Augmented Adventures: Strategies to Transform Your Dungeons & Dragons

ChatGPT is the leading chat AI in the world, and it can be a really helpful tool for your D&D games. It has a wealth of information from various sources, and thanks to its generative ability, it can get really creative.

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Here, we’ve highlighted some ways you can use ChatGPT to add a more customized experience to your Dungeon & Dragons game. But you might get a better experience if you opt for the paid version of it since it has fewer restrictions.

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Use ChatGPT for Story and Worldbuilding

Brainstorm ideas for your setting and world using ChatGPT. You can start by embedding your idea as a core part of the prompt and tell the AI to flesh it out in dedicated sections.

In this case, we used ChatGPT to build up an idea for a city set in the clouds and then describe the city in sections divided into architecture, politics, foreign policy, military strength, and historical facts.

You can use this as a good premise to build your own lore and create a plot hook your players can use to get into the campaign.

Also, you can use it to answer impromptu questions about the story players might ask, which you didn’t prepare for. For example, one of the players in our campaign asked an elder about the people who founded the city. It was just a matter of inputting that question into ChatGPT and making the answer part of the lore.

However, ChatGPT isn’t very good with original creativity and won’t be good with naming things. You should come up with names yourself if you wish for more original names.

ChatGPT Is Good at Descriptions

Many Dungeons & Dragons adventures come in ready-made modules with predetermined characters and location descriptions. But we all know most of the real fun games are totally made-up homebrew games everyone is going along with. However, one of the issues with that is how it might be difficult to get an accurate description of a place the game master has no real-life experience with. That’s where AI can come in to help you.

Use ChatGPT to generate descriptions of places you would otherwise have trouble describing accurately. In our campaign, we used ChatGPT to generate the description of a crystal weapons foundry the players found while exploring Tremion, the City on Clouds.

Here’s our prompt: “In this city of clouds called Tremion, there’s a crystal smith foundry that creates crystal weapons of fame for the elite guards. Can you write a detailed description of the crystal foundry, including all the specialized tools a smith would need to create these weapons?”

And the image below contains some parts of ChatGPT’s reply to that prompt.

One advantage of using an advanced virtual tabletop (or VTT) is that you can embed these ChatGPT-generated descriptions as notes into your scenes. This will let the game flow smoothly, and you will get less distracted juggling tabs for descriptions.

If you don’t know which VTT to use for your D&D game, we have a list of the best VTTs for D&D you can work with.

Generating Loot Is a Lot Faster

Generating loot might also be difficult to do on the fly as a game master. It’s hard to come up with balanced and relevant loot items for players unless you have years of improvisational experience.

Craft a prompt that details your players’ level, location, and what creature they are looting (if applicable). Using our campaign as an example, our level 5 players found a hidden chest in Tremion’s foundry.

Here’s what the prompt looked like: “We are playing a D&D 5e game based in the city of Tremion. Our party of 3 level 5 players has found and opened a chest hidden in the crystal foundry. What items, based on their location and their level, did they find in the chest?”

And this is ChatGPT’s result:

ChatGPT Helps With Rule Lawyering

Even the most experienced D&D game masters don’t know all the game’s rules. There are so many classes, subclasses, spells, abilities, and items that it might be impossible to internalize all the rules. You can use ChatGPT to search for and settle debates on rules that pop up while playing a game.

For instance, in D&D 5e, it could be hard to tell when to use a Perception or Investigation roll. However, you could detail the scenario for ChatGPT and ask it which roll is best suited for resolving the action.

In the image above, ChatGPT resolved a scenario where the players had to find a handprint stain in a burgled room as an Investigation roll, not a Perception roll. Additionally, it also gave its reasons why, which could be a great explanation for players who would like to argue.

Calculations and Simulating Results

Game masters are tasked with a lot during the course of the game. One of these things is simulating physics and running calculations to ensure that things happen as they would in a realistic scenario.

Using D&D 5e as an example, longbows in the game have an accurate range of 150ft and a maximum range of 600ft. This means that anything within 151ft to 600ft will have a disadvantage. In our campaign, our rogue tried to shoot a target while standing on a 75ft tower. This target was 140ft away from the base of the tower.

When we typed the scenario into ChatGPT, it was able to detect how far the arrow would have to travel to reach its target. Thanks to this, we quickly figured out that the arrow would travel 158.7ft, which is no longer in the longbow’s accurate range—meaning that the roll had to be made with a disadvantage.

It’s still worth noting that sometimes the AI may generate wrong results, as that’s one of the issues with OpenAI’s ChatGPT . You should still use your discretion as a game master and a human to make the right calls.

For More Immersive NPC Dialogues

Some games can get pretty immersive, and as a game master, you can use ChatGPT to keep up. Players can get lost in character and begin to ask very specific questions to NPCs.

Our bard, Little Jack, spent the last session drilling the tavern’s lutist on how he strings his lute. Since the game master had no clue how to string a lute, we asked ChatGPT to tell us how to do so.

There’s More AI Can Do in Your Games

We only listed here all the things ChatGPT can do. But there are still other free AI products you can use to enhance your games. There are AIs that can generate images that you can use for scenes and characters.

And there are other AI products that are good at making unique sounds and music. Feel free to incorporate these into your game to create a custom, fine-tuned experience.

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Here, we’ve highlighted some ways you can use ChatGPT to add a more customized experience to your Dungeon & Dragons game. But you might get a better experience if you opt for the paid version of it since it has fewer restrictions.

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