Has anyone used chat GPT to used random encounters? Just input this: "build random encounter for dnd 5e located in the woods outside Cragmaw Castle for a party of five level 4 player characters. The players are a druid, paladin, ranger, wizard and cleric. encounter should be medium hard. this is part of Phandelver and Below the Shattered Obelisk" and chat GPT really came thought with some great idea. played with some variations. What's your thoughts on AI for game prep?
OUTPUT:
Encounter: Spider Cultists and the Venomous Widow
Location: Dense Woods outside Cragmaw Castle
As the party traverses the thick woods near Cragmaw Castle, they stumble upon an ancient spider-shaped stone altar surrounded by glowing runes. The ground is littered with webs, and there is an unsettling silence in the air. From the shadows, cultists emerge, flanked by a massive spider-like creature that seems to command the forest's deadly predators.
Creatures:
2 Spider Cult Fanatics (CR 2 each)
These cultists worship the ancient spider deity Lolth and are twisted in both mind and body. They wield dark magic and poisonous weapons, seeking to trap their enemies in webs of both silk and shadow.
Abilities: Use stats for a Cult Fanatic but give them the ability to cast Web once per day. They fight with poisoned shortswords that deal an additional 1d6 poison damage.
Tactics: One cultist will attempt to engage from range using spells like Hold Person and Inflict Wounds, while the other charges in, casting Shield of Faith on themselves or their allies.
1 Venomous Widow (CR 4)
A large spider-like monstrosity (use stats for a Phase Spider, but with a poisonous aura). The Venomous Widow is the central threat of the encounter, capable of phasing in and out of the Ethereal Plane to ambush the party.
Abilities: In addition to the Phase Spider's regular abilities, the Venomous Widow has an aura of venom. At the start of its turn, all creatures within 10 feet must make a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or take 2d6 poison damage. On a successful save, they take half damage.
Tactics: The Venomous Widow will phase into the Ethereal Plane after its attacks, reappearing to ambush isolated party members. It uses the terrain and webs to create chaos and confusion.
2 Giant Wolf Spiders (CR 1/4 each)
These massive spiders act as the Widow's scouts and protectors, flanking the party and attempting to trap them in their webs.
Abilities: As per the Giant Wolf Spider, they can climb effortlessly and use Web Sense to locate hidden enemies. Their primary goal is to disrupt spellcasters by climbing into trees and dropping onto them.
Tactics:
The Spider Cult Fanatics will attempt to control the battlefield by casting Web to hinder the party’s movement, followed by offensive spells like Hold Person to isolate weaker characters (such as the wizard or cleric).
The Venomous Widow will phase in and out of combat, focusing on backline spellcasters and characters separated from the group. It will use its poison aura to wear down nearby characters, forcing them to spread out.
The Giant Wolf Spiders will climb trees and ambush from above, trying to trap characters in webs or poison them to soften the party for the Widow and cultists.
Environmental Features:
Spider Webs: The area is covered in thick webs. Any character who moves more than 20 feet per turn must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or become restrained by the webs (escape DC 12). These webs can be burned away using fire, but doing so will create thick smoke, lightly obscuring the area.
Dense Forest: The trees provide cover and limit visibility. The ground is uneven, counting as difficult terrain in areas due to the twisted roots and underbrush. Ranged attacks have disadvantage if targets are obscured by trees or webs.
Spider Altar: The ancient altar at the center of the encounter is covered in glowing runes. A character proficient in Arcana or Religion who inspects it can make a DC 15 Intelligence check to determine that the runes are empowering the cultists, giving them resistance to poison damage. Destroying the altar will remove this resistance.
Treasure:
Spider Cult Relic: A small, obsidian amulet shaped like a spider. The wearer can cast Spider Climb once per day. (Requires attunement.)
Venom Sac: Harvested from the Venomous Widow, this item can be used by an alchemist to create a potent poison or antidote. Alternatively, the sac can be carefully applied to a weapon, giving it an extra 1d6 poison damage on its next successful hit.
Cloak of Webs: Crafted from the sticky threads of the spiders, this cloak grants the wearer resistance to poison damage and advantage on saving throws against being restrained.
This encounter provides a mix of magic, poison, and tactical challenges. The Venomous Widow’s phasing and poison aura will keep the party on their toes, while the cultists and wolf spiders create disruption and chaos, making positioning and teamwork essential. The environmental hazards add another layer of danger, encouraging the party to be mindful of their surroundings.
Has anyone used chat GPT to used random encounters?
I use ChatGPT for brainstorming. I like using it during prep outside of play to review the results and improve them in context, etc., for my game. It's a good jumping point and a fine emergency tool if you are in a live game and surprised by a content need.
