🛠️Getting set up
Step-by-step instructions to set up your GMP with the goal of running your first session.
Last updated
Step-by-step instructions to set up your GMP with the goal of running your first session.
Last updated
The campaign is the primary object that helps the GM to structure their thoughts and it trains the AI on your story. It is made up of modules, and encounters. Think of modules as chapters in your story and encounters and the details that you play out during your sessions.
Campaign has these sections.
Campaign Details: This is the section that is used for describing the details of the campaign. Like starting level, location, rules, game master experience, and rating.
Campaign Summary: This is used to describe to others what the campaign is all about. This is what the marketplace will use to describe the campaign to others. It is limited to 150 words.
Campaign Overview: This describes the campaign in detail. This is the primary contributor to the AI to learn about your campaign.
Campaign Outline: This includes the hooks and modules (chapters) of the campaign. The purpose is to both structure the campaign and enable others to see an index of what is in the campaign.
Modules: These are the chapters of the campaign and hold the encounters.
Each module has an overview and image. The overview should describe the first chapter of your campaign with the possible outcomes. The image will be generated off of the content you put into the overview.
Encounters: Are the pieces that make up the adventure. They pull together the location, NPCs/Foes/Items, the PC's and notes that allow the DM to run the encounter.
Maps: This should be a map of where this campaign takes place. Use it to anchor the story and locations of the players.
Video: This is where the GM can link to a recording of a short video that describes what the campaign is about. It should be used to educate other GMs to see if they would like to run this campaign.
View Campaign: Homepage Link
This pulls together a great overview of the campaign and this is what will be shared with others through the marketplace.
Additional Information
ChatGPT & Dall-E Prompts: Unleashing Creative Potential in Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Design >>
6 Steps, One Prompt. Using ChatGPT to Generate One-Shot D&D Adventures >>
Step-by-Step: How to Create a D&D Campaign in 6 Easy Steps Using AI >>
From Broad Strokes to Fine Details: AI Tech to Streamline D&D Campaigns, Modules, and Encounters >>
The ruleset is what is pulled into your campaign and session to have all of the rules that you want at your fingertips. You can create your own ruleset or clone from an existing rule set.
Once you create a ruleset you will want to go back into your edit campaign page and pick the ruleset that you want to associate with that campaign. This process allows you to play with different rulesets in different campaigns.
Each Ruleset can be associated with a campaign and through the plus icon, you can add new tabs and content to your ruleset.
Here is what the rule set looks like in a running session.
If modules are your chapters, then the encounters are the pieces that make up your adventure.
A Complete Module Looks Like
Module Name
Module Overview The module overview should describe the different elements that you plan on running in your first module. A module could be one or more sessions. It should represent a major ending in your story.
Encounters: There will be between 5-25 or more encounters to a module. It depends if you want a longer chapter or a shorter chapter.
Encounters are made up of the following sections.
Overview: This is where I put the high level description for the players that describes the encounter. I will then list and relevant details about the encounter.
Encounter Maps: This is where I will the map for the encounter, it could be a hand drawn dungeon, a battle map, or the interior of a tavern.
DM Notes: This is where I put any notes for the DM. I may include the outcomes or important items that should happen in the encounter. It might be a conversation, finding of an item or information. I will also convey to the DM why this encounter matters to the story.
PCs: These are the PCs that may be playing this encounter. By adding the PCs it will establsih a base line in which we can determine the difficulty of the encounter. This is based on the experience levels of the PCs.
FOEs/NPC: This is where you can add the Foes or NPCs that the PCs will interact with. I usually add the FOEs first to get a sense of encounter difficulty to make sure I am not setting them up for failure.
Add Items: This is where you can add any items that may be relevent to this encounter. Like something that they may find or engage with. Books, Magic, Scrolls etc.
For example, in the early days of D&D, Gary Gygax created a series of modules all within a single theme or series. This is how I think about this structure.
Example Structure
This below example is from one of the very first campaigns called The Giant Series, from 1978. It had 3 modules.
G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief G2: The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl G3: Hall of the Fire
Each module is an adventure that contains between 30-50 rooms.
How I would approach setting up this campaign in the GMP. * Create a Campaign Page for the entire series. * Build 3 modules with an overview of each module. * Create encounters for each module in groups of 1-5 rooms at a time. * You would end up with 15-20 Encounters/Module
Campaign: The Giant Series
Module 1: G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief * Encounter 1: Intro Rooms * Encounter 2: Central Rooms * Encounter 3: Back Rooms ETC... Module 2: G2: The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl Module 3: G3: Hall of the Fire
The first encounters would be grouped in this manner.
Encounter 1: Intro Rooms 1,2,4,7,11,13,14
I would then have all of the descriptions, NPCs, Foes, and Items built out in that encounter from these rooms. I would then take time to add more interesting things or backgrounds into the story of these original modules and tweak them for my own use. I would add images, interesting items with the goal of bringing these old modules to life.
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Additional resources
A Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting Fantasy Adventures Using ChatGPT and 5 Room Dungeons >>
Inside the assets area you can create your own NPCs/Foes/Items/Spells from scratch, or you can download from the library.
