dm

Unofficial D&D Claude Dungeon Master

with Cinematic Display Companion — Couch Co-op Edition

Ruleset: D&D 5e — 2014 (SRD 5.1) by default; 2024 (SRD 5.2) opt-in per campaign. Choose at /dm:dnd new time; legacy campaigns are auto-prompted to migrate (with backup) on first load. See the Ruleset section for mechanic differences and dataset details.

Claude runs the game. You play. The TV shows the story. Your phone is your controller.

An unofficial D&D 5e (2014 ruleset / SRD 5.1) Dungeon Master skill for Claude Code — persistent campaigns, full 5e mechanics, and an optional cinematic display companion that streams typewriter narration, dice rolls, and live character stats to any screen — TV via Chromecast, tablet, phone, or second monitor — while players submit their actions from a phone or tablet.

Built for groups who want a real DM experience without needing one at the table.

---

What This Is

You run /dm:dnd load my-campaign in Claude Code. Claude becomes your DM — rolling dice, voicing NPCs, tracking HP and XP, and running combat. If you have a TV or tablet nearby, the cinematic display companion puts the narration on screen in real time — typewriter effect, atmospheric backgrounds that shift with the scene, a dynamic sky canvas, and a live party stat sidebar. Open it on any device on your network and everyone at the table can follow along. Players submit their actions from their phones; Claude picks them up automatically and runs the next turn.

There are two ways to play, and they serve different needs:

Improvised campaigns — Claude generates the world from scratch and auto-creates a committed three-act narrative arc from the setting, factions, and threats it just built. The arc gives the story a defined shape without scripting what happens — beats are defined by consequence ("what changes") not by event, so Claude stays flexible on how each beat lands while committing to the fact that it must. The arc advances across sessions, can be revised when players redirect the story, and continues into a new arc when all six beats resolve. This is Claude as a full creative collaborator: world-builder, improv partner, and story architect in one.

Structured campaigns — Use /dm:dnd import to drop in a pre-written source (official WotC modules, published third-party campaigns, or a custom DM-written document in PDF, markdown, DOCX, or plain text format). Claude reads and chunks the source, extracts the structure type (linear, hub-and-spoke, or faction-web), and builds all campaign files automatically — acts, chapters, key story beats, telegraph scenes, NPCs, factions, locations, and quest hooks. The campaign runs with enforced deterministic structure: required beats must land in each chapter, Claude telegraphs before delivering them, and steers with world pressure rather than walls when players drift. Drop in the Lost Mine of Phandelver and Claude will run it chapter by chapter with the same twelve DM standards applied to every scene.

Both modes share the same DM engine. The twelve applied behavioral standards are enforced as hard constraints in every session regardless of which mode you're in — improvised or structured, the DM improvises within situations, lets choices matter, makes every NPC a person, and controls pace deliberately.

It also manages a deep web of campaign data without overloading the LLM — coherent and complete, without burning tokens on context that isn't needed yet:

• DM instructions — split across three files with staggered load timing; core rules always in the system prompt, script syntax and command procedures loaded once at session start
• Campaign data — NPC roster indexed at load, full entries pulled only when a character becomes relevant; quest hooks and worldbuilding text in cold storage until called for
• Imported modules — a published book is kept as a lazily-loaded corpus, not inlined: the act/chapter tree, quest/location bank, and per-chapter source text load on demand, so a long module runs chapter by chapter without sitting whole in context
• Session history — archived as continuity summaries, not raw transcripts; full campaign history available for reference without front-loading token weight
• Compaction resilience — a compact Live State Flags block in state.md anchors faction stances, player cover, and NPC dispositions; re-read at any claim to keep world continuity grounded in source files rather than Claude's increasingly lossy impression of them
• Autosave — continuity (state flags, relationship graph, session tail) is checkpointed behind the scenes at scene boundaries and on a turn cadence, so a context compaction never loses your place; toggle with /dm:dnd autosave on|off, with an optional Stop hook for a deterministic per-turn backstop

A campaign can run dozens of sessions deep — with coherent recall of past events, NPC attitudes, and long-tail consequences — without the context bloat that forces other implementations to summarize, forget, or reset.

