In March 2026, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks told PC Gamer he has "so much AI-based grist" in his personal D&D games "it would floor you." Animation, images, text, sound effects, voice cloning. The CEO of the company that owns Dungeons & Dragons uses AI constantly when he runs games.
But Hasbro won't put AI in official D&D products. "People just don't want it there," Cocks said.
That one quote tells you everything about where AI and TTRPGs stand right now. The publishing industry is drawing hard lines against AI. The ENnie Awards banned all AI-assisted submissions for the 2025-2026 cycle. Foundry VTT's creator called AI in tabletop gaming "a betrayal." Inkarnate reversed its AI art policy after community backlash in October 2025. Meanwhile, at kitchen tables and Discord servers everywhere, GMs are quietly using AI to cut their prep time in half.
This guide is for those GMs. Not the debate. The practical reality.
I've spent the last several weeks testing and comparing every AI tool relevant to running tabletop RPGs in 2026. Here's what's actually worth your time, what isn't, and how to put it all together without spending a fortune.
What can AI actually do for your game?
Before we get into specific tools, let's be honest about what AI can and can't do for your game.
Where AI saves you real time:
- Session notes and recaps. This is the single biggest win. Paste your rough notes into any AI and get organized summaries in seconds. Tools like Archivist AI automate this from Discord recordings entirely.
- Name generation and NPC sketches. When you need 12 NPCs for a market district by Saturday, AI gets you 80% of the way there fast. You add the soul.
- Rules lookup. "How does grappling work in PF2e?" is answered in ten seconds instead of ten minutes of flipping through PDFs.
- Brainstorming partner. AI is surprisingly good as a creative sparring partner. Throw half-formed ideas at it and see what comes back. I use Claude this way constantly during prep.
- Encounter and side quest scaffolding. Not the finished product, but a solid first draft you can riff on.
Where AI consistently fails:
- Producing anything with a point of view. AI-generated content tends to be fine but forgettable. Every tavern gets a mysterious hooded stranger. Every quest involves a missing heirloom. Your players can feel the difference between content you cared about and content you delegated.
- Maintaining long-term campaign memory. General AI assistants like ChatGPT forget everything between conversations. Dedicated tools solve this, but vanilla ChatGPT doesn't.
- Replacing the DM. Friends & Fables runs a solid AI-powered D&D game, but the experience still feels different from a human GM who knows your group. AI can run a game. It can't read the room when your rogue's player has had a bad day.
- Visual consistency. AI art looks great in isolation. Getting the same NPC to look the same across five different images is still a pain, even with tools like CharGen's anchor system.
The principle that makes all of this work: AI should be in your prep, invisible to your players. Use it like a research assistant, not a ghostwriter. The GM still owns every creative decision.
The tools: category by category
General AI assistants
These are the Swiss army knives. Not TTRPG-specific, but the tools most GMs reach for first.
ChatGPT is the default. Free tier gets you GPT-4o, which handles NPC generation, adventure outlines, encounter tables, and rules questions well. The custom GPT feature lets you build a persistent "DM assistant" persona with your campaign context loaded in. More community prompts and YouTube tutorials exist for ChatGPT than any other AI. The weakness? Generic, "safe" outputs. Every NPC backstory gets a tragic past and a heart of gold unless you push hard against it.
Claude is my personal pick for deep prep work. When I'm writing lore documents, building faction politics, or need the AI to maintain a consistent tone across a long conversation, Claude produces noticeably better output than ChatGPT. Structured content is a strength. Less of that flat "AI voice." The downside: a smaller community around TTRPG use, and it can be overly cautious with dark or morally gray content.
Gemini fills a niche. Its 1M+ token context window means you can feed entire rulebooks into a single conversation, which is useful if you're running a system with a 400-page core book. Best for GMs already in the Google ecosystem using Docs and Sheets for campaign notes.
All three cost $20/month for their pro tiers. All three have usable free tiers.
