A narrative world on wilds.ai can play two ways. **Freeform** is the live narrator writing fresh prose in response to whatever you type. **Saga** is a charted, hand-built branching story that plays out the same way every time, with real dice, skill checks, and inventory, and no credit cost per choice. This guide covers how each mode plays, when you get to pick, and why a Saga run is repeatable beat for beat.A narrative world on wilds.ai can play two ways. FreeformFreeform is the live narrator writing fresh prose in response to whatever you type. SagaSaga is a charted, hand-built branching story that plays out the same way every time, with real dice, skill checks, and inventory, and no credit cost per choice. This guide covers how each mode plays, when you get to pick, and why a Saga run is repeatable beat for beat.
#The two modes at a glance
| Freeform | Saga | |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes the story | The AI narrator, live, every turn | A human author, once, into a fixed branch map |
| Same choices, same result | No. Every run is one of a kind | Yes. The path is charted and repeats exactly |
| Dice, checks, inventory | Yes | Yes |
| What a choice costs | Credits per turn (the narrator writes new prose) | Nothing per choice (the next beat is already written) |
| Best for | Open-ended play, going anywhere, surprising yourself | A tight, replayable, shareable story you can master |
Both modes run on the same game engine. The difference is only who decides what happens next: the narrator improvising in the moment, or an author who mapped the branches ahead of time.
#Where you choose
When a narrative world carries an authored story, the session lobby shows a Story lane selector next to the play settings. Pick Saga to play the charted story, or Freeform to let the narrator improvise. Worlds without an authored story only offer Freeform, so the selector does not appear. Authored Saga stories are curated by the wilds team.
The lane is fixed for the length of a session. To play the same world the other way, start a new session and choose the other lane.
#How a Saga turn plays
A Saga world reads like any other narrative session: authored prose sets the scene, and a set of choices sits below it. The difference is under the surface.
- Plain choices move you straight to the next authored beat. You read, you pick, you continue. No dice, no waiting, no credits.
- Skill checks roll real dice against a difficulty. The choice names the check (say, an Athletics test on a d20), you roll, and the server decides the outcome from your live character sheet. A success, a partial, and a failure each lead to a different authored beat. The client cannot claim its own result: the roll and your sheet decide it.
- Scene changes swap the backdrop and location when the story moves somewhere new, exactly as they do in Freeform.
- Endings are authored. When you reach one, the run is over, your score is recorded, and it lands on the world's leaderboard like any other completed session.
Because every beat is already written, a Saga node costs no credits. You are reading an author's story and rolling your own dice through it, not paying the narrator to compose each paragraph.
#Why a Saga run repeats exactly
Determinism here has a precise meaning: the same choices, resolved to the same dice outcomes, always lead down the same branches to the same authored prose. Two players who make the same picks and roll the same results read the identical story. One player who replays a run the same way sees it play out the same way.
Dice are still live. Determinism does not mean the outcome is fixed; it means the story is a faithful function of your choices and your rolls. Roll differently at a check and you branch differently, toward a different ending. That is what makes a Saga story worth replaying: you can chase the paths you missed, master a hard check, or hand a friend the exact route to an ending you found.
#Saga keeps every game mechanic
Saga is a narrative mode, not a stripped-down one. Everything the narrative and tabletop engine does still applies inside a Saga run:
- Real dice and skill checks resolved against your character sheet
- Combat, when the story calls for it
- Inventory and items you carry between beats
- Character stats that modify your checks
- Authored scene art and audio
Saga adds a charted spine to all of it. You are not choosing between "a real game" and "a fixed story." You are playing the same game along an author's route.
#When to pick which
- Pick Saga for a crafted story with a clear shape, when you want stakes that are the same for everyone, a run you can replay to find every ending, or a story you can share with a friend and know they will see what you saw.
- Pick Freeform to go off the map, do the thing the author never anticipated, and get prose written for your exact moment. Every Freeform run is unrepeatable by design.
Neither is a lesser version of the other. They are two ways to play the same world.