I want to make my own framework as a project to learn more lua. So my question is could I bypass with using only mysql-async or would I need something else?
In theory you don’t need any database manager if you aren’t using persistent data. If you are, you can use whatever you like. FiveM is a mod framework and you have a lot of freedoms to choose what external libraries you will use.
So essentially I could pull the information from files in a folder if I wanted to?
Yes. If you did that, most people go with a JSON formatted file. The big advantage to that is that there are no other software dependencies that need installed on the server, and it could arguably be faster (depends on the scale). A good example is the EssentialMode JSON plugin: [Release] [EssentialMode 5] esplugin_json | Storing user data in json files! | Easy setup