I'm a big fan of @slyflourish@ttrpg.network's trick of preparing secrets, clues, or general plot point revelations in advance and without anticipating the context of where or how they will be revealed. That is, you just prepare a list of ten facts or details that will engage the players if and when they learn them, and you improvise how they learn them at the table. It's great for when a player character unexpectedly goes to the library to aimlessly look for clues, or the PCs start talking with an NPC and you need to drop some nugget of info to make the conversation feel worthwhile.

https://slyflourish.com/sharing_secrets.html

So, far and away the greatest utility I have found for ChatGPT is in two areas:

• Brainstorming ideas like a random generator or book of tables. ChatGPT can be especially helpful with brainstorming ideas if your campaign doesn't fit neatly into traditional genres or stories typically featured in role-playing games.
• Brainstorming how to tie up loose plot threads. This is beyond the ability of most traditional tools or aids to help with, and it's a godsend if (like me) you often lay down clues long before you've fully worked out all the details of the mystery.

General Brainstorming

ChatGPT is pretty good at just coming up with ideas for your campaign in general. I'm talking about stuff like adventure ideas, encounter ideas, descriptive details of rooms, etc. It's not great, though, and its output can feel pretty generic compared to material like Raging Swan Press which has entire books full of wonderfully evocative tables great for filling environments and dungeons with detail. There's also stuff like this Random Adventure Generator by @slyfourish@ttrpg.network or this other Random Adventure Generator by donjon which are both probably just as good or better than ChatGPT in general at brainstorming adventure ideas.

Where ChatGPT shines however is that you can give it basically arbitrary thematic or fictional constraints and tell it to generate ideas within that context. ChatGPT is mediocre at generic D&D or traditional fantasy, but my campaign isn't a typical D&D campaign world, and as a result ChatGPT is basically the only random generator that can reliably generate ideas that are actually useful for my campaign. In essence, ChatGPT is a random generator I can tailor to my campaign world.

Here's an example below of how I might use ChatGPT for this. In practice, I often like to "prime" it with details of the major characters of my campaign as well. It's not brilliant, and you can see in many places it's effectively repeating back themes or ideas that I gave it in the first place, but it's nonetheless incredibly useful compared to the kind of stuff I tend to get back from other random generators that focus on generic fantasy content.

My biggest challenge with this kind of usage of ChatGPT is that it tends towards sounding like a back-of-the-book summary of a plot, often generalizing or otherwise glossing over the specific details that I'm preclisely interested in. The first response to my prompt in the example is a great demonstration of this, which is why you'll see I have to follow up by prompting it for specifics about the macguffins and the cast of characters.

Tying Up Plot Threads

ChatGPT can be really helpful with brainstorming not just general ideas but specific plot points for your adventures and campaigns. I don't know how to explain this well outside of sharing another example but the gist is that you give ChatGPT a lot of detail about your campaign and its themes, characters, world, and setting, and then explain how there's a "gap" in the story somewhere and ask it to brainstorm how to fill it. In my example here, the "gap" is that I'm missing a clue to deliver some critical information, but I've also used it successfully for other things like:

• "Why or how would character ABC be connected to mysterious phenomena XYZ?"

• "Which of these characters could have summoned the monster, and why?"

• *"What is the nefarious scheme this character is planning (which I hinted at in a prior session)?"

I was a bit bummed to see that Mike didn't mention any of the Fediverse options but honestly Lemmy and kbin are still cooking as technologies so I don't exactly fault him. I was surprised to hear him skeptical of Patreon—the same incentives are there, surely, but I wasn't aware of any recent actions they had taken.

Replacing Discord will definitely be painful if/when it comes.

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.)

I found my two groups (both online, play vis VTT) through the /r/lfg community on Reddit. Not sure where I would look now.

I feel (rightly & legitimately) called out 😭 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! that I more likely couldn't switch systems without home brewing everything out the wazoo 😓

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.

I feel like Go then Roll is more typical in (at least modern) d&d, which is my primary experience with role-playing. I'm actually really drawn to giving players more creative control over the scenario but I've found it's not uncommon for players to be reluctant to assume that kind of control. The one exception is when there is a critical success with an attack or an otherwise crazy high roll on some skill check; in those cases, they universally seem to appreciate narrating their over-the-top accomplishment.

