Powerful Ways How AI Can Enhance Your D&D Sessions
Was it a year since AI took off as the next big thing? Even though it's a remarkable technology, it's still a bit sketchy, raising important questions about regulations, intellectual property, and ethics, which are still being explored. However, until Skynet takes over, I'm here to only delve into how we can enhance our Dungeons & Dragons sessions and generate some silly things!
I used ChatGPT 4.0 CustomGPTs as a primary example for this article, using it as an example to crack this topic. Trying to use or build CustomGPTs will require a ChatGPT Plus ($20/month subscription), but if you do decide to try it out, please help yourself to try out one of my generators, which might help you get started:
Be sure to comment down below on what you think. I'll be improving these and adding more to the list in the future...
To start with, creating your own Custom GPT doesn't require coding expertise. It's kin to chatting with AI about what you want to create, giving it more details and instructions as you go on. You can also give more in-depth guidelines through configurations, and I’ll have some tips for that. So, let’s start!
1. Save time and add value to yourself and your players using AI.
As a Dungeon master, integrating AI tools saves me time by cutting off some of the less critical session preparation steps or helps me quickly add flavor texts for less relevant elements for my campaign. It improves my sessions and worldbuilding notes by visualizing my homebrew ideas or giving me suggestions if I suffer from a creative block.
But, AI does take some time to train to tailor it to your specific DM needs, but it becomes a valuable Dungeon Master tool if you invest time in it. I prefer using ChatGPT builders that focus on generating highly specific tasks, such as NPCs, locations, or item images, which, in the process, yields the best results.
Time saved on things I would rather skip lets me focus on more essential and enjoyable aspects of the game, such as creating interesting plots and characters for my players, which they will interact with the most during a session.
2. Overcoming creative blocks
I keep having less time to prepare for DnD sessions, and creative blocks hit my head occasionally, giving me even less time to prepare and make a great session. Using AI to ask for ideas kickstarts my inspiration in moments like these. The trick might be to use AI not to replace but rather to kickstart your own clogged-up ideas in your head to move forward with whatever you create regarding Dungeons & Dragons prep.
For example, I run an open-world sandbox campaign and get stuck on connecting each story hook and payoff with the main quest. Simply asking ChatGPT to provide some logical ways to tie up the story or give ideas for story arcs, helps me to create quicker instead of spending countless hours unproductively pondering for one word to manifest itself on an empty page.
3. More efficient worldbuilding.
Since beginning my journey as a Dungeon Master, I have been cursed with this unhealthy worldbuilding habit of mine. Being a perfectionist with sprinkles of ADHD on top does not help me NOT going on a wild goose chase writing on some minor, unimportant detail about the local baking guild. And while details like this may not directly contribute to the main quest, generating these minor elements can help me enrich my world.
Creating small worldbuilding details takes some time and exploration when writing, and usually, it's not as productive as focusing on your story, but creating some of these worldbuilding details might inspire richer and deeper main story elements, such as providing a tiny backstory for each random NPC that could inspire you to add something from it to your main plot as you worldbuilding.
4. Generating villages, towns & cities
Town generators are nothing new, but ChatGPT takes the cake when tailoring the generation part to your needs. For example, the locations I create would be relatively short, up to three paragraphs, that I could easily read up during a session. Reading a wall of text can be overwhelming during the session, juggling many things simultaneously. And the ability to instruct the GPT to generate for your needs conveniently enhances the whole process.
Even though it sounds a bit silly but, you can train the GPT's to empathize with the generated content. For example, NPCs can provide a sentence of what they like/dislike about the generated place and provide such information as rumors or gossip about the place, taking into account the context of generated location information beforehand. This lets you quickly give snippets of a bigger picture for the idea you start with.
For example, this is a very simple set of configuration I added to set up one of my village generators to make GPT empathize with the generated content and generate on top of it without inputting a prompt:
Create a fantasy village with these rules:
Village Name:
Village Description
Couple of Districts which have:
Name:
Are no longer than a sentence in the description of what interesting buildings there are up to 3
Leader Name, Species, and Government Type:
List of 10 NPCs which have:
Name, Species, Occupation
Provide an interesting fact about living in this place, expressed as a personal quote, but a sentence at max.
