Embarking on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign is a journey like no other. It demands creativity, imagination, and a touch of magic, often on-the-fly. Here we’ll look at five different ways to use ChatGPT prompts for D&D. These are specifically designed for fueling your creativity and superhero-style rescuing you when you’re put on the spot and want a little extra something for your table.

Let’s dive into the realm of possibilities.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links. At no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

ChatGPT Prompts for D&D

What if you could tap into an infinite wellspring of inspiration to enhance your D&D or tabletop adventures? Start with your concepts or ideas, and let the magic of technology run rampant to see what happens. ChatGPT, your new assistant DM can be your trusty companion in the realms of imagination.

With your imagination and ChatGPT’s quick creative capabilities, this tool can help you craft compelling narratives. It chimes in with unexpected twists, interesting magic items, or even NPC and room descriptions immediately as you need them.

As a Dungeon Master or a player, we all strive to create captivating storylines. We want them filled with memorable characters in immersive worlds that keep everyone at the table eagerly anticipating the next session. To help you with this, I’ve also provided a Midjourney prompt to go with an accompanying picture. Let’s have some AI fun!

1) Magic Items

ChatGPT Prompt: Please create for me a strange magic item for D&D 5th edition. Please make it colorful and fun, and include a description of the item.

Your players stumble across an area you hadn’t expected. Maybe they did something extra cool you want to reward, or perhaps you forgot to stock those enemies’ pockets. No worries.

Midjourney Prompt: a chromatic telescope on a medieval desk, dramatic lighting, magical lighting, studio lighting, intricate maximalism, colorful, bejeweled magic item –v 5.1

ChatGPT Prompt: Please create for me a strange magic item for D&D 5th edition. Please make it colorful and fun, and include a description of the item.

I have come to believe that ChatGPT actually likes Dungeons & Dragons. (Though I do realize this may not be possible.) I get much more verbose responses from the system when asking for content ideas or descriptions for D&D than I do for literally anything else.

One of my players right now is wearing a steampunk-inspired prosthetic leg courtesy of ChatGPT in our campaign, and she loves it.

2) Location Descriptions

ChatGPT Prompt: I’m playing D&D. My players just went into a haunted chapel. Please describe this in spooky detail.

Sometimes, if you ask for something from ChatGPT, the system’s safety settings will go off. This can happen even if it’s a genuinely innocent request. For example: I asked for ideas about a villain’s city-terrorizing plans once. ChatGPT then told me it was against its protocol to talk about terrorists. Fair enough.

A way to make sure ChatGPT is still helpful in these situations is to begin by telling it that you are playing Dungeons & Dragons. When I began with that information I had no trouble. By prefacing with this, the AI is more likely to respond. Plus, I’ve also noticed it flavors its responses with more of a fantasy or medieval flare.

Midjourney Prompt: black and white illustration showing a creepy abandoned church in the style of grimdark fantasy horror, bold chiaroscuro contrast, ink and wash, medieval style art, comic book-style art, necronomicon illustrations –ar 4:5 –v 5.1

ChatGPT Prompt: I’m playing D&D. My players just went into a haunted chapel. Please describe this in spooky detail.

3) NPC Descriptions

ChatGPT Prompt: I need a description for a new weird NPC, fast. He’s kind and funny, from far away

Midjourney Prompt: a lighthearted storyteller from medieval times in D&D named Quirbly Stumpwhistle, action shot from a movie, –v 5.1

ChatGPT Prompt: I need a description for a new weird NPC, fast. He’s kind and funny, from far away

If you need the information to be more easily consumable and less paragraph-like, just tell it to put the information in a bulleted list.

4) On-the-Fly Speeches

ChatGPT Prompt: Please write me a speech about how my players’ adventuring party, “The Mindslayers” have saved a small town from a goblin that poisoned the water supply. It’s being delivered by the grouchy mayor, Sir Humperdink.

