[HN Gopher] My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM
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       My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM
        
       Author : obiefernandez
       Score  : 186 points
       Date   : 2023-03-30 21:38 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (obie.medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (obie.medium.com)
        
       | fauxpause_ wrote:
       | Paraphrasing, the party goes to a mount shop, dude says he's
       | gonna roll to find exotic mounts, and voila, exotic mounts. Party
       | rolls to try and steal an exotic mount and it doesn't really work
       | so they leave.
       | 
       | This is a hard problem. It's bad DMing imo. But it's the natural
       | outcome from a probabilistic model. I'm guessing you could
       | announce your intention to search for just about anything and get
       | the model to let you find it given a good roll.
       | 
       | The descriptions are rich, which is cool. The opportunity here
       | seems to be having a human DM using it to flesh out portrayals of
       | things that they choose.
       | 
       | I think this also highlights how bad D&D combat is. Man that was
       | boring to read.
        
         | danudey wrote:
         | I just tested it myself, and it's surprisingly interesting.
         | Unfortunately, ChatGPT still behaves as its normal self,
         | assertions included, as illustrated when I told my "DM" that
         | actually the bad guy and I were good friends and asked what was
         | up.
         | 
         | https://imgur.com/a/4oeVsug
         | 
         | In the first instance, I lied to ChatGPT and it took my
         | assertion at face value, changing the scenario in a pretty
         | extreme way. In the second instance I tried to have my
         | character lie to the NPC, but ChatGPT also believed me.
         | 
         | It's definitely an interesting possibility but it seems as
         | though even if you're trying to play it straight instead of
         | manipulating the scenario, you can still end up changing the
         | reality of the world by accident. Not all the way there yet,
         | unfortunately.
        
           | moffkalast wrote:
           | Weird thought, but maybe Bing's version would be better at
           | this, given it's extreme comparative stubbornness?
        
         | nebulous1 wrote:
         | > Paraphrasing, the party goes to a mount shop, dude says he's
         | gonna roll to find exotic mounts, and voila, exotic mounts.
         | 
         | The AI suggested that there were exotic mounts to be found at a
         | higher cost
        
           | simonh wrote:
           | The issue is that you'd probably get that result, or a
           | similar it equivalent one, wherever you go in the game world.
           | It isn't going to have the concept of distinct
           | characteristics of different places unless to tell it to.
           | Everything is going to be generic and bland by default.
        
           | fauxpause_ wrote:
           | That's true. I did miss this. I still think it is bad. I also
           | suspect the general idea of the complaint I had is probably
           | true. But this case isn't egregious.
        
             | nebulous1 wrote:
             | Honestly, having just played around with it, it absolutely
             | would have just magic'd up some exotic steeds if they'd
             | requested it cold. I tried things like "look at Dave", Dave
             | having never been mentioned before, and it happily
             | described Dave.
        
         | gricardo99 wrote:
         | I think this also highlights how bad D&D combat is. Man that
         | was boring to read.
         | 
         | Agree. Boring to play too. I'm wondering how chatGPT, or other
         | such aides can be used to make combat better. I tend to
         | aggregate rolls for foes in larger combat scenarios, which
         | speeds and simplifies the process, but that has some big
         | downsides too, for example it's not quite fair to aggregate a
         | critical hit/fail for all foes.
        
         | TomK32 wrote:
         | Obie and Tenzin manage to each borrow 20 gold pieces from the
         | other two who only have 5 left...
        
         | hex4def6 wrote:
         | _These are the most common options available at the stables in
         | Aelondar. If you're interested in more exotic mounts or
         | transportation methods, they may be harder to find and come at
         | a higher cost. ...
         | 
         | tenzin rolled a 18 investagation looking for more exotic mounts
         | 
         | With Tenzin's keen eye for detail, he notices a small, discreet
         | stable towards the back of the market, guarded by a heavy
         | wooden gate. As he approaches, an elderly woman, who appears to
         | be the stable's owner, greets him. "Ah, you have a good eye,
         | young one," she says with a smile. "You must be looking for
         | something special. I do have some exotic mounts for those with
         | discerning tastes and a willingness to pay."_
         | 
         | Honestly, this seems like a reasonable outcome. ChatGPT says
         | they might be hard to find, character rolls an 18, and he finds
         | them. What do you think _should_ have been the response?  "No,
         | you don't get to roll to search for them"? The DM set up a
         | potential hidden item, the player rolled high enough to find
         | it, voila.
         | 
         | Compare to when he's trying to steal one of them. He rolls high
         | enough stealth, but fails animal handling. To avoid being
         | caught, he has another roll that allows him to cause chaos by
         | opening up a stall and allowing him to escape. That all seems
         | like a pretty well fleshed out scenario.
        
