With the recent surge in AI-related news and tools, people all over the world have found different ways of using them for their everyday activities. When the multi-languaged chatbot ChatGPT was released in 2022, things advanced even further.
If you still haven’t heard about ChatGPT: It’s a chatbot that will generate answers to your prompts, allowing you to have human-like conversations with it and use its vast knowledge of things. The bot can do fascinating things when the right prompts are given.
This has, of course, proved useful in the Dungeon and Dragons community in multiple ways. With a little bit of creativity and understanding of the way prompts should be given to the language model, you’ll have a great asset at your disposal – regardless of your role in the game.
Let’s take a look at all the ways AI bots can be used in Dungeons and Dragons.
Let ChatGPT Be the Dungeon Master (Partially)
Hoping that the language model can run your entire campaign will frustrate you. It should be used as a supplement. I’m saying this now to prevent you from making up ideas of a robot Dungeon Master who will surpass any DM you’ve ever seen before.
The role of the Dungeon Master often includes preparing the story, narrating the creatures and non-player characters that exist in the story, managing the outcome of the character’s actions, etc. These tasks can be performed by a language model like ChatGPT.
To get the best results you should teach the bot about its role and how you want it to respond to your prompts. The bot can then remember the commands and guidelines you’ve provided, which will garner much better results.
Let the bot get into the swing of things, and you’ll have a good Dungeon Master at your disposal. This can be time-consuming the first time – and it depends on how much information you want to feed the bot. Keep in mind that the more guidelines you can provide, the more precise ChatGPT will be.
- Here’s an example of a small prompt fed to the AI prior to starting the adventure.
- Here’s an example of a more thorough prompt fed to the AI prior to starting the adventure.
We’ve had some great campaigns with ChatGPT filling the role of the Dungeon Master, especially when playing with younger crowds or beginners. We’ve also tried using ChatGPT for solo adventures, where a sole player is guided through the game by the Dungeon Master.
But we’ve had to make some tweaks to some of the answers we’re given by the bot.
The AI is still missing a few elements that a human Dungeon Master possesses. Therefore, I think you’ll get the best results by using the chatbot as an assisting Dungeon Master who can generate all sorts of things, such as items, settings, characters, options, challenges, and more.
Here’s an enormous list of ChatGPT prompts for Dungeons and Dragons that you might find useful.
Use ChatGPT to Generate Content For Your Campaign
This is where ChatGPT excels. You will never have to spend time coming up with names for characters, items, cities, quarters, taverns, or anything else you might want to name. You can simply describe the object to ChatGPT and ask it to generate a fitting name.
I prompted ChatGPT to provide a fitting and funny name for a Steampunk character and this is what I was given:
- Amelia Gearhart
- Cornelius Steamfist
- Octavius Copperbeard
- Ada Ironwood
- Nathaniel Clockwinder
- Victoria Steamweaver
- Ezekiel Brassheart
- Imogen Cogsworth
- Leopold Steamwright
- Rosalind Gearspinner.
You can ask ChatGPT to generate NPCs, cities, character ideas, plot twists, background stories, and much more. Here’s an example of a generation given to me when I asked ChatGPT to describe a city in ruin. This is what it came up with:
The city lay in ruins, a haunting reminder of its former glory. The once-grand buildings were now crumbling, their walls cracked and overgrown with vines. The streets were empty, with no sound but the rustling of leaves in the wind.
The city had been abandoned for centuries, with no living thing remaining to tell its story. It was as if time had stood still, frozen in a moment of decay and desolation. The only signs of life were the animals that had made their homes in the ruins, scurrying through the empty streets and seeking shelter in the decaying buildings.
Lastly, I tasked ChatGPT with coming up with a puzzle for me to describe to my party who had just entered an abandoned library during their adventure. Here’s what it came up with:
“As the party of adventurers steps into the abandoned grand library, they are immediately struck by the overwhelming sense of history and knowledge contained within its walls. The shelves are stacked high with ancient tomes, scrolls, and manuscripts, and the air is thick with the dust of ages.