But when you start handing over the reins of the larger narrative? Or inviting them to have some creative control of the setting and world? That seems to be challenging to some players' suspension of disbelief, like they're seeing the man behind the curtain (indeed, being invited behind it themelves) when they wanted the wizard. Obviously d&d doesn't really have a ton of support for these kinds of interactions at the table, so it's perhaps not too surprising that players feel like they're in uncharted territory when I spring it on them.

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?

I'm playing in a Curse of Strahd game right now. I had actually bought the module some months ago and it's sheer luck that I didn't get around to reading it before my Sunday GM decided to run it. All I know is it has a big reputation as a celebrated module, so we'll see 🤷

I'm also running a D&D 5e game set in my own homebrew setting & story. I'm basically trying to cram as much occult mystery, political intrigue, and high society manners and drama as I can into it, but I'm leaving myself open to the prospect D&D simply might not be cut out as a system for what I'm interested in. So I might be forced to transition to something else eventually, but so far so good for the most part. I've had more than a few sessions already without any combat, and I know I'm a bit over the skis of the rules at that point, but players seem to be enjoying it; and ChatGPT has been a godsend with helping me patch together loose plot threads and brainstorm explanations such as e.g. why there's a dungeon full of gelatinous cubes beneath the count's country estate.

Ah that's fair. I mean, at the time you recorded the video I couldn't have named any kbin or Lemmy groups that were even rpg focused (I didn't know any either) so it would have been by far the most embryonic of the options you listed. We're watching the plane get built mid-flight! Credit to the other shout outs you gave, though; I did notice them at the time and they do all present legit alternatives for controlling your life on the internet.

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"

Hot damn that game sounds rad

The two I would recommend are both centered around GM prep:

• The Lazy Dungeon Master by Mike Shea (@slyflourish@ttrpg.network , @slyflourish@chirp.enworld.org )
• Never Unprepared by Phil Vecchione (@dnaphil@dice.camp)

I don't think either of these are perfect, but they both offer really good, actionable advice. The philosophies/systems described in these two don't naturally mesh, and I think that's a plus. Every GM needs to figure out for themselves how to prepare to run a game, because the things each GM needs are unique. I think having two books outline pretty drastically different approaches can help you triangulate your own needs and methods

While I appreciate the change as it allows me to actually login, there's been a lot of issues with spam accounts reported at a lot of Lemmy and kbin instances. For example: https://mstdn.social/@stux/110582137637837383

Huh. In the list with "fastest growing #Lemmy instances" are only spam instances now

I'm currently creating an instance ban list for Geddit to block those instances if they don't take action.. This is a disaster waiting to happen

...

Lemmy ‘total users’ has now reached the million..

That’s ~200K new spam accounts in the past hours or so 🙀

All to say, anything you can do to fix the email issue and get email verification back on would be appreciated 🙏

You can see a list of the communities here: https://ttrpg.network/communities

Flee, Mortals! is so excellent and makes me so sad that it's likely to be the only monster book MCDM produces 😭

I'm a fan of the 3rd party campaign module Odyssey of the Dragonlords and it's hilarious how much this is the consensus on the dedicated Discord community for that adventure. Everyone loves the bones of the module, but everyone also agrees it needs a lot of love and polish.

I can understand the skepticism, but if helps things up at all, I would clarify that I think exceedingly few people who use random tables (even all the way back to the 70s) really use them as a final say in what's happening next. Most who use it probably appreciate it more as a way of dislodging tired tropes and tricks they find themselves always falling back on.

I think of it as one more source of inspiration to keep in your toolbox, alongside the evergreen "steal from media you like." That said, ymmv as with all things in life, and the best prep is the one that works for you!

I think I don't run into the conversational issues as often but I might be more willing than most GMs to retcon that a given NPC has secret info that explains why they aren't persuaded by a given interaction. When it's a raw attempt to ingratiate with an NPC, I always find the line of "hmm, you said all right words but this seems a bit too convenient or neat and they suspect you have an ulterior motive" to work decently well.

Of course, it could always be that I'm just bad at detecting my own bullshit 😅 Either way, on the whole, I'm very drawn to more collaborative models of role-playing and letting the players have more reign of the narrative, but I do feel like they need to be coaxed into the mindset. So many players are used to playing RPGs as though they are piloting their characters like mechs in an imagined environment—very simulationist, in other words. I want to play more like a writing room of screenwriters workshoping a story. I just need to find systems and mechanics that let players dip their toes in the water before they're asked to swim.