Documentation

DM Forge is a campaign management platform for Dungeon Masters. It covers the full lifecycle of running a D&D campaign — from world-building and session prep to live play and post-session recap — with AI assistance available at every step.

• Campaigns — Your top-level container. One campaign holds all the lore, NPCs, locations, factions, and sessions for a single story arc.
• Sessions — Each session is a structured play event made up of scenes. Build sessions ahead of time using the Session Builder, then run them live with the Session Runner.
• AI Everywhere — Every major feature has an AI generation option. You can generate manually or use AI to fill in the details — the choice is always yours.
• Library — A shared pool of monsters and loot items (including the full D&D 5e SRD) that you can pull into any encounter or scene.

DM Forge follows a three-phase workflow designed to match how DMs actually prepare and run games.

The campaign is the foundation of everything in DM Forge. It holds your world's identity and serves as context for all AI generation within the campaign.

• Premise & Lore — A summary of your campaign's core story, setting, and themes. AI tools reference this when generating content.
• World Rules — Define how magic works, what deities exist, how technology fits in, and any special rules for your setting.
• Genre & Tone — Set whether your campaign is high fantasy, dark horror, political intrigue, or anything else. This shapes AI-generated content.
• Status Tracking — Campaigns move from Draft → Prepared → Running → Completed. The status determines what actions are available (e.g., only Running campaigns show the Session Runner).
• AI Image Generation — Generate a campaign cover image from a prompt to visually represent your world.

The Campaign Wizard is a multi-step AI agent that builds an entire campaign foundation from a single premise sentence. It's the fastest way to go from idea to playable world.

• Step-by-step guidance — The wizard walks you through setting your premise, genre, tone, and key details before generating.
• Full skeleton generation — Generates campaign lore, world rules, starting factions, key locations, and major NPCs all at once.
• Editable output — Everything the wizard generates is fully editable. Use it as a starting point and refine it to match your vision.

Non-player characters are the heart of any campaign. DM Forge lets you build rich NPC profiles with personality, backstory, and voice — manually or with AI.

• Rich profiles — Name, race, class, age, appearance, personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws.
• Backstory & motivation — Full narrative backstory and what drives the NPC's actions in the story.
• Voice description — Describe how the NPC speaks so you can roleplay them consistently at the table.
• AI image generation — Generate a portrait image for any NPC.
• Encounter attachment — Attach campaign NPCs directly to encounter scenes in the Session Builder.

Populate your world with the places and power groups that give it depth and political texture.

• Locations — Add cities, dungeons, wilderness areas, and points of interest. Each can have a description, notable features, and connected NPCs.
• Factions — Define guilds, noble houses, cults, or any group with shared goals. Include their goals, methods, and alignment.
• AI image generation — Generate visual representations for locations and faction crests.

The World State Timeline is the living history of your campaign. It records key decisions, consequences, and changes to the world as your sessions unfold.

• Decision log — Record major player decisions and their immediate outcomes to track the story's evolution.
• NPC & faction changes — Track when an NPC's allegiance shifts or a faction's power rises or falls.
• Session-linked entries — Timeline entries are linked to the session they occurred in for easy reference.
• AI context — The timeline feeds into AI generation, so new sessions and NPCs can be created with awareness of past events.

Sessions are built from scenes — discrete narrative moments with their own encounters, puzzles, and loot. The Session Builder gives you a visual canvas to structure your play.

• Scenes — Add as many scenes as you need. Each scene has a title, description, and type (exploration, roleplay, combat, etc.).
• Encounters — Add combat encounters to scenes. Each encounter can include monsters from the Library and NPCs from the campaign.
• Puzzles — Design riddles and puzzles with progressive hints that you can reveal one at a time during play.
• Loot — Attach specific loot items to scenes or encounters. Items come from the Loot Library or custom entries.
• Branching paths — Set up branch options on scenes that connect to other scenes. The Session Runner lets you follow these branches based on player choices.
• Difficulty rating — Tag encounters by difficulty (Easy, Medium, Hard, Deadly) to help with encounter balancing.

The Session Runner is your at-the-table companion. It presents your session scene by scene and gives you the tools to manage everything in real time.