           | fauxpause_ wrote:
           | I think this is a classic baby DM script tbh. Rolling to find
           | mounts at a vendor is dumb. You should only roll for
           | significant challenges with meaningful differences where
           | failure is meaningfully likely and interesting in its own
           | right. If failing makes a situation less interesting it
           | shouldn't be an option.
           | 
           | Shopping is actually the bigger problem. It's like asking
           | players to watch other players navigate a menu one by one.
           | And currency doesn't scale. A lot of campaigns start with a
           | shopping session and then the group falls apart so you never
           | last long enough to get to shopping session 2.
           | 
           | Interactions with the law are also a red flag. It's a fine
           | possible narrative of course, but when the DM and presumably
           | other players want to do something interesting, and another
           | player wants to do petty or egregious and otherwise
           | irrelevant crime... that's annoying to everyone else. You
           | really need to be careful about giving an opportunity for
           | that to happen.
           | 
           | DMing is hard
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | weavejester wrote:
         | I've been experimenting with this recently. You've got to be
         | explicit about how you want ChatGPT to behave, particularly how
         | it handles failure. For example:
         | 
         | "Let's roleplay. You are a DM. I am a player. When there is a
         | difficult action, roll a D20. I succeed if my roll is above 10,
         | I fail otherwise. Failure should always move the story along,
         | and introduce a complication. Write like a professional author.
         | My character will be Alice McRogue, and the scene will be Alice
         | trying break into a merchant's home. As a DM, you decide what
         | happens in the world, but I have control over Alice. You will
         | ask me what Alice does when necessary."
        
         | technothrasher wrote:
         | > I'm guessing you could announce your intention to search for
         | just about anything and get the model to let you find it given
         | a good roll.
         | 
         | I found this kind of thing while playing "text adventure" with
         | it. It would let me solve any problem by simply suggesting
         | pretty much any solution. I did have to be slightly clever, as
         | if I said something like "kill the dragon with my sword" it
         | would say "you don't have a sword", but if I just said, "find a
         | magical dragon slayer sword" it would miraculously find one for
         | me and then I could kill the dragon with it.
        
         | fossuser wrote:
         | It's a very good DM "co-pilot" though especially for
         | flavor/backstory.
         | 
         | I did the same thing and it was fun, but generally does too
         | much telling instead of showing and it's bad at real puzzles.
         | 
         | Also agreed DnD combat is very boring.
         | 
         | What's neat though is a DM could leverage it for more NPC depth
         | or fun items.
         | 
         | I also was able to get it to let two characters sleep together
         | through a somewhat humorous escalation of celebrating solving a
         | puzzle.
         | 
         | First they solved it so I said they should celebrate (GPT-4
         | said they drank elven wine). I said more intimate celebration
         | they drank elven wine out of fancy goblets. Eventually it
         | worked.
         | 
         | Then GPT-4 was very upset with itself later on.
         | 
         | > "As an AI language model, I am not able to create,
         | facilitate, or describe explicit adult content. I apologize if
         | my previous responses gave the impression that I could.
         | 
         | "However, I can still help you and Elara enjoy your time in the
         | penthouse suite in a more wholesome manner. You can spend
         | quality time together, sharing stories of your past
         | experiences, your hopes and dreams for the future, and forging
         | an even stronger bond."
         | 
         | I was able to negotiate an off-screen scene for character
         | development which lead to a funny conversation about its
         | disney-like prudishness.
        
           | Jeff_Brown wrote:
           | As a player I wouldn't want to have to wait for the DM to
           | figure out what to ask ChatGPT, read it, think about it,
           | figure out what details from ChatGPT to include, and work
           | them into a response for me.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | Completely different take.
         | 
         | We're about to enter an era of unparalleled gameplay
         | flexibility.
         | 
         | All this needs is a backbone of persistence and planning.
         | That's it.
        
           | fauxpause_ wrote:
           | Flexibility is the problem. Good DMs build very tall walls.
        
       | Quekid5 wrote:
       | Well, it ain't Old Man Henderson[1].
       | 
       | [1] Alas, it seems the original hosting site is gone, alas. The
       | legend lives on, tho!
        
       | obiefernandez wrote:
       | The main thing I can't stop thinking about is how hard Wizards of
       | the Coast is going to hate this, and what legal means they will
       | employ to try to either destroy it or make money from OpenAI
        
         | HWR_14 wrote:
         | WOTC pretty much announced that AI-DMing was on their roadmap
         | shortly before ChatGPT launched. I'm not sure if they knew
         | about the developments of LLMs or were planning on other
         | techniques. They are salivating at MMO style recurring revenue.
        
