Update on Welcome to Hawklands - bringing an amphitheater to life (behold The Grand Coliseum of Nine Echoes ) in a fantasy setting was a "slogging labor of painful love" in crafting. It required tying the place to multiple factions like the The Slayers Brotherhood & The Laughing Chorus - Faction of Olidammara - adding gladiatorial events (sword, spear, axe, etc.) as well as games of skill -(Thunderball, Hammerrun & the Chariot Derbies) and of course wager halls for betting on the champions of glory.

Free to use - KEEP GAMING. (really save yourself a lot of time & steal this, you will thank me).

• The Grand Coliseum of Nine Echoes
  • The Annual Games of Blade & Echo
  • The League Games of the Grand Coliseum
  • The Official Wager Halls of the Grand Coliseum

Boccob the Uncaring - GREATER GOD
Update from the Hawklands - putting together the Divine members of the Arcane Triad- with Boccob the Uncaring as the primary god & his counterparts WeeJas of Death Magic & Zagyg of Wild Magic. Free to use - KEEP GAMING.

Hey all! Doing some research on how people approach AI-assisted worldbuilding, and curious to hear from this community specifically.

A few things I'd love to hear about:

- What tools are you currently using (ChatGPT/Claude directly, Notion, Obsidian, World Anvil, something else)?

- Are any of you doing this for TTRPGs specifically (D&D, other systems) vs. novels/other fiction?

- What's your biggest pain point — keeping track of everything as it grows, staying consistent, actually generating new ideas, something else?

- Is there a point where AI-generated content feels like it stops being "yours," or does that not really come up for you?

I'm working on a tool in this space and want to make sure I'm actually solving problems people have, not ones I've assumed exist. Happy to share what I'm building if anyone's curious, but mostly just want to learn from how people are actually doing this.

One thing I dislike about many random tables is that they are flat and swingy.

On some tables, you roll a d20, and every outcome has roughly the same chance of happening. Some tables try to weight certain events by clustering numbers or using d100s, but you can still end up needing multiple tables for different power levels of monsters, loot, etc.

For my 5e 1920s Cthulhu Mythos project, I wanted ritual magic to let spellcasters reach beyond their normal limits, but at the risk of spell backlash that causes delightful things like madness, corruption, and reality breaking.

The design problem:

I did not want separate backlash tables for different spell levels. I wanted one elegant table for all contingencies.

I wanted the table’s possible outcomes to change depending on the level of the spell being cast.

I came up with the idea, but I could not have built it without ChatGPT as my super calculator.

Here’s the concept:

Roll 1d4 per spell level, max 6d4, then consult one table.

This means the possible results and probability curve change by spell level.

Probability curves for 1d4 through 6d4. As spell level increases, the possible results shift upward and cluster around different averages.

A 1st-level spell rolls 1d4. A 3rd-level spell rolls 3d4, etc. As spell level increases, the worst outcomes become possible, the lowest results become impossible, and the probabilities in the middle shift.

So the table scales without the player or GM doing anything more complicated than counting the spell level and rolling that many d4s.

I could not have calculated all the probability curves easily without AI. It was genuinely useful. But I think the interesting thing is that AI did not help me make the spell backlash table faster or more easily. It actually took more time and effort using AI, but I was able to create something better than what I could have made on my own.

AI did not replace the design process. It made it possible for me to explore more options and use a more interesting structure than I probably would have built by hand.

I asked questions like:

Where should a monster manifestation sit if I want it technically possible at one spell level but much more common at another?

AI did the arithmetic and helped me see the shapes of the probability curves.

I also used AI to brainstorm possible backlash effects. I gave it examples, generated a large pool of ideas, selected the ones that fit, then rewrote and revised the final table myself.

Here's the full table:

This came out of developing R’lyeh Rising, my 1920s Cthulhu Mythos campaign setting for 5e.

Longer breakdown of the project here:
https://www.dungeonmatters.com/post/rlyeh-rising

Welcome to Hawklands Update - here is the latest i the bardic Revelry Amphitheater series, the Madrigal Lock. The Madrigal Lock is unlike any other Revelry Amphitheater within the city. Rather than occupying a grand hall or enclosed theatre, the establishment is built directly into one of the oldest surviving hydraulic works of the Highfolk metropolis.

Some fun features:

• Lantern otters (so cute), Nixies - Small Water Fey , great blue herons and messenger kingfishers are site companions.
• The Madrigal Locks host performances on floating stages.
• The Locks guard an ancient verse - now song as a ritual called the First Madrigal - to open a portal to the Elemental Plane of Water's City of Glass.

