I’m not a dungeon master, but I play one on TV. Okay, maybe not, but I have always found myself building worlds in my head. I’ve kept notebooks, doodled, drawn, and taken notes, but I’ve never really fleshed out a world. My creations have always been skeletal, superficial, and very top-level. My most recent world-building project has become somewhat of a hobby of mine, it helps me wind down at the end of the day.
World-building
However, since I started using ChatGPT, I’ve found it invaluable for supplementing my creative world-building. Call me a cheater, but ChatGPT has significantly enhanced my craft. It speeds up my world-building process, and I absolutely love it. With ChatGPT, I can create worlds rich in lore, politics, and character. It acts as a soundboard and editor for my wild ideas, augmenting my creativity.
This series takes a step back from AI in the context of libraries and educational purposes, instead exploring using AI for fun and creativity.
It all started last spring when I was testing ChatGPT’s capabilities with the free version of GPT-3.5. I entered a simple prompt: Create a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that combines vampires and Cthulhu from H.P. Lovecraft.
ChatGPT responded: “Certainly, here is a campaign setting that combines vampires and Cthulhu from H.P. Lovecraft…”
The ancient vampire lord, Strahd von Zarovich, has long ruled over the dark land of Barovia. But something strange is happening in the mists that shroud the land, something that even Strahd himself cannot explain.
As your adventuring party arrives in Barovia, you are immediately struck by the oppressive atmosphere of the place. The people seem to be living in constant fear, and rumors abound of strange happenings in the night.
As you delve deeper into the mysteries of Barovia, you begin to uncover a dark secret: the vampire lord is not the only creature of the night that stalks these lands. Something else, something far more ancient and terrible, is stirring beneath the surface.
You soon learn that a group of cultists has been summoning Lovecraftian beings from beyond the stars, hoping to use their power to overthrow Strahd and take control of Barovia for themselves. These beings are not like any you have encountered before, and their very presence warps reality around them.
To make matters worse, it seems that these cultists have somehow gained the favor of one of the Elder Gods, and they are using its power to further their dark goals. You must not only stop the cultists from unleashing this Lovecraftian horror upon Barovia, but also find a way to banish the Elder God back to its own realm.
As you travel deeper into the land of Barovia, you will encounter powerful vampires, grotesque monsters, and mind-bending entities from beyond space and time. You will also need to navigate the complicated politics of the vampire court, where loyalties are fickle and alliances are made and broken on a whim.
Can you stop the cultists before they unleash the Lovecraftian horror upon the land? Will you be able to banish the Elder God back to its own realm? Only time will tell, as you venture deeper into the dark and twisted world of Barovia.
ChatGPT, 2023
Holy shit. I want to play this.
A place I want to visit
Since then, the world of Barovia has taken on a different shape. The pandemic stole years of travel from me, but right before it hit, I took two trips to Japan. Since then, I’ve become fascinated with Japanese culture. I’ve read books on Shinto, the history of the Shinkansen, and many other works discussing Japanese culture.
For this D&D campaign, I took ChatGPT’s Barovia and started tweaking the world to reflect a place I wanted to visit. I transformed the Eastern European-sounding city and vampire lord, Barovia and Strahd von Zarovich, into the more Japanese-sounding Kagenoki and Shirudonoyami.
Why incorporate Japan?
My love for the nightscape of Japanese cities made perfect sense for a vampire city. The idea of fluorescent lights illuminating a city that comes to life at night was so appealing, and it made me instantly fall in love with the world of Kagenoki.
I became captivated by a campaign world I realistically wouldn’t play D&D in, but I found myself returning to Kagenoki conceptually. I kept expanding the lore, the city, the people, the politics, and, most importantly, the threats facing the city.
Some people like to throw on a Netflix show and knit; I would put on The Office (which I’ve probably watched five times) or the NHL playoffs and lose myself in the world of Kagenoki.
Inkarnate for city building, ChatGPT for idea generation
I started using Inkarnate to build the city and continued to converse with ChatGPT about the world. For example, what might a vampiric druid guild be called? What might their history look like?