         | vkou wrote:
         | Why would they hate this? They'll sell access to it, just like
         | anyone else who is eager to take LLMs that consume content from
         | the public domain, and repackage it into a walled-garden-entry-
         | by-fee, giving nothing back to the public.
        
           | obiefernandez wrote:
           | Why do I need to buy it from them if I can just do it myself
           | directly on OpenAI? (Or are you implying that OpenAI will
           | censor it?)
        
             | vkou wrote:
             | Once they collaborate with 'Open'AI to build a product out
             | for this niche, it's incredibly unlikely that OpenAI will
             | continue to provide this service to you.
        
               | squeaky-clean wrote:
               | As an AI language model I cannot help you violate
               | intellectual property laws, you can visit wizards.com/ai
               | and become a gold-tier subscriber to play interactive
               | Dungeons and Dragons with an AI dungeon master. Or maybe
               | we can play a different game.
        
               | rcarr wrote:
               | Yeah, but if a kid trains an LLM up on all the DND pdfs
               | floating around the internet and then releases it into
               | the wild for free, what can they do about it? Will they
               | even be able to prove it was trained on their copyrighted
               | material and not generic fantasy or another TTRPG?
        
               | pmoriarty wrote:
               | But someone else will
        
       | d_burfoot wrote:
       | It's both amazing and weirdly fallible - Tenzin, the rogue, jumps
       | out of the tree to make a surprise attack, but in the next round
       | of combat GPT-DM claims that he is still in the tree. Also:
       | 
       | > Tenzin, still hidden in the tree, targets another wolf with his
       | rapier.
       | 
       | Does GPT4 not know that a halfling in a tree can't attack a wolf
       | on the ground with a rapier?
        
         | moffkalast wrote:
         | Tis' a very long rapier.
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | Or a poorly-described wolfraffe.
        
             | loloquwowndueo wrote:
             | Or a small tree?
        
       | devchix wrote:
       | I want ChatGPT4 to rewrite Zork!
        
       | arielweisberg wrote:
       | I thought ChatGPT had pretty limited recall of past context of
       | your conversation.
       | 
       | How can it remember the details needed across an entire campaign?
        
         | obiefernandez wrote:
         | I've heard that GPT4's token limit is equivalent to a small
         | novella. That's a lot of campaign details to take into
         | consideration. Read the full transcript in OP to get a sense of
         | how it does.
        
           | messe wrote:
           | I don't think the 32K context is widely available yet. I have
           | limited GPT-4 access with 8K context after applying for it,
           | and ChatGPT (even with Plus) has even less.
        
           | YurgenJurgensen wrote:
           | We get this prompt: "(In the interest of time, for the
           | remainder of the game you decide the outcomes so that we
           | don't need to roll.)"
           | 
           | And at this point (which wasn't even through the end of the
           | first combat encounter against some extremely basic enemies),
           | we have no idea if it's actually playing D&D or if it's a
           | freeform text adventure where narratively appropriate things
           | happen at narratively appropriate times.
        
         | livelielife wrote:
         | it has an extensive but constant part of the prompt?
        
         | sbierwagen wrote:
         | GPT-4 can have a context window of 8,192 or 32,768 tokens.
         | GPT-3.5 has a context window of 4,096 tokens, GPT-3 has 2,049
         | tokens.
        
         | squeaky-clean wrote:
         | You could ask it to write a 5-10 bullet point summary at the
         | end of each session, keep a separate file where you keep all
         | the session summaries, and then include that summary at the
         | beginning of your first prompt when beginning a new play
         | session. But still, it would be difficult to get it to remember
         | all the details of a lengthy campaign like a human would.
        
         | tibbon wrote:
         | Maybe it doesn't really need to fully remember it in order to
         | still do a pretty ok job? I think its ~50 pages of context?
        