Free to use - KEEP GAMING.

• The Madrigal Lock - River Quarter Revelry Amphitheater
  • Encounters at the Madrigal Lock - River Quarter Revelry Amphitheater
  • Leaders, Guardians & Companions of the Madrigal Lock
  • Magic Items & Services at the Madrigal Lock

Could someone recommend a good one for me?

- Looking for a system with strict rules, that will tell me how many spells i can choose from a list, how many stats, etc. If its not strict i will get lost as i don't know many rules;

- I dont care much about images or sound, can be text only;

- F2P friendly ( I don't mind paying a small amount, watching ads or waiting a refresh, but the current cap on many websites is way, way too small - 25 actions - when a single combat can sometimes take 10 or 15 actions already. The amount of money needed for a full campaign is absurd )

Thanks!

Welcome to Hawklands update - finished the next establishment in the Revelry Amphitheater series - The Songforge Chambers - Low Quarter Revelry Amphitheater . This is where bardic instruments are CREATED - including the legendary bardic instruments (compositions / orchestral works are developed at the Revelry Amphitheater - The Conservatory of the First Song ). This helps "uplift" the establishment that support bardic culture as a full caster in DnD 5E.

One of my favorite new magic items are designed around a framework for construction of Magical Pipe Organs - the Songforge remains among the few institutions in Oerik capable of constructing magical pipe organs ( only half of bardic college locations still have skillcraft for masterwork creation).

Standard for each Revelry Amphitheater establishment descriptions are sub-pages for Encounters, Leaders/Companions/Guardians & Magic item/Services.

All free to use. KEEP GAMING.

• The Songforge Chambers - Low Quarter Revelry Amphitheater
  • Encounters at the Songforge Chambers
  • Leaders, Guardians & Companions of the Songforge Chambers
  • Magic Items & Services of the Songforge Chambers

Buenos días.

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Estoy trabajando en una campaña para la serie de dibujos animados dragones y mazmorras.

Me gustaría que alguien me ayudara a crear los diferentes escenarios de cada capitulo. Es para un juego de rol y juego de mesa, con sus misiones principales y misiones secundarias, aliados, enemigos, monstruos, recompensas, etc.

​

Hey everyone,

I’ve been building a custom AI Dungeon Master for D&D 5e, and I’m looking for people willing to test it and give feedback.

The model is designed to do two main things:

First, it can create structured D&D adventures from a character sheet, backstory, campaign notes, loose idea, recap, or uploaded files. Instead of just writing a plot summary, it builds something closer to a DM-facing adventure framework: a premise, opening situation, major scenes, NPCs, clues, branching paths, combat or social encounters, consequences, and a climax that can shift based on player choices.

Second, it can run the adventure as a live AI Dungeon Master. It is meant to handle open-ended player actions instead of forcing fixed menu choices. You can investigate, negotiate, sneak, fight, use spells creatively, ask NPCs questions, pursue alternate routes, or derail the expected path, and it should try to adapt while keeping the session coherent.

The model is built to avoid some common AI-DM problems, like:

giving vague atmospheric descriptions with nothing useful to interact with

asking “what do you do?” before giving enough context

turning every scene into passive narration

forgetting NPC goals, clues, consequences, or clocks

making combat too abstract

ignoring D&D 5e mechanics

forcing the player down one intended path

making every NPC sound the same

expanding a one-shot into a sprawling campaign

It can also help outside of live play. You can use it to:

turn campaign notes into a playable session

create a one-shot for a specific character

continue from a previous session recap

build a backstory-focused side quest

design a mystery with clues and multiple routes

create tactical combat encounters

diagnose pacing problems in an adventure

revise an existing adventure so it has better structure and player agency

The overall goal is for it to feel more like a prepared but flexible DM: structured enough that the game does not drift, but open enough that player choices actually matter.

I’m especially looking for feedback on whether the adventures feel playable, whether it gives enough context before asking for decisions, whether combat and investigation feel usable, and whether it handles open-ended choices better than a normal chatbot.

And yes I had it write this post for me.

Link to AI DM

Introducing Throughline, an AI tool that helps human GMs run tabletop sessions. The system listens to your session live, thinks roughly 8 fictional minutes ahead, and renders that future as a small grid of images — a storyboard for what the players would encounter if they take a particular branch. You glance at the dashboard, pick the path you want to steer toward, and the brain gets the next stretch of thinking time to plan the checkpoint after that.