I wanted the vampires of Kagenoki to defy stereotypes. They are just another race trying to make it in the world, but there would still be those who cling to old histories (the MAGA crowd, if you will—Make Kagenoki Great Again). The development of this world is not purely fantasy, it;’s based on my studies of Japan (a vampire city loosely drawing on Japanese isolationist history) and my research with Inkarnate city building.
ChatGPT as an augmentation of my creativity
Using ChatGPT to augment my world-building has been invaluable. This series showcases the world I’ve become so fascinated with. While it may be a slight departure from my usual education and library posts, it highlights my evolving relationship with ChatGPT, akin to two writers bouncing ideas off each other.
The eventual upgrades to ChatGPT would allow me to not only bounce ideas for the story. It would also allow me to generate images of the world. The images aren’t perfect reflections of my vision of the world. However, they certainly give me ideas and allow me to explain my ideas to others. I also find the “prompt engineering” that goes into generating these images, helps me to articulate my ideas better.
This world-building series could, in some ways, be seen as a game developer’s diary. I hope to share through these blog posts my use of ChatGPT to build the land of Kagenoki and the people and threats that live in it.
I’ve been having great success using Claude.ai and the new workbooks features (kind of like custom GPTs, but I find them more flexible and easier make.) I’m sure these tools leverages RAG for a ‘searchable memory’ (retrieval augmented generation… Like a memory that doesn’t count against your context) and the artifact output window is pretty great too. Regardless of which tools you use building up game notes and a large body of text to query against. Keeping track of npc names and interactions. Producing timelines and summary from notes. Incorporating player back stories, etc. it’s been amazing to have tools like this at my beck and call. The free features on these sites are are pretty decent too.
As a programmer the next level is to produce data files for other tools to ingest as input. Any tool that outputs a data file can be reversed engineered as examples for the LLM outputs to ingest these outputs into these tools. Seriously cool once you get over the initial hurdle. And with workbooks you can build a body of knowledge for each tool into a set of reusable files to speed that up. Running a local LLM with RAG framework also helps. Agentic frameworks to grind longer and sometimes more better formed responses out of the open source LLMs.
Also consider solo play in your worlds. As a forever GM I am always looking to explore/to out some ideas. I never pass up on doing that with another dm but sometimes cracking a new chat session and dumping all the info into it (or pointing to a workbook) is a great way to explore an NPCs life events in a generative collaboration.
Which lead me to a other use case unlike using which was player and NPC timeline generation. When and where a player is, what other timeline are they sharing (on a party.) I would have loved to have this tech when I was running multiple groups with shared and varied player base in a West Marches style game. As much as we tried to keep sessions to be atomic actions, it got very convoluted to track everyone’s timelines. It was a lot of spreadsheet work. It always started out strong but got unwieldy half a year in. We managed, but we’d start over a lot just to avoid the late game bookkeeping that’s the group was keen on having. There was a lot of competition between some players… And it was worth fostering. Good data management and trust in unbiased systems was key to keeping it healthy. I was very busy and well fed for those campaign years. Unbiased but taking bribes to impose more games per week on my schedule. But I digress. We can end my stream of consciousness here.
Damn those were some great years… 🤣
Thank you for the response! Apologies for the delay; I’ve been a bit under the weather.
I haven’t had the chance to explore Claude.ai yet. I believe it became available in Canada in early June. It might have been accessible via VPN before that, but I haven’t tested it.
I often discuss generative AI and creativity with others. Some argue that AI isn’t creative, but I think it’s the users who decide if the output is creative. I’m comfortable saying AI is “creative.” As an admitted novice (probably less than a novice!), I often solo play in my world. ChatGPT lets me step into that world and explore its nooks and crannies. I imagine how my character would be treated or how they, along with NPCs, would react to situations, given the complex history I’ve crafted.
These tools are invaluable for breaking down barriers, making me think differently, and providing interesting starting points. They often help me learn the most through creative “tests.”
Thanks again!