D&D General AI Has Completely Spoiled Dungeons & Dragons for Me — I Can’t Go Back to Human DMs

[Elandor Swiftblade]

Ah…for me TTRPG is a social activity. The human goofs and unpredictability are the juice.

If I want to play without others, there’s a whole slew of wonderful video games with incredible stories, exciting gameplay and graphics that I can play.

No video games compare to actual D&D game play. With the exception of Bard's tale which by the way has been remastered in GOG.

 

[bsss]

That analogy doesn’t really work because in this case the “fast food” is actually higher quality than the fine dining. A human DM simply can’t compete with AI when it comes to improvising dialogue, descriptions, and character interactions off the cuff. It creates a much more immersive experience.

Even ignoring the wild generalization, this is not worthy of debate. I hope you pull yourself out of this nosedive and find humanity again, or you won't need to post on this forum for long because an AI could tell you whatever you want to hear and you'll just become another sad story of someone who lost their life to autocomplete.

 

[NaturalZero]

What model are you using? I've done a bit with ChatGPT and it's good at some things and pretty bad at others. It's great if you want something that feels like a choose your own adventure book that's designed keep moving along regardless of what decision you make but ChatGPT is bad about remembering accurate mechanics or creating anything novel with any mechanical complexity. I haven't tried upload a full-on mod, so maybe it could be better if had that data.

Ah…for me TTRPG is a social activity. The human goofs and unpredictability are the juice.

If I want to play without others, there’s a whole slew of wonderful video games with incredible stories, exciting gameplay and graphics that I can play.

Even the most advanced video game is on rails and freedom from that is part of the draw of tabletop. With AI, you can literally make the game anything you want - any setting, any plot, etc. I haven't seen an example that could completely replace a DM, especially when it comes to creating maps or complex NPC interactions, but the LLM tech is not only new but advancing at a crazy pace.

 

[Elandor Swiftblade]

What model are you using?

Claude AI ... Upload the module and it will follow it verbatim.

 

[AlViking]

Anybody else using AI as a DM?

I’m using it right now and it’s amazing. I uploaded the module and it handles everything flawlessly — It keeps track of NPC personalities, party banter, spell slots, encounters, initiative order, hit points, conditions, inventory, combat rounds, location etc.

Honestly, there’s no comparison to a human DM.
The ad-lib storytelling between characters is incredible. I play two characters while the AI runs the other four, and the interactions feel like a real adventuring party. It constantly improvises dialogue and story far beyond what’s written in the module.

For example I asked a wizard to heal another party member, and his response was "Brother I am no cleric; my magic rends flesh, it does not mend it."

You can even use the new Google read page to have it narrate... Better yet use the speak icon and you can just have a conversation with the DM and voice your actions as it narrates everything in a gentle English accent.

Right now I’m playing through all the modules from my past, and the experience is even better than I remember.

Anyway it's a viable alternative if you don't have any other players to game with... honestly I couldn't go back to playing with a group after this and definitely could not go back to a human DM.

I'm glad it works for you and maybe someday it will be good enough that we can just have an AI DM for our group. But I play D&D in large part to connect with other people, not just to play a game. So the pushback you're getting is not necessarily that it can't run a good game (even if I don't think it would have the flexibility for the weird stuff we do), it's that it's like an AI girlfriend. It might tell you that you're awesome but it's not real.

But it's also easy for me to say that because I DM and live in a metro area where finding players is as simple as a post to meetup. I wish you luck but for a lot of people the game itself is frequently secondary to socializing with other people.

 

[Artamo]

Even the most advanced video game is on rails and freedom from that is part of the draw of tabletop. With AI, you can literally make the game anything you want - any setting, any plot, etc. I haven't seen an example that could completely replace a DM, especially when it comes to creating maps or complex NPC interactions, but the LLM tech is not only new but advancing at a crazy pace.

But I can’t make a human DM.

 

[Elandor Swiftblade]

I'm glad it works for you and maybe someday it will be good enough that we can just have an AI DM for our group. But I play D&D in large part to connect with other people, not just to play a game. So the pushback you're getting is not necessarily that it can't run a good game (even if I don't think it would have the flexibility for the weird stuff we do), it's that it's like an AI girlfriend. It might tell you that you're awesome but it's not real.

But it's also easy for me to say that because I DM and live in a metro area where finding players is as simple as a post to meetup. I wish you luck but for a lot of people the game itself is frequently secondary to socializing with other people.

For me the group aspect actually takes away from the enjoyment of the game. To each his own but until you've tried it both ways I don't really think you realize the level of immersion you're missing out on.

And again you can still play with multiple players while using AI as DM. As mentioned you can put it on speaker mode and everybody can talk directly to AI and it will interact accordingly.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That analogy doesn’t really work because in this case the “fast food” is actually higher quality than the fine dining. A human DM simply can’t compete with AI when it comes to improvising dialogue, descriptions, and character interactions off the cuff. It creates a much more immersive experience.

