You know that moment mid-session when everything clicks? The players just befriended an NPC you improvised, they discovered a plot hook you want to track, and the rogue found a magic item you need to write up. Three things to document. But you're running a game, and if you alt-tab to your notes now, the momentum dies.
So you open the assistant sidebar and type:
"Create a character note for Mira the fence. Halfling information broker in the Copper District. Greedy but reliable. She helped the party fence the stolen goods from the Blackstone heist."
One click to approve. The note appears in your campaign workspace. You never left the conversation.
That's the simplest version of what the ScriptoriumGM AI assistant does. Here's the full picture.
From Research Tool to Campaign Companion
The AI assistant started as a way to ask questions about your uploaded rulebooks. It was useful for that, but every piece of feedback said the same thing: "I wish it could DO things, not just tell me about them."
So we rebuilt it. The assistant today has eight distinct tools, handles complex multi-step requests, generates images, makes targeted edits to your documents, and remembers your full conversation history so you don't have to repeat yourself. You stay in control of every write operation.
Here's what each tool does and why you'd use it.
What Can the Assistant Actually Do?
Search Your Knowledge Base
When you upload rulebooks, sourcebooks, or reference PDFs to your Campaign Library, the assistant can search through them. It understands what you mean, not just the exact words you type. Ask a question in your own words and it finds the right passages.
Ask "What are the dragonmark abilities in Eberron?" and it pulls the relevant passages from your uploaded Eberron source material. Ask "How does the grapple action work in Pathfinder 2e?" and it finds the answer in your uploaded rules, not from some generic training data.
Every answer comes with citations pointing back to the specific document and page. You can verify anything it tells you.
I use this constantly during prep. Instead of flipping through a 300-page PDF trying to remember where the faction mechanics are described, I just ask. Ten seconds versus ten minutes.
Create Campaign Notes
Describe what you want, and the assistant creates a properly formatted document in your workspace. Characters, locations, items, session logs, general notes. It handles all the formatting and puts the note in the right folder if you specify one.
The real power here is document references. When the assistant creates a note, it can link to other documents in your campaign. So if you say "create a location note for the Copper District and mention that Mira the fence operates there," the resulting note contains a clickable link to Mira's character document. Your campaign wiki builds itself.
Types you can create: character, location, item, session, note, or custom. The assistant picks the right type based on context, or you can specify.
Edit Existing Notes
This one was the most-requested feature by far. The assistant can read your existing documents, understand their structure, and make targeted edits. Add new sections, replace outdated content, delete things that are no longer relevant.
Say your party just completed a quest. You tell the assistant: "Update the Merchant's Guild faction note. They now owe the party a favor after the warehouse heist. Add it to the relationships section."
The assistant finds the note, reads it to understand the structure, then proposes a targeted edit to the relationships section specifically. Not a dump at the bottom of the file. The actual section where it belongs.
You see exactly what's changing before you approve it.
Search Your Campaign Notes
Different from the knowledge base search. This is a fast keyword search across your own notes, the documents you've written or the assistant has created. "Do I have notes about the Merchant's Guild?" instantly locates every mention across your campaign documents.
The assistant uses this internally all the time. Before it creates a new note, it checks if one already exists. Before it edits something, it finds the right document first. You can also use it directly: "Search my notes for anything mentioning the Starfall Amulet."
Read Your Notes
Once the assistant finds a document, it can read the full content. This is how multi-step workflows come together. Search finds the document, read pulls up the content, and the assistant can reference your actual notes when helping you brainstorm, prep, or create new material.
Browse Your Library
The assistant can explore your campaign library's folder structure. "What folders do I have?" or "Show me what's in my NPCs folder." Useful when you're organizing or when the assistant needs to figure out where to file a new note.
Generate Images
This is the newest tool. Ask the assistant to create an image of a character, location, creature, or item, and it generates one using AI image generation. Portrait orientation for characters, landscape for environments, square for tokens and items, widescreen for battle panoramas.
"Draw a portrait of Mira the fence. Halfling woman, sharp eyes, gold jewelry, dark leather coat, standing in a dimly lit alley."
The assistant searches your existing notes for the character description first, so the image matches what you've already established about them. If you described Mira as having a scar above her left eye three sessions ago, that detail gets included.
Multiple art styles are available depending on the image provider. Oil painting for classic fantasy sourcebook art, watercolor for journal illustrations, dramatic cinema for boss encounters, dark aura for horror campaigns. The assistant picks a style that matches your campaign's tone, or you can request a specific one.
Transparent backgrounds work too, so you can generate character tokens for VTTs.
Image generation always requires your approval before it runs, even if you have auto-approve turned on for other tools. We did this because image generation has a real cost, and you should always confirm before it executes.
Roll Dice
Full RPG dice notation. 1d20+5 for attack rolls, 4d6kh3 for ability score generation, 2d20kh1 for advantage, 2d20kl1 for disadvantage. Batch rolls too: roll initiative for six creatures at once.
The dice are real random rolls. No predetermined results. Natural 20s and natural 1s are detected and highlighted. My players don't trust AI dice (fair), but I use it for quick behind-the-screen rolls during prep and between sessions.
How Multi-Step Workflows Work
The assistant doesn't just use one tool at a time. When you ask something complex, it plans and executes multiple steps on its own.
Here's a real example. You say: "Based on the taverns I've already created in Millhaven, create a new tavern that would serve a different clientele."
