A blog in which guest writer Tori Struder tells the tale of what happened when she decided to ask ChatGPT to DM for her…
The Setup
I didn’t initially set out to use ChatGPT as a dungeon master. So far I’ve mostly used it as a writing partner, helping me brainstorm and analyze my writing faster than I could do alone.
My wife and I are big D&D fans – any TTRPG, actually – but as two working parents with a young child, we barely have time to say hi to each other, let alone organize a campaign. One night, frustrated by yet another failed attempt to dungeon together, I asked ChatGPT if it could DM for me. Imagine my surprise when it said yes!
At first, it felt like I was cheating. My wife usually runs our games, and I didn’t want her to feel like I was replacing her with a robot. (That’s a little too Black Mirror for me.)
To my surprise, she was all for it! A campaign that she didn’t have to plan or run? Sign her up! (Remember, two working parents.)
Naturally, our ever-curious seven-year-old daughter wanted to know what we were talking about. And that’s how I found myself huddled around a laptop screen with my wife and daughter on a Sunday afternoon, waiting for ChatGPT’s next prompt.
Session Notes
I first told ChatGPT about each player’s familiarity with D&D, as well as our purpose for playing. I explained that the adults were familiar, but the child was not, and we wanted to give her a good first experience with D&D.
Chat immediately replied with several scenarios, and our daughter picked the forest adventure with talking animals. Chat prompted us to create simple characters: name, race, class, special item or magical ability, and favorite animal. It told us to give the adults 12 hp and the child 10 hp.
We also had the choice to roll dice ourselves and share the number or to have Chat roll for us. (Of course we chose toroll dice ourselves! Although perhaps this wasn’t the best call, as you’ll see later.)
My wife and I went with fairly typical party members: an elven ranger with a camouflage cloak and a fairy healer with a magical dragonfly. Our daughter was more creative. She chose to be a yopi.
She described it as a small furry creature the size of a raccoon that looks like a dragon with little horns. Her favorite animal was also made up – a pink boka. Chat went right along with this, and our adventure began.
The opening scene was fairly simple, and right at the appropriate level for a seven-year-old. The basic premise was that the Heartlight was missing from the Whispering Woodlands, and without it all the animals – including the pink boka – were in danger.
We were prompted to roll dice to see if we could figure out who took the Heartlight and where they went. Based on our characters, we rolled perception, nature, and animal handling checks, and two of us rolled…quite poorly, to put it politely.
However, ChatGPT still gave us enough information to figure out where to go next.
What followed was a mini dungeon crawl that involved using the camouflage cloak and a distraction to lure away a shadow guardian while our daughter swooped in, snatching the Heartlight from the grip of some shadow vines in the nick of time.
We traveled back to the forest, and harmony was restored.
Debrief
According to my daughter, the best part was the picture ChatGPT generated of our party. For myself, I appreciated the age-appropriateness of the adventure.
All told, it took about 30 minutes, which was right at the edge of our daughter’s attention span.
Additionally – and others may disagree with me on this – I liked that low rolls didn’t necessarily mean that nothing happened. Sometimes it meant we didn’t get very much information, while other times we got an unexpected result.
Either way, it wasn’t like waiting 45 minutes to take your turn in combat, rolling a 3, then waiting another 45 minutes for your turn to come back around again. The plot was always moving, and Chat was generous with both the prompts and the freedom to choose another option.
It felt similar to an old-school text-based computer adventure than a true D&D session, but it fit our needs perfectly. As a busy parent, it was wonderful to have someone else running the show and keeping track of the details for once.
All in all, using ChatGPT was a fun way to pass the time with family. And now our daughter finally understands what we mean when we say: “Roll for initiative.”
Written by Tori Struder
Tori Studer is a teacher and freelance writer. She has an unnatural love of grammar, Dungeons and Dragons, and learning anything new, and she believes a great pun is its own reword. When she’s not writing, she can be found haunting local bookstores or taking random online classes.
