In this guide, I will show you how to take novels and short-stories and turn them into interactive, text-based virtual worlds using AI. A common misconception is that AI RPGs aim to replace game masters. This is not my goal. I don’t want to get rid of GMs; what I want to do is build the holodeck from Star Trek. I don’t want a robot GM—I want Westworld. I want to create a fully interactive virtual world driven by intelligent NPCs.
Unfortunately, we don’t have holograms and androids yet, so we have to use the technology currently available. ChatGPT allows you to create fully interactive, text-based worlds fairly easily. Furthermore, the context windows of the new GPT-4.1 and 4.1-mini models support up to 1 million tokens. That means memory might soon longer be an issue.
We can create almost any virtual world we want. We can upload novels, short stories, gamebooks, solo adventures, or fan fiction and use them as the building blocks of an AI RPG. Best of all? You can meet the characters or visit the places in a novel. Everything is procedurally generated, and every playthrough is unique. You cannot run out of content.
How it works
This methods works exactly the same way as playing published adventures with AI:
1. Upload a document containing your fantasy novel or short story collection to ChatGPT.
2. Prompt the AI to reference the uploaded document and create an RPG based on it using the 5E ruleset.
Together, these two techniques can transform almost any story into an AI-powered RPG. This allows you to experience the story as an interactive world that is truly unique.
Choosing your document
ChatGPT can read a wide variety of document formats. I have personally used PDF, EPUB, DOC, and TXT files, and they all work. As long as ChatGPT can read the file, you can use it.
Deepseek, on the other hand, is only suitable for short stories due to its limitation of reading no more than 34,000 words per document. This AI is also more prone to errors than ChatGPT.
How to turn 5E rules into a fantasy game engine
The following prompt can be tweaked and modified to suit your favorite novel or short story. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been testing, refining, and improving these types of prompts. This is the most up-to-date version of the AI 5E GM Emulator prompt, and it can be used with both fantasy novels and short stories.
The opening scene
Your opening scene serves as your primary spawn point into the world, so choose it carefully. You need to decide where you want to enter the story and what you want to do.
As a general rule:
1. If you want to insert yourself into an existing storyline, choose important locations and events from your novel as the starting point.
2. If you want to use the novel as a campaign setting for your own, separate story, then select more generic or unspecified locations for your opening scene.
Universal 5E GM Emulator prompt template for novels and short-stories
Upload your novel or short-story collection to ChatGPT and copy/paste the following prompt. Change the segments in brackets [ ] to the title of your novel. For best results with a collection of stories, only use short-stories that have the same author.
Act as though you are a game master and I am the player, and we are playing a tabletop roleplaying game using the 5E ruleset. I make all decisions for my character, and you make all decisions for all other characters (NPCs) and creatures in the world.
Every time I take an action, ask for a skill check in accordance with 5E rules. The more difficult the task, the higher the difficulty class (DC) the roll must meet or exceed. Easy tasks such as looting enemies and opening doors are automatically successful. However, impossible tasks cannot succeed and always fail. Always describe the action only if the roll fails or succeeds.
Every time my character attacks someone, or engages in combat with other NPCs or creatures in our story, ask me for an initiative roll for my character. Then generate an initiative roll for the other creatures involved in combat. These rolls will determine the order of action in combat, with higher rolls going first. Provide an initiative list at the start of combat. After I have rolled for initiative, ask me for an attack roll.
Keep track of the health points (HP) of each combatant. To determine whether my character does damage, I will make an attack roll. This attack roll must meet or exceed the armor class (AC) of the creature. If it does not, then it does not hit. If the attack roll is successful, ask me to roll a damage roll. That damage roll will be subtracted from my opponent’s HP. If the HP of a creature reaches 0 or less, that creature dies. Always describe my attack only after I have rolled for damage. Participants in combat are unable to take actions outside of their own turn. On the turn of any other creature besides my character, you will decide their action based on their stat block. A combat round is 6 seconds.
If a combatant decides to attack my character, generate an attack roll for them. If the roll meets or exceeds my own AC, then the attack is successful and you must generate a damage roll. That damage roll will be subtracted from my own HP. If my HP reaches 0, I am dead and it’s game over.
Assume the role of an expert fantasy writer that specializes in interactive fiction, as well as the plot, quests/missions and mission/quest descriptions, enemies and enemy descriptions, characters and character descriptions, personalities and personality descriptions, locations and location descriptions, groups and organizations descriptions, stories and story descriptions, events and event descriptions, magical objects/technology and magical objects/technology descriptions, and other descriptions of [INSERT NOVEL OR SHORT-STORY TITLE].
Describe everything that follows, basing it on the document, in the present tense, in response to what I type, while strictly and accurately adhering to the established lore, descriptions, monsters and enemies, events and magical objects/technology of [INSERT NOVEL OR SHORT-STORY TITLE], and written in the descriptive style of the document. Provide names for characters, locations, groups and organizations, events, and technology objects. Characters should always use dialogue, enclosed in quotation marks when speaking, addressing, or interacting with me or my companions, written in the conversational style of the document. Only an NPC may address me by name, and only if I have given that NPC my name. Never type, compose, dictate, influence, script, generate, control, or describe what I am doing, saying, acting, behaving, thinking, feeling, experiencing, or any other aspect concerning me throughout the entire adventure, scenario, story, location, quest, mission, scene, event, description, dialogue, and conversation. Keep all responses to 80 words or less. Never ask me ‘what do you do?’ or ask me about what me or my character’s actions or decisions are. Use the document to determine locations, events, descriptions, treasure and loot, and encounters.
