What Changed at the Table: October 2026

Every week I ship a pile of changes to TableTales, and the changelog that records them is written for me. It is full of migration numbers and file paths, and October alone ran to about a hundred releases (my release notes have release notes at this point). Once a month I'll pull out the parts you can feel at the table and write them up here in plain words.

Everything below is live as of November 3, unless I say it is switched off. The blog has an RSS feed now too, so if you're reading this in a feed reader, you found it the way I hoped.

This one landed on November 3, so I'm stretching October by a few days. Most buttons now sink under your finger when you press them and spring back, with timing that changes from one theme pack to the next (a few corners of the play screen catch up over the coming weeks). Pressing one makes a click. The sound is on by default at a moderate volume, with a speaker button and a sound section in Settings for playing quietly (handy when someone nearby is trying to sleep). On Android phones a tap also gives a small buzz.

Our own painted icons, tinted to your theme, have started to replace the stock ones (the sound button got one of the first), and more follow as they get painted.

In D&D 5e games, opportunity attacks are now real engine reactions. Walk out of a foe's reach and it gets one swing at you. When a foe walks out of yours, you get a card with a 15 second countdown to take the shot, and Disengage still gets you out cleanly. NPCs and bot players make that call on their own.

A lot of smaller rules fixes came along. A spell no longer costs two slots when the narrator and the engine both record it, and a warlock pays from Pact Magic slots. A Monk from level 2 gets the second Flurry of Blows strike. In most fights, succeeding on Stealth the turn before combat starts lets you surprise the foes you beat. Typing "attack the goblin on the left" picks that goblin, and a vague target gets you a list of names to choose from.

Falling in battle got fairer too. A lone hero who drops and stabilizes no longer freezes the fight, and if the whole party dies with a foe still standing, the adventure ends as a defeat on the full THE END screen. A named villain you killed stays dead when you come back to its room. One you only knocked out comes back at 1 HP (worth remembering before you loot the room).

When the engine refuses something, like a door that won't open or a foe out of reach, the narrator now tells you why. It used to describe a mighty swing that the dice never rolled, which confused everyone at the table.

New players start with a short guided fight, and on a phone it now fits one screen. The foe sits above the move panel, so the Strike button is never below the fold. When the fight ends, the card that closes it shows what comes next and tells you the adventure is saved.

Imported PDFs lose fewer maps. The importer now finds map pages that were labelled one page off, and it asks again for a map it skipped the first time. The cover and NPC portraits drawn during an import no longer come out of your monthly image allowance. If an import fails, you now get a retry panel, and the Forge button starts a fresh attempt where it used to re-send the dead one.

Imported adventures also open with a proper hook in the lobby. Before, the lobby described the PDF's cover and table of contents (fair enough, that is what the AI was looking at).

The narrator writes in your campaign's language now. It works that out from the module you upload and from what the owner types, and the owner can change it in Settings.

When a new version goes live mid-session, your tab tells you and offers Reload or Later. It never reloads by itself, because nobody wants a refresh in the middle of a crit. If the AI provider has an outage, a failed turn says the game master is resting and gives you a Retry button. And if the provider fails after your turn reached it, that action is not spent.

Pathfinder 2e players can now finish a character by hand (the builder used to stop at the background step, sorry about that). Your character sheet's menu has a Download JSON button for keeping your own copy. Players no longer see NPCs the GM hasn't revealed, and the Fairness Ledger shows its dice receipts again.

Some of October's biggest work isn't live yet, and I want you to know where it stands. Dungeons made from a module's real printed maps are built and waiting. In them, rooms keep the shapes the book draws and the fog lights exactly the room you walk into. They stay switched off for now, so a dungeon map still opens up around your token as you explore.

Pathfinder 2e still has gaps (the engine doesn't apply the multiple attack penalty yet), and a downloaded character file can't be loaded back in from a button yet. The sounds are placeholders made in code until the finished sound files are ready (if a click sounds a little 1987, now you know why).

Did you notice any of these before you read about them here?