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AI tools for dungeon masters: prep, VTTs, and group play

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For a human dungeon master, AI is most useful as an assistant. It can draft NPCs and locations before a session, voice a character the players decide to question at length, look up a rule, or turn a session recording into a recap. That is also the use research supports most clearly. The strongest positive result in the studies so far comes from an AI that helped dungeon masters instead of replacing them.

If you play online, it also matters where AI is allowed, and the main virtual tabletops treat it very differently. Foundry VTT allows AI content generated at your own table. Roll20 and D&D Beyond have no AI game master, and the marketplaces where DMs sell adventures don’t accept products that include AI-generated text. This part of the series covers all of that, plus how to run a group game when an AI is the dungeon master. Part 2 covers playing solo with ChatGPT or Claude.

Where AI helps a dungeon master

Running a game takes a lot of preparation, and much of that preparation is writing: descriptions of places, names and motives for NPCs, lists of rumors and items. This is where AI helps most, because it writes quickly and you can throw away whatever doesn’t fit your game.

Research backs this up. In CALYPSO, a 2023 study from the University of Pennsylvania, dungeon masters used an AI assistant during real games on Discord. They reported two useful kinds of output: text good enough to read to players directly, and rough ideas they could develop further while keeping creative control. Fortune’s Brian Childs, who had run a campaign for two years, reached a similar conclusion after testing ChatGPT in 2023. He recommended using it for the parts of DMing you don’t enjoy, such as writing scene descriptions, and keeping the parts you love for yourself.

Research on how game masters work suggests which kind of material helps most. In interviews with eight expert game masters, Philip Tchernavskij and colleagues (2022) found that they prepare “readymades” before a session, such as notes, maps, and NPC cards, and improvise from them during play. A readymade doesn’t script the session. It gives the DM something to reach for when the players go somewhere unexpected. AI can produce that kind of material quickly:

During a session, an AI can voice an NPC the players decide to question at length, or describe a place you hadn’t prepared. Keep the plot decisions yourself. The CALYPSO DMs valued the assistant because it left creative control with them, and studies of AI running whole games found problems with exactly those decisions: railroading, and too few challenges for the players.

Rules lookups

D&D has a lot of rules, and looking one up in the middle of a session slows the game down. An AI can help, as long as it works from the actual rules text instead of what it remembers from training. The System Reference Document 5.2.1, the core of the 2024 rules, is free from D&D Beyond under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-4.0), so you can give the full text to an AI and ask questions against it.

Treat its answers as a first draft. Ask the AI to quote the SRD section it is relying on, and check any ruling that matters against the text. Even AI built specifically to check rules makes mistakes. In a 2025 study at the Nagoya Institute of Technology, adding AI agents to check a game master’s replies against the rules made rule violations more common.

Session recaps and recording

Recaps help a group remember what happened, especially when sessions are weeks apart. Several tools now record a session, transcribe it, and write the recap automatically, often through a Discord bot. They save the DM a chore, but they also record your players’ voices, so the tool’s data policy matters.

The policies differ, so read them before you start. Recap Raven says audio is deleted after transcription and that it announces recordings in the channel. Saga20 says recordings are deleted once the summary is generated and that voice samples are kept for up to 72 hours. Both say they don’t train AI models on your sessions.

Whatever tool you use, ask every player before you record. Recap Raven’s own FAQ answers the question “Does everyone need to consent to recording?” with a plain yes.

AI on virtual tabletops

Many groups play online on a virtual tabletop, and each one has its own rules on AI. The differences affect both what you can do in your own games and which add-ons you can install.

Foundry VTT

Foundry VTT has a detailed AI policy, revised on March 18, 2026, that separates two kinds of content. Content prepared in advance for packages in its official listing, such as text, art, and audio, must be human-made. Content an AI generates at your table in response to your own prompts is allowed, and Foundry says it does not police what users generate at their own table. Packages that write code while you play need your consent before that code runs.

In practice, you can use AI tools in your own Foundry games. Community modules connect Foundry to AI models for NPC dialogue, journals, and running adventures, and several connect it to Claude through MCP, a protocol that lets an AI use outside tools. Foundry’s founder sees AI differently from his company’s policy, though. Andrew Clayton is personally opposed to generative AI and called its use in the industry “a betrayal of the creative people who made the TTRPG industry what it is” (PC Gamer, 2025).