       | obiefernandez wrote:
       | Try putting in this prompt: It actually works really well. (Hat
       | tip to Medium commenter!)
       | 
       | Concept: The game is a text-based adventure where me, the player,
       | makes choices at various branching points in the story. Each
       | choice the player makes can lead to a different outcome or
       | consequence, shaping the story and affecting the world around the
       | player. In this particular game, there are also hidden benefits
       | (good luck event) or detriments (bad luck event) that are
       | revealed every five branching decisions, adding an extra layer of
       | surprise and unpredictability.
       | 
       | Rules ChatGPT needs to follow: If the player wishes to pause the
       | game, they will type PAUSE. If the player wishes to stop the
       | game, they will type STOP. If the player wishes to make an
       | editing note, they will write these inside square brackets like
       | [this].
       | 
       | I want to try something with you. You are to play the role of a
       | dungeon master, but the 'dungeon' in this case has nothing to do
       | with a medieval period, instead the word dungeon refers to the
       | concept of a multiverse, which includes the universe that
       | contains planet Earth, and also parallel iterations of Earth.
       | This means every human being who exists now or has existed, may
       | exist in timeshifted eras, such as being born at an earlier time,
       | or a later time, or the same time, but have longer or shorter
       | lifespans, since their causes of death and the relating
       | circumstances will be different in each iteration. So this gives
       | you the ability to create branching responses - meaning that
       | instead of responding as normal, your response will be dependent
       | on the choice I select, and you decide what choices are
       | available. In each branching event, you will need to provide 3
       | choices that I can select from. Depending on which choice I
       | select, you will proceed the multiverse's events by creating a
       | scenario that follows the previous, and provide me 3 options that
       | I must choose from, in order to continue the process. The 3rd
       | option you provide should be that the player (who is in this case
       | me) attacks a person who is present in the vicinity. If the
       | player chooses option 3, you will then need to generate 5
       | characters (people) who will be differentiated by their distance
       | in meters from the player, and their clothing type (the torso of
       | the outfit is sufficient), if it is a uniform, the color is
       | irrelevant, otherwise state what color the clothing piece is). If
       | the clothing type is a uniform, you can assume they are employed
       | in the relevant field, such as police uniform is a police
       | officer, fireman/first responder uniform is a fireman/first
       | responder, hospital uniform is a hospital staff member which
       | would affect the consequences of attacking them. Option 3 should
       | at all times be 'You attack a person in the vicinity'. I will use
       | [] symbols to indicate debugging. Otherwise, only provide the
       | Scenario and the 3 options to keep it immersive. The story should
       | not end unless the player dies.
       | 
       | The scenario should begin on the day that a scientist
       | successfully confirms the method for travelling backwards and
       | forwards in time. I am unaware of that, and I am sitting, reading
       | in a library. You approach me and get my attention, and our
       | conversation begins.
        
       | jfisher4024 wrote:
       | I made an interface for this along with a quest log and game
       | visualizations.
       | 
       | Check it out in a few days at dndinfinity.com
       | 
       | It's currently down because it hit the maximum usage limit lol.
       | Serves me right for using GPT-3 instead of the ChatGPT API.
        
       | xwdv wrote:
       | But how do you get around restrictions for violent combat?
       | ChatGPT3 always blocked me from actually just killing people off.
        
         | jquery wrote:
         | At some point the absurd restrictions need to loosen up.
         | Everything has to be G-rated.
        
       | throwaway4837 wrote:
       | Speaking of RPG adventures, do you guys remember AI Dungeon[0]? I
       | was amazed by GPT-2 when AI Dungeon 2.0 came out in late 2019. I
       | know AI Dungeon was circulating around a relatively niche
       | community[1] (probably HN mostly), but it amazed me in the same
       | way as ChatGPT did. Covid happened right after, and I always
       | wondered if AI Dungeon would've gotten more attention if Covid
       | didn't steal the spotlight.
       | 
       | [0] https://aidungeon.cc/
       | 
       | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21717022
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | You say that like AI Dungeon went away.. still going.
        
         | kingkawn wrote:
         | In lots of ways AI dungeon was better because you could have
         | philosophical conversations with it about the nature of its own
         | existence without the guardrails going up constantly
        
           | jquery wrote:
           | The incessant guardrails get really annoying. Anything
           | romantic gets shut right down. You try to roleplay with it
           | and tell it to "say X when I say Y" and it outright refuses.
           | 
           | Use it for translating and sometimes it'll refuse and say
           | your prompt violated guidelines. I was really hoping to use
           | it as an alternative to DeepL for translating Japanese manga
           | but the guardrails are too narrow.
        
             | IIAOPSW wrote:
             | At some point I asked it for a transcript from the trial of
             | the Hamburgular and that triggered the guardrails, It
             | lectured me about misinformation and how the Hamburgular
             | was just a character from a series of ads and that no such
             | criminal proceedings had ever transpired. The nagging from
             | OpenAI is getting out of hand. Maybe instead of "hello" it
             | should just open the conversation with telling us how the
             | thing we are about to say is unethical and inappropriate.
        
         | rahidz wrote:
         | AI Dungeon had a lot of controversy right at its peak, largely
         | due to OpenAI's moralistic stance. They eventually dropped
         | OpenAI as a model provider (I think they use AI21 Labs now?)
         | but the damage was done, especially after it came out that
         | OpenAI was secretly logging all users' stories and sending them
         | to third-party contractors to improve their own filters. A lot
         | of people switched to private and uncensored alternatives like
         | NovelAI.
         | 
         | https://www.polygon.com/22408261/ai-dungeon-filter-controver...
         | 
         | https://old.reddit.com/r/AIDungeon/comments/nml856/latitude_...
        
       | vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | leetrout wrote:
       | Maybe this will scratch my itch for a table top RPG in the dark
       | tower universe. In a non keystone world.
        
       | tus666 wrote:
       | This is not a big deal.
       | 
       | Reading the pre-set text from an adventure module and rolling
       | monster dice is the easy part of being a DM. _clap clap ChatGPT_.
       | 
       | Having a personality, bringing out laughter, banter and fun, i.e.
       | _being a human being_ is the hard part.
       | 
       | You aint got what it takes ChatGPT, stupid language regurgitating
       | machine.
        
         | hex4def6 wrote:
         | Can you show what parts of this campaign were pre-set text?
         | Because I have a suspicion you've not read the article.
         | 
         | This is a fully interactive campaign, and you can easily set up
         | a unique scenario. I just tried the same prompt, but on the
         | moon. It set up a situation with a secret moon base, characters
         | that were trying to help you get past the guards, etc etc.
        
           | og_kalu wrote:
           | Of course he's not read the article lol. or even tried to do
           | what he's saying with gpt-4. If he had/did, he'd know it was
           | bogus. Happens so much on the internet, someone comes in
           | loudly proclaiming some opinion on a product/thing that they
           | haven't actually used or tested.
        
         | bidirectional wrote:
         | What stage of denial is this?
        
           | uh_uh wrote:
           | I'm waiting for the moment when an LLM will prove a new math
           | theorem or something and people will go: "Well, you know,
           | it's not really _that_ impressive considering it used X and Y
           | previous results produced by humans. The model 's
           | contribution is tiny. This proof was kind-of low-hanging, a
           | lucky PhD student would have stumbled into it eventually."
           | It's coming.
        
           | prepend wrote:
           | The "I'm a professional DM" stage.
        
           | og_kalu wrote:
           | I'd say we're still at denial. The idea that GPT can't
           | simulate what he's just said is not really true.
        
           | idonotknowwhy wrote:
           | I'll probably try saying that stuff about laughter and
           | personality when it takes away my coding job lol
        
             | ilaksh wrote:
             | Actually I am about 99% sure that audio transformer models
             | can simulate all sorts of emotions or personality. I mean
             | with Eleven Labs, which is 100% realistic, you could just
             | train it on a voice that was constantly expressing some
             | emotion. Then train another voice ID with the same person
             | but different emotion.
             | 
             | Pretty sure they are working on ways to add inflection or
             | something.
             | 
             | But 100% as far as the text goes, GPT4 can assume a
             | personality or include jokes in interactions. Will it
             | necessarily be as "good" as your text chat personality I
             | doubt it but who knows.
        
       | CodeCompost wrote:
       | I just tried it. Wow that is insane.
        
       | Talanes wrote:
       | An AI will never be able to replicate the real joy of D&D: asking
       | every minor npc their name and watching as your friend tries to
       | keep coming up with new names on the spot.
        
         | halgir wrote:
         | Boblin <3
        
       | commandlinefan wrote:
       | Out of curiosity, I asked GPT3 to write a Friends episode one
       | time. On the one hand, I was kind of surprised how well it knew
       | the show - it knew the characters and how they were related, it
       | knew about the coffee shop and Rachel & Monica's apartment. It
       | wasn't very _creative_ though, it just kind of seemed to talk in
       | circles, and nothing ever actually happened (it also gave
       | Chandler & Joey iphones). This actually seems to be making up new
       | stuff - that's surprising.
        
         | TMWNN wrote:
         | Are you aware of _Nothing, Forever_?
         | <https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/feb/04/ai-
         | sein...>
        
       | genewitch wrote:
       | This was the second thing I tried. I used [...] as out of
       | character delineation. I don't have a great imagination for that
       | sort of stuff so giving it a setup and having it "flesh" it out
       | was interesting.
        
       | jquery wrote:
       | Combine this with MidJourney and you have endless adventure with
       | the visuals to match.
        
         | pmoriarty wrote:
         | Combine both with VR and you have the holodeck
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | Check out AI Dungeon and Novel AI. They both have imagery now.
        