5. Details for unessential characters
Everyone had Boblin the Goblin as a character they created on the spot or assigned as a random name from a prepared list. However, over the months, I found that GPTs let you create NPCs with some additional backstory for them. The NPC fisher might have found a Hags Soulstone, or the local innkeeper could reward the party with a map they found near a potential location 5 years ago. Focusing on minor details like these is impractical when prepping for a session, but using AI to do these menial tasks is a nice way to enrich your world.
6. Excellent name generators.
GPT 3.5 generated names well, and GPT 4.0 is even better for your Dungeons & Dragons characters. Instructing the GPT to draw inspiration, be influenced by your favorite media, or fit your particular campaign setting does beat any generators there are to create great-sounding names quickly to fit your world.
7. Creating a dedicated AI lore assistant.
Making your custom lore generator was a game changer for me when I started to train the custom GPTs to answer questions about my lore and world, sparking ideas when you input a clear structure and some lore guidelines into the GPT, even keeping in mind my homebrew calendar date formatting (I’m a dork I know).
For example, I needed a historical event about how two kingdoms were at war, which ended and became allies. And I wanted to have some consistent lore for the festival where my player will play the next session. So, instead of focusing on minor things, I can focus on the main plot, which gives me a quick, more detailed understanding of the ideas I personally create.
8. Connecting ideas with AI
I get lost in my plots relatively quickly due to the sheer amount of notes that I wrote about my world in the past five years, and connecting the dots is a mental jigsaw puzzle that sometimes needs some brute force thinking about how to make a new thing I write work. Like, okay, I ran an orc encounter. I have a Hag villain, and I just added a unicorn on top of the story when I was under the influence. The challenge lies in weaving these random elements into a coherent and believable narrative for my players. However, trying to use AI to help me with it gives me a result like this:
"The unicorn is a guardian of an ancient artifact that the Night Hag desperately seeks for her nefarious purposes. The orcs, manipulated by the Hag, are hunting the unicorn. The players must protect the unicorn and prevent the artifact from falling into the Hag's hands, which might involve a series of challenges or puzzles."
Above is one of the five ideas I got on how to connect these random encounters into something I could explore. It's only a hint, but AI could give me ideas to jumpstart what I could potentially create. If you write yourself into a corner, AI might help every Dungeon Master, providing ideas on how to untangle these types of complex plotlines.
9. Improving your lore
Sometimes, you get into a flow and write faster than you want to edit your ideas. This bites you in the long run if you don't stop and edit occasionally. Not editing the lore becomes worse as time passes, and you start forgetting some of the lore bits. Allowing AI-driven generators to find inconsistencies or gaps in logic can quickly improve your DnD campaigns with minimal effort.
10. Visual representation
If a picture is worth a thousand words, AI can help you save a few words when creating a visual aid for your homebrew creations. Creating a GPT for this purpose lets you generate excellent, almost consistent images, saving your time endlessly scrolling Google Images or Pinterest to find the perfect character image that would fit your creation. Even though AI struggles with hands and fingers, it lets you generate images that are good enough to match your personal artistic or setting style. For example, I like illustrated grim and dark fantasy styles, and AI does a relatively good job of providing me with images that fit these styles. What's also cool is that GPT can hold context for the generated image, so it lets you create additional consistent images between each other, so creating a whole village with similar style locations and characters is a breeze.
However, about using AI for DnD
It might sound fine and dandy, but while AI-generated content is convenient, I've found that it resonates less deeply than the content I've spent time crafting. Ultimately, I suggest not overusing this tool to become a crutch for your creative pursuits.
I believe you must find a personal approach to making AI a valuable tool for you and your players. It's a tool to help me brainstorm and provide additional details that are nice to have rather than to replace my ideas or creations in their entirety. In other words, AI should help you create things faster and at a higher quality rather than replace the joy of creating your story and world.
But what do you think? Is there a way you learned how to use AI to improve your DnD sessions? Let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear it. Cheers!
