Your first encounter
This walkthrough confirms your setup is wired up correctly and shows you what Chucks actually returns. Open a new chat in your chatbot and follow along.
What your prompt needs
Your prompt has one required ingredient and two optional ones that make the result better:
- Party composition (required). Number of characters and their level — e.g. 4 PCs at level 4. Without it the chatbot has no XP budget to work against and will ask before doing anything.
- Difficulty (optional). Low, moderate, or high. Naming one gives Chucks a narrower target.
- Scene (optional, recommended). One sentence about where the PCs are and what they're doing — crossing a river by ferry, exploring a sealed vault, climbing a watchtower at night. The chatbot uses it for flavor in the encounter hook and to steer the roster toward monsters that fit.
Try this prompt
Generate a moderate difficulty encounter for 4 fourth-level characters. The PCs are exploring an old vault thought to be sealed for a hundred years.Watch it work
Your chatbot pauses while it calls Chucks. You should see Chucks tool activity in the conversation before the answer appears. That's how you know the setup works. If no tool call appears, the Connector may not be enabled — head back to the setup page for your chatbot.
The result
Every encounter comes back in the same shape: an Encounter Hook setting the scene, a Roster with the XP math, and a closing question inviting follow-ups. Yours will look different in the details, but the shape is the contract:
Encounter Hook
A hundred years ago, this vault was broken into by a company of tomb robbers. They were caught in the act by the vault's undying guardian — a wight, the reanimated corpse of the knight sworn to protect this place in life. The robbers never escaped. Three of them rose as ghouls, still trapped here, still hungry. When the PCs enter, the wight holds its ground at the far end of the vault while its ghouls stalk forward through the dark.
Roster
| Creature | Count | XP Each |
|---|---|---|
| Wight | 1 | 700 |
| Ghoul | 3 | 200 |
Total XP: 1,300 | Budget: 1,250–1,750
Want me to adjust the roster, swap out monsters, or build a different encounter entirely?
Iterate
That closing question is your invitation to keep talking. A few follow-ups that usually work well:
- Make it harder. Bumps the difficulty band and rebuilds.
- Swap the wight for something less deadly. Targeted swap, keeps the rest of the roster.
- Same encounter, but the vault is flooded waist-deep. Reuses the roster and rebuilds the hook around the new scene.
Try two more things
Encounter building is only one part of Chucks. Confirm that rules and monster lookup work too:
Check Chucks for the 2024 rules for grappling and explain what happens on a success.Use Chucks to show me the complete stat block for a Wight.