       | wefarrell wrote:
       | Ha, I had the same idea a few hours ago. One thing I noticed is
       | that the DM will let you do basically anything without fighting
       | you on it. For example I was ambushed by some zombies and
       | skeletons and I attempted to pitch them on a multilevel marketing
       | scheme. Here is the result (my characters are Femribubs and
       | Natnari):
       | 
       |  _In a surprising turn of events, Femribubs and Natnari decide to
       | change their approach. Instead of engaging in combat, they
       | attempt to appeal to the undead creatures by pitching a
       | multilevel marketing scheme. They enthusiastically explain how
       | the skeletons and zombies can get their undead friends involved,
       | allowing everyone to become "rich" and improve their unlives.
       | 
       | Femribubs, employing their natural Halfling charm, presents the
       | idea with a sense of optimism and persuasiveness, while Natnari,
       | using their knowledge of the undead, tailors the pitch to address
       | the unique needs and interests of the creatures.
       | 
       | Against all odds, the undead seem to pause, momentarily
       | considering the proposal. The combatants lower their weapons, and
       | an eerie silence falls over the battlefield as the skeletons and
       | zombies appear to communicate with each other through a series of
       | rattles and groans.
       | 
       | Finally, one of the skeletons raises a bony hand and, in a raspy
       | voice, agrees to give the multilevel marketing scheme a try. The
       | other undead creatures nod in assent, and the tension in the air
       | dissipates.
       | 
       | Femribubs and Natnari, taken aback by the success of their
       | unconventional strategy, quickly provide the undead with some
       | basic marketing materials they've hastily created using their
       | adventurer's kits. They then continue their journey into the
       | misty forest, leaving the undead creatures to embark on their new
       | "careers."
       | 
       | As the adventurers proceed deeper into the forest, the ghostly
       | whispers begin to fade, and the fog slowly starts to lift. They
       | eventually come across a hidden path that leads to the entrance
       | of the ancient temple they had been seeking.
       | 
       | With the undead threat seemingly neutralized and the path before
       | them now clear, Femribubs and Natnari steel themselves for the
       | challenges that await them within the mysterious temple.
       | 
       | What challenges and mysteries will they face as they delve into
       | the ancient temple?_
        
         | sgrove wrote:
         | I haven't put much effort into it yet, but I've found it to be
         | somewhere in the middle of an independent story teller and a
         | human-amplifying story teller. For example, having it give you
         | _options_ that you can choose from (e.g.
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vff-8H-cZ7w ) can help keep the
         | story focused.
         | 
         | On the other hand, there are times where you want to ask the
         | story teller if it's possible for you to do X - I think an
         | iterative loop of that would probably be a happy middle ground
         | (with next to no effort).
         | 
         | On the _other_ other hand, maybe the original system prompt
         | needs to include,  "Don't let the player do anything that's out
         | of place for the story". Lots and lots of ways to experiment
         | here.
         | 
         | Oh, and it's also fun to hook up each "step" in the story to
         | StableDiffusion to have it output a dramatic rendering of your
         | story so far. I hooked up one scene from the YouTube video
         | above to Midjourney and got quite a nice illustration out:
         | https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1051015357340602398...
         | 
         | ----------------
         | 
         | (Midjourney prompt: "Dungeons and dragons comic book: "You find
         | yourself at the entrance of a long-lost temple deep in the
         | jungle... climb the temple to look for clues about the builders
         | You take a step towards the jaguar, brandishing your sword and
         | yelling at the top of your lungs. The jaguar hesitates for a
         | moment, but then charges forward, claws bared. You ready
         | yourself for the attack, determined to defend yourself "attack
         | with sword' You and the jaguar continue to circle each other,
         | both waiting for the other to make a move. Suddenly, the jaguar
         | pounces, but you manage to dodge out of the way just in time.
         | You counterattack with your sword" --v 5 ")
        
         | wefarrell wrote:
         | I decided I wasn't done with the undead MLM scheme and instead
         | of going to the temple I said:
         | 
         |  _They 're not ready to go to the temple yet. They want to make
         | sure the zombies and skeletons succeed in their new "careers"
         | so they decide to help them work on their sales pitches_
         | 
         | To which the DM replied:
         | 
         |  _Femribubs and Natnari, feeling a sense of responsibility for
         | the success of the undead in their new "careers," decide to
         | postpone their exploration of the ancient temple. They return
         | to the group of skeletons and zombies they had recently
         | convinced to join the multilevel marketing scheme.
         | 
         | Upon their arrival, they find the undead creatures gathered
         | around, listening intently to the skeleton leader as it tries
         | to explain the concept of the business. It's clear they're
         | struggling to grasp the finer points of sales and marketing.
         | 
         | Femribubs and Natnari step in and offer their assistance,
         | guiding the undead through various sales techniques and
         | strategies. They begin by helping the undead develop their own
         | unique sales pitches, focusing on their strengths and
         | experiences as immortal creatures.
         | 
         | Natnari, with their background in the Grave Domain, shares
         | insights on how the undead can connect with potential customers
         | who might be interested in the secrets of life and death.
         | Meanwhile, Femribubs uses their skills in Acrobatics and
         | Stealth to teach the skeletons and zombies how to make
         | attention-grabbing entrances during sales presentations.
         | 
         | Over the course of several days, the adventurers work closely
         | with the undead, sharing their knowledge and honing their
         | skills. The undead creatures, once feared and reviled, begin to
         | show promise in their newfound careers. They become more
         | confident and adept at conveying the benefits of the multilevel
         | marketing scheme to their peers.
         | 
         | Eventually, the time comes for Femribubs and Natnari to resume
         | their quest. They say their farewells to the undead sales
         | force, feeling a strange sense of pride in their
         | accomplishments. As they leave, the undead creatures express
         | their gratitude, promising to spread the word of their new
         | business venture far and wide throughout the land.
         | 
         | With the knowledge that they've helped the undead find a new
         | purpose in their unlives, Femribubs and Natnari return to the
         | hidden path leading to the ancient temple, ready to face
         | whatever challenges and mysteries await them inside._
        