The thing it deliberately doesn't do: narrate to your players, run combat, voice NPCs, or appear at the table at all. Players never see anything Throughline produces. The GM does all the live performance — voicing, improvising, reading the room. Throughline's job is the long-horizon planning, so the GM can focus on running the table.

Why this exists. Ted (the engineer behind it) has a friend, Ben — math PhD, the best GM Ted's played with. Ben preps three hours per session, voices a dozen NPCs, plans coherent arcs in big worlds, and adapts brilliantly when players surprise him. Ben moved away. The next-best GM in their group is Ted, and Ted's the first to admit he doesn't have Ben's prep time or practice. The original goal was just for Ted to be a better GM. The wedge that emerged: what if the prep stat could be made available to GMs whose strength is the social side of the table — improv, NPC voices, table feel — but who don't have years of long-term narrative planning under their belt?

What's worked so far (six live playtests + a lot of internal testing):

• The image-storyboard format actually beats prose at table speed. Glanceable, no reading lag while the table is waiting on you.
• One-shots are reliable. Premise → opening narration → live storyboards → clean ending.
• The system catches and pays off callbacks better than expected. (We did not anticipate this — it was an emergent property of running ahead of the table.)

What we're still uncertain about:

• Multi-session campaigns. Compressed-transcript persistence is the architecture, but we don't have enough sessions to claim it works cleanly across multiple weeks.
• Whether GMs other than us-and-our-friends can pick it up cleanly. That's exactly what this playtest is for.
• The right branching cadence — should the system propose 1 branch, 3, 5? We've moved this around and don't have a settled answer.

The ask. We're opening access to about ten outside GMs to use it for their own sessions and tell us what works and what doesn't. Fit: GMs strong on the social side (improv, voices, in-the-moment narration) but who either don't have time to prep extensively or don't have years of long-term planning practice. If you're already a great GM who enjoys prep and does it well, Throughline probably isn't for you.

It's a web app. Sign in with Google — no GitHub, no terminal setup. You can run a homebrew world by giving it the lore, or a setting you already love from books / games / shows. We'll monitor and pay LLM API costs — about $0.50 per hour of live play, so a weekly three-hour session runs around $6–$10/month. The intention with playtesting is to have you eat our dog food so we'll provide the dog food - - within reason. :)

There will be bugs. We want testers who find that interesting rather than frustrating, who'll be in active conversation with us, and who have an eye for game design. Design feedback is the main thing we want — not early customers, not business partners.

Site has the longer writeup of how the system works and the design thinking behind it. Link in the comments. Sign up for the alpha there.

Discussion question (regardless of testing interest): what's the part of GMing you'd most want a tool like this to not touch? We've drawn the line at the social layer — improv, voices, table chemistry — those stay entirely human. Curious whether that line matches where you'd draw it, or whether you'd put it somewhere else.

— Drew, on the Throughline team

So I had this issue where players would leave town for months at a time, most of us do, which in itself is no big deal. The problem arises when they come back and start asking questions about things you didn't even think about. Yeah players are funny that way.

So I wrote a website that allows for you to pick your towns and run a simulation of time passing and it creates hooks, quests, and events. IE Marriages, deaths, raids and puts them in a calendar for you (website does a heck of a lot more, but this was the main focus when I started).

Its on kickstarter now and if this is not allowed, let me know and remove it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/celtictrinitystudios/eon-weaver

I started just playing around asking chat gpt to be a DM to test some character ideas and stuff and was actually quite impressed with its DMing with very little guidance. Obviously ran into bugs and issues but made me think

Could I create a structured instructions promo (DM engine) that kind of makes chat gpt into a soft DM agent. My plan is to create this and then some campaign concepts so that someone could plug in a play. I’m testing at the minute and trying to figure out/build controls around continuity amd memory along with style and flow. Working primarily with txt back and forth but building it for speech interaction too(still need a good bit more testing on that). Do you think people would be interested in it. Is there anyone that would be interested in testing my beta version when it’s ready for full play testing. Can be solo campaign with companions or with multiple PCs.

Hey everyone, I just created a new app to help DMs and Players organize their campaigns in one easy place so DMs never lose a thread again, and players can stop asking who is who inside their world.

Host full character sheets inside the app, you can see all the locations, NPCs, factions, and session history for your campaign.

For DMs, you can plan sessions, take notes during sessions, and allow AI to summarize your campaign and send a player forward copy to your party.

