Create a campaign

Whoever creates a campaign owns it and starts as its party lead: the person who steers settings, the story tools and the pace at an AI table. The lead can be changed later, and at a human-DM table story authority moves to the Dungeon Master seat.

The creator

New campaign on the home screen opens a stepped wizard with a diamond stepper across the top and a gold wipe between steps.

1. Premise. A title, and who runs this table: AI Dungeon Master, AI narrates, I steer (you take a steering seat with no character; see Steering the story), I run the game, or I run the game, with AI help. Optionally a pre-built world from the world packs installed on the server, which reskins races, classes, spells and monsters to a universe.
2. Setting. One of seven world portals (high fantasy, dark fantasy, mystery, horror, cyberpunk, steampunk, post-apocalyptic) or a custom theme typed in, with climate chips. The premise the Dungeon Master builds the arc from (leave the AI story setup on and it invents the rest), how the narrator talks, and the table language, one of fifteen, that the story is written in.
3. Party. The table sheet: players, starting level, difficulty, campaign length (short, standard at four to five acts, long), the dice policy, hit points per level (average, rolled by the server, or maximum) and starting wealth (the class's starting gear, or wealth rolled by class), with a running total of what it means.
4. The table. What is on at the table: the living world, bonds, romance, the outcome check, the narrator's voice and pace, and AI allies.
5. Advanced. Variant and house rules, prep brought in from a workshop, safety, and live voice chat. All optional.
6. Review. The cover reads it all back. Create.

All of this is editable afterwards from the lobby's game settings and the table's Setup tab, except the world pack once play starts. On a shared server the administrator can keep campaign creation to administrators; then New campaign and Quick start do not appear.

Where the AI comes from

On a world hosted from an app, the campaign follows the device's Story AI choice: whatever you set on the home screen (a human, your OpenAI key, a local model or an agent) narrates every campaign, new or old, and the Setup tab shows that choice instead of asking again. On a self-hosted server, the campaign starts on the server's default backend. Only an administrator can point a campaign at a backend address or key of its own; a campaign anyone else owns uses the server's, and the administrator decides whose tables may spend a paid AI backend. If the server has no text backend at all, the creator only offers a human Dungeon Master.

Quick start

Quick start on the home screen makes a one-evening adventure with four ready-made heroes: two clicks from the menu to a seated table, and the lobby offers the heroes to whoever joins. It needs an AI storyteller.

Solo adventure

Solo adventure on the home screen, shown when the server has an AI storyteller, skips the lobby: one character, the AI narrating, straight to the table. The same engines, the same arc, no room code. A solo campaign can be opened up later by turning on mid-game join and sharing its code.

Cover art

A campaign has a cover, shown on the home screen and in the lobby. Upload one, or ask the image backend to paint one from the premise. On an app-hosted world with an OpenAI key, painting a cover uses that key.

Campaigns and workshops

A workshop is a campaign that never plays: the same editors for maps, monsters, NPCs, encounters, lore, tables, storyboards and homebrew, measured against a stand-in party, with nothing to narrate. Build there, then import into a real campaign at creation or from the lobby. See The workshop and Importing workshop prep.

Cloning

Any campaign clones from its menu on the home screen. The clone carries the setting, settings, prep and lore; the chronicle and the party do not travel. Characters clone from the library.