Bridging Mythos and Tech: Enhancing Dungeons & Dragons Characters with GPT & DALL-E

Creating characters for D&D is one of the most exciting parts of preparing for a game. Whether it’s a one-shot or a full-length campaign, designing a good character plays a part in setting the tone for the game. Using AI, you can make the character-creation process much quicker and a lot more satisfying.

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DALL-E and ChatGPT are both free AI tools by OpenAI you can use to help create your character. Here, we’ll show you how to use both of them to bring out the character you have in your head.

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How to Use ChatGPT to Create D&D Characters

The most popular chat AI so far, there’s a reason ChatGPT’s alternatives aren’t as trendy as it is. It’s trained on a large data set, can understand context, and has a simulation of creativity you can use when creating your character.

In our example, we’ll be creating a two-handed weapon-wielding Dragonborn Paladin for the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure.

For Background and Backstory

Since ChatGPT is familiar with any popular D&D 5e module or adventure, you can save a lot of time by asking your questions directly to the chat instead of googling it. This way, you have a good lore-friendly way to tie in your new character. In our case, we asked it to briefly describe the Lost Mine of Phandelver and the lore surrounding the Sword Coast.

After establishing the story surrounding the Lost Mine, we asked ChatGPT to create a background and backstory for why a Dragonborn Paladin will take up the beginning quest of an escort for hire. And it generated a long and coherent story using the lore of Faerun.

However, ChatGPT isn’t very good with names. The name it generated for our Dragonborn was Draconis, which isn’t very original. You can prompt it to give you ideas for better names or just come up with your own instead. We ended up renaming the Dragonborn Anomander Rake.

If you’re playing a homebrew campaign, type in as much as you know about the lore for ChatGPT and ask it to generate a relevant backstory and background for your character. You can keep prompting it till you find something you like.

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For Character Description

Now that you have a race, name, class, backstory, and background for your character, it’s time to get ChatGPT to cook up a detailed description. When typing this prompt, mention everything you want it to consider when creating the description, like unique characteristics such as scars, clothing, weapons, etc.

Our prompt was: “So we need a description for Anomander Rake. What we know is that he’s a chromatic dragonborn, and he is a paladin. He is male, and he is in level 1. Based on this, what would he look like?” ChatGPT came up with black iridescent scales, golden eyes, and red-tipped horns. It also came up with voice timbre and the aura of Anomader Rake as a Paladin of Justice.

To Determine Character Traits and NPC Attributes

As an extension of the character’s description, you can ask ChatGPT to create your character’s traits and then use them as is or as inspiration for how your character would behave. Anomander Rake, as a Dragonborn Paladin of Justice, is a determined devout with a strong sense of righteousness with the fatal flaw of being adamantly stubborn. ChatGPT helped us come up with that.

If you would like an NPC character for your campaign, you could also use ChatGPT to generate stats based on what role they’ll be performing. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to generate attributes and a character sheet for a giant dragonfly if your players should ever encounter one in battle.

However, while generating attributes for an NPC, you should remember to tell ChatGPT to balance it according to the level of the players who will be facing the NPC. As the dungeon master, you should still make sure it’s balanced, but it would do a fairly decent job of trying to balance it.

How to Use DALL-E 2 to Create D&D Characters

DALL-E is a Generative Pre-Trained (GPT) AI developed by OpenAI that changes your text to images. Combined with all the information you have curated from ChatGPT, you can string together a very detailed description of your D&D character. Tell ChatGPT to create a prompt you can give to DALL-E.

Here’s what our prompt looks like: “Based on all the descriptions of Anomander Rake in this chat, can you create a prompt I can give DALL-E for an accurate representation of what he’d look like?”

And here is the result: “Create an image of a male Chromatic Dragonborn Paladin named Anomander Rake. He stands tall at 6 and a half feet with a strong and muscular build. His scales are obsidian black, with occasional iridescent sheen. He has piercing gold-colored eyes and a prominent brow ridge. A pair of curving horns extend from the sides of his head, shimmering with a dark bronze to fiery red gradient. Between the horns, there is a crest of shorter spines. He wears a suit of polished plate armor with engravings representing his devotion to Bahamut. A flowing crimson cape, emblazoned with the emblem of the Order of the Silver Wing, trails behind him. He wields a mighty warhammer with a polished steel head and a leather-wrapped grip. Show him emanating an aura of strength, righteousness, and determination.”

The prompt might be too long for DALL-E 2, but you can still ask ChatGPT to shorten it.

To Create a Character Image

If you’re new to it, you should first learn how to use DALL-E 2 so you know how to create an account and be aware of its workings. Once that’s done, you should add a few key things to the description you give DALL-E.

• Add “create a digital art of” and then the rest of your description. This will lead to higher-quality images.
• If you want a comic-style or anime-style character, you should specify that (but still leave “digital art” in the prompt).
• Specify “portrait” if you want a bust image. Doing this will leave less room for DALL-E 2 to mess up the rest of the image.

If you’re unhappy with the results, you can keep clickingGenerate to create more images. If there’s an image close to what you want, click it and selectVariations so that DALL-E can create more like that. If you find something you like, select it and click theDownload button (represented by a download arrow) on the top right of the image. All your previously generated images are saved on the right menu, so don’t worry about losing them.

All images you download from DALL-E have watermarks.

Use AI to Enhance All Facets of Your Game

It doesn’t have to stop at characters; you can use AI to enhance all parts of your game. ChatGPT can be immensely useful for descriptions, loot, rule lawyering, and all the other time-consuming things that a Dungeon Master has to juggle during a game.

However, AI is still limited, and discretion is advised. Remember to temper AI decisions with human judgment and expertise. That will lead to better results.

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