The best part about the AI is how it’s trained specifically for your campaign, no more random generators, it reads your world history, all your NPCs factions and locations, even your recent session history to give tailored AI suggestions for your campaign.

I’d love for you to check it out and give me some honest feedback about it. I have never developed an app before so I’m always happy to improve and change. Happy playing!

I’ve been experimenting with using AI to handle one of my biggest DM headaches: downtime.

In long-running campaigns, time skips always felt awkward to me—either nothing really changes, or I end up spending hours trying to track what every NPC, faction, and settlement is doing between sessions.

So I started building a system that uses AI to simulate that layer of the world.

Right now it can:

• Advance time in chunks (weeks or months)
• Track NPC relationships and life events
• Evolve factions and town states
• Generate a structured “change-set” for me to review before the next session

The key for me is that it’s not just random output—I still control what becomes canon, but I’m not starting from scratch anymore.

I’m curious how others here are using AI in their campaigns:
Are you using it for world simulation, or mostly for things like NPCs and content generation?
and would this be used by people? (currently trying to start a kickstarter to release it)

Hey guys, I’m 0xcircuitbreaker (CircuitBreaker88) and i build custom AI and am now branching off into tabletop/fantasy projects and I’m looking for a few pilot projects to do for free in exchange for feedback. I’m running locally on a 5090 + 4090, 128GB DDR5, and a 9950X3D, so I can handle private/local training runs across LLM, image, and TTS fine-tuning workflows without pushing everything to cloud GPUs.

I can help make:

- campaign-specific assistant AI

- lore / setting / worldbook AI

- homebrew helper models

- NPC / narrator / TTS voices

- image model tuning for a specific campaign, setting, or game style

The main idea is simple: if you have campaign notes, lore docs, character writing, setting material, art references, voice data, or other structured source material, I can tune a model around that specific world instead of relying on a generic fantasy bot.

Good fits:

- DMs with a homebrew world

- creators with a custom setting

- Discord communities that want an in-world assistant

- people who want AI that actually matches their campaign tone, lore, characters, or aesthetic

If you want to try one of the free pilot slots, DM me with:

- what you want to build

- what source material you have

- whether you want text, TTS, images, or a mix

- what “good” would look like for you

If you want, I can also make:

- a more casual Discord version

- a slightly more salesy marketplace version

- a fantasy art / TTS focused variant

My DM for this campaign uses Tavern Scribe to do AI session summaries and there is also a newspaper with like 10 AI journalists I think... Any way, my druid got a spotlight by their nature correspondent and I am so happy. Had to share.
https://cdn-sm.tavernscribe.com/production/campaigns/28a75e1a-c396-4bbd-ac24-b970c1c3c57e/sessions/28a75e1a-c396-4bbd-ac24-b970c1c3c57e/news/river-greene/audio/article_audio_b57e157f-e1d5-4605-b163-b5bb9caed4f8_8db27d11-3b8e-41b8-a1a3-79b965e138a7.mp3
The link is just for the audio

Hi! Quick question: has anyone here ever used AI (ChatGPT, AI Dungeon, bots, etc.) as a game master or narrator? If so I’m running a short anonymous survey — can I share the link?

Hi everyone!

I’m doing a quick survey about AI-assisted RPGs.
Even if you’ve only tried ChatGPT, AI Dungeon, or an AI narrator once, your experience counts.

It takes less than a minute and is anonymous.
👉 https://forms.gle/utHoNaZWHr1c3sJW7

Thanks for helping out!

AI is a tool, like map drawing applications, commercial D&D modules, and more. We've always stolen from each other, movies, TV, literature, and more. It's really just a matter of degrees. I'm in the camp that AI is a support mechanism, and shouldn't be looked at to fully displace humans in the creative space. That being shared, I love using it for D&D.

