Announcing the GM Forge

We just launched GM Forge - a companion tool I built for organizing and generating content while you run your live tabletop sessions.

Unlike Townscryer story tables, this is built FOR the systems that you use in your live play. It allows you to generate NPCs, monsters, objects, and locations quickly and keep them organized by session. Everything's editable and searchable, there are private notes and more goodies than I can list here.

Why I Built This

1. Solo play: When I'm playing solo RPGs, I need to generate NPCs and locations quickly without interrupting the flow of the story. The back-and-forth of pausing to create something was breaking immersion. Not only that, but having something that is one step better than an oracle has changed the way I do solo play.

2. Running sessions with just a laptop: I wanted to be able to show up to a session with just my computer. Don't get me wrong, I love my books (too much probably), but I didn't want to need them at the table. Having everything digital and searchable meant I could actually focus on the game and be present with the players instead of scouring 20 different random tables.

The Highlights

• Works across game systems: Right now it supports D&D 5E, Blades in the Dark, Call of Cthulhu, Fate, and Vampire: The Masquerade. We're expanding to more systems—let us know what you're running and we'll prioritize what to add next.

• Generate entities during play: You describe what you need ("a paranoid blacksmith" or "a cursed amulet" or nothing at all (let the GM Forge decide)) and it generates a full stat block for your chosen system. Works for enemies, NPCs, neutral characters, objects and locations.

• Session notebook: Track your sessions as you play. Keep notes on what happened, what your players did, where the story's going.

• Use aspects for thematic consistency: Aspects are modifiers you define, like "Pirate Crew" or "Undying" to add color to your specific world (generating the 1400th Goblin can be tiresome). These are flexible attributes that modify generation across whatever dimensions make sense for your game and unlock a lot of power for cohesive entity generation.

• Dice roller: Built-in roller for d4 through d100, plus custom dice, modifiers, roll history, and roll descriptors.

• Share entities: Every entity has a public URL you can share if you want (includes attribution to you).

You can generate a full session's worth of content beforehand, or make things up if when your players go rogue.

What's Next

This is the first version. We'll keep working on it based on how people actually use it. If you run into friction or think of something that would make it more useful, let me know. And if there's a game system you want supported, tell us - that's how we'll decide what to build next.

I built this because I wanted a single tool for running sessions without needing to bring your bookshelf. If that matches what you're looking for, try it out.