ChatGPT is great for random encounters. But not so great for a broader scale narrative. I personally don't like including completely random encounters in my game, all my encounters are somehow tied together to a larger overarching plot, so I don't use it much.
Do you have have you thought of changing your input parameters in chat gpt to customize your encounters to your game? If so, does that work can do you have any tips? I have found the more detailed my question the better the AI suggestion.
It's fine as long as you understand what chat gpt does and doesn't do. Allot of people get in trouble because they view these language models as a fancy search engine when they are closer to a game of word association.
Chat GPT doesn't know the rules. It doesn't even really know math.
It won't balance encounters
It won't consider game play
it won't consider the broader narrative beyond what you tell it.
so you will need to check it for all that yourself.
ChatGPT is great for random encounters. But not so great for a broader scale narrative. I personally don't like including completely random encounters in my game, all my encounters are somehow tied together to a larger overarching plot, so I don't use it much.
You can use random encounters a part of a broader plot. Typically would do that by taking an optional or core encounter and simply randomizing where / how it appears. Something like the revenant encounter in the COS. Where you can meet a faction outside of their area to fore shadow them and give them some depth.
Of course Chat GPT will not do that unless you specifically ask for a certain kind of encounter and even then it may not match your idea of it.
I second what another said: GPT is for brainstorming. I have a word doc for example that is absurdly long and outlines my entire narrative, all the NPC's towns, quests and secrets. Then I feed that document to GPT. I ask if it it thinks I have a plot hole or something, and then ask it to give me ideas where I can tie every NPC to the central narrative somehow. It's magical at synthesizing huge amounts of data for great ideas. Most of its ideas aren't that great, but some are amazing.
To your point though: I feel like randomness is the enemy of intentional design, and the quality of intentional design is superior to the quality of randomness.
It's kind of like getting a random shoe and hoping it fits nicely vs. a bespoke shoe that has been designed with due consideration of your needs.
Not to say there isn't a place for randomness of course. Like for example, you could design 4 possible encounters that happen in a setting, and you roll a d4 to see which one it is. But to add no intentionality to it, or sense, isn't a great practice.
One time I did something similar, in my early days as a DM--I had players going through a swamp, and I had designed 4 random encounters with random monsters. So in this swamp it spawned me a Triceratops, which I thought was cool. When the players ran into it, they were like WTF is a dinosaur doing in this swamp?
I was expecting them to be like "Whoa awesome!" then they had this dialogue "it must be connected to the narrative, how would this make sense?"--and on my end it had no logic, it was random. So while they were trying to figure out how it made sense, I improved that it was also rabid, and later added some narrative so it made sense (it escaped from a black market group of poachers who were transporting it from a region far away).
But in reality, it was random encounters don't add depth to the game, just consume time. Instead, connect it to a plot somehow and curate for balance.
I use ChatGPT a lot. I love to use it for quick basic versions of items and monsters, which I proceed to adjust heavily. I also have it make powerful versions of monsters or weaker versions
You can use random encounters a part of a broader plot. Typically would do that by taking an optional or core encounter and simply randomizing where / how it appears. Something like the revenant encounter in the COS. Where you can meet a faction outside of their area to fore shadow them and give them some depth.
Of course Chat GPT will not do that unless you specifically ask for a certain kind of encounter and even then it may not match your idea of it.
If those are still random encounters - i.e. the location & time of the encounter is completely arbitrary - then I still don't like them. Sure they foreshadow enemies in the world but if they don't have a reason for occurring then I find them very shallow and problematic as soon as the players start asking questions. Why were the revenants on this road? Where were they going? Where did they come from? What do they have with them? - all of these questions are hard to answer if it is truly a random encounter leaving the players feeling dissatisfied as it is just a thing that happened.
Rather, I design all my encounters by knowing who and what the enemies/antagonists are and what their goals are. I can still have the party come across a group of revenants on the road to foreshadow a larger plot, but now they necessarily have a reason to be there which also makes the details of the encounter easy to come up with so I don't need ChatGPT.
For example: If there is a faction of revenants dedicated to killing Strad, then maybe a group of them travels across the land extorting villagers for money to buy better weapons and armour. The party can run into them whenever they are travelling the roads - and particularly when traveling around smaller settlements that don't have their own guards.
Details: The number of Revenants should be at least 2 to discourage the villagers from trying to fight back but wouldn't be a full military platoon, and the Revenants should first demand the party pay them or hand over any magic items they have and only attack if/when the party refuses. The Revenants would have old/scratched up armour, and have blunt weapons in addition to their deadly weapons for beating villagers that refuse to pay up. They should have a large amount of small-denomination coins on them, and might have a list of names/addresses with some mark indicating who they have/haven't visited. The Revenants won't necessarily fight to kill and will accept surrender as long as the party then pay up, the party could potentially avoid conflict by offering to help the Revenants.
