Episode 1 of Project Lexa is live.

For the last several months I've been building Lexa, a digital table assistant for tabletop RPGs. Not an AI Game Master. I'm the Game Master. Lexa's job is to help me stay present enough to run the game.

After 20 years in the Army and three deployments to Iraq, I came home with a TBI and PTSD. I can run a game, tell a story, and react to my players' completely ridiculous plans. The hard part is everything I'm trying to hold in my head at the same time. What was that NPC's name? What happened two sessions ago? Was that in my notes, or did I tell the players? Every time I stop to hunt for something, that's attention I'd rather give to the people at my table.

I'm not a software engineer. AI wrote most of the code. I brought the direction, the testing, and a lot of "nope, that was terrible."

The video covers where it started, everything that broke (including the time Lexa started playing the game without me), and an honest live demo where she autocompletes an entire adventure and maybe marries herself.

It's not finished. But it exists, and a year ago it didn't. If you've got a thing you wish existed, maybe go make yours.

Watch: https://youtu.be/R9reVcATUTw

What part of running a game drains the most mental bandwidth for you?

#ProjectLexa #TTRPG #YUA