AI Session Notes for D&D

Introduction

After a D&D session, you’re left with hours of audio and a head full of decisions, names, and plot threads. Turning that into usable session notes and campaign canon is tedious — unless you let AI handle the heavy lifting. This guide walks through how to turn audio recordings into session summaries: transcription, event extraction, and campaign continuity, and how the Tabletop Arc pipeline does it end to end.

From recording to summary: the three steps

Turning session audio into something you can search, reference, and build on boils down to three stages:

1. Transcription — Speech to text so every line is searchable and timestamped.
2. Event extraction — Identifying NPCs, locations, decisions, and key moments from the transcript.
3. Campaign continuity — Feeding those events into a single source of truth (your campaign wiki) and optional recaps for players.

Get these right and your “what happened last session?” problem goes away.

Transcription: turning speech into searchable text

The first step is turning your recording into text. Good transcription gives you:

• Searchability — Find “the blacksmith’s name” or “what we decided about the treaty” in seconds.
• Evidence — Every fact in your campaign can point back to the moment it was said (timestamps, segment IDs).
• A base for AI — Summaries and extraction work best when they run on a full transcript, not raw audio alone.

Tabletop Arc uses industry-leading speech-to-text so your session audio becomes a searchable transcript. You upload the file after the session; processing runs in the background. Once it’s done, you can read or correct the transcript before any analysis runs. That transcript is the foundation for everything that follows.

Event extraction: finding what matters in the transcript

A transcript is long. What actually matters for your campaign? Event extraction answers that by pulling out:

• Scenes — Distinct beats or encounters (e.g. “Tavern confrontation”, “Travel to the ruins”).
• Entities — NPCs, locations, items, factions, quests mentioned or implied.
• Decisions and outcomes — What the party agreed to do, what the NPC said they’d do, what changed in the world.

In Tabletop Arc, an AI analysis step suggests scenes and entities from the transcript. You don’t have to accept everything: a review queue lets you approve, edit, or dismiss each suggestion. Approved items flow into your Lore Wall (campaign wiki) with evidence attached — so you can always click through to the transcript segment that supports a fact. That keeps your canon accurate and correctable.

Campaign continuity: one source of truth

Session notes aren’t useful if they live in a separate doc and never touch your world bible. Campaign continuity means:

• One canon — NPCs, places, quests, and events live in a single, linked wiki (the Lore Wall) that updates after every session.
• Evidence-backed — Every entry can show “where we learned this” in the transcript, so you can fix mistakes without losing history.
• Dual-track output — GM-private notes (full spoilers, internal canon diffs) stay separate from player-safe recaps and public episode pages.

Tabletop Arc is built for this. After you’ve reviewed the analysis, you can generate an episode recap (for players or your own reference) and a GM continuity report that summarizes what changed in canon. Both are tied to the transcript, so your session notes and your campaign wiki stay in sync.

The Tabletop Arc pipeline

Here’s how it fits together:

1. Upload — After the session, upload your audio. Tabletop Arc stores it and starts transcription.
2. Transcribe — Speech-to-text produces a full transcript. You can view and correct it before moving on.
3. Analyse — AI suggests scenes and entities (NPCs, locations, items, etc.) from the transcript. You approve or dismiss in the review queue.
4. Canonize — Approved entities appear in your Lore Wall with links to transcript evidence. You can add or edit entries manually anytime.
5. Generate — Create an episode recap and GM continuity report. Optionally write a manual recap instead of or in addition to the AI one.
6. Publish (optional) — Make the episode and your arc public so players and readers can follow the story.

The pipeline is designed so you stay in control: you decide what gets into canon and what gets published. AI handles the grunt work; you handle the story.

What's the bottom line?

Turning audio recordings into session summaries is a matter of transcription, event extraction, and campaign continuity. Tabletop Arc’s pipeline does all three: upload your session audio, get a searchable transcript, review AI-suggested scenes and entities, and keep a living Lore Wall that stays in sync with what actually happened at the table. Try it for your next session.