• Scene navigation — Move forward, backward, or jump directly to any scene. The current scene is always highlighted.
• Branch choices — When players reach a branch point, choose a path and the runner navigates to the destination scene automatically.
• Combat Tracker launch — Open the Combat Tracker directly from an encounter card in the runner. Monsters and NPCs are auto-loaded.
• Puzzle hints — Reveal puzzle hints one by one as players need them without showing all hints at once.
• Session state — The runner remembers your current scene between page loads, so you can leave and come back.

A dedicated live combat tool for tracking initiative order, HP, and combatant status during encounters. No more notebook scribbles or lost sticky notes.

• Initiative order — Add combatants with initiative rolls and the tracker sorts them automatically. Advance through turns with one click.
• HP tracking — Apply damage or healing to any combatant. HP bars show current vs. max at a glance.
• Auto-load from encounter — When launched from the Session Runner, monsters and NPCs from the active encounter are auto-populated with their stat block values.
• Persistent state — Combat state is saved so you can switch tabs mid-fight and return without losing your place.
• Add mid-combat — Add new combatants at any time during combat — for ambushes, reinforcements, or late arrivals.

DM Forge uses AI agents throughout the app to generate content that fits your specific campaign. Every AI tool is context-aware — it reads your campaign's premise, lore, and existing content before generating.

• Campaign-aware — AI tools know your campaign's tone, world rules, and lore. Generated content won't contradict your established world.
• Always editable — AI output is a starting point. Everything generated can be edited, tweaked, or completely rewritten.
• Optional — AI is a tool, not a requirement. Every feature in DM Forge works fully without AI.

Generate fully fleshed-out NPCs from a simple description. The NPC Generator produces a complete character profile including personality, backstory, voice, and motivations — tailored to your campaign setting.

• Prompt-based — Describe what you need (e.g., "a dwarven blacksmith who knows a dangerous secret") and get a full NPC back.
• Full profiles — Gets you name, race, class, appearance, personality traits, bonds, flaws, backstory, motivations, voice style, and secrets.
• Campaign context — The generator knows your world's lore, factions, and existing NPCs to create characters that fit naturally.

Turn your plot notes into a complete, structured session. The Session Generator creates scenes, encounters, puzzles, and branching paths — ready to load into the Session Builder.

• From plot notes — Paste in your rough session ideas and get a fully structured session with scenes back.
• Includes encounters & puzzles — The generator adds encounters (with appropriate difficulty) and puzzles where they fit the narrative.
• Branching paths — Generates branch options at key decision points so your session can adapt to player choices.

Generate visual art for your campaign, NPCs, locations, and factions. Images are saved to the record and displayed throughout the app.

• Campaign cover art — Generate a header image for your campaign that represents the world's feel and tone.
• NPC portraits — Generate a character portrait for any NPC based on their appearance description.
• Location & faction art — Generate imagery for key locations and faction symbols.
• Prompt control — Images are generated from a custom prompt you write (or that AI drafts from the record's existing description).

After a session, generate an AI-written narrative recap that summarizes what happened — great for sharing with your players as a "Previously on..." intro to the next session.

• Narrative style — Written in an engaging, story-like format rather than a bullet-point list.
• Context-aware — The recap uses your session's scenes, encounters, and the campaign's known world state to write an accurate summary.
• Editable — The generated recap is fully editable so you can add details or correct anything before sharing.

A searchable compendium of monsters available for use in any encounter. Includes the full D&D 5e SRD monster set plus any custom monsters you create.

• Full SRD compendium — All D&D 5e SRD monsters with stat blocks including AC, HP, speed, ability scores, actions, and special traits.
• Custom monsters — Create your own monsters with full stat blocks. Custom monsters can be AI-generated or built manually.
• Filter & search — Filter by challenge rating, monster type, size, and alignment to quickly find the right creature.
• Add to encounters — Add monsters from the library directly to any encounter in the Session Builder.

A catalog of magic items and equipment that can be attached to scenes and encounters. Includes the SRD item set plus custom items you create.

• SRD magic items — All D&D 5e SRD magic items including weapons, armor, wondrous items, and consumables with their full descriptions.
• Rarity tiers — Items are tagged by rarity (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, Legendary) for easy filtering.
• Custom items — Create custom loot with your own name, description, type, and rarity.
• Attach to scenes — Drop loot items onto any scene or encounter in the Session Builder. When the scene is reached in the runner, the loot is listed as available reward.