Case Study · AI-Assisted Game Publishing

From .odt Draft to Live Website —
Little Donjons Finds Its Product Form

A children's tabletop RPG existed as a plain text file. Its designer was too anxious to publish it. One AI session produced a 16-page print-ready PDF gift prototype, a live marketing website at littledonjons.com, and a working spam-protected mailing list.

≈ 2 hrs Session to live URL
16 pg Print-ready PDF
$0/mo Ongoing cost
3 Services wired live
Little Donjons box cover — four adventurers before a castle Box Cover
Little Donjons Rulebook cover Rulebook Cover
01 — The Game

What Little Donjons Is

Little Donjons is an original tabletop RPG for children aged 6 and up, designed by Dan Anderson as a derivation of the RPG Donjon. In it, one player acts as Dungeon Master and describes a world; the others play heroes — a dinosaur warrior, a good witch, a fairy princess, a robot adventurer, a pirate captain — and roll dice to find out what happens when things get tricky.

The game's core insight is that losing a roll is not a failure state — it's a storytelling opportunity. The losing side gets to narrate what went wrong. Consequences are gentle. No one is eliminated. Characters can only be written out if their own player agrees.

The game existed as a complete, playable .odt text file. The designer had no idea how to turn it into a product, and was too anxious about the publishing process to start. The goal of the AI session was to do that translation — and produce the first prototype as a personal gift, so the designer could hold the game in their hands.

Little Donjons box cover — witch, knight, cat warrior, and unicorn before a castle
Box Cover / Website Hero Used full-bleed as PDF page 1 and base64-embedded in the website hero section.
Little Donjons Rulebook cover
Rulebook Cover / Signup Preview PDF page 3. Shown in the website's signup section with a hover tilt effect.
02 — The Live Website

littledonjons.com — Single File, Zero Backend

The website is a single HTML file (~1.1 MB including both cover images embedded as base64). It runs on Hostinger static hosting with no server, no database, and no monthly cost. DNS propagated within two hours of upload.

littledonjons.com
Little Donjons
Make Heroes. Roll Dice. Tell Stories!
Visit littledonjons.com →

The mailing list pipeline runs through three free services wired in sequence: reCAPTCHA v3 scores the submission invisibly → Formspree validates the token server-side and emails the game's creator → Google Apps Script appends a timestamped row (Date | Name | Email) to a private Google Sheet. If the Sheet call fails, it fails silently — it never blocks the user-facing flow. On success, the form hides and a download button appears pointing directly to the hosted PDF.

03 — The PDF Prototype

16 Pages, Generated from Plain Text

The PDF was built entirely from Dan's source files — no design software, no templates. The AI parsed four uploaded files (.odt draft, two .docx reference docs) and used Python's reportlab library to generate every page, then pypdf to merge cover images and content into a single output file.

Box cover
Pg 1 — Box Cover
✉️ Gift Letter
Pg 2 — Gift Letter
Rulebook cover
Pg 3 — Rulebook Cover
📖 6 pages
Pp 4–9 — Full Rules
🔔 4 pages
Pp 10–13 — Adventure
🧙 2-up sheet
Pg 14 — Char. Sheets

Palette: parchment background, deep forest green, gold accent. All colors, typography, and layout programmatically defined — no Photoshop, no Illustrator, no InDesign. The gift letter (page 2) was written by the AI based on the emotional context the human provided in the original brief.

04 — Conversation Excerpts

What Was Actually Said

Inventor
"Help me turn this reference text into a polished board game. The goal is to make a gift prototype in a box or envelope for my friend who drafted the TXT.odt file and is too nervous to try and sell the game design."
AI — action taken
Parsed four uploaded files. Extracted all rules, sample characters, and the Sunny Bell Adventure. Generated a 16-page PDF: programmatic cover, rulebook with boxed callouts and step badges, full starter adventure with read-aloud sections, two-per-page character sheets. Included a personal gift letter as page 2. Delivered in one pass.
→ First complete deliverable in one session, no design software used.
Inventor
"Box art & Rulebook cover art attached." [uploads two 1024 × 1536 PNG illustrations]
AI — action taken
Detected image dimensions. Rebuilt the cover pipeline to embed both PNGs as full-bleed letter-size PDF pages. Discarded the programmatic cover entirely. Re-merged all sections. Same 16-page count, real artwork throughout.
→ Human supplied the creative asset. AI integrated it structurally without breaking the document.
Inventor
"Can you make a one page website for this game — all credit and game ownership to [the designer]? Website littledonjons.com reserved, can be hosted on Hostinger and added to Google Captcha, Formspree, and Google Sheets to track a mailing list. People can download the current rules if they add themselves to the mailing list."
AI — action taken
Generated complete single-file HTML: full-bleed hero, character card strip, how-to-play section, signup form with reCAPTCHA v3 + Formspree + Google Apps Script pipeline, success state revealing PDF download. Both cover images base64-embedded. Three credential placeholders clearly marked for the human to fill in.
→ AI built the architecture. Human went and registered the three service accounts.
Inventor
"Site key [key] / formspree [endpoint] / Script link [URL] / Can the PDF file be shared on the hosted website? Or is Google Drive the best way?"
AI — action taken
Recommended hosting the PDF directly on Hostinger alongside index.html — cleaner UX, no Drive permission issues, no intermediate preview. Wired all three credentials. Verified zero remaining placeholders. Output: index.html + little_donjons_rulebook.pdf. Deploy path: upload both files to public_html/. Done.
→ Human asked the right infrastructure question. AI gave a direct, opinionated answer.
Inventor
"It looks to have worked. Waiting for the DNS to update. Thank you. I will likely have some tweaks after [the designer] sees it."
→ DNS live within two hours. First complete product published from a .odt file in a single session.
05 — Four Pivots