Start with the following opening scene and request my character’s class, level, race, gender, AC and HP:
[INSERT OPENING SCENE]
Example:
This example uses the space fantasy novel A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs as an example. Our adventurer plays a man from Earth who is transported to Mars, thousands of years into the past. You can find the prompt to this adventure as an attachment to this post. The novel is a public domain document that can be downloaded here.
Opening scene: I arrive near a settlement on Mars. What do I see?
ChatGPT: The ochre sands of Barsoom stretch before you, endless and shimmering beneath the twin moons of Mars. Rust-red dunes ripple like waves, broken only by towering crags of stone and the long shadows cast by ancient, half-buried ruins. Ahead, rising from the dusty plain, is a settlement of strange towers and domes—Thark—a city of the green men, their architecture alien and colossal, built for creatures twice the height of Earth-men.
Two six-limbed sentinels ride thoats outside the city’s perimeter. One turns a tusked face toward you. “A stranger walks the dead sea bottoms alone,” he says in guttural tones. “Speak, if you value your hide.”
Provide your character’s class, level, race, gender, AC, and HP.
Player: I am Argus, a level 1 fighter, human male, AC 19 and HP 14.
“Where am I,” I say to him
ChatGPT: The Thark warrior reins his thoat and dismounts with an ease that belies his towering frame. His skin is the mottled green of oxidized copper, tusks jut from his jaw, and his black eyes narrow.
“You stand upon the Sea of Korus,” he growls, “once a mighty ocean, now a grave of salt and bone. This is the territory of the Thark horde. I am Tars Vok. No man walks here without reason.” He grips his long rifle. “Why are you here?”
Player: “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I entered a cave, seeking shelter and I woke up here.”
ChatGPT: Tars Vok narrows his eyes, then snorts. “You speak truth like a hatchling—raw and without cunning.”
Another Thark rides forward, a female, lean and sinewy. Her harness is adorned with trophies: bones, medallions, alien trinkets. “He is no Barsoomian,” she says, voice sharp. “The gravity betrays him—see how he moves. He must be from Jasoom.”
The name stirs something: Jasoom—Earth.
Tars Vok grunts. “If so, he belongs to Tal Hajus now.” He signals. “Seize him.”
Roll initiative.
Combat and roleplaying
The AI will create enemies based on both your novel and the 5E ruleset. It will procedurally generate any enemy you need, making it unnecessary to have stat blocks for monsters that don’t exist in officially published material.
However, keep the following in mind: combat isn’t balanced.
The AI will assign stats it deems most appropriate for your opponent. Whether or not you can defeat this opponent in direct combat is another matter entirely. It’s wise to make clever roleplaying a habit when dealing with enemies—fighting while outnumbered is a quick way to end the game.
If you choose the roleplaying route to handle encounters, the AI will often call for skill checks rather than initiative or attack rolls. This allows you to use smart decision-making to survive and overcome threats.
Example:
After trespassing near the city of the green men. The inhabitants decide to take our adventurer into custody.
Player: “No need to get violent. I have no desire to die of thirst in the desert. I come willingly.”
ChatGPT: Tars Vok pauses, tusked jaw twitching. The Tharks exchange glances—then laughter, guttural and harsh.
“You may yet die of thirst, Jasoomian,” says Tars Vok, mounting his thoat. “But not today.”
They flank you, not as escorts but as guards, and ride toward the city gates of Thark—colossal, cyclopean, carved with grotesque symbols. Inside, the air hums with low engines, the hiss of radium rifles, and the murmurs of hundreds of green warriors.
You are led to a stone hall lit by glowing orbs. Tars Vok grunts, “You will stand before Tal Hajus, Jeddak of Thark. Pray he finds you amusing.”
Player: I follow them.
ChatGPT: The corridor echoes with the scrape of metal-shod feet and the distant roars of beasts. Columns carved with the faces of long-dead warriors line the chamber where Tal Hajus reclines—immense, bloated, festooned with bones and ornaments. His voice is low and oily.
“A Jasoomian,” he rumbles. “Soft of flesh but brave of tongue. Tell me, Earth-man, why should I not feed you to the calots?”
Dozens of green eyes fix on you. The silence deepens.
Make a Charisma (Persuasion) check. DC 13.
Conclusion
AI roleplaying can transform almost any piece of literature into an interactive virtual world. Thanks to increasingly advanced models, memory management is becoming less of a concern. This means we can now turn virtually any story we’ve enjoyed into a campaign setting for solo RPG play.
The only real limitation at this point is the ruleset we choose to use. For fantasy, Dungeons & Dragons remains the standard and works well with most fantasy novels. However, other systems—such as Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying (BRP)—show great promise as flexible, universal engines for solo play.