Sure I could use ChatGPT to generate the overarching conflicts that then drive the design of the individual encounters, but honestly, I've never really had an issue with that. You can just steal/borrow from the real world or other fiction/media or just pick some monsters with good lore that describes their general goals. For instance in my HB world I have the following overarching plots in different regions:
A powerful sorceress calling herself the "Winter Queen" has emerged in the north and is building allies before setting out on a conquest of the continent.
A Macbeth-esque intrigue plot has occurred in another country at the end of a recent war between them and a neighbouring nation, the tyrannical leader has a Rasputin-ish evil advisor who is creating a curse causing famine across the land to make the peasants too weak to fight back.
A civil war between Seelie & Unseelie factions in a Fey-dominated regions, triggers by an assassination (a la WW1)
A hag creating were-creatures to terrorize villagers so she demand daughters of a nearby village to form her coven.
An Aboleth has united the Merrow and is using them to raid & pillage to weaken a major coastal city before attempting to infiltrate & conquor it.
An ancient dragon conquered a major dwarven city (a la Hobbit)
This is probably just a personal thing, but I never let ChatGPT or any AI near my campaigns. Random encounters decided by a dice roll already take away a lot of DM agency, and making it so that an AI decides what is inside that table takes even more power out of your hands. Also, it takes the fun out of it. Writing little encounter tables, seeing what works and what doesn't, then getting better at ruling and playing it makes you a better DM.
It's fine as long as you understand what chat gpt does and doesn't do. Allot of people get in trouble because they view these language models as a fancy search engine when they are closer to a game of word association.
Chat GPT doesn't know the rules. It doesn't even really know math.
It won't balance encounters
It won't consider game play
it won't consider the broader narrative beyond what you tell it.
so you will need to check it for all that yourself.
Exactly, the best use of AI in my opinion is as a brainstorming tool
It's fine as long as you understand what chat gpt does and doesn't do. Allot of people get in trouble because they view these language models as a fancy search engine when they are closer to a game of word association.
Chat GPT doesn't know the rules. It doesn't even really know math.
It won't balance encounters
It won't consider game play
it won't consider the broader narrative beyond what you tell it.
so you will need to check it for all that yourself.
Yeah this is pretty aptly demonstrated by the fact that the random encounter it generated for OP's 5 player, level 4 party has an adjusted 4,200 XP worth of monsters in it (just under half their daily budget).
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Has anyone used chat GPT to used random encounters? Just input this: "build random encounter for dnd 5e located in the woods outside Cragmaw Castle for a party of five level 4 player characters. The players are a druid, paladin, ranger, wizard and cleric. encounter should be medium hard. this is part of Phandelver and Below the Shattered Obelisk" and chat GPT really came thought with some great idea. played with some variations. What's your thoughts on AI for game prep?
OUTPUT:
Encounter: Spider Cultists and the Venomous Widow
Location: Dense Woods outside Cragmaw Castle
As the party traverses the thick woods near Cragmaw Castle, they stumble upon an ancient spider-shaped stone altar surrounded by glowing runes. The ground is littered with webs, and there is an unsettling silence in the air. From the shadows, cultists emerge, flanked by a massive spider-like creature that seems to command the forest's deadly predators.
Creatures:
2 Spider Cult Fanatics (CR 2 each)
1 Venomous Widow (CR 4)
2 Giant Wolf Spiders (CR 1/4 each)
Tactics:
Environmental Features:
Treasure:
This encounter provides a mix of magic, poison, and tactical challenges. The Venomous Widow’s phasing and poison aura will keep the party on their toes, while the cultists and wolf spiders create disruption and chaos, making positioning and teamwork essential. The environmental hazards add another layer of danger, encouraging the party to be mindful of their surroundings.
I use ChatGPT for brainstorming. I like using it during prep outside of play to review the results and improve them in context, etc., for my game. It's a good jumping point and a fine emergency tool if you are in a live game and surprised by a content need.
View my StartPlaying.Games profile to see my games!
ChatGPT is great for random encounters. But not so great for a broader scale narrative. I personally don't like including completely random encounters in my game, all my encounters are somehow tied together to a larger overarching plot, so I don't use it much.
Thank you. I thought I was the only one.
Do you have have you thought of changing your input parameters in chat gpt to customize your encounters to your game? If so, does that work can do you have any tips? I have found the more detailed my question the better the AI suggestion.
It's fine as long as you understand what chat gpt does and doesn't do. Allot of people get in trouble because they view these language models as a fancy search engine when they are closer to a game of word association.
Chat GPT doesn't know the rules. It doesn't even really know math.
so you will need to check it for all that yourself.
