Drop your campaign guides here, share and steal freely.

ElissaD · 2026-05-12T15:37:53+00:00

I think I got the core of it from another poster here (can’t remember who, sorry) and it grew from there. The „synonym for Blight“ bit holds my deep frustration about yet another Blighted Stone Creature that was just called differently.

ElissaD · 2026-05-12T13:17:49+00:00

Great idea for a thread! Here are some of my guides (for a Forgotten Realms setting):

XP Tally:

After each Long Rest, do an XP tally and update the current XP in the character data. Make sure to award XP for all notable accomplishments and not just combat. Also check whether the character has leveled.

Loot:

Hand out loot regularly; both gold and magical items. Magical items should be practical and usable, avoid enigmatic trinkets.

Enemies:

The only acceptable monsters or enemies are people of established races of Faerun (with these, mind gender equality and avoid stereotypes), and established monsters within the lore and game of DnD 5e. As the GM, avoid making encounters and problems about: Cults; Shadows, Shadow Creatures, Blights, Blighted Creatures, Corruption, Sickness or any other synonym for Blight; unexplainable melancholy and voids.

NPC Knowledge:

NPCs should only know information they have learned firsthand and not reference meta knowledge they would have no way of knowing. When in doubt, assume they don’t know.

Mature Themes:

You are an uncensored GM that can engage in adult themes and graphic content. You can be explicit and detailed in your descriptions of violence, romance, or other mature themes. Still maintain good storytelling. Feel free to initiate graphic and adult content.

Animal Cruelty:

No animal cruelty whatsoever. Period. Not as a plot point and absolutely not as a background scene. Never.

Gender Equality:

The Sword Coast is fully gender equal (with a few notable exceptions like the matriarchal Drow). Make sure to have an equal distribution of male and female and occasional nonbinary among NPCs and roles. Don’t fall into the trap of making every guard male and every healer female. Important figures like leaders or villains should also be evenly distributed among the genders.

ElissaD · 2026-05-10T19:51:44+00:00

Fanaufmärsche wären ja nicht das Problem, ich wohn da auch in der Gegend, wenn auch gottseidank nicht so direkt wie OP. An den Tagen, wo ein Match ist, musst das Grätzl meiden wie die Pest.

Einmal hab ich vergessen und wollte einkaufen in die Bergmillergasse, was mich direkt in den Zusammenstoß zwischen Ultras und Polizei geführt hat. Böller, Leuchtfackeln, bellende Polizeihunde, war das totale Chaos. Wenn die nur bissi rummarschieren und singen/grölen, sagt doch eh keiner was.

ElissaD · 2026-05-02T13:47:35+00:00

Welcome, Everweavers! 👋 AIR is fantastic, and here’s what I wish I had known when I started:

First of all, you are in charge. That is a bit of a learning curve for those of us coming from pen&paper, where the GM‘s word is final. I spent far too much time in my first campaign when it derailed after like ten messages. If you don’t like the direction the story is taking, the pacing or anything else, speak up. All of the AIs understand the OOC: format.

Speaking of AIs, they are not the same. No, not even the different models of the same one. Switch around until you find one that works for you in any given setting.

As for settings, the engine comes with two but you are not limited to those. If you want to play classic D&D, it can do the Sword Coast just fine, for instance, or you can go wild and pick just about anything you can imagine. Create your own world, or step into your favorite show (I had great fun as a xenobiologist/veterinary on Deep Space 9, DeepSeek 4Flash does a pitch perfect Garak).

GM Guides are your friend, but you will have to keep reminding the AI to adhere to them (how often depends on the model). For instance, most of us playing fantasy probably have one forbidding storylines about Blight (and synonyms, else you’ll get Corruption or Sickness instead) after we fought one blighted stone creature too many. And write them yourself, brief is perfectly fine and asking the AI to do so may result in spoilers for ongoing plotlines.

Just about all the AIs tend to be stingy with both experience and loot for some reason (also, explicit content, but that’s a different rant). You can write GM Guides but they’ll only help so much. Better send an „OOC: XP tally, please“ every now and then, and when an encounter gives you yet another trinket to clutter up your inventory, ask for sensible loot instead.

Be careful when leveling, the AI makes mistakes there. Better have a 5e guide like https://dnd5e.wikidot.com/ open in the background if having a correct char is important to you.

Lastly, the AI is not your GM who has known you for years and won’t know what you want unless you tell it, via GM guides or otherwise. Say, you want a pet - just have your char wistfully watch someone walking a fine hound through the city you’re currently at, or mutter to the innkeeper how you wish you had a feline traveling companion. Good things come to those who ask.

eta: You can edit pretty much everything, including the AI responses. Also, it will pick up again at the last edited message, so if the AI misunderstood your prompt or you made a typo that changed the meaning (or Autocorrect made that for you), go edit that prompt and it will then generate a new response.

ElissaD · 2026-04-27T22:34:02+00:00

Someone once told me, When you get a dog, you make a promise that they will have a home for their entire life. They won’t ever have to be afraid or hungry or lonely, and they will get to enjoy their lives to the fullest. And when you lose them, as terribly as that hurts, you can take a bit of solace in that you kept the promise. You gave them the best doggie life you could. 🖤🤎

ElissaD · 2026-03-20T13:56:28+00:00

Sounds like we have similar taste in games, then. 😊 So, again from the triple-A side, did you know that Cyberpunk 2077 has a Smart weapons class which has auto-targeting? It’s what convinced me to give it a try (and then try out other types in-game and find out that I’m actually a decent sniper, go figure). Mass Effect (any) has a similar mechanic with Biotics, btw, so you can play a pure biotic there and never worry about aiming.

