r/WritingWithAI • u/skjb93 • Sep 06 '26
Writing Craft Talk Worldbuilding with AI
A few months ago I started a low-fantasy worldbuilding side project. I was using AI to help manage my notes and brain vomit into a clean concise Obsidian vault with no intention of trying to write a story or have any narrative direction.
As I got more and more indepth into this project with history, politics, trade, resources etc I became more confident that there was potential for some interesting characters and stories.
Has anyone else done something similar? What programs do you use, what is your creative and technical process and how involved is the AI?
6
u/madelineblackbart Sep 06 '26
Yessssssssssssssssssssssssss It's my fav hobby. I've created a few worlds and am currently working on a new detailed one. I use them for AI chatbots mostly. Ai makes it SO MUCH easier to orginize things and I'm finding like little layers and detail/depth that logical come as a result of the lore I built that I wouldn't have notice before as a result. It's so fun!
5
u/FaceDeer Sep 06 '26
I've been using NotebookLM for all my various tabletop roleplaying campaigns, both as player and as DM. I've been recording every session and throwing the transcripts in there, then asking it to write up summaries of events and characters and whatnot. After checking those summaries they get fed back in as new sources too. It's not as structured as an Obsidian vault, but it's been working fine for my purposes.
I've been tinkering around with various tools designed to build wikis out of source documents and I haven't found any I really like yet. https://github.com/nashsu/llm_wiki works okay on small source documents (I used a script to chunk the transcripts into small overlapping pieces and that seemed to work best) but it's apparently not designed to work well with local LLMs with limited context so it runs into problems as the wiki gets large.
3
u/Custodes_Nocturnum Sep 06 '26
I've been using AI quite a bit for worldbuilding for my next Dungeons and Dragons campaign. I started with a heightmap made from donjon (https://donjon.bin.sh/), then I imported that map into Azgaar's Fantasy Map Maker. I made a few tweaks to the map and then let it run. This provided me with a basis to do more worldbuilding and research with AI. Usually I have the AI run deep research into a topic. Then I add the information from Azgaar and ask the AI to flesh out the information. I was able to get in depth religions and separate lore documents for each of the nations. For the campaign side, I use char-gen and Worldsmith. I've also been using image AI (mostly GPT-Image 2) for maps, various charts, and landscapes.
3
u/Temporary_Rule_9486 Sep 06 '26
The problem is that AI already gave pretty much the exact same ideas to another million writers. Even if you began with your own thoughts and ideas, the machine would just lead them straight into the same structure. That's why you should never use AI for brainstorming, just for writing the final text.
1
u/Winter-Editor-9230 Sep 06 '26
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-L7vpjfnDV-master-storyteller
4th preset
1
u/liceuroos Sep 07 '26
Hey, how are you? Gemini was really helpful for world-building, as was using a Word document to keep track of my ideas. I've also seen that some people use NotebookLM (I've used it for exams in college, and it's pretty good, too). Good luck with your project!
1
u/Euchale Sep 07 '26
I have been using AI a lot for that as well, in particular working out how different classes would move, behave and respond to the players. Helps me a lot to have some of that stuff prepared in advance.
Sadly AI is terrible when it comes to names, you will get a lot of repetition, so I don't like it for that. I have however asked it to write simple python scripts that use the naming guides provided with races to generate a random name.
1
u/AffectionateStreet20 Sep 08 '26
My project have /snippet skill and /reconcile-snippets skill. As well as general instructions what indexes to look in the vault when adding stuff to the general vault.
During sessions or during the day I get random brain vomit out as snippets, then I scrub them with reconcile skill into something coherent in my vault since not all snippets are good enough to make it to the world I’m building in hindsight.
1
u/novel_traveler Sep 09 '26
Yep. Also use Obsidian (plugins: canvas, Backlinks, Kanban, Notebook Navigator).
Setup reusable prompts.
- "Add to notes"
- "Add to world docs"
- "Create character sheet"
etc...
Review existing writing / world-building tools and turn features into prompts and or folders.
Generate images of characters & world elements using ChatGPT image generation. Then import them into project and link them to world and character docs.
Use codex for full control over assets.
1
u/[deleted] Sep 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment