GMs: What is your prep to play ratio?

[payn]

I've never used generative AI for scenario design.

But this is an example of what an Agon island looks like (it's one I wrote up):
As you can see if you go back to the thread I originally posted this in, it was inspired by a list of "Iron DM" ingredients. But will AI create something like this, based on a list of ingredients and an instruction to design an Agon island? @Gorgon Zee's post makes me doubtful.

This chunking or using iron GM ingredients is precisely the type of thing A.I. is good at. No, if you go to an untrained prompt and ask for an RPG adventure it won’t be like this but given opportunity to learn it could spit outlines out just like this.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Given that I only run homebrewed campaigns and dismissing pre-campaign prep, I probably average at 1.5 to 2 x prep time to hour played. But for major setpieces and evolving intrigues and conspiracies it can be way more. But that’s a major part of myGMing fun.

 

[Scott Christian]

That's like a part-time job.

It is, but it is only for summer. And, it's fun!

Here are a few of the adventures I have made. Some are quests (more linear) and others are sandboxes.

For the record, I do not sell these. They are just for me and friends.

 

[zakael19]

It is, but it is only for summer. And, it's fun!

Here are a few of the adventures I have made. Some are quests (more linear) and others are sandboxes.

For the record, I do not sell these. They are just for me and friends.

Gotcha, that's on a slightly different scale!

 

[Gorgon Zee]

This chunking or using iron GM ingredients is precisely the type of thing A.I. is good at. No, if you go to an untrained prompt and ask for an RPG adventure it won’t be like this but given opportunity to learn it could spit outlines out just like this.

Yes, definitely. It will indeed spit out outlines looking just like this. And it can be made to produce a dozen or so outlines and they will all feel just a bit same-y. If you add enough prompts, it will produce something different, but it will still be trying to do it in the generic way it has been trained to.

AI is really good for producing boring material; those are the use cases I build for in my work — summarizing and generating boilerplate. But it’s not great at being creative. If you really want to use AI for your home game, come up with the ideas yourself and just have AI format it nicely and fix spelling/grammar. It’s good at that