Item Image Prompt

Spec and template · the query that makes an item’s picture

The house style

All art for the Onda campaign is 16-bit pixel art in the style of Chrono Trigger — the Super Nintendo look of 1995: a small palette, chunky visible pixels, hand-placed shading, a dark outline, and nothing smoothed. The fight pages already use this for their battle maps (the environment prompt), and an item’s picture names the same style, word for word, so every image the table sees comes from one hand.

Naming the game is not enough on its own. A generator that knows the name will get most of the way there; one that does not will drift toward painted fantasy art. So the style line spells out what the name means — crisp pixels, no anti-aliasing, a small palette, a black outline, one light source — and that line is fixed too.

The shape of one

Five labelled lines, in this order. Four of them never change. It is written as an order to the generator, not as a description of the thing — a bare description reads as a caption, and a generator handed a caption will answer it with a sentence, a scene, or a mood board. The first word is Generate, and every line after it says what the line is for.

1. Task — fixed. Generate one image of a single D&D magic item, drawn as an item icon. What is being asked for, and how many.
2. Style — fixed. 16-bit pixel art in the style of Chrono Trigger (Super Nintendo, 1995): crisp visible pixels, no anti-aliasing, a small palette, a black outline, hand-placed shading, light from the upper left. Names the game, then spells out what the name means for a generator that does not know it.
3. Composition — fixed. One object only, centered, three-quarter view, filling most of a square frame, on a plain dark background. This is what keeps ten items looking like one set.
4. The object — three sentences, and the only part that is written.
   • What it is. The object in plain words. A squat oak cask.
   • Material, size, and the one mark. What it is made of, how big, and the single detail that identifies it. A foot across, hooped in black iron, a cooper’s mark stamped on the head.
   • The one visible sign it is magic. Something a picture can show. A glow, a bead of water where there should be none, frost on the iron. One thing, not a list.
5. Do not include — fixed. Text, lettering, people, hands, a scene, a background object, or a second item. Generators put lettering on anything with a flat face and a hand on anything that can be held. Say no to all of it every time.

Draw the three sentences from the item’s box on Items, and cut what does not render. What the thing does, who made it, what it weighs, and what it is worth are all in the box because the players need them; none of it is a shape or a colour, and none of it goes in the query. The box is the handout. The query is the parts of the handout you could draw.

The template

Replace the three TODO sentences on the Object line and nothing else.

Worked example — the Cask That Never Empties

From its entry. The box says twelve pounds, a gallon, twice a day, Emil made it, Varga casks do not leak. None of that survives into the query. The oak, the iron, the mark, and one bead of water do.

How to ask for one

• Say the item’s name. “Generate the image of the Cask That Never Empties.” That is the whole ask.
• What comes back is the block above, filled in, and nothing else. No preamble, no options, no explanation of the choices. One block to copy.
• If the item is not on Items yet, the entry gets written first — the box and the picture have to come from one description, or they will disagree.
• If the picture comes back wrong, the fix is in the three object sentences, never in the fixed lines. If a fixed line has to change, change it here, and every future prompt inherits it.
• Where the picture goes is not decided. Until it is, the query lives here and the image lives wherever it was made.

📐 Item Image Prompt · the items themselves are on Items