AI GMs

[LordEntrails]

When I use something like chatGPT, often it is the act of bouncing ideas off it that sparks my creativity. I get the same spark from conversations from others, reading books, watching shows, etc. You get ideas that you can riff off and build something up for a game and while the AI itself may not provide the answer, it can often help get you where you want to go.

You said in a couple sentences what I stumbled about for paragraphs trying to explain

 

[Bill Zebub]

When I use something like chatGPT, often it is the act of bouncing ideas off it that sparks my creativity. I get the same spark from conversations from others, reading books, watching shows, etc. You get ideas that you can riff off and build something up for a game and while the AI itself may not provide the answer, it can often help get you where you want to go.

Yeah, I feel the same way. I use it to generate lots of ideas...then I pick and choose, recombine, sprinkle in some salt. I don't think it's categorically different than doing the same thing with ideas I've gathered from life experience.

I do understand the position of refusing to use AI because of its environmental cost, and I somewhat understand the position to use it because of some of its more negative impacts.

But I also think some people, starting from those objections, are convincing themselves that nothing AI generates could have any value.

 

[DragonLancer]

Following something mentioned in one of the other AI threads here, a couple weekends ago I asked ChatGPT to run me a solo campaign for D&D 2024. The character (one I am planning on playing for real in the next campaign I get to play) is 18-19 year old human woman, CG, Warlock going Great Old One patron. Concept being that she is a simple tavern keeper's daughter but something has tapped her and started giving her power. She knows/senses it comes from a dark source but if she spurns it, she goes back to being a normal ordinary person and she doesn't want that. She now has to handle the power and maintain her general good nature.

Chat has actually run a fairly interesting and different story than I would have expected. No traditional dungeons or the like. Instead it has woven a story of some dark bureaucratic power in the city who are using bureaucratic concepts to effect the city, especially the poorer quarters where the character lives. "Creatures" which exist just outside what can be seen which are deleting people so that they never existed, both physically and accountingly (made up word) - removing them from records so they haven't/can't pay taxes, own/start a business, be paid. It's weird and I'm not describing it very well but it's very clever and well made. It's not something that I would have considered or even thought of, but for the character concept it's oddly perfect for a solo campaign.

Thoughts on ChatGPT as the DM from this experience:

1. It has a good memory for what it has done but ever few hours I have to ask it to save the campaign so I can restart it in a fresh chat and continue because it slows down so quickly.

2. It has a very good grasp of D&D 2024 rules. I did catch it out once when it used a 2014 wording rather than 2024. It also pointed something out to me that I had not realised about my character build a couple levels in. It also politely said it would hold the combat and wait while I fixed the error.

3. It handles combat well and lets the dice fall as they will. Otherwise it took me a couple days to realise that it remained what some people call "a people pleaser". I noticed that even in the most difficult or awkward problems/puzzles, whatever I came up with worked perfectly, which did put a damper on it a little. I wanted the option to be wrong and take any consequences. Some of the tension, which had been building nicely, was lost.

All in all, it's nice and it came up with a clever concept and has run it well. Even role-play between myself and NPC's has been top notch. I can't get ChatGPT to hold a real world debate but it does well when role-playing it. It's been fun for a short while but it's not 100% what I want from an AI Dungeon Master in the long run.

 

[Reynard]

I think the most compelling aspect of an AI GM over just using other solo tools is that it feels like a "person" and therefore the play is much closer to "real" role-playing than GM emulator solo is. You can ask questions in natural language and get an answer from someone besides yourself. And that has value to people, and some kind of power.

I am curious if anyone has used a local, installed LLM and how that went, because that would help mitigate environmental worries.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Following something mentioned in one of the other AI threads here, a couple weekends ago I asked ChatGPT to run me a solo campaign for D&D 2024. The character (one I am planning on playing for real in the next campaign I get to play) is 18-19 year old human woman, CG, Warlock going Great Old One patron. Concept being that she is a simple tavern keeper's daughter but something has tapped her and started giving her power. She knows/senses it comes from a dark source but if she spurns it, she goes back to being a normal ordinary person and she doesn't want that. She now has to handle the power and maintain her general good nature.

Chat has actually run a fairly interesting and different story than I would have expected. No traditional dungeons or the like. Instead it has woven a story of some dark bureaucratic power in the city who are using bureaucratic concepts to effect the city, especially the poorer quarters where the character lives. "Creatures" which exist just outside what can be seen which are deleting people so that they never existed, both physically and accountingly (made up word) - removing them from records so they haven't/can't pay taxes, own/start a business, be paid. It's weird and I'm not describing it very well but it's very clever and well made. It's not something that I would have considered or even thought of, but for the character concept it's oddly perfect for a solo campaign.

Thoughts on ChatGPT as the DM from this experience:

1. It has a good memory for what it has done but ever few hours I have to ask it to save the campaign so I can restart it in a fresh chat and continue because it slows down so quickly.

2. It has a very good grasp of D&D 