The party soon learns that the library was once a repository of arcane knowledge, with many secrets hidden within its labyrinthine corridors. They are tasked with finding a hidden department that is said to contain a powerful artifact that could help them in their quest.
As they search the library, they come across a locked door with no apparent keyhole or mechanism to open it. However, upon closer inspection, they notice that there are strange symbols etched into the stone around the doorframe.
The symbols seem to represent different magical schools of thought, and the party realizes that they must activate each symbol in the correct order to open the door and reveal the hidden department.
The catch is that each symbol is also linked to a specific riddle or puzzle that the party must solve in order to activate it. The riddles are all related to different aspects of arcane knowledge, such as magic theory, ancient languages, or magical creatures.
For example, one riddle might be: “I am a creature of the night, with wings that can blot out the moon. I am often feared, but can also be a symbol of transformation. What am I?”
The answer, of course, is a bat, and once the party has solved the riddle, they can activate the symbol for the school of illusion magic, which will light up on the doorframe.
Once all the symbols have been activated in the correct order, the door will swing open, revealing the hidden department and the artifact within. However, the riddles and puzzles will be challenging and require the party to use their knowledge and skills to solve them, making it a satisfying and rewarding puzzle for them to overcome.”
I asked ChatGPT for the rest of the riddles and immediately it spat out 5 more great riddles for me to use in the library.
Any Dungeon Master will immediately see how this could be a great resource when planning a campaign. No longer will you run out of ideas with nowhere to turn.
Use ChatGPT For Worldbuilding
Yes, this goes without saying after reading the tip prior to this one, but I still think it’s worth mentioning that it can be used for all your world-building endeavors. From the universe where the story takes place, to the house your character was raised in, and anything in-between.
Can You Learn How To Play DnD With ChatGPT?
Dungeons and Dragons is a game with a plethora of rules, mechanics, classes, and a few different editions. Information about these things is then spread out across a bunch of different books, making it hard for newcomers to learn the ropes at a rapid pace.
Now, one of the best ways to learn the game is to play with someone with superior knowledge of the game who can pace the campaign to fit a group of beginners and teach the rules and mechanics along the way.
ChatGPT can also supplement the rulebooks to a certain degree. You can ask ChatGPT about specific concepts or mechanics and ask it to explain them as if the recipient of the message was a total beginner with no prior knowledge.
You can ask the AI to teach you the basics of Dungeons and Dragons then continue from there. Make sure to include the edition you’re playing as the rules may vary from one edition to the next.
The only issue is that you can’t trust the answers to be correct every single time, meaning you might feel the need to fact-check some of the answers. Most answers tend to be correct though.
Can ChatGPT Single-Handedly Run a DnD Game?
While it can be used to come up with pretty much anything, I think any seasoned player would say that ChatGPT can’t replace the Dungeon Master in every aspect, and I concur. The AI can remember prior conversations and recall pieces of information that you’ve given about the setting, characters, or encounters.
But as of now, I think humans do a better job of putting all the pieces together. Your results will be somewhat limited if you intend to use the bot as your sole Dungeon Master. On the other hand, using ChatGPT as your assistant will prove extremely useful.
We tried having ChatGPT as the sole Dungeon Master in a campaign for the youngsters in our family, and it worked great. It included plot twists, explained concepts, took their age into consideration, and provided age-appropriate content. We monitored the campaign and fed their prompts to the AI, which we then read out loud for them.
So, while the AI was producing the content, we narrated the AI.
Anyone with a little bit of programming knowledge could probably use OpenAI’s API to implement ChatGPT in their own apps to create a sweet toolset for their DnD groups.
What’s Bad About ChatGPT When Using It For DnD?
Sometimes, the AI won’t understand the core intention of your message. You might have a clear image of what you’re relaying to the AI – but you’re then given something back that falls way off what you had hoped for.
You will, at times, get overshadowed by ChatGPT who will answer the prompt and leave very little space for your input or include you in a not-so-satisfying way.
It can also feel like you’re being served the same thing over and over again. Even though the bot will give you different answers, there’s something about them that just feels generic. I think this can be manipulated with the right prompts.