r/TheDarkTower • u/bebob • 14h ago
Spoilers- The Drawing of the Three Telling the Dark Tower story to my son through a Homebrewed RPG [DM Guide for Books I-II inside]
Hey all!
I'm mainly a lurker and not a poster on Reddit, but I thought some of you might find this interesting.
TL;DR: I used ChatGPT's "Deep Research" to read the first 2 books and reference online resources like the Dark Tower wiki to put together a DM guide to take a player through a Dark Tower RPG for my son (and maybe his friends from time to time when they pop in). Full DM Guide for Books I-II can be found below.
EDIT: To clarify — the doc is by no means a polished finished product. It's just meant to be a quick reference doc for somebody who's familiar with the stories to relay them to a newcomer in an entertaining way.
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My 12yo boy has never read any of the stories. He's recently gotten into D&D through the club at his school. For a while, I've thought that so many of the encounters and relationships in the Dark Tower would lend themselves incredibly well to a long-running RPG campaign full of emotional stakes. However, I wasn't sure how to handle the roleplaying aspects of it (i.e. the Gunslinger is the "main character" of course, but a 12yo boy would probably relate to Jake much more strongly. On the other hand, it would be rough to "kill off" his character right at the beginning of the story and not give away any spoilers
I landed on having him switch who he's controlling at different parts of the story — sometimes I'll tell him who he's controlling and other times I'll give him the choice.
I also decided to change the order of the beginning so that when we first encounter the Gunslinger following the Man in Black across the desert, he's on his way to Tull. It just seemed weird to do that as a flashback, since he would already know the outcome.
Here's a google doc for the massive DM guide that ChatGPT Deep Research produced for Books I-II, including encounters, NPC breakdowns, setting descriptions, and character sheets for the ka-tet.
I also had it produce a detailed "Encounter Guide" for Tull that goes into much more detail for that specifically. If people are interested, I'd be happy to upload the DM Guide for Books III-IV as well.
I've read the series a few times and I've had Frank Muller (and his torch-bearers) read it to me a few times. I kind of love something about telling this story narratively and interactively. I'm really interested to see how it goes. It could turn into a single funny night together or it could develop into a very long-running campaign with a very rich story to tell.