Warframe is showing love to Dungeons & Dragons with this ‘legally distinct’ RPG

Dungeons & Dragons is in the air at Digital Extremes. The developer is introducing a new minigame to Warframe: a “legally distinct” roleplaying game called Fables & Frontiers.

Longtime players will recognize the name. It’s the fantasy tabletop game that Amir, one of the 1999 expansion protoframes, desperately wants to play with the rest of the Hex. Well, it’s finally time for Amir’s dream of playing a game with his friends to come true.

“This particular mini adventure is staying forever as a permanent expansion to the Hex,” Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford told Polygon in a pre-TennoCon 2026 interview. “What we found was as we move away from 1999, year over year, it’s just too important to leave.”

Warframe: 1999 expanded the human cast of the game for the first time, introducing protoframes that hold the line for humanity against an alien infestation. Also, you can kiss them. Now the game’s narrative is pushing toward a new star system with the upcoming Tau expansion, but the protoframes are beloved characters whose stories still matter to the community.

“People for a long time have been like, ‘When is Amir ever gonna play […] Fables & Frontiers’?” said community director Megan Everett. “And so I think this is a nice little community love letter.”

A dedicated space in the Höllvania Mall will be redecorated as Amir’s F&F campaign room, complete with maps, game pieces, and the ability to summon Amir in a flash. The minigame itself is a text-based adventure that happens in the K.I.M. messaging system, which players already use to build relationships with the Hex.

Fables & Frontiers became a real, playable minigame within Warframe because tabletop roleplaying is not a fad for the development team at Digital Extremes.

“It’s been a lifelong hobby for a lot of us,” said Ford. “We used to play Pathfinder, Dungeons & Dragons, and then it became a community team thing.”

Fables & Frontiers was included as a reference in the 1999 expansion as a gesture of “verisimilitude,” said Ford. “And then the campaign idea came together when we said we wanna do a Nightwave that is specifically focused on 1999, give it some flavor,” she said.

Image: Digital Extremes

Fittingly then, the free Nightwave battle pass system will be taken over by Amir this August, in an event called Amir’s Shockwave. Shockwave will feature themed daily and weekly quests with new rewards — one of which is the new On-Lyne song, “Running Late.” It’s against this backdrop that players will be able to enjoy Fables & Frontiers.

The D&D flavor doesn’t end there, though, because acclaimed DM and voice actor Matthew Mercer is joining the Warframe cast with the Tau expansion, as the detective-themed Warframe Brysko.