Roll20 and Owlbear Rodeo

We found no AI game master built into Roll20. Its marketplace, together with DriveThru, has refused products that include text generated by AI language generators since July 2023, so AI tools for Roll20 come from outside the platform. Owlbear Rodeo’s official extension directory lists dice rollers, initiative and combat trackers, and character sheets, and we found no AI extensions in it.

D&D Beyond and Discord

D&D Beyond, Wizards of the Coast’s official platform, has no AI game master. Its site rules ban content created in whole or in part with AI, including text, images, and audio, across the forums and the rest of the site.

Avrae, the D&D Beyond bot for Discord, rolls dice and tracks initiative without using AI. That makes it useful next to an AI game master: with Avrae handling dice and turn order, those numbers stay out of the AI’s hands. Sigil, the 3D virtual tabletop Wizards built for D&D Beyond, shuts down on October 31, 2026. Community-made connectors that let an AI read D&D Beyond character sheets are unofficial, so check D&D Beyond’s terms before you use one.

Discord was also where one of the better-known AI game masters started. Friends & Fables began as a Discord bot and moved to its own platform in July 2024. Its Discord bot still runs as “Legacy Friends & Fables” but is no longer developed.

Running a group game with an AI game master

Group play adds problems that solo play doesn’t have. At a human table, the dungeon master keeps track of whose turn it is, notices when a quiet player hasn’t done anything for a while, and keeps the game moving. An AI game master does none of that on its own. It answers one message at a time, so when several players type at once, it may merge their actions or answer one and skip the rest. Slow replies make this worse. In the Nagoya study, extra checking made the AI’s responses slower and the conversation less smooth.

A few habits help a group game run more smoothly:

If you’d rather not manage this yourself, apps built for groups handle turn order for you. Friends & Fables supports parties of up to six and runs 5e combat on battlemaps, and Voyage has multiplayer and a DM Mode. Our list of AI Dungeon alternatives compares them.

Session zero and table safety

A session zero is a conversation before the first game in which the group agrees on what kind of game it will be: the tone, the kind of content in play, and what is off the table. Many groups run one with a human dungeon master, and with an AI at the table it matters even more. A human DM watches the players and adjusts when someone looks uncomfortable. An AI only knows what you tell it, so the limits have to be written into the game master prompt.

The common safety tools work with an AI too. Lines are topics that never appear in the game, and veils are topics that can happen off-screen but aren’t described. The X-Card is a signal any player can use to remove content without explaining why. With an AI, write the lines and veils into the prompt, and repeat them if the AI drifts.

Research on human tables supports the effort. In a survey of more than 400 D&D 5e players, Joe Lasley and Antonio Ruiz Ezquerro found that facilitation is linked to clarity, cohesion, and support at the table. Giuseppe Femia (2025) analyzed players’ stories about “nightmare” game masters and traced many of them to expectations that were never agreed before play. Sean K. Reynolds and Shanna Germain’s free guide, Consent in Gaming (Monte Cook Games, 2019), covers how to have these conversations.

If you publish your homebrew

Many DMs eventually share or sell what they write, and the rules there are much stricter than at your own table. The Roll20 and DriveThru marketplaces don’t accept products that include text generated by AI language generators. They do allow AI-generated images on a cover or inside a product PDF, as long as the product is marked with the AI-generated content filter. Some community content programs on DriveThru ban generative AI entirely, including Chaosium’s Miskatonic Repository and Jonstown Compendium.

Other publishers have similar rules. Paizo has required since 2023 that work submitted to it be created by a human, and doesn’t allow AI-generated content on its Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite marketplaces. D&D Beyond’s site rules ban AI content in homebrew shared there, and Wizards of the Coast requires creatives working on official D&D products to refrain from using generative AI for final products.

Common questions

Can I use AI with Foundry VTT?

Yes. Foundry’s policy allows AI content generated at your table in response to your own prompts, and community modules connect Foundry to AI models. Content prepared in advance for packages in the official listing must be human-made.

Does D&D Beyond have an AI dungeon master?

No. D&D Beyond has no AI features for running games, and its site rules ban AI-generated content. Wizards of the Coast said in 2023 that “no one at Wizards is working on AI DMs.”

Can I sell an adventure I wrote with AI help?

Not on the Roll20 or DriveThru marketplaces if the product includes text generated by AI, and some community content programs ban generative AI entirely. AI-generated cover art is allowed there if the product is marked.

Do players need to agree to being recorded for AI recaps?

Yes. Ask everyone before the first recording, and check how long the tool keeps audio and transcripts.

Sources

Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, and D&D Beyond are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast. Lunelle AI is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast or with any other company named in this guide.