models are metered. That is the whole reasoning, and it is meant to be something you can plan a campaign around rather than a promotion with an end date.
Make an account, build a realm, invite your table, and write as much or as little of it yourself as you want to. When a session runs long and nobody feels like writing it up, that is what the coins are for.
The pricing page has the tiers, the coin packs, and what an hour of audio costs. The campaign wiki page covers what you can build by hand for nothing, and the transcription page covers what the paid half does.