The Business: The Bots Produce Playable Content Faster (Receipts Shown)

Below, in its entirely, is what I got from throwing this prompt into Grok on Twitter:

Devise a campaign scenario for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition. This campaign involves players controlling all significant factions and notable actors in the campaign, in the manner of Braunstein, whose interactions emergently generate playable adventure scenarios that need to be resolved at the table.

There are at least three and no more than six factions. They are all contending over an objective, but not all for the same reason. Each faction has a separate Win Condition. There is also a separate Loss Condition that, if met, ends the campaign with no one winning. They are contending within an area of 1000 square miles; the terrain can be fantastical in its variation, befitting a fantasy campaign full of swords and sorcery.

List the factions, their leader, approximate size, starting location, and Win Condition. Specific what the central point of contention is, and how it is tied to the Loss Condition.

And this is the response:

Setting: The Shattered Veil

The Shattered Veil is a 1000-square-mile region where reality frays at the edges. At its heart lies The Riftspire, a towering, crystalline obelisk pulsing with arcane energy. This ancient artifact is said to grant dominion over the fabric of the world—or unravel it entirely. The terrain is wildly varied:

• Northern Peaks: Snow-capped mountains riddled with dragon lairs and icy caverns.
• Western Glowwood: A forest of luminescent trees, home to fey creatures and hidden portals.
• Eastern Bonefields: A desolate wasteland of skeletal remains and necromantic miasma.
• Southern Deepholds: A network of dwarven ruins and lava-filled chasms beneath the earth.
• Central Riftlands: A chaotic plain of shifting ground and magical storms surrounding the Riftspire.

The factions vie for control of the Riftspire, but their reasons differ, and their ambitions threaten to destabilize the region entirely.

Central Point of Contention: The Riftspire

The Riftspire is an ancient artifact of unknown origin, radiating power that can reshape reality. Legends claim it was forged by a forgotten god to bind the world together, but its energies are now leaking, causing unnatural phenomena: time distortions, monster surges, and breaches to other planes. Each faction seeks to harness or destroy it, but tampering with it risks catastrophe.

Loss Condition: If any faction destabilizes the Riftspire beyond repair (e.g., through reckless magic, physical destruction, or overuse of its power), it collapses, unleashing a planar rift that consumes the Shattered Veil in a cataclysmic void. The campaign ends with no victor—all factions lose.

Factions

Below are five factions, each with a leader, approximate size, starting location, and unique Win Condition. Players can control faction leaders, key lieutenants, or even rival adventurers within these groups, with interactions generating scenarios like ambushes, diplomatic summits, or dungeon delves.