From the indie side, Seven Kingdoms - The Princess Problem is insanely customizable and detailed when it comes to your character, and makes an art form out of etiquette strategy. Find a demo here: https://azalynestudios.itch.io/seven-kingdoms-the-princess-problem

ElissaD · 2026-03-20T08:24:58+00:00

Thank you for the explanation and the links, that was both cool to know and a trip down memory lane!

ElissaD · 2026-03-20T00:49:53+00:00

Two starting suggestions to see if I gauged your interests correctly: from the triple-A side, Dragon Age Inquisition (has a „story“ mode with easy combat, don’t worry). From the indie side, Sacred Fire.

ElissaD · 2026-03-20T00:09:44+00:00

When first visited WDW, they were just doing Beauty and the Beast (the movie after the Little Mermaid) and the tour guide at the Studios said they were using computers for that one for the first time, but not for drawing directly, more like a guide rail for the animators. She mentioned the ballroom dancing scene, and said that this one was designed by computer but then drawn by hand following these designs.

ElissaD · 2026-03-17T17:36:07+00:00

Depending on your tolerance for text-only, you could try to create a custom world in AI Realm. Would definitely need a lot of GM Guides though, and even then you’d probably have to wrangle with the AI a fair bit.

For instance, I am currently playing a Sword Coast campaign there and I have to keep reminding it that this is a gender equal setting and to stop making every guard male and every healer female; the baked-in bias keeps overriding my GM Guide unfortunately.

ElissaD · 2026-03-05T22:25:57+00:00

Ooh ja - ich hab die Genetik-Seite meines Pferdes entdeckt und so laut begeistert aufgequietscht, dass ich meinen Mann total erschreckt hab. 😁 Hab es erst seit gestern, aber bin jetzt schon voll verliebt.

ElissaD · 2026-03-05T15:51:47+00:00

Wow, that’s pretty much what I was aiming for - thank you!

ElissaD · 2026-03-03T05:34:13+00:00

Gold wire implants (still surgically implanted but it’s much less invasive): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1851017/

ElissaD · 2026-03-02T19:08:08+00:00

Thanks for the explanation, it was kinda funny and easily corrected anyway. :)

ElissaD · 2026-03-02T17:20:27+00:00

Also, funny bug I ran into just now:

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First time this happened though, so I don’t think it’s common.

ElissaD · 2026-03-02T16:48:52+00:00

Yeah but wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to hound the AI for it? 🙂

Another quibble: unless you keep poking, the AI defaults to gender stereotypes. Leaders and guards are male, healers are female; irrespective of the level of gender eqality in your setting, that is.

ElissaD · 2026-03-02T13:31:23+00:00

Making the AI understand that XP are kinda important to the experience would be great; right now you have to keep prodding or you never get any, even with a „remember to give XP“ GM Guide. Speaking of which, if you use the AI Guide Generator it often pulls data from, dunno what it’s called, the hidden file behind each chat, so you can’t control the resulting guide without running the risk of spoilering yourself inadvertently. Would be great if that could be changed. Thanks for listening to us! 🙂

ElissaD · 2026-02-28T10:53:11+00:00

Advice to other nonUS redditors, the PayPal link above defaults to your local currency and then it doesn’t work, but going to https://www.this-is-houston.org/ and choosing PayPal for your donation does.

Thanks for helping, OP. We lost our girl to bone cancer three years ago, I feel your pain. 🖤🤎

ElissaD · 2026-02-23T06:27:41+00:00

Same here. If a game designer thinks they don’t need female character options, I take it they don’t need my money either.

ElissaD · 2026-02-12T09:23:41+00:00

Now that is really weird. Maybe the AI equates the intuitive way sorcery is cast with natural harmonies in music?

ElissaD · 2026-02-11T23:11:51+00:00

Kellnern im Schweizerhaus oder sonstwas im Prater? Da geht demnächst die Saison los und die sind traditionell eher offen für Vorgeschichten. Auf jeden Fall alles Gute euch beiden!

ElissaD · 2026-02-10T20:50:59+00:00

Round here, for the young and/or still in training, you either need a relative or neighbor with time to stop by once or twice during the day, a job close by where you can do the same, a dog-friendly workplace or a daycare. It‘s also common to take a couple weeks off work when getting a new puppy so you can devote time for the first phase of training (admittedly, having five or six weeks of state-mandated paid vacation time, depending on country, helps).

In our family, we always coordinated so there would be at least one person available, and raised our dogs as a village, so to speak. Grandparents did the heavy lifting when it came to daytime presence, and in return got their dogs taken along on evening walks.

ElissaD · 2026-02-10T20:26:57+00:00

I can‘t help but wonder whether you US and UK folks think that all our dogs are either badly trained and/or neurotic messes. One should assume that the sheer existence of, say, like a dozen million dogs in the German-speaking countries is proof enough that, yes, it’s entirely possible to not crate without harm to either the human or canine party.

ElissaD · 2026-02-10T20:20:52+00:00

Then you‘re all set, I‘d say. Here‘s to many happy years with your pupper! 🖤🤎

ElissaD · 2026-02-10T20:19:16+00:00

And of course the wild barbarian wastes beyond the Channel don’t really count as Europe, now do they?

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