AdventureNomicon

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  AdventureNomicon

Inspiration

Tabletop game masters and RPG creators often have plenty of ideas but not enough organized prep. A campaign can start as scattered notes, half-written lore, loose NPC concepts, old session scraps, map ideas, faction motives, and source material the creator is allowed to use. The hard part is not always imagination. The hard part is turning that chaos into something playable at the table.

AdventureNomicon was built to solve that gap. It is an AI-powered campaign prep workbench that helps game masters turn messy notes into structured, source-aware adventure material: hooks, NPCs, locations, encounters, clues, factions, rewards, module drafts, and exports.

The goal is not to replace the game master. The goal is to give them a living grimoire that sorts the pile, points out missing pieces, keeps source safety visible, and helps them get to a playable session faster.

What it does

AdventureNomicon lets a user try a small public sample without an account, then use the full authenticated app to build and manage campaign prep in a private workspace.

The current app includes:

• A public marketing site with feature pages, use-case pages, pricing, legal pages, and a small anonymous sample generator.
• A limited public sample flow that returns three hooks, one NPC, and one location seed.
• Firebase Authentication for signed-in users.
• Private workspace bootstrap for each user.
• Source upload and pasted-source ingestion.
• Source organization into reusable adventure components.
• AI-assisted extraction of hooks, NPCs, locations, factions, clues, encounters, rewards, and module-ready ideas.
• Adventure draft generation from a campaign brief and saved workspace material.
• Markdown and JSON export.
• Source safety and provenance review screens.
• Billing and plan structure groundwork.
• Admin/evidence dashboard groundwork for tracking users, modules, sources, exports, agent runs, review flags, and billing events.

The product is designed around a simple workflow:

1. Bring the pile: paste or upload legitimate campaign notes and source material.
2. Index the pieces: AdventureNomicon organizes the source into reusable adventure parts.
3. Build the night: AI agents assemble a module draft from selected ideas and session goals.
4. Review and export: the user reviews safety/provenance notes and exports usable prep.

How AI is used

AdventureNomicon is built as an agentic workflow rather than a single prompt box. The system breaks the work into scoped AI-assisted steps:

• Parser Agent: normalizes pasted or uploaded source material.
• Component Extractor Agent: identifies hooks, NPCs, locations, clues, factions, rewards, encounters, and other reusable adventure parts.
• Safety and Provenance Agent: flags source status, quote/name concerns, and private-vs-shareable review needs.
• Adventure Assembler Agent: uses the campaign brief and saved components to create a playable adventure draft.
• Module Writer Agent: turns structure into readable game-master prep.
• Table QA Agent: checks whether the generated prep has usable hooks, clear stakes, clue flow, encounters, and missing sections.
• Export Agent: packages the final material into Markdown and JSON.
• Evidence Logger Agent: records agent runs, usage events, exports, safety flags, and operational evidence.

Gemini is used for structured generation and extraction where available, with local deterministic fallback paths so the app can degrade gracefully during development or provider failure.

How we built it

AdventureNomicon is a Next.js and Firebase application with a public website, protected authenticated app routes, server-side API routes, workspace-scoped Firestore data, Cloud Storage-backed source uploads, Gemini-powered generation, Stripe checkout plumbing, and admin/evidence endpoints.

The application is designed as a real SaaS product rather than a static demo. Users can sign in, get a workspace, add source material, generate module drafts, save outputs, and export files.

The public site is separated from the full app. Anonymous visitors can only use a tiny sample generator. Full source uploads, saved workspaces, exports, and larger generation flows require an account.

Challenges

The biggest challenge was product truth. It is easy to build an impressive-looking AI generator that just produces a wall of text. AdventureNomicon needed to become a real workflow: authenticated users, private workspaces, structured source ingestion, reusable adventure components, safety review, export records, billing structure, and evidence logs.

Another challenge was source safety. RPG creators often work with a mix of personal notes, open materials, licensed references, and private inspiration. AdventureNomicon is being designed so private uploads stay private, shared outputs require clean source roots, and risky names, quotes, or unclear source material can be flagged before anything becomes public or reusable.

A third challenge was avoiding the “giant prompt box” trap. The product works better when adventure prep is treated like structured software: hooks, NPCs, locations, factions, clues, encounters, rewards, and module drafts are saved as reusable parts instead of one disposable chat response.

What we learned

The most important lesson was that game masters do not just need more ideas. They need organized, runnable prep. A good adventure tool should help with structure, continuity, source awareness, exportability, and speed.

We also learned that AI-native operations need visible evidence. If an AI agent extracts components, generates modules, runs safety checks, or creates exports, those runs should be logged. That helps users trust the tool and helps the business prove that AI is actually operating key workflows in production.

What’s next

The next phase is focused on hardening AdventureNomicon as a production SaaS:

• Enforce free and paid plan limits.
• Strengthen safety review so blocked or unreviewed source material cannot accidentally flow into exports or shared assets.
• Improve component selection during module generation.
• Add persistent export files and re-downloadable export history.
• Expand the admin evidence dashboard for revenue, users, agent runs, API usage, costs, exports, and testimonials.
• Add deeper module editing, version history, PDF export, and eventually VTT-friendly exports.
• Build toward a curated creator marketplace where users can share or sell clean, reviewed adventure packs.

AdventureNomicon is starting as a campaign prep workbench, but the long-term vision is a source-aware adventure operating system for game masters, professional GMs, and tabletop RPG creators.

Built With

• acml
• adventure
• cloud-storage-for-firebase
• component
• custom
• firebase-admin-sdk
• firebase-app-hosting
• firebase-authentication
• firestore
• google-gemini-api
• json-export
• markdown-export
• next.js
• node.js
• react
• schema
• stripe-checkout
• stripe-webhooks
• typescript
• zod