Speak for yourself. Both my current GM and the two best GMs I ever had in 4e were amazing at it.

I myself am okay at it. Good enough to have kept players for years and years. I think I'll be okay without retiring and handing over our game to an extremely advanced pattern-recognition software.

If people want to sit around a table and banter with their friends, that’s great — that’s a social activity. But if the goal is to feel like you’re actually living and breathing inside the adventure, AI does that far better.

Well, unless you hit a snag, or you prefer non-canned products.

Hitting snags almost never happens in Dungeon World, but...I don't think Claude (or any LLM) can actually run a game of Dungeon World properly, because it's about what characters want and value much more than about just crunching numbers, and questions of value and purpose are a lot harder for LLMs to handle.

Conversely, for literally anything (DW or not), I always prefer non-canned products. I prefer a world actually developed by a person, rather than a canned adventure, and that kinda puts Claude completely out of the running for me. Nothing about a canned adventure could approximate the depth, immersion, and beauty I've seen in home-made campaign settings.

Funny there's always naysayers but as Einstein said: “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

Sure--or, at least, it's claimed he did (but no evidence that he actually did). But P.T. Barnum (just as apocryphally!) said, "There's a sucker born every minute." Remember when they promised teachers were going to be replaced by audio tapes? And then video tapes? And then computers? And then computer games? And then VR? And then...etc., etc.

Point being, some things really are the revolution that rewrites the world, and yes, in most cases, such revolutions are met with skepticism for a long time until they prove themselves.....but the thing is, LOTS of things CLAIM to be the revolution that rewrites the world. It's reasonable to be skeptical when the vast majority of things claiming to be revolutions have been mere revolving doors, and many of the things that really did spark a revolution turned out very very little like what the pie-in-the-sky dreamers claimed it would.

Remember how the internet was going to eliminate copyright and make all humans equally well-educated and keep people accountable and usher in a golden age of creativity and expression for everyone? And then it only kinda sorta muddled copyright up a little, and resulted in a LOT of humans who have a lot of basic education and MANY outright falsehoods held as "facts", and enabled all sorts of shenanigan BS that is so hard to track, and led to an ENORMOUS amount of youtube slop content long before any AI slop got involved?

Again: I'm not saying AI isn't a tool with potential uses. All I'm telling you is that smugly stating incorrect quotes doesn't make you look like a pioneer boldly thrusting into virgin territory, nor like a prospector bravely drilling where everyone else swears there's no oil left. Instead, it kind of makes you look like you don't really value the contributions of actual people, and are easily taken in by flashy things with minimal substance. Of course, the truth is likely that you aren't either of those things! But we can't really know until the AI bubble has burst and it starts worming its limpid tentacles into all sorts of places, just as the internet once did, with its own bubble that burst. I'm just thankful that the vast majority of the spending is in parts of the economy that won't affect the average consumer when the bubble finally pops.

 

[Elandor Swiftblade]

Speak for yourself. Both my current GM and the two best GMs I ever had in 4e were amazing at it.

No human can compete with AI creativity off the cuff. Don't believe me then ask it to write a poem or a short story.

I gave an example in my first post... A human DM would have responded: "uh he's not a cleric"...

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

I've been using AI as a DM on and off for about a year now. It's OK, and I can see the technology replacing humans in a few years, but right now it's not there yet.

Right now one of my biggest problems is AI cannot IGNORE data. Anything you tell it, or anything communicated to it, seems like it MUST be factored into the game. My character is a bard, has a staff with the "topple" mastery on his sheet, and the AI keeps either trying to topple enemies for me or scoldingly reminds me that I can't use a weapon mastery as a bard.

One time I tried to get it to pick a canonical NPC known for being a wise scholar and it gave me... Volothamp Geddarn.

I also find that I succeed at like nine out of ten d20 rolls and I've never gotten under a 15 on initiative, even when I tell the AI to fully simulate random die rolls; I think the AI is a bit too much of a "people pleaser" to include actual difficult.

If anyone is curious, this is the instruction I'm currently using for the AI that's giving me these results (Google Gemini Pro 3.1):

Run the game as a DM using strictly and painstakingly by the book rules as written 2024 rules 5th edition D&D. Use 5e.tools and DnD Beyond as rules references. Assume my character sheet is correct. Balance the game for a single character of the level indicated in the sheet. Make sure to factor in a level appropriate version of the Blessing of the Lone Champion from the Dragon Delves book. Stick exclusively to canon lore, preferring officially published Wizards of the Coast books, the Forgotten Realms wiki, and 1d6chan. The year is 1501 DR on Faerun in Abeir-Toril. Always roll dice randomly and openly.