I talked about this a little bit already in the other ChatGPT article I wrote a bit ago, but it bears repeating. If you have some kind of ceremony, award, cult event, or other scenario with pomp and circumstance going on, ChatGPT is awesome at creating speeches.

And Eleven Labs can deliver them for you in a variety of voices. There’s a free version that I’ve been using. It’s fantastic and my players have gotten such a kick out of it.

Midjourney Prompt: a cell shaded cartoon of a grouchy, portly mayor giving a speech about a group of excited adventurers, it’s windy out, medieval times, detailed village, sunset, colorful –v 5.1

ChatGPT Prompt: Please write me a speech about how my players’ adventuring party, “The Mindslayers” have saved a small town from a goblin that poisoned the water supply. It’s being delivered by the grouchy mayor, Sir Humperdink.

What’s important here are the several details I included in the prompt. I made this scenario up for the sake of this article; by including that the mayor is grouchy, the entire tone of the speech changed. I also gave ChatGPT the party’s group name (not made up) and some information about what they achieved. This gives the AI more to work with to make the speech believable.

I think this speech is sort of hilarious. My players would be torn between being flattered and super irritated.

Carried Away

Sometimes ChatGPT gets really carried away and will embellish the plot. Like I said above, I’m pretty sure ChatGPT likes D&D, if it can. Just axe those extra details out and you should be good. If you have a few minutes, you can ask the AI to embellish on a particular detail or rewrite the speech to include or leave out items as well.

ChatGPT also likes to go on… and on… and on sometimes with these. You can always stop and tell it to be more concise, to halve the length, or put in other requirements as needed.

5) The Killing Blow (or Any Other Blow)

ChatGPT Prompt: Please describe this scene: my D&D players have finally killed the evil husband and wife couple who worshiped (evil) Asmodeus, ending their noble reign of terror over Waterdeep. Be vague about how they actually died.

I always feel like the final blow on a tough enemy should be an exciting moment for players. While Mercer has immortalized “How Do You Want to Do This?” I never feel comfortable straight-up copying another fabulous DM. I love to give my players the opportunity to describe the scene, but it can also be helpful to have ChatGPT prepare something a little extra flavorful ahead of time for you to deliver, should the opportunity present itself.

Midjourney Prompt: a room with a marble floor, dramatic lighting, ultra realistic, 8k, the room was lavish and opulent and has been torn to pieces by a fight –ar 3:2 –v 5.1

ChatGPT Prompt: Please describe this scene: my D&D players have finally killed the evil husband and wife couple who worshiped (evil) Asmodeus, ending their noble reign of terror over Waterdeep. Be vague about how they actually died.

This is really long. I would definitely start to feel awkward about halfway through, so I will just paraphrase parts, take my favorite parts, and possibly just use the last paragraph as part of a speech from Laeral Silverhand (current Open Lord of Waterdeep).

Saving Prompts

I generally keep track of my prompts in one of two ways. If I’m feeling lazy, I’ll copy it quickly into Google Keep. This becomes a problem quickly though; it’s not really designed for this type of documentation. I much more highly recommend using Microsoft’s OneNote, which is free, or Evernote. Evernote has gotten pretty naggy lately about devices so I haven’t used it as much.

Notion is also indispensable.

The second way I keep track of my favorite prompts (and literally the rest of my life) is in a series of notebooks. I love the Leuchtturm 1917 (Amazon). I have, I think, six of them at this point. The paper is really creamy and nice and I’m a huge nerd and into stuff like that.

I suggest you do save your favorite prompts that give you the results you desire in any AI interface, that way you can adjust them and use them again in the future.

Closing Thoughts

Whether you need help with brainstorming unique items or creating immersive settings, ChatGPT can be a new invaluable addition to your arsenal. I often have a tab open with ChatGPT during my D&D games just in case I want a bit of a fancier description of something (and I have a few moments ahead of time to have it work). I also had ChatGPT come up with an entire schedule for a masquerade ball, making my life infinitely easier, especially since I’ve never been to one. Check that out here.

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