D&D General Which Sacred Cow Will Be The Last To Slaughter?

[Snarf Zagyg]

They've recently taught brainoids how to play Pong, so clearly the next step is to teach them D&D.
Just skip the AI, and go straight for a DM brain-in-a-jar!

YES! Finally, my dream* of having Richard Nixon DM my games will become a reality!

*As in, I fall asleep and this is what I see. .....don't judge. I can feel it. I feel the judging. Stop it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

YES! Finally, my dream* of having Richard Nixon DM my games will become a reality!

*As in, I fall asleep and this is what I see. .....don't judge. I can feel it. I feel the judging. Stop it.

I feel like Nixon would be a pretty awful DM, but you could at least be certain he had recordings of all your sessions if you ever wanted to go back over what had happened!

 

[overgeeked]

WFRP and Runequest jump to mind. Those are in roughly the same genre.

Two games is not a lot.

 

[loverdrive]

No-one has really attempted this yet to me knowledge (the closest is us AI Dungeon as per @loverdrive but that is a true AI (if I understand it correctly), just not one designed for this).

It's kinda designed for that. Well, it's just a GPT-3 trained on a ton of CYOA stories and some literature, and it gives reasonably good answers to prompts. As is, it's basically like playing a freeform roleplaying game with a bit senile novice game master.

It works really well with PbtA games, if you just decide whether your PCs actions trigger a move, resolve it and feed AI the output. Like:

You are outnumbered and outgunned: NINE guys, armed and angry. naughty word's going south. You peek out of your cover...

...and hear that nasty CLANK-CLANK of a grenade rolling on the floor. What ya gonna do?

Here, to my surprise, AI actually picked up on me highlighting some words with all caps, and using ellipsis.

Then, I decided that my gal is gonna hide behind a fridge (this scene is taking place in a slaughterhouse, so I'd say that's reasonable). It triggered Act under fire move, and I rolled 8. So, worse outcome it is — I guess it's 0-harm, I make Harm move and get a 7. Lost footing, I guess, so I write:

You dive behind a heavy industrial fridge as explosion goes off. You don't resemble swiss cheese full of shrapnel, but your ears are ringing and your vision is blurry — you've suffered some serious concussion.

Instead of waiting for AI to reply, I thought that my gal is gonna open her brain to the psychic maelstrom to see the possible future, as she can't really do anything else. It's a fail, so I continue with:

You open your mind to the psychic maelstrom and listen...

You wince in pain, as the noosphere retaliates against you, and ...

I left the sentence unfinished, so AI can pick it up for me. It responded with

you're overwhelmed by a storm of angry thoughts and emotions. You realise that you're now on the second floor of a building, which is bad news as there are raider scum on the first floor searching for you.

Which is kinda boring, but makes sense. Tomorrow I'm gonna play to find out what happens next.


The only thing I really don't like is that this horny computer bastard sometimes decides to describe how scantily clad my character is for no real reason.

 

[loverdrive]

WFRP and Runequest jump to mind. Those are in roughly the same genre.

I'm not familiar with Runequest, but WFRP characters certainly start less competent and powerful than 5e characters.

Maybe you've meant that Age of Sigmar game, Soulbound? There characters surely are like superheroes

 

[pogre]

I'm not familiar with Runequest, but WFRP characters certainly start less competent and powerful than 5e characters.

Maybe you've meant that Age of Sigmar game, Soulbound? There characters surely are like superheroes

We will have to agree to disagree on that. I have found WFRP character's far more hardy than 1st level D&D PCs. I have not played Soulbound. I fully accept our play experiences could be vastly different.

Two games is not a lot.

It was just two examples from the fantasy genre. There are many more. We can just agree to disagree. It is certainly not a big deal.

 

[TheSword]

I reckon the dice will probably go before any of the things on that list…

In so far as they are archetypal components of D&D so won’t be going at all.

A game that gets rid of them, won’t really be D&D.

 

[Minigiant]

Technically D&D video games lack a DM.

 

[CleverNickName]

Technically D&D video games lack a DM.

...or do they?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not familiar with Runequest, but WFRP characters certainly start less competent and powerful than 5e characters.

Maybe you've meant that Age of Sigmar game, Soulbound? There characters surely are like superheroes

Or he's referring to the more recent editions of WFRP, where PCs definitely are sturdier than any D&D PCs except 4E ones. They didn't stop making WFRP in the '90s, you know! Even in the '90s, though, the 2E WFRP characters were a little bit harder to kill than L1 D&D characters. That wasn't to say they were hard to kill though!

Two games is not a lot.

I'm struggling to think of an non-OSR/non-PF (so essentially D&D) fantasy RPGs where the PCs aren't tougher (at the very least) than L1 D&D PCs, so actually it is a lot.

More competent is something that's infinitely arguable, but I'd say it's extremely common for fantasy RPGs to have PCs as or more competent than L1 D&D PCs. In fact I think if we really look hard at it we'd find an awful of fantasy RPGs had starting characters who had more in common with L3 PCs.

Even with level-based games like Earthdawn, the starting point of toughness (and arguably competence) is a lot higher.