Us the AI to generate names, sample stat blocks, and backstories. Since the AI is trained on your campaign, the backstories and histories of the NPCs are tied to your campaign.
Take the time to associate a CR value to the NPC/Foe, this way the encounter will calculate the difficulty level when you build it out.
I would use the AI Assistant to help me build out these items.
Additional Resources
How to Create AI-Driven Villains for More Impactful D&D Campaigns >>
Bringing your NPCs to life with detailed backgrounds using advanced prompt engineering in ChatGPT >>
The session is the object where you pull together your module, encounters, PCs and prepare to run your session. It is the object that will keep track of your play time, trigger follow up emails and provide session notes back to the players. The session page provides the structure for the GMs to prepare for their upcoming sessions.
Most GMs can run 3-7 encounters for each session. So, I will prepare anywhere from 5-10 encounters for each session. This will include 2-3 random encounters that I may or may not use, as well as encounters that the players may never need.
There are 5 steps in preparing for your session.
Step 1: This sets the date, the module, and the starting encounter.
Step 2: PC's and Game Assets This is where you invite the PCs to come play this session with you.
Game Assets - if you have other assets not related to an encounter, such as a map, new NPC, or Item, you can add them here and they will be made available in the GM's digitial screen.
Step 3: Encounters This is where you pull in all possible encounters that you may play during your session. These do not need to be played in a linear order. I will often create random encounters that I may never use.
Step 4: Preparing for your session
Overview: In this section I try and complete this sentence.
"In [Session Name], the adventurers will continue their journey in [setting and location], where they will [summarize major plot points], and the party will face the decision of [insert decisions]. Outstanding items include [unresolved hooks], and in the next session, the party should aim to [identify objectives or goals for next session]."
I may use the AI to help me summarize this for me.
Strong Start: Grab the attention of the PCs and keep it
Try to start your session with an early sense of excitement, it can be a new NPC, information, flashback, dream, and of course a battle.
Rule of Cool: Is about keeping the PCs at the center of the campaign. I try to answer this question for each of the players.
Rule of cool is about making the characters feel more relevant in an encounter. Complete this sentence for each player. Wouldn’t it be cool if [player] got to do [this] in this session.
Summary: The summary serves two purposes.
1) To set the scene for the upcoming session before you run your session
2) To recap a completed session. It is these notes that appear in the players session notes and on the homepage.
Additional Resources
Leveraging AI to Enhance Your Session Preparation as a Dungeon Master >>
Once you have a sense for your campaign and you are getting close to running your first session. I would reach out to my players to assign a character to them.
If it is a one shot, I will pre build my characters and assign them to a player. If I am developing a longer campaign I will work with my players to build their charcters and their backstories during the campaign creation process.
Inviting a Player
Go to the invite page Enter their email, name and chose a character Hit Add
Resending an invite or reassigning a player
To resend the invite email Go to the Invite Player page Click on the email icon - this will resend the email invite
To Reassign a Player Go to the invite player page Click on the "x"
Go to the player page Remove the player from the PC page Go through the invite process again
Additional Resources
5 ChatGPT Prompts to Start a Fight in your Campaign>>
Understanding the Five Archetypes of D&D Players: A Guide for DMs >>
From the session page you hit play. This will transition you to your game masters screen where it will pull in all encounters, NPCs/Foes/Items, Player characters, Maps and notes.
It centralizes all of the details that you need to run a session and gives you the ability to manage initiative orders, keep track of hit points and move from encounter to encounter.
Back Button: This takes you back to the edit page, you can go back and forth during a running session.
Start Session: This begins the session counter, when you stop the encounter, the platform will save the session and total time. You cannot start the encounter again once you stop it.
You will need to create another encounter.
NPCs/Foes: this list out all of the NPCs/Foes associated with the selected encounter. You can click on each one to see the details of that NPC or Foe.
PCs: This list out all of the PCs that are in the session and allows you to see their details and communicate with them.
Initiative Tracker: This allows you to pull in and arrange the order of initiative between the NPCs/Foes and PCs. This only works when the session is running.
Encounter: This is all of the details around the current encounter you are on. If you pick another encounter from the drop down, this information will change.
Session: This is all of the details that you put into the session.
Rulesets: The tabbed folder icon opens up the ruleset you selected on the main campaign.
{-} AI Assistant: Icon opens up the AI assistant where it will show you all of the previouse chats that you have done for this campaign.
Wrapping up a session: When the session is completed you should write down a short summary in bullet points as to what happened. Feed that to the AI and ask it to write a session summary. Then take what it generated for you and paste it into the summary notes.
These notes will then show up on the homepage and the session notes for the players. These notes will also be written to the characters memory so the players can chat with their characters about what happened. The characters get smarter the more sessions you play.
The AI Assistant is a powerful tool for you to dream of campaign ideas, build our your campaign details, create NPCs/Foes/Items and spells, and react to in session changes. Since the AI Assistant is trained on your campaign it is an invaluable tool for the GM.
AI Assistant Best Practices
Create New Chats Start a new chat when you start a new idea or theme. Save the chat by giving it a unique name
All of these chats are available when you run your session. This give the GM a distinct advantage when the session goes off of the rails.
