dwgill

joined 1 year ago
[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 year ago

I'm a big fan of a small app called UpNote. It's clean and simple with a few power features you can use if you really dig into it. It largely has the same baseline set of features as Obsidian, but it supports syncing across devices out of the box and has a one-time purchase of a lifetime membership.

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't even realize Avatar Legends had a box set ๐Ÿค”

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 year ago

That's honestly the biggest potential upside with Meta's Threads in my opinion: better chance to grab more of the big online personalities (e.g. it's on the record that they've been reaching out to major celebrities) and (at least for the foreseeable future) Meta seems invested in full-featured Fediverse interoperability including account migration, etc.

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think this is an entirely valid perspective. Some people are just overflowing with ideas and the use of ChatGPT (or any kind of aid in inspiration, such as random tables) seems redundant. Just for a point of comparison, my own experience is a combination of (a) I simply enjoy creating some kinds of content more than others, and (b) I don't have enough spare time to personally author all of the content I want for my campaign. With my limited time, I want to focus on authoring the stuff that I enjoy creating and/or the stuff that's going to have the biggest impact. As an example, I'm happy to delegate descriptions of rooms to books of tables or ChatGPT if it means I can focus instead on the lore of the dungeon as a whole or the background & motivations for its overarching villain.

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I highly respect this bit of advice. It's a classic. But I have also found it can assume a certain kind of player, and that there do exist players which seemingly desire a storyline they can just follow. They still want to have agency and make interesting and consequential decisions, but I still find them a bit aimless and lost when I drop them in a sandbox.

In fairness to this received wisdom, I think the phrase interesting situation is doing more work than I have historically given it credit for. It's not just about it being interesting in the abstract, but (at least with some players and parties) presenting a status quo and then introducing (or threatening) the prospect of changing that status quo. I suppose my tl;dr is that with interesting situations inaction should feel like a meaningful choice. The orphanage will burn down, the criminal will escape, the freedom fighter will be caught. (Ideally, you leave the determination of whether they're a criminal or a freedom fighter up to the players.)

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I feel (rightly & legitimately) called out ๐Ÿ˜ญ I literally got two months into my renaissance political intrigue campaign before I discovered Court of Blades. It's a perfect fit for my interests, but now my campaign is lousy with so many d&d tropes (Tieflings! Dhampirs! Changelings! Dragons!) that I more than likely couldn't switch systems without home brewing everything out the wazoo ๐Ÿ˜“

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm fascinated to hear you actually use it during a session! Can you give an example of what that looks like? I can't imagine it without majorly interrupting play personally, so I'd love to hear more about how you make that work

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 year ago

Ah, that makes sense. On one hand I'd think Sci-Fi would be tricky for chatgpt as it's nowhere near as homogenous as fantasy, but on the other hand (as you say) it's kind of anything goes all the same, so that's cool to hear it works out well in the end

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 year ago

That area of "material that's nontrivial to produce but not certain to be read/consumed by the players" might be the most useful place for chatgpt, in retrospect. I don't want to draft an entire story that could well just be ignored, but I can edit or touch up something that an AI gives me.

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It does seem to do pretty well in that regard. Can I ask if your game is a conventional d&d campaign or something else?

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's awesome. ChatGPT seems to do pretty well when your campaign aligns with traditional D&D tropes, but I had no idea it would even generate hex maps! That's wild

[โ€“] dwgill@ttrpg.network 4 points 1 year ago

I have found it useful for handouts as well. I usually need to do a few rounds of editing and back and forth to get details and tone/voice just right, but it's often still easier than writing it from scratch myself. It's also nice for writing something yourself and then having it rewrite it in another voice e.g. "rephrase this letter like a victorian dandee wrote it"

 

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.

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