Requirements Analysis and Speculative Design of Support Tools for TTRPG Game Masters

This study examines what tabletop role-playing game Game Masters need from computational support tools, with the aim of informing design directions rather than producing generalizable quantitative results. Using a prototype built around the beginner module Lost Mine of Phandelver, the authors combined interviews with eight GMs and an analysis of roughly 35 online commenters from communities such as r/DMAcademy and r/DnDNext. The work is qualitative and exploratory, and its scope centers on the planning and improvisation practices of contemporary Dungeons & Dragons-style play.

Across these sources, GMs generally welcomed a visual tool for organizing module information in expanded, condensed, and character-centric views, but they asked for richer relationship linking, filtering and tagging, workflow integration, and computational help with swapping and generating content. Participants favored heavily adapted or sandbox-style campaigns, valued hooks and consequences tied to individual characters, and endorsed "fail forward" approaches and escalating villain activity. Interviewees and online advice largely agreed on tailoring content, cutting material, and improvising consequences, with online sources contributing three additional codes: difficulty, theme, and keeping the party together.

The authors identify two speculative directions as most promising. The first is a collaborative information-tracking and story-management tool that consolidates campaign knowledge and tracks player progress. The second is an improvisation assistant combining procedural content generation for NPCs and factions with plot-thread prompts, aimed primarily at novice GMs. The closing discussion recommends future work that observes real play sessions, including experimental formats in which players work against the GM, to further understand collaborative storytelling at the table.