Guards & Wards: The Creative Labour of GMs and Considerations for Designing with AI

Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) provide a complicated environment for creativity. Game masters (GMs) co-create a story along with their players and many choose to complete significant labour both prior to and during a gaming session. However, the boundaries that GMs may have about generative artificial intelligence (AI) being used in this creative hobby have not been examined. We examine the perceptions of GMs on the use of AI for creativity support in TTRPGs. We conducted a survey of GMs to discover the labour they completed in preparation for and play of TTRPG sessions, the existing creativity support tools (CSTs) that they use for this labour, and their opinions on the use of AI in TTRPGs. We performed both qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine survey data. We contrasted our results across two participant groups: those who have or have not been paid to GM a gaming session, and those who have or have not used AI as GMs. From our data, we created twelve distinct orientation groups encompassing the opinions of participants on AI for use in TTRPGs. We propose thirteen design considerations in the form of questions AI tool developers should ask when creating AI-based CSTs for TTRPG use.