Archivist AI Reviews 4

I was initially a bit skeptic about AI being a notetaker for my campaign. But the humans in my campaign were no match..
Since using Archivist (Archie as we call it), it's changed my campaign.
As a DM, I'm constantly looking through the player's tabs to see what they did exactly and where they want to go (the new player arc is invaluable for that).
I'm constantly reminded of things I improvised and forgot about (because that's how it goes) which helps me tremendously in world building.
Data Studio helps me recognise which players I need to engage more, and let's me check if my players are focusing on the NPC's and Locations I had in mind.. If not I can swing my story around.
It's brilliant...

As a player. Don't tell my DM I use it to remind me of the names I've forgotten, the places I need to go check out, or the quests that are at foot.

As a last note, the devs are ON it. If you have any issue it will either be resolved within 24 hours or they will contact you about it when it's something they are planning. The community is listened to and ideas are constantly evolving.

It's the only AI TTRPG notetaking tool you'll ever need.
I need to end this review before it gets to long, I could talk for hours. Just check it out yourself.

I'm currently playing in one campaign, and this tool is a lifesaver. It’s super powerful and handles the heavy lifting, so I barely have to write anything down myself. This makes a huge difference for my immersion and RP flow since I'm not distracted by administrative tasks anymore. Highly recommended if you want to focus on playing, not scribbling!

I have been using Archivist for 3 separate games for just under a year.

One I run as a face 2 face game
- I record the audio on my phone just sat on the table - tweak it a little in Audacity to normalise the volume so everyone sounds roughly each as loud as each other - and then upload the audio into Archivist. It does a great job at creating the transcript, ignoring all the OOC banter and creating a pretty accurate timeline and summary of what happened in the session, extracting and adding data to a wiki like compendium of characters, locations, items and factions and building up the combined story over time in the Campaign Summary.

The second game I run I do on Foundry VTT and Discord. In this instance, the Archivist sits on the discord server and does an even better job of creating the transcript and adding to the campaign compendium. Being integrated into Foundry also helps as well- especially being able to ask the Archivist questions about the game in a ChatGPT like chat window directly from Foundry. Can’t remember the name of that NPC I made up in the previous session? “Archie” will remember.

The final game I use Archivist for I am technically just a player rather than DM. For this one we use Discord and Roll20. Archivist isn’t (yet?) integrated into Roll20 like it is with Foundry but if anyone has questions they can still ask them in Discord during (and in-between) sessions. Need to step away from the keyboard during the session and don’t want to miss anything important or interrupt the flow of the game - chuck a chat message at the Archivist bot on the discord channel and ask it about what happened in the last five minutes!

Despite not being the DM in this last game, everyone else still appreciates the 2 page pdf session summary I send out between games.

In terms of money (the developers have committed their livelihood to this after all), I would say it is worth it for the session & campaign summaries alone.

The evolving wiki-like campaign compendium attached to each game is just one of the many additional nice to haves that they have been adding over time as they continue to hone their pride and joy. And as the Discord community of users they have grows, they (known affectionately as the Gregs) have proved time and time again to be super friendly and responsive - despite there being just the two of them. So if you do try this thing out - check out their discord server where you will definitely find a group of friendly fellow gamers who will be happy to welcome you.

Got promised a full trial, got a full trial, even though it was a mistake. I am amazed by the capabilities this site offers and it definitely delivers. I was sceptical but was definitely proven wrong and am going to be a fully fledged subscriber. (:
Anyone interested should definitely try the free trial to get an idea for themselves.