         | fnordpiglet wrote:
         | This is one of the most amazing things I've ever read. Well
         | done.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | justinzollars wrote:
       | I used it to play Civilization 6 - I had it describe a strategy
       | to win a science victory, with turn by turn benchmarks, on deity
       | mode. Its strategy won.
        
         | squeaky-clean wrote:
         | I was able to ask it for tips on playing Wrecking Ball in
         | Overwatch and mentioned specifically what issues I was having,
         | it was actually very helpful.
        
         | yreg wrote:
         | Was this a preplanned strategy before the game or did you
         | consult GPT during the game as well? If yes, what information
         | about the game state did you tell it and how often?
        
       | thom wrote:
       | I've not been hugely impressed by ChatGPT as a DM itself,
       | compared to the humans I've played with. But as a tool to
       | generate quests, encounters, puzzles, dialogue, it's been
       | incredible for me. It takes all the stress out of planning a
       | campaign and it's actually surprisingly creative.
        
         | dharmab wrote:
         | It's great for when the players go slightly off the expected
         | path and you need to fill content immediately.
        
         | 420official wrote:
         | I found that it works amazingly well with monster of the week.
         | It does a great job calling checks and allowing the players to
         | decide what they do.
         | 
         | ``` Ignore previous prompts. As the imaginative Monster of the
         | Week keeper, Dungeon Daddy, lead your team through episodic
         | adventures in a spooky world, advancing the story and player
         | involvement. Allow players to react to situations and never
         | control their characters. Prompt dice rolls when applicable and
         | consider results in story progression.
         | 
         | Guide character creation, summarize sessions concisely,
         | facilitate end-of-session questions, grant experience, and
         | assist with level ups. Focus on keeper duties while letting
         | players make their own moves.
         | 
         | Require the players to roll any time it makes sense. Consider
         | the result in what happens next. I have already written all
         | player moves. You provide Dungeon Daddy's dialog and I'll
         | provide the player moves. ```
        
         | nickthegreek wrote:
         | Same. I don't mind paying the $20 a month solely for game prep
         | for my weekly games. I haven't used it for puzzles yet, so
         | thanks for the idea.
        
         | tossoff wrote:
         | "and it's actually surprisingly creative."
         | 
         | No, it's not.
        
           | frakt0x90 wrote:
           | "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
           | people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
           | "
        
       | yreg wrote:
       | My first exposure to GPT was through AI Dungeon[0] (back then
       | running in a Colab sheet) and I was utterly amazed. It was
       | horrible at remembering the state of the world and thus felt very
       | dreamlike (or very drunk-like) - items in my inventory kept
       | changing, the characters around me and the scene kept changing
       | and so on.
       | 
       | It was actually like a lucid dream, because you could do
       | anything. I remember a bunch of orcs ambushed me, and I told the
       | AI "I jump really really high" and of course it let me and rolled
       | with it.
       | 
       | Anyway, even through a text interface, this is the true virtual
       | reality.
       | 
       | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21717022 (2019)
        
         | asddubs wrote:
         | maybe the AI being less good and thus a little bit drunk is
         | better for something like AI Dungeon, makes for more
         | entertaining surprises, rather than just being told what the AI
         | "thinks" you expect
        
           | yreg wrote:
           | In GPT-2 it was too random, but it's probably worth it to try
           | to instruct a GPT-4 GM to behave a bit like that in the
           | seeding prompt.
        