You can use random encounters a part of a broader plot. Typically would do that by taking an optional or core encounter and simply randomizing where / how it appears. Something like the revenant encounter in the COS. Where you can meet a faction outside of their area to fore shadow them and give them some depth.
Of course Chat GPT will not do that unless you specifically ask for a certain kind of encounter and even then it may not match your idea of it.
I second what another said: GPT is for brainstorming. I have a word doc for example that is absurdly long and outlines my entire narrative, all the NPC's towns, quests and secrets. Then I feed that document to GPT. I ask if it it thinks I have a plot hole or something, and then ask it to give me ideas where I can tie every NPC to the central narrative somehow. It's magical at synthesizing huge amounts of data for great ideas. Most of its ideas aren't that great, but some are amazing.
To your point though:
I feel like randomness is the enemy of intentional design, and the quality of intentional design is superior to the quality of randomness.
It's kind of like getting a random shoe and hoping it fits nicely vs. a bespoke shoe that has been designed with due consideration of your needs.
Not to say there isn't a place for randomness of course. Like for example, you could design 4 possible encounters that happen in a setting, and you roll a d4 to see which one it is. But to add no intentionality to it, or sense, isn't a great practice.
One time I did something similar, in my early days as a DM--I had players going through a swamp, and I had designed 4 random encounters with random monsters. So in this swamp it spawned me a Triceratops, which I thought was cool. When the players ran into it, they were like WTF is a dinosaur doing in this swamp?
I was expecting them to be like "Whoa awesome!" then they had this dialogue "it must be connected to the narrative, how would this make sense?"--and on my end it had no logic, it was random. So while they were trying to figure out how it made sense, I improved that it was also rabid, and later added some narrative so it made sense (it escaped from a black market group of poachers who were transporting it from a region far away).
But in reality, it was random encounters don't add depth to the game, just consume time. Instead, connect it to a plot somehow and curate for balance.
I use ChatGPT a lot. I love to use it for quick basic versions of items and monsters, which I proceed to adjust heavily. I also have it make powerful versions of monsters or weaker versions
If those are still random encounters - i.e. the location & time of the encounter is completely arbitrary - then I still don't like them. Sure they foreshadow enemies in the world but if they don't have a reason for occurring then I find them very shallow and problematic as soon as the players start asking questions. Why were the revenants on this road? Where were they going? Where did they come from? What do they have with them? - all of these questions are hard to answer if it is truly a random encounter leaving the players feeling dissatisfied as it is just a thing that happened.
Rather, I design all my encounters by knowing who and what the enemies/antagonists are and what their goals are. I can still have the party come across a group of revenants on the road to foreshadow a larger plot, but now they necessarily have a reason to be there which also makes the details of the encounter easy to come up with so I don't need ChatGPT.
For example: If there is a faction of revenants dedicated to killing Strad, then maybe a group of them travels across the land extorting villagers for money to buy better weapons and armour. The party can run into them whenever they are travelling the roads - and particularly when traveling around smaller settlements that don't have their own guards.
Details: The number of Revenants should be at least 2 to discourage the villagers from trying to fight back but wouldn't be a full military platoon, and the Revenants should first demand the party pay them or hand over any magic items they have and only attack if/when the party refuses. The Revenants would have old/scratched up armour, and have blunt weapons in addition to their deadly weapons for beating villagers that refuse to pay up. They should have a large amount of small-denomination coins on them, and might have a list of names/addresses with some mark indicating who they have/haven't visited. The Revenants won't necessarily fight to kill and will accept surrender as long as the party then pay up, the party could potentially avoid conflict by offering to help the Revenants.
Sure I could use ChatGPT to generate the overarching conflicts that then drive the design of the individual encounters, but honestly, I've never really had an issue with that. You can just steal/borrow from the real world or other fiction/media or just pick some monsters with good lore that describes their general goals. For instance in my HB world I have the following overarching plots in different regions:
This is probably just a personal thing, but I never let ChatGPT or any AI near my campaigns. Random encounters decided by a dice roll already take away a lot of DM agency, and making it so that an AI decides what is inside that table takes even more power out of your hands. Also, it takes the fun out of it. Writing little encounter tables, seeing what works and what doesn't, then getting better at ruling and playing it makes you a better DM.
Best Spells: https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2190706-applause, https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2047204-big-ol-switcheroo, https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2188701-cerwicks-copper-cables
Best Feats: https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/1512461-soapbox-revised
Best Monsters: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/3775489-jar-jar-binks, https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/3860024-spare-ribs
Exactly, the best use of AI in my opinion is as a brainstorming tool
Yeah this is pretty aptly demonstrated by the fact that the random encounter it generated for OP's 5 player, level 4 party has an adjusted 4,200 XP worth of monsters in it (just under half their daily budget).