It is not an official Wizards of the Coast product. It uses Claude as the DM engine. It takes the rules seriously and the storytelling even more seriously.

---

Using a different LLM?

This skill is built specifically for Claude Code. If you want to run the same framework on a different model — local inference, OpenRouter, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — check out open-tabletop-gm, the model-agnostic version extracted from this repo. It trades some Claude-specific integration depth for broader model support and includes a probe tool for benchmarking narration quality across models.

If you'd rather skip the install entirely and play in a browser, neuralinitiative.ai is the hosted version — same design DNA, sign in with Google, top up an account balance, play. Trades self-hosting (and lower per-session cost) for zero setup and a more refined GUI.

If you're on Claude Code, you're in the right place.

---

Features

• Persistent campaigns — state, NPCs, quests, and characters survive across sessions in plain markdown files
• Two campaign modes — improvised (Claude generates world + dynamic arc) or structured (import pre-written material and enforce its beats)
• Dynamic narrative arc — auto-generated at /dm:dnd new from the world's threat, factions, and setting; three acts, six beats defined by consequence not event; arc tracked across sessions, revised when players redirect the story, continued into a new arc when complete
• Campaign relationship graph — typed-edge graph alongside the markdown campaign files, with verbatim source-anchors on every edge; scene-context query auto-pulled at /dm:dnd load to surface who-knows-whom in the current scene without re-reading full NPC files; designed to hold long-session continuity when context compaction strips files out of scope. Background research and the A/B replay study that motivated it: docs/research/graph/
• Campaign import — /dm:dnd import accepts PDF, markdown, DOCX, or plain text; extracts structure type, acts, chapters, key beats, telegraph scenes, NPCs, factions, and quest hooks; builds all campaign files automatically and keeps the full source as a lazily-loaded corpus so even a long module loads chapter by chapter
• Portable characters — bring your character into any campaign; level up, grow your stat tree, and carry your inventory and loot — or start fresh each time
• Full D&D 5e mechanics — initiative, attacks, saving throws, spell slots, XP, levelling up, short/long rests
• Atmospheric DM — dark fantasy tone, distinct NPC voices, hidden rolls, a world that reacts to choices
• Cinematic display companion — typewriter narration on your TV, scene-reactive backgrounds, dynamic sky canvas, live party sidebar; cast, mirror, or open on any screen on your network
• Dynamic sky canvas — sun arc, moon, twinkling stars, and cloud density rendered in real time from world time data; transitions with time of day and weather
• Player input from the companion UI — players submit actions from phone/tablet with a one-tap send and a live Your move → Sent → ✓ DM has your move → narrating status strip; Claude picks them up automatically in autorun mode
• Enforced roll handling — choose at game start whether players roll their own d20s (DM calls for the roll and waits) or the DM rolls openly; per-character override from the phone; the DM never silently auto-rolls a PC
• Reading controls — per-player text-size stepper (legible across the room from a Chromecast) and a narration-length slider that sets the DM's per-turn word budget
• Autorun / taxi mode — Claude drives the turn loop without DM input; a pie countdown shows the next auto-fire window
• LAN party support — serve the companion over your local network; every device in the room sees the same display
• TLS / HTTPS — self-signed cert generation included; required for full browser feature support over LAN
• 17 scene types — auto-detected from narration keywords — tavern, dungeon, ocean, crypt, arcane, glacier, and more
• Clickable character sheets — tap any sidebar card to open a full character sheet modal (attacks, features, inventory); works on phones and tablets via LAN
• SRD spell/feature lookup — click any spell or feature name in a character sheet to view its full description; bundled 5e dataset with supplemental entries for non-SRD content (Xanathar's, Tasha's, subclass features); wikidot fallback link shown for anything not in the local data
• DM Help button — click the ◈ button on the display for an on-demand contextual hint or warning; generated from the current scene without per-turn token overhead
• Tutor / learning mode — enable per-session for automatic hint blocks after every scene, decision point, and roll; ideal for players new to D&D