At the end of one of our weekly four-hour game sessions, one of our players told us they couldn't make the next game due to real-life events. Rather than skipping the week, my remaining group of three and I decided to do a one-shot. Usually, we jump into another game system, but this time we wanted to stay within the world of our two-year-long D&D Eberron campaign, specifically running a high-level "flashback" episode that would carry genuine narrative weight in the present day.
In the past, this decision would have been immediately followed by a wave of anxiety. A Level 12 one-shot that ties into two years of specific party lore? I would have spent days digging through folders on Google Drive, cross-referencing wiki articles, and frantically re-reading sourcebooks just to find a narrative niche that wouldn't contradict established canon.
I love world-building, but with only a week to prep, I didn't have the luxury of time. It would likely take me a week to refresh my memory on all the areas we could lean into, let alone design a balanced session around them.
But luckily, I have everything on ScriptoriumGM. Instead of panic, I got excited. I knew I could create this game in around an hour, the entire process, because various AI applications I use allow me to stop being the librarian of my own world, endlessly searching for facts, and finally become the creative director. The system already knew the connections. I just needed to get creative.
Here is how I used AI to turn a week of stress into an afternoon of epic creative flow.
Starting with the Concept
It all starts with figuring out the concept. The point of RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) is that it can read through and contextualise all my notes I've taught it. I've used Obsidian in the past, which is an excellent tool for keeping things like D&D notes organised, but I've found I get just as much value from ScriptoriumGM, as it gives me the same structure, but can also read my notes and help me prep. So I have everything neatly laid out, my NPCs, my world notes, my campaign reference book, all my characters, and all the minor notes I've kept along the way, like the names of the Demon Overlords trapped in Khyber (Eberron's version of Hell).
And so, with this initial prompt, I got some ideas:
We have a player unable to make the next game, so as a fun side adventure, we've decided to run a game set in the distant past, with another set of prophesied. The game will need to take place over 4 hours, and start with combat, but be cinematic, and designed for three level 12 characters. Ideally, this would relate to the story we have in the future, somehow, as well. Could you suggest a few fun ideas that I can work on?
It gave me four ideas, which all had great detail. I'll add the one I decided on:
1. The Last Stand of the Gatekeepers
Setting: Shadow Marches, approximately 9,000 years ago during the daelkyr invasion
Premise: The players take on the roles of powerful Gatekeeper druids and their allies who must perform a critical ritual to seal away a daelkyr lord. The adventure begins with an immediate battle against aberrations and cultists trying to stop them.
Connection to Main Campaign: The ritual site could be the same location your current party is exploring, because the seals are now weakening in your main timeline, causing aberrations to emerge. The characters might discover writings or artifacts left by these ancient heroes.
Structure:
- Opening combat against aberrations and cultists
- Journey through a corrupted landscape where reality itself is warping
- Final confrontation at a manifest zone where they must complete the ritual while fighting the daelkyr's most powerful servants
The other ideas were just as good, and I could have used any of them to make the game.
The Power of Context-Aware AI
With a more general AI like ChatGPT, I would have gotten something much more generic. It wouldn't have picked up that aberrations are emerging in my current campaign, which is in my session notes, or that I have had a large focus on Druidic Factions and realmic influences. But with RAG, using ScriptoriumGM, all of that is an easy background that can fuel some initial sparks of creativity.
I really liked the idea of the link to Xoriat, the realm of madness. I had my spark; it was time to dive deeper.
I create a new note directly in ScriptoriumGM and call it "Session 62.5 - The Daelkyr Invasion" I may change this later, but I'm keen to get going.
Building the Session Structure
I think about the initial structure. I know my players; they can get through three, maybe four scenes in a four-hour game, and I need to focus on getting the most out of this. I decide on a structure that could work: start with a minor combat, let them get a feel for their new characters, then have a short interlude where they can interact socially, then a final boss battle, and finally a conclusion. Excellent. I have four scenes. A push, but we'll make it work. I drop that structure into my session prep notes.
Now I need to figure out how to start this off. How do you introduce a whole world in a few paragraphs, leading up to "Roll Initiative"? I need a little more inspiration, so I turn back to Scriptorium's AI panel and ask about what to start with and how to progress. It gives me some ideas, including an opening scene, and then outlines what it thinks could work. I work with it. It's not telling me how to play. I collaborate, share thoughts, delve into some aspects and negate others.
After some discussions and final thoughts, I have an opening, complete darkness, riding the back of a great dragon, and the sounds of battle below. I transfer it into my session notes and recraft it until it sounds right. I'm even more inspired. But they're diving straight into combat. How do I make this fun and interesting without making it a slog? It needs to be two rounds, max. I need to get into some details with Scriptorium.
Designing Thematic Encounters
Earlier, the system gave me an idea of what we could be fighting:
Opening Scene: Battle at the Breach
The adventure begins with an immediate battle at a manifest zone where Xoriat's influence is spilling through. The heroes arrive just as a Gatekeeper ritual is being disrupted by aberrations and cultists. This battle establishes the stakes and the corruption spreading across the land.
