Freelance Traveller

AI For Session Summaries

by Joshua Levy

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2026 issue.

Author’s Note: This article is intended to be the first of a series of articles on how gamemasters can use AI chatbots to help them run their games.

One of my favorite uses of “AI” technology is to produce summaries of gaming sessions. In the past, I tried to take notes (both as a player and a gamemaster) to help myself in the next session, and make things more consistent. However, these days I think that AI is much better at this than I am. If I’m playing over Zoom, I record a transcript of the session. If I'm playing in person, I can still start a Zoom session, just to get a transcript. Zoom has some cool “meeting summary” tools, and I suggest you try them all. Why not?

However, in this article, I’ll talk about how I use public and free AI chatbots (like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Mistral) to generate RPG-focused summaries from transcripts.

For many chatbots, you can ask a question (called a prompt) and submit documents. If you cannot add the documents, then I would find a different chatbot, which does allow it. However, you can usually put into the question space both your question and then cut-n-paste the entire transcript after it. Sometimes you can do this for several documents, if you have text versions of them.

If you want more details, ask your favorite search engine or chatbot one of these questions:

How to ask [my chatbot] a question about a couple of documents?

Replace [my chatbot] with “google gemini”, “mistral”, “chatgpt”, or your favorite chatbot.

Creating Your Prompt

I’ve found that the prompt for summary creation should have these parts:

1. The Basic Request
2. Names Used (and their correct spelling)
3. Characters Present in the Session
4. Descriptions of Any Additional Documents

The Basic Request

The Basic Request is simply a summary statement of what you want the chatbot to do:

Create one or two page summaries of what happened at a Traveller role playing game, as seen by each character in the game and also by the gamemaster (who is running the game).  The First document below is a transcript of the gaming session as created by Zoom.

Notice that I’m not asking for a summary; I’m asking for one from each character’s point of view. This is one magical thing that AI brings to the table. It can create all these different points of view quickly and (from your point of view) easily.

Names Used

I’ve found that transcripts are bad with names, especially with RPG games which have a lot of fictional and made-up names. So the next part of my prompt tells the AI what names to use.

Note that you should spell the characters names this way: Bika’ii, Bikò', Chunta (also known as Eats Rocks), Eats Gravel, Naabaahii, and Rabbit Tracks, even if they are spelled differently in the summary.

Eats Rocks and Eats Gravel are different people.

The transcript sometimes refers to the Rabbit Tracks character as Coyote, but it is the same character. 

My prompt focuses on characters, because it really bothers me to misspell character names. However, you might also add spelling for other words unique to your setting, such as alien races, planets, political organizations, and so on.

Characters Present

I’m not sure how important this is, but I do tell the AI who is there and who is not:

Only the following characters were in this session: Chunta (also known as Eats Rocks), Eats Gravel, Naabaahii, and Rabbit Tracks; the Bika’ii and Bikò characters have been in previous sessions, but not this session.

Additional Documents

Then I tell it about the other documents I'm giving it, if I am:

The rest of the documents include the specialized Traveller setting we use which is the standard Traveller universe, but with a different timeline and more aliens, taken from other popular science fiction fandoms, and also some documents on what brought the characters together and what they are trying to accomplish.

Adding Documents

The key document is the transcript, which you should get from Zoom or whatever website you are using to run your game.

I also put in all the hand outs I give to the players.  These often include information on the setting and the background of the adventurers. I’ve found the AI often puts this information to good use.

Results

After using this system, I have stopped taking notes as a player. Everything I would have liked to write down is in the AI summaries that I get, and there is no “split focus” of gaming and taking notes at the same time.

As a gamemaster, I still take a few notes, although fewer and fewer as I gain more confidence in this transcript/AI system.  The notes I still take are:

• Specific ideas for future adventures that come up in the middle of the current adventure.
• Things I know I will need to do, like fill in the details of items found in the adventure, or bad guys who got away.

Although, in truth, I'm seeing those things are more and more called out in the summaries that I'm generating.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I continue to be surprised at how good the AI is at summarizing the sessions from the different points of view of each character, and also how helpful this is to me as a gamemaster.  Obviously, I’m looking at the game from my point of view, but seeing it from the character’s point of view is great.

Does Adding Character Sheets Help?

Once I had the system described above working well, it occurred to me to also give the chatbot the character sheets of all the characters in the gaming session. I assume that would result in better summaries.  However, it did not. 

I asked my players which summary was better, the one created  without the character sheets or the one created with the character sheets. The result was a little surprising. Most prefered the summary generated without character sheets.

So What’s Next?

An obvious next step is to use the transcript and a chatbot to help create the next adventure. I’ve been experimenting with this prompt:

Create a document with the following sections.  Each section between a paragraph and a page long.

1. A plan for what should happen in the next session.

2. A list of 2-5 unexpected outcomes or plot twists that might happen in the next adventure.

3. A magic item that the head bad guy might have.

But these have not been successful.  The results are too backwards focused. The AI suggests too many things that go back to the previous adventure, when I’m looking for ideas for the next adventure.

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