GM Assistant for Ansible Playbooks: A Surprisingly Good Fit
Discover how GM Assistant, a tool for organizing tabletop RPG sessions, can also streamline your Ansible playbook writing process with its unique features and capabilities.
Why GM Assistant for Writing Ansible playbooks
GM Assistant was built for tabletop RPGs, but its core features—structured note-taking and relationship mapping—can support Ansible playbook documentation and planning. However, it's not a native Ansible tool.
Key strengths
- Detailed note-taking: Captures and organizes infrastructure details, server configurations, and environment specs in one place.
- Entity relationship mapping: Models dependencies between servers, networks, and applications, which can inform playbook structure.
- Session recording and playback: Teams can review and discuss past deployments or test runs to identify improvements.
A realistic example
A team managing 50+ servers across multiple regions used GM Assistant to map which applications depend on which databases and networks. They documented these relationships in the tool, then used that map to write Ansible plays that reflected actual dependencies—avoiding the guesswork of manual playbook creation.
Pricing and access
GM Assistant uses a tiered pricing model starting at $9/month. See the tool's website for current options.
Alternatives worth considering
- Ansible Galaxy: Pre-built playbooks and roles reduce development time but require manual integration into your workflow.
- Puppet: Mature configuration management tool with steep onboarding costs.
- SaltStack: Flexible automation platform with higher operational overhead than Ansible.
TL;DR
Use GM Assistant if you're documenting complex infrastructure relationships before writing playbooks. Skip it if you need purpose-built Ansible tooling or playbook execution management.