Dedicated TTRPG content generators
LitRPG Adventures ($5/month) has been around since 2021 and remains the most affordable dedicated option. Over 35 generators cover NPCs, dungeons, quests, encounters, taverns, cities, monsters, spells, and magic items. A public library of 250,000+ pre-generated elements means you often don't need to generate anything new. It supports D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2e, OSR, FATE, and homebrew. The interface is showing its age, but at $5/month (or $30/year for 3,000 credits), it's hard to argue with the value.
CharGen (from ~$11/month) is the art-forward option. Purpose-built for TTRPG character portraits, it understands race, class, and equipment terminology natively. Their workflow goes from session notes to NPC profiles to AI portraits to VTT-ready tokens in about 50 minutes. The free tier gives you 10 daily image generations. If you want consistent character art without wrestling with Midjourney prompts, this is the tool.
Friends & Fables (free to $40/month) does something different. Its AI, Franz, actually runs D&D 5e games with real rules enforcement, including HP tracking, spell slots, conditions, and turn-based combat. It's more of a "play D&D with an AI DM" tool than a prep tool. If you want to test encounters solo before running them for your group, or if you want to play when your group can't meet, it works better than you'd expect. Free tier works for solo play.
AI map generators
Dungeon Alchemist ($44.99 one-time on Steam) is the clear winner here. Draw a rough room layout, pick a theme, and the AI fills in walls, floors, furniture, lighting, and props automatically. The results look great. Multi-level map support landed recently, and it exports directly to Foundry VTT, Roll20, and Fantasy Grounds with grids and lighting walls pre-configured. One-time purchase with no subscription is a rare and welcome pricing model. It's limited to dungeon and battle maps though.
Inkarnate ($40/year for Creator tier) is the standard for world and regional maps, but it uses zero AI. The community pushed back hard against AI art in its marketplace in October 2025, and Inkarnate reversed course entirely. If you want hand-crafted world maps with 30,000+ human-made assets, this is still the tool. No AI needed; just good design.
Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator (free, open-source) procedurally generates full fantasy worlds with cultures, religions, states, rivers, and demographics. The depth is wild for a free tool. If you're building an original campaign setting from scratch, start here.
Session notes and campaign memory
This is the category that's evolved the most since 2024.
Archivist AI ($10-60/month) automates session recaps from Discord recordings, audio uploads, or text input. It tracks entities automatically, categorizing NPCs, locations, items, and factions as they appear in your sessions. Searchable history across all sessions, quest log compilation, and one-click PDF recaps. The base plan ($10/month) gets you one campaign and four sessions per month, which is tight for weekly groups. The Seasoned tier ($20/month) covers three campaigns and ten sessions.
StormScape (free tier, $9.99-29.99/month paid) takes a different angle. It records your Discord sessions and generates "campaign intelligence" reports, analyzing character relationships, narrative arcs, pacing, and player behavior patterns. The idea is that after 14 sessions, it can tell you things like which players engage most during political intrigue versus combat, which plot hooks your party tends to ignore, and where your pacing drags. Over 10,000 DMs are using it as of March 2026, according to founder Storm Burpee. The free Apprentice tier gets you 2 campaigns and 5 AI reports. Adventurer ($9.99/month) bumps that to 5 campaigns with AI session notes and Content Forge. Legend ($29.99/month) unlocks unlimited everything. It's primarily Discord-focused.
The DIY approach still works. Paste rough session notes into ChatGPT or Claude with the prompt "Organize these into: key events, unresolved hooks, NPC state changes, and what the party plans next." Free, fast, and good enough for many groups. You lose cross-session search and entity tracking, but for a casual campaign, it does the job.
Campaign management with AI
ScriptoriumGM (that's us) takes a different approach from the tools above. Instead of generating generic content, ScriptoriumGM makes your specific campaign knowledge searchable and AI-queryable. There's a free tier with basic AI assistant access, and paid Patreon tiers at $10/month (Adventurer), $20/month (Loremaster), and $30/month (Legendary Guide) that unlock increasingly powerful AI models. Upload your rulebooks, create campaign notes, and the AI assistant can search across everything you've built. Ask "What did we establish about the Merchant's Guild in session 3?" and get an answer with citations pointing to the exact document. The assistant also creates and edits campaign notes, generates images, and handles complex multi-step requests. The core idea is that your campaign already has hundreds of details scattered across documents. The AI helps you find and use them instead of forgetting they exist. We wrote more about what the AI assistant can do recently.