Enemies could include:
- Dolgaunts and dolgrims (twisted goblinoids created by the daelkyr)
- Cultists of the Dragon Below who have been driven mad by Xoriat's influence
- Foulspawn shock troops serving more powerful aberrations
It gives me a good idea of what could work, and I like the Dolgaunts and Dolgrims, so I decide to use them. The RAG system understands the themes of my game, so it generates monsters that work not only as good adversaries but also as specific, narratively interesting ones. No random encounters, story-driven, well-crafted fights that have interesting mechanics or fun options. I am specific, it needs to end in a round or two, but still feel like a good battle. It needs to use some of the players' resources, so they have to prioritise, knowing there's a harder fight coming. It needs to work for their level and character build. The system knows all of this and can give me a thematic, interesting and useful set of creatures in seconds.
Creating Visual Assets
OK, I've got the monsters and the vibe of the fight ready, so I grab some reference images for these creatures online. I have a specific art style I like to use, and I have a subscription to Midjourney, so I use the references and spin up a few interesting creatures, using these prompts:
In the style of speedpainting, a portrait of an aberration creature of Eberron. The portrait is in a ring of red as a portrait border, all on a white background.
I'll then drop it into an editing software like GIMP and remove the background. I also need a battlefield, and I use the description from my intro to get some cool layouts as well, using a prompt like this:
In the style of speedpainting, a top-down, birds-eye view of a set of standing stones in a clearing in an ancient forest. The whole scene is filled with strange geometric light patterns, and the trees closest to the centre are being warped and twisted, light bending in on itself, and extra limbs appearing in octoid and cephalopod forms.
It gives me something to work with. If I had more time, I might use this as a reference and drop into Inkarnate to attempt to recreate the image and add my own elements, especially if I wanted some specific aspects of it, but what it's given me is excellent for this game.
Bringing It All Together
My tokens and map are ready. I want some good music to go with all these battle scenes, so I jump onto Suno to get myself a neat battle song. Suno has a great feature that lets you describe a scene and use an AI tool to generate a musical style for it, which I use regularly. Within a few minutes, I have all my assets ready to go.
I jump into Roll20, our online TTRPG arena, and import all the assets, then use the creature stat blocks I've found online to put them together. I tweak some numbers, like the initial health of my Dolgaunts and Dolgrims, as well as my Mind Flayer, and I'm combat-ready in less than 30 minutes. I have another fight to generate, the one with the Lieutenant of the main bad guy, but I've got his stats already so I go through the same process and come out with a cool battle scene. Two full combat maps, in only 30 minutes, that I find awesome, and I'm sure my players will love.
The Session and Instant Recall
Two days later, I'm in the game with my table. They're having a blast, loving the music, the crazy story, and just generally enjoying the company. Now, luckily, this didn't happen in this game, but let's say one of them had asked me, "Hey, didn't the Daelkyr Banisher come from this time?" Now, I might remember the weapon I gave one of the heroes in our current game, its stats are great, and it has some cool features, but it's been a while since we did anything with it.
I have it in my notes, and in the past would have had to look through a bunch of my reference documents, related to items I'd given the players. Or, worse, not remember quite what the Banisher was, and had to figure that out first. But with Scriptorium, I would just prompt: When did the Daelkyr Banisher come into existence, and how would it affect the people of the world during the war of Xoriat?
The system has all my notes. It knows who has it and everything I've written about it. It would give me the facts I've laid out, then fill in the blanks with some ideas from my world, and other parts of my notes, that I could interpret, integrate or use as inspiration for my answer, and it would happen within seconds. That's the power of the RAG system. It's your logistics, your librarian, your wiki. You get to ask it, and then decide how you want to use that information to make your game shine.
Freedom from the Burden
I've stopped worrying about my game prep. I've made sessions in minutes, and entire campaign worlds over weeks. But I'm no longer afraid of the large number of variables I need to track. I'm not afraid I'm going to contradict myself, or not have the best information at hand, because the system has it all. I've used AI to support my games for almost two years now, and I wouldn't know how to go back, because it's so seamless and feels like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders. I can run three campaigns simultaneously, weekly and bi-weekly, as well as play in another game with detailed notes, all because I've integrated these tools into my arsenal.
A Note on AI at Your Table
As a final thought, my friends and I at our table have had a long conversation about the use of AI in my games. Like every relationship, we've established a few boundaries. Where we draw the line, and how we want to use these tools responsibly and ethically. We try to keep up to date with the way these tools are developing, not only to what they're doing, but also how they're going about it. This has helped us all relax and enjoy the game, knowing where we all stand. Not everyone has the same views about AI at the moment, and it's important to talk about these things at your table.
However, if your table is comfortable, and you're happy to use tools to lighten the burden of note-keeping and open up a wealth of creativity, then I hope you've found this useful, and I wish you all the best for your games.