1. The Order of the Saffron Veil
   • Leader: High Seeress Lysara Veyn (Lawful Neutral, Human Cleric 12th level)
   • Size: 200 members (50 elite templars, 100 acolytes, 50 support staff/scouts)
   • Starting Location: A fortified monastery in the Northern Peaks
   • Win Condition: Seal the Riftspire permanently to prevent its power from corrupting the world, using an ancient ritual known only to Lysara. This requires access to the Riftspire and three sacred relics hidden across the Shattered Veil.
   • Motivation: The Order believes the Riftspire’s power is a divine test; failing to contain it will doom the mortal realm to chaos.
2. The Emberclaw Syndicate
   • Leader: Zargoth the Blackscarred (Chaotic Neutral, Half-Orc Fighter/Thief 10th/8th level)
   • Size: 150 members (80 mercenaries, 30 thieves, 20 wyrmling dragonkin, 20 hired mages)
   • Starting Location: A smuggler’s stronghold in the Southern Deepholds
   • Win Condition: Claim the Riftspire as a weapon to dominate trade and extort neighboring kingdoms, using its reality-warping power to create portals and monopolize resources.
   • Motivation: Greed and ambition drive Zargoth, who sees the Riftspire as a tool to elevate his syndicate into an empire.
3. The Circle of the Verdant Pact
   • Leader: Great Druid Elaris Moonshade (Neutral, Half-Elf Druid 14th level)
   • Size: 120 members (40 druids, 60 fighters and beast companions, 20 fey allies)
   • Starting Location: A sacred grove in the Western Glowwood
   • Win Condition: Destroy the Riftspire entirely to restore natural balance, believing its existence poisons the land. This requires a primal ritual using the blood of an ancient creature tied to the Riftspire’s creation.
   • Motivation: The Circle views the Riftspire as an abomination that disrupts the natural order, blaming it for the region’s magical corruption.
4. The Bonecrown Legion
   • Leader: Lich-Queen Veyraxis (Neutral Evil, Lich Magic-User 15th level)
   • Size: 300 members (100 skeletons, 80 ghouls, 50 wights, 20 death knights, 50 living cultists)
   • Starting Location: A necromantic citadel in the Eastern Bonefields
   • Win Condition: Bind the Riftspire’s power to Veyraxis’s phylactery, granting her eternal dominion over life and death. This requires a dark ritual performed at the Riftspire’s base.
   • Motivation: Veyraxis seeks godhood, believing the Riftspire’s energy can elevate her beyond mortality.
5. The Riftborn Cabal
   • Leader: Kaelith the Unseen (Chaotic Evil, Drow Cleric 11th)
   • Size: 80 members (30 arcane scholars, 20 assassins, 20 summoned planar entities, 10 elite guards)
   • Starting Location: A hidden tower in the Central Riftlands, near the Riftspire
   • Win Condition: Open the Riftspire fully to summon an extraplanar entity (e.g., a demon lord or elder being) that will grant the Cabal ultimate power in exchange for servitude.
   • Motivation: Kaelith and her followers crave forbidden knowledge and power, seeing the Riftspire as a gateway to cosmic forces.

How It Plays Out

Players take on roles within these factions—leaders, lieutenants, or adventurers—and pursue their Win Conditions through diplomacy, espionage, or open conflict. Scenarios emerge organically:

• The Order of the Saffron Veil sends templars to recover a relic from the Southern Deepholds, clashing with the Emberclaw Syndicate.
• The Bonecrown Legion ambushes a Circle of the Verdant Pact caravan carrying ritual components.
• The Riftborn Cabal tricks two factions into fighting, weakening their defenses around the Riftspire.

Each faction’s actions risk destabilizing the Riftspire. For example:

• The Emberclaw Syndicate’s portal experiments cause tremors.
• The Circle’s primal ritual draws aggressive magical beasts.
• The Bonecrown Legion’s necromancy taints the Riftspire’s energy.

The DM tracks a hidden “Instability Score” (e.g., 0-10). If it hits 10 due to faction actions, the Loss Condition triggers, ending the campaign in ruin. Players must balance their ambitions with caution, creating a tense, emergent narrative resolved through classic AD&D mechanics: exploration, combat, and roleplaying.

I can add on to this if I like.

Turns out that this is much like I did for the Tower Campaign, save that the Spire has no one acting on its behalf. The Instability Score mechanic should be known to the Faction Players, including any unaligned parties that creep up.

Why a map that big? To have plenty of room for those unaligned parties to appear, since Fog Of War is in effect and thus only the Referee knows where everything is for certain, forcing a balance of exploration, diplomacy, and combat to ensue. Scale it down if you want big action faster. Then make your campaign map, some starting dungeons to delve (got to have that gold and treasure, yo) and go!

All this took longer to copy, paste, and mark up for reading than it did to generate. You can run this using just the three core rulebooks, though you'll want the Fiend Folio and Deities & Demigods. The only thing a PDF Slop Merchant offers you is the minutes saved generating a hex map for the overworld and a grid map for starting dungeons.

Yes, I said "minutes". The online tools are already good enough to make buying premades pointless; the tools are free, and you can just print them out.

That is why the days of PDF Slop Merchants are over; what you see now is the dying momentum of a machine whose engine just died, carried forward for a while as it slows until it stops stone dead, and the sooner awareness of this hits critical mass--this is so easy and convenient that Normies will adopt it--the better things will be all around, except for the Merchants.

Save your money. Master the tools you have instead.