World Anvil and Kanka are the established wiki-style campaign managers. Both are excellent organizational tools. Neither has real AI features as of 2026. World Anvil is better for deep worldbuilders who want public-facing wikis with timelines and family trees. Kanka is better for GMs who want flexible, TTRPG-specific organization with strong player permission controls and a generous free tier.
VTT AI features
Foundry VTT ($50 one-time) has an interesting contradiction. Its creator is publicly anti-AI, and the March 2026 policy bans AI-generated visual media in packages. But community modules with runtime AI features are explicitly allowed. FoundryAI gives you an AI assistant with 40+ tools including combat management, session recaps, and NPC roleplay chats. Inworld AI integration lets you have real-time conversations with NPCs powered by persistent AI characters. RPGX AI Assistant runs entirely on local models through Ollama, so your campaign data never leaves your computer.
Roll20 has zero AI features. None announced on the 2026 roadmap either. It's focused on Demiplane integration, Dungeon Scrawl maps, and performance improvements. (We covered Roll20 and other VTTs in depth in our VTT comparison guide.)
AI art (quick overview)
For NPC portraits and session handouts, your options are:
- Stable Diffusion (free, local): Fastest option at 5-15 seconds per image. Runs offline. Requires a decent GPU and some technical setup.
- Midjourney ($10-30/month): Best for painterly, atmospheric concept art. Less literal than other options.
- DALL-E 3 (included with ChatGPT Plus): Best prompt accuracy. Good for when you need a very specific NPC to look exactly as described.
- CharGen (see above): Best for TTRPG-specific character portraits with consistency features.
The community workflow from GMCraft Tavern: write a prompt with permanent visual anchors (role, species, two physical features, mood, lighting), generate in bulk, export at 512x512 for tokens. An evening of batch generation gives you enough NPC portraits for months.
The pricing table
Here's what no other article puts in one place. Every major tool, what it does, and what it costs.
| Tool | What It Does | Free Tier? | Paid Price | Payment Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | General AI assistant | Yes (GPT-4o) | $20/month | Subscription |
| Claude | General AI (better for lore) | Yes | $20/month | Subscription |
| Gemini | General AI (huge context) | Yes | $20/month | Subscription |
| LitRPG Adventures | 35+ TTRPG generators | Samples only | $5/month | Subscription/credits |
| CharGen | RPG art + NPC + tokens | 10/day generations | ~$11+/month | Subscription |
| Friends & Fables | AI runs D&D 5e | Yes (limited) | $20-40/month | Subscription |
| Dungeon Alchemist | AI battle maps | No | $44.99 | One-time purchase |
| Inkarnate | World maps (no AI) | Yes (limited) | $40/year | Annual subscription |
| Azgaar's | Procedural world maps | Fully free | Free | Open source |
| Archivist AI | Session recaps + tracking | 30-day trial | $10-60/month | Subscription |
| StormScape | Campaign intelligence | Yes (free tier) | $9.99-29.99/month | Subscription |
| ScriptoriumGM | AI campaign management | Yes (free tier) | $10-30/month | Patreon subscription |
| World Anvil | Campaign wiki | Yes | Subscription | Subscription |
| Kanka | Campaign organization | Yes (generous) | Subscription | Subscription |
| Foundry VTT | Virtual tabletop + modules | No | $50 | One-time purchase |
How do you build an AI toolkit without overspending?
You don't need all of this. Here's how I'd build up a toolkit depending on what you're willing to spend.
The $0 Toolkit (Surprisingly Good)
- ChatGPT or Claude free tier for NPC generation, encounter ideas, and rules questions
- Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator for world maps
- Kanka free tier for campaign organization
- Copy-paste session notes into your free AI of choice for recaps
Honestly? This covers 70% of what most GMs need. I ran campaigns for years with less.