Where the AI Was Wrong and How It Got Corrected

01
AI drew its own cover instead of waiting for real artwork
What went wrong Generated a programmatic cover — geometric dice drawn in Python, color-coded names as text. Functional. Generic. The real illustrated art hadn't been uploaded yet.
How the human fixed it Uploaded both PNG covers in the next message. AI rebuilt the pipeline: full-bleed pages, discarded the programmatic version entirely. Complete replacement, not a patch.
02
Credential placeholders left the site non-functional out of the box
What went wrong The AI correctly built the three-service pipeline but had no access to real API keys. The form rendered but would not submit until credentials were filled in.
How the human fixed it Registered reCAPTCHA, Formspree, and Apps Script accounts. Returned with all three values in one message. AI wired them in, verified zero remaining placeholders.
03
PDF hosting strategy was left ambiguous — Google Drive mentioned as an option
What went wrong AI offered Google Drive alongside direct hosting as roughly equivalent choices. They are not. Drive links often open a preview, can require Google accounts, and break if sharing settings change.
How the human fixed it Asked directly which was better. AI gave a definitive answer: host the PDF on Hostinger, use a relative path. The human's direct question forced a direct answer.
04
Without emotional context, the gift letter would not have existed
What went wrong A default AI session produces a technical deliverable. The PDF would have had correct rules and missing the most important page.
How the human fixed it The brief included "too nervous to sell the game design." That phrase caused the AI to write a personal encouragement letter as page 2 — the reason this was a gift, not just a file. Human framing produced it.
06 — Inventor Contribution

What Only the Human Could Provide

07 — For Hardware Inventors

The Same Pattern, Different Domain

The workflow here — parse source files, generate structured output, integrate services, deploy — is domain-agnostic. Twelve more games are planned using this exact method. The same loop applies to physical product development.

01

Turn a spec doc into a formatted technical datasheet

Feed a requirements .docx and a target format. The AI generates a structured datasheet using the same reportlab pipeline — with your branding, units, and section hierarchy. First draft in minutes, not hours of layout work.

02

Build a product landing page before the hardware exists

This site was built from a text file and two images. A hardware product page needs a hero image, a specs table, and a signup form — same three components. Reserve the domain, supply renders and copy, capture early interest before V1 ships.

03

Wire a pre-order or waitlist pipeline at zero monthly cost

The Formspree + reCAPTCHA + Google Sheets stack costs $0/month for a typical hardware launch list. Same architecture, different fields — add a product variant selector, a region dropdown, a "notify me at launch" checkbox. Production-grade lead capture without a backend developer.

04

Generate packaging and instruction copy from engineering notes

Engineers write in bullet points and jargon. Packaging needs plain language. The same parsing approach used on Little Donjons works on engineering documentation — AI extracts salient facts and rewrites them for the target reader. Cuts the copywriter brief to a conversation.

08 — Honest Assessment

What This Workflow Is and Isn't

✓ What it genuinely delivers

A working, professional-quality prototype in a single session. Code and HTML you can read, modify, and hand off. Architecture that separates concerns so pieces can be swapped as requirements change. A partner that handles boilerplate, remembers what you uploaded, and connects decisions made three exchanges ago.

⚠ What it requires from you

Source material and domain knowledge. You must know what "correct" looks like in your field. You must push back precisely when something is wrong. You must be willing to go register three accounts and come back with the keys.

✓ Where it saves the most time

Library selection and service integration. Format translation (text → PDF → website). Boilerplate: forms, footers, field validation, credential wiring. The fire-and-forget Sheet logging pattern took one conversation exchange. The PDF took one session.

⚠ Where it still needs you

Anything requiring authentication, physical access, or real-world judgment. The AI cannot register your domain, evaluate whether your product is ready to launch, or know what the artwork looks like before you create it. You are the creative director. It is the production studio.

Python / reportlab pypdf / odfpy / python-docx base64 image embedding Formspree (free) reCAPTCHA v3 Google Apps Script Google Sheets Hostinger static hosting

Highlighted = generated and executed by AI in-session. Plain = services the human registered. Zero paid software licenses. Zero backend server.

09 — The Takeaway

A Game That Existed as a File Is Now a Product at a URL

Little Donjons went from "a .odt file its author was too anxious to share" to "a live website at littledonjons.com with a download-gated mailing list" in a single two-hour session.

The designer's original work — the rules, the characters, the adventure — was unchanged and fully credited. What the AI provided was the translation layer: text file → formatted PDF → hosted product → working lead-capture pipeline.

This method is being applied to twelve more games using the same workflow. The pattern is repeatable. The cost is time and clear communication — not design software, not backend developers, not a production budget.

If you have source material and domain knowledge, ChessTrees can run this workflow with you. The tools are the same. The session length is the same. The deliverable is a working product, not a plan.

Work with ChessTrees → Visit littledonjons.com →