ChatGPT has been a lifeline for me as a GM with little spare time to prep and far too grand ambitions for the scale and scope of (D&D) campaign I want to run. I’m curious how other GMs have found ChatGPT and similar AI tools useful or helpful in running their own games. I’ll share my own workflow below as a comment, and I hope others find it useful. I’m especially interested in any ChatGPT prompts you have found worthwhile, and you can see some of my own prompts in the examples I’ll share shortly.
I use ChatGPT (GPT4 version) for my homebrew campaign. I use it for generating stat blocks, adding filler details to settings I came up with (“describe this room with x y and z in it and foreshadow this thing at the end of the adventure”), and brainstorming options for how the plot could go going forward.
My party is 6 players, so there are a lot of individual subplots and backstories to keep track of. When I pitch new ideas to ChatGPT after refreshing it on the campaign’s context, it often will point out themes that would be good to highlight so I can tie some new event or setting into one or more characters’ backstories or emotional insecurities. It’s startlingly good at managing the complex interplay of ideas.
Everything else I just improv, so basically I use it for prep and setting the scene when entering a new location.