The $20/Month Toolkit
Everything above, plus:
- ChatGPT Plus OR Claude Pro ($20) for better models, longer conversations, and image generation
- This single upgrade makes your general-purpose AI way more useful for every prep task
The $50/Month "Full Stack"
- Claude Pro ($20) for deep prep and lore work
- LitRPG Adventures ($5) for quick dedicated generators and the pre-built library
- Archivist AI Casual ($10) for automated session recaps
- Dungeon Alchemist ($44.99 one-time, amortized) for battle maps
That covers content generation, session memory, maps, and a serious general-purpose AI. It's less than a lot of GMs spend on sourcebooks each month.
The community debate: an honest take
I'd be doing you a disservice if I pretended this was all smooth sailing. The TTRPG community has genuine, heated opinions about AI.
The GDC 2026 survey found 52% of game developers view generative AI negatively. The ENnie Awards completely banned AI-assisted submissions. Nightfall Games faced a scandal when an artist secretly used AI for the Terminator RPG. UK Games Expo got criticized for promoting AI-illustrated content.
On the home game side, the picture is different. Browse r/DungeonMasters or r/DMAcademy and you'll find threads full of GMs sharing how AI helps with session prep, notes, and brainstorming. The community has broadly settled toward a pragmatic middle ground: AI for prep support is widely accepted. AI replacing the human DM is still controversial. AI-generated published content remains contentious.
My own position: I think AI is a tool, and tools don't have morality. A hammer can build a house or break a window. What matters is whether the game your players experience feels personal, surprising, and human. If AI handles the admin work so you have more energy for the creative work, that's a win. If you're letting AI write your entire adventure and reading it to your players like a script, that's something else.
The best quote I found during research came from StormScape founder Storm Burpee: "The future of AI in tabletop RPGs isn't going to be driven by industry adoption. It's being shaped by tired DMs who just want their Sunday afternoon prep to take 45 minutes instead of 5 hours."
That resonates.
Where is AI for GMs heading next?
Here's how I think about where all of this is heading.
Wave 1 (2022-2023) gave us discrete generators. "Give me an NPC." "Give me a tavern name." LitRPG Adventures is the best example. Useful, but disconnected from your actual campaign.
Wave 2 (2024-2025) brought session memory and campaign context. Tools like Archivist AI and StormScape can ingest your actual sessions and track what happened across months of play. CharGen built integrated workflows from notes to art to tokens. Big improvement.
Wave 3 (emerging 2026) is where it gets interesting. AI that learns from your specific campaign. Not "generate a generic NPC" but "based on 14 sessions of play, here's an NPC that fills a gap in your faction web and would appeal to your group's play style." Campaign intelligence that notices your players ignore political intrigue hooks and suggests adjusting future content. An AI that knows Captain Veyra always wears a silver tide-ring because you established that in session 4 and has never contradicted it.
We're early in Wave 3. Agentic NPCs powered by Inworld AI are showing up in Foundry VTT modules. GDC 2026 demos featured AI characters that persist between sessions and simulate worlds from text prompts. Research from January 2026 tested AI models on D&D specifically and found they're getting meaningfully better at long-term decision-making in campaign contexts.
The tools that win long-term will be the ones that understand your world, not just the generic fantasy template.
The bottom line
The AI tools available to GMs in 2026 are useful. Actually useful. Not perfect. Not magic. But useful. The gap between what existed two years ago and what exists now is enormous, and it keeps widening.
Start with a free tier of ChatGPT or Claude. See if AI-assisted prep works for your style. If it does, add specialized tools one at a time based on your biggest pain point. If session notes eat your life, try Archivist AI. If you need maps fast, grab Dungeon Alchemist. If you want your campaign knowledge to actually be searchable, give ScriptoriumGM a look.
The Hasbro CEO gets it, even if he can't say it publicly. AI makes your prep better and your game nights more fun. Use the tools. Keep the creativity yours.
What AI tools are you using in your prep? Any favorites I missed? Share what's working at your table in our Discord community - we're always swapping tool recommendations and workflow tips.