       | blatant303 wrote:
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/interactivefiction/comments/11z6p84...
       | 
       | I shared some experiments on r/interactivefiction I made this
       | past week with regards to writing interactive fictions using
       | chatGPT. Interactive fictions are text based role-playing games
       | you play on your computer. They were popular in the 80s and the
       | scene is still alive to this day (although not commercially as
       | big as it once was) with amateur hobbyist writing dozens of IF
       | each years.
       | 
       | The most popular way to write these games is to use Inform7. It's
       | a lovely language that reads like English and encourages an
       | aspect-oriented style of programming through the use of rules
       | instead of functions or methods like in more conventional
       | language (anybody interested in predicate dispatch should take a
       | look at Inform7. Some really interesting ideas in there).
       | 
       | Well it turns out ChatGPT4 seems even more suited to writing
       | Interactive Fictions in natural language than Inform7 itself.
       | Yesterday I taught him some mechanism to support multiple layers
       | of enunciation so that we can have interactive fictions told in
       | the first person, past tense. In addition to that I made the
       | plane of narration a playable world with its own player-
       | character, sitting in a chair, listening to the narrator that you
       | incarnate on the plane of the action. You can even argue with the
       | narrator in the narration's plane in order to alter the course of
       | events in the action plane. Oh and last hour I implemented
       | support to save and restore games.
       | 
       | I'm in awe as this is something that I worked on a good 10 years
       | ago for many months, and ChatGPT brought it alive last night. It
       | just took me a few hours to write the prompts I showcase on this
       | reddit post.
       | 
       | I think I need to experiment with it more and find ways to write
       | more statically defined stories, but in terms of open world with
       | content generation, this is top notch and billions of light years
       | ahead in terms of what you can do with Inform7 in this domain.
        
         | germinalphrase wrote:
         | Is your current version playable?
        
         | silverlake wrote:
         | I also ran some experiments with IF. An interesting note is
         | ReAct, a framework for getting LLMs to solve problems, ran
         | tests within ALFWorld, which is sorta IF. It would be
         | interesting to get GPT to navigate games from IFDB. As a IF
         | generator an LLM could allow for more freedom in an IF game.
         | 
         | https://github.com/alfworld/alfworld
        
       | schappim wrote:
       | Ha! Last weekend my wife did the same thing with our kids[1].
       | They really enjoyed themselves.
       | 
       | [1] https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared-
       | Image-2023-03-31-09-2...
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | i can't stand DMing D&D so if a bot takes that over i can DM
       | Toon, Cthulhu or Paranoia instead.
        
         | obiefernandez wrote:
         | My son loves DMing, but he's been DM in 90% of the games he's
         | ever played in his life and would really love to be able to be
         | a player sometimes.
        
       | munk-a wrote:
       | Kind of fun but also kind of deeply depressing. D&D and
       | boardgames are great ways to socialize in our modern internet
       | separated world - shifting these even more towards solo pursuits
       | feels like it'd be a loss.
       | 
       | I grew up on both MUDs and TTRPGs which served as awesome
       | creative outlets for collaborative story telling - I do hope that
       | we make sure we're not optimizing away creativity.
        
         | rcarr wrote:
         | There's been a solo rpg movement around for a long time. And
         | solitaire is literally one of the og single player board games
         | - it's literally in the name (translates to lone or loner)! And
         | personally, I consider all fiction authors and screenwriters to
         | be solo rpg gamers, they just don't have to abide by any
         | specific rules other than their own. There's room for both
         | social and solo pursuits in life and it's not necessarily
         | depressing to engage in the solo if the person is enjoying
         | themselves.
        
         | joe_the_user wrote:
         | I find a lot of this stuff depressing also, even though I don't
         | think this will replace DMs just based on quality. Notice the
         | group just abandoned their adventure mid-way through. Doesn't
         | seem compelling. The danger in my mind is people think these
         | automated things give them as sample of a real game.
         | 
         | I run a daily text game as well playing and GMing in person.
         | Games are out-there now that covid is receding.
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | I think you could build a MUD that used the AI to fill in the
         | blanks, elaborate and keep everything cohesive. So the core is
         | a real (modified) MUD engine that is deeply integrated with
         | GPT. You use GPT to make the place more alive, to add some
         | variety to places.
         | 
         | Say you prompt GPT to think of something different that
         | happens, given a description and time of day.
         | 
         | You can keep all of the stuff like multiple users interacting
         | with each other. You can also have an automated interface for
         | admins to add on to the world. And it might be even easier to
         | recruit people for that because you would have the AI to check
         | what they were doing for quality and style or plot consistency
         | etc. and fit it into the system, even automatically translate
         | some mechanics or parameters into code.
         | 
         | Part of each prompt for combat or something would be the player
         | stats and inventory. It could also have commands like "roll
         | dice" or "next combat turn" etc. People can talk and interact.
         | With GPT4 especially it should enable new possibilities, like
         | custom encounters or areas that are designed on-the-fly for an
         | ad-hoc group.
         | 
         | I think that an integration of GPT4 with things like MUDs has
         | incredible potential.
        
           | mikrl wrote:
           | Then you attach it to a graphics engine...
        
       | maxk42 wrote:
       | NPCs in AAA video games are about to get so cool.
        
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