The assistant:
- Searches your campaign notes for existing Millhaven taverns
- Reads each one to understand your naming conventions, tone, and the types of establishments you've created
- Notices your existing taverns are all blue-collar working-class places
- Creates a new tavern that fills a gap: maybe a hookah lounge catering to merchants and scholars
- Links the new document to the relevant Millhaven location notes
Five steps, one request. You approve the final note creation, and your world gets a little richer.
For most requests, it needs two or three steps. But it can handle much longer chains when you ask something that requires real research before creation.
Watch It Think
For complex requests, the assistant reasons through the problem before acting. You can see this thinking process in real-time through collapsible thinking blocks. It shows you what it's planning, what it found, why it's choosing a particular approach.
When the assistant is about to create something, seeing its reasoning helps you catch misunderstandings before they become documents you need to fix. "Oh, it thinks the Merchant's Guild is hostile to the party. I should clarify that they're actually neutral."
You Stay in Control
If the idea of AI editing your campaign notes makes you uneasy, good. That's the right instinct. Nobody wants surprise changes to their carefully crafted world.
Every write operation requires your approval. When the assistant wants to create a note, edit a document, or generate an image, you see exactly what it plans to do. Approve or reject with one click. Nothing changes until you say so.
Here's how the approval system works in practice:
By default, everything asks. Creating notes, searching your library, rolling dice, generating images, editing documents. You see a card with the action, the details, and approve/reject buttons.
You can turn on auto-approve. If you trust the assistant for certain operations, you can enable auto-approve at the conversation level or globally in your settings. Library searches and dice rolls are common ones people auto-approve, since they don't change anything.
Image generation always asks. Regardless of your auto-approve settings, image generation requires manual confirmation every time. It costs real resources, and you should always see the prompt before it runs.
There's a 5-minute timeout. If you walk away mid-conversation and the assistant is waiting for approval, it times out after 5 minutes rather than hanging forever.
Three Tiers, Different Strengths
Quick session notes don't need the same brainpower as a request that touches a dozen documents. ScriptoriumGM gives you three AI tiers, unlocked by Patreon level:
Fast is available to everyone. Quick responses for simple questions, note creation, dice rolls. It handles most day-to-day tasks well and uses the least of your usage budget.
Balanced is the default for $10+ patrons. Better reasoning, sharper creative output, stronger multi-step planning. This is what I use for most things: prep conversations, NPC generation, session note updates.
Powerful unlocks at $20+. The deepest reasoning, best creative writing, and strongest ability to pull together information from across your entire library. I reach for this when I'm doing complex worldbuilding or asking the assistant to connect threads from a dozen different notes.
You can switch tiers per conversation. Start a quick chat on Fast, switch to Powerful when you need it.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Let me walk through some real workflows.
Post-Session: "Just Log What Happened"
Session just ended. You're tired. You remember the big beats but don't want to write formal notes.
You: "Update tonight's session notes. The party learned Lady Vance is funding the resistance. They got the Starfall Amulet from the tomb. Kira's player was absent so Kira stayed at camp."
The assistant finds your current session document, reads the existing format, and appends the new information in the same style. You review, approve, done. Three bullet points instead of 20 minutes of note-taking.
Mid-Prep: "I Need a Visual"
You're prepping a dungeon and want a reference image of the final boss.
You: "Generate an image of the Hollow King. He's a gaunt, undead elven lord in tarnished silver armor. Pale blue light leaks from cracks in his breastplate. The throne room behind him is crumbling, overgrown with dead vines."
The assistant searches your notes for any existing Hollow King descriptions, builds a detailed prompt that incorporates those details, and generates the image. Oil painting style because your campaign has a classic fantasy tone. Portrait orientation because it's a character.
You approve, and now you have a reference image to show your players when they enter the throne room.
Between Sessions: "Connect the Dots"
You: "What have I established about the thieves' guild across all my notes?"
The assistant searches your campaign notes and knowledge base, pulls together everything you've written about the thieves' guild from session logs, faction documents, NPC notes, and location descriptions. Gives you a summary with references to each source document.
Then: "Update the thieves' guild faction document to note that their leader was killed last session and add a section about the resulting power vacuum."
Targeted edit to the right document, right section. Approve and move on.
Quick Table Rolls
"Roll initiative for six goblins. 1d20+2 for each."
Six rolls, six results, all with breakdowns. Natural 20s and 1s highlighted. Takes about two seconds.
Getting Started
If you're already using ScriptoriumGM, all of this is live right now. Open a campaign, start a conversation with the assistant, and try something:
- Ask it to create a note for the last NPC your party met
- Search your campaign notes for a character or location you know exists
- Ask a rules question about something in your uploaded sourcebooks
- Roll some dice
The approval system means you can experiment freely. Try weird requests. The worst that happens is you hit "reject."
If you're new to ScriptoriumGM, check out our survival guide to get set up, then come back here once your campaign is created and your library has some materials.
On the free tier, you get the Fast assistant. Enough to experience the full workflow and decide if it fits how you run games.
Your Campaign, Your Rules
The assistant is good at what it does. It finds information fast, creates well-formatted documents, generates useful images, and chains actions together in ways that save real time. The biggest difference for me has been post-session: instead of spending my evening writing up notes while everything's fresh, I dump the key beats into the assistant and approve the formatted result. That alone has been worth it.
But it's your campaign. Your world. Your story. The assistant handles the filing, searching, formatting, and image generation. You handle the storytelling, the improvisation, the weird voices, and the moments that make your players text each other about the session three days later.
That's the split we're going for. Less busywork, more actual game mastering.
Share Your Workflows
What would you ask an AI assistant to do for your campaign? We've seen GMs use the assistant in ways we never expected, and the best ideas keep coming from the community. Share what you're building in our Discord.