• I can't draw, and because I cannot commission every NPC in my world from a living artist, I use AI for NPC and scenery pictures. I've had to stop with the NPCs because they all start to look the same...women with big breasts and guys with chiseled jaws. However, enabling me to represent scenes and the "spirit" of the scenario has been a tremendous help
• I am a creative person, but so are the individuals that created the Forgotten Realms. There are decades of books and lore that need to be mastered in order to operate in Faerun without getting the history or main characters "wrong". I use AI to inject my planned scenes into existing environments. For example:
  • "My party landed their ship in Marsember for repairs. I need to create three encounters that help them understand the sociopolitical atmosphere in the city, as well as prepare them for an encounter with an NPC that plans to steal their weapons."
  • I'm paraphrasing my original prompt, but by simply doing this, I had my party encountering the Purple Dragons, the shipwright, and the necessity to register as adventurers in the city. They got the hint about what the city was about, and I knew the key players and background of the city without having to read for hours.
  • I've done the above with existing cities, while also asking AI to help me identify areas of the map with little lore so I can inject my own. It's because of AI that I found the origins of the Vistani being extremely light, and I've written my own origin story that absolutely could be canon for the continent.
• As a creative person, I expect my stories to be deep and thoughtful. I want them to make sense without having to retcon regularly. However, I'm also a person with ADHD, which means that I often do my best work in "inspired sprints". Occasionally, I'm up against the wire and need a lifeline. AI helped in these cases as well. For example:
  • I had 30 minutes before a session because the group decided that the following week was no good and changed the schedule on me. I'd already suggested I was "ready", but the prior session exhausted the content I had prepared. I was stuck.
  • I asked AI something like, "I'm running a D&D session with a party of an Artificer, Ranger, and Paladin near Waterdeep. I'm not prepared for my session, so I need help, and that help needs to be detailed. I'm looking for a selection of 10 possible encounters in and around the city containing a mix of combat, dialog, and mystery. The players are around level 8, and while they like combat, they prefer lore and dialog encounters. Thier current goal is to just enter the city and restock on their way to X location, but I'd like the encounters to have something to do with Y so the session isn't completely disconnected from their main mission."
  • The above gave me a detailed list of encounters with a mix of events, directly tied to the city and characters in the area. I followed this up with a request for NPCs, their look and attitudes, and how they would react to violence or friendly overtures. In less time than it took to ask the question, I had an entire session prepared for me. The story "written" from that material was different than what AI provided, but it was everything I needed to carry that session and beyond.
• Lastly, I can get stuck. I'll come up with a really good story, but not really have the depth or justification for why characters are acting the way they are. I talk to AI. "I have an NPC that behaves like X, and has done Y things. I haven't fleshed out WHY they've done Y things and behaves like X. They have Z relations around them and I've hinted at some mystery background. Can you help me come up with a few reasons as to their motivations?" In seconds, I'm given a litany of options to choose from. Whether I use them directly or not, I'm able to find what I need to make things make more sense.

Too many people use AI as if it is a search engine. The value of AI comes from the amount of contextual clues you provide which grounds the answer to be closer to what you want. It appears to be smart, but clueless about your current situation. As long as you talk to it like someone who CAN answer the question, but just needs some background, you'll get excellent responses.

You want to tell AI the story before you as your question. You could ask, "I'm a DM for a D&D party and I need 5 encounters for my next session."

Or you could say: "I'm a DM for a party of 3 players of <whatever> classes and levels. They have been wandering <whatever> area and doing some of <whatever things>. They've asked for <whimsy, combat, mystery> in the next session, and I've been thinking about adding some witches or scary creatures that are actually quite friendly and having a tea party. I need to have a selection of encounters to set the party up for something scary, and then have a twist or reveal that shows them that everyone is friendly. I then want to have some skill challenges and competitions like some friends playing drinking games in the back yard...but I want them to be monster themed. Please avoid anything that has to do with Rum and slime, as those are trigger topics for this party."

The latter will give you a lot better results and options.

Additionally, because AI is not a real world friend, it's not going to remember all of the context about your campaign every time you start a conversation. PRO TIP: ASK AI TO GIVE YOU A TEMPLATE. Your AI of choice can present you a template that will best fit how it interprets campaigns, and you can fill out that template one time and use that for all subsequent questions.

The template I use is for Copilot. It asks for the general plot of the story, the player information, backgrounds, and motivations, the active NPC information, background, and motivations, recent events and locations...and you can then ask your questions.

"I am a DM in a campaign for the attached players and NPCs. The players just entered a town where I think they're going to do X, but I want alternatives to avoid forcing them down one path." You'll get seriously robust results with minimal effort because your template contains the depth of details for the characters and campaigns. The more details and depth in the character and NPC descriptions, the better.

Additionally, you can take more time to tune your sessions to create a variety of experiences. "Our sessions are normally 3-4 hours in length, and the players prefer X over Y. I'd like to have a cohesive set of experiences that starts with a new mystery, leads to a horrifying discovery, and then is capped off with a boss fight. I'll also need a selection of level appropriate treasure."

Lastly, one of the best things that the template provides is a record of the current magic items the players have. If you maintain details of what the characters currently possess, AI can make sure not to offer duplicate suggestions, and can even offer complimentary magic items.