AI and the Games Master

There's a general backlash against AI in a lot of the gaming space, but I think that it could be extremely useful, especially if you're the GM.

Recently, I've been trying out Google's NotebookLM to analyse text. The T&Cs state that the data you upload isn't used to train the AI and that it remains private. I've experimented with Shadows of Atlantis for Achtung! Cthulhu. I struggled throughout the campaign that I ran because it was very overwritten and some of the editing between editions lost elements. I often found myself hunting for a reference in the text. The natural language queries allowed me to pull out some very succinct summaries. Unfortunately, I found it when I had a two sessions left to run.

More recently, I have uploaded the books for the Traveller Deepnight Revelation campaign (see screenshot). There are 11 books (4 from box set, 6 expansions and an adjacent adventure) and this is a game changer in how you can find things. Think of it as semi-intelligent search and summarising. NotebookLM shows were all the summaries come from so you can check it and you can produce timelines, mindmaps and more.

I got some good use from queries like: 

• Give a summary of the named crew members on the Deepnight Revelation, their motivations and how they impact the plot.
• Give a breakdown of the locations on Alpha in Deepnight Legacy and include the information that can be learned and threats at each.
• What steps should the Travellers take to ensure that they succeed and survive the events of Deepnight Legacy?
• What are the key locations that Deepnight Revelation can use for resupply?
• Summarise the events in the Riftsedge Transit 
• Compare the way that characters can resolve the events of 'Deepnight Legacy' and 'Deepnight Endeavour'.

I think that this would also be useful for large tomes like Ptolus or perhaps the recent Forbidden North OSR tomes. Of course, there's part of me that would love to upload all the Traveller canon to get that searchable like this, but it would break the limits.

I've also seen Tabletop Recorder, which is on Kickstarter at the moment.

https://tabletoprecorder.com/

This is designed to take an audio recording of your game session and produce a summary, cutting the meandering side conversations and allowing you to produce output at a variety of levels. Initially I scoffed, but now I think about it, it would be useful for longer campaigns or more episodic games as a reference. When I think how long I spent taking notes during Curse of Strahd, it makes me wonder if this would have been a useful investment. I suspect that it would have been really useful for Eternal Lies too, with all the threads that has. I may trial back it to see how it works.

The part that will make and break it will be how well it handles names etc and how well it filters out the cruft. I've seen some alpha test output and it looks pretty good.

Have you experimented with some of the AI tools out there? Does anything look like it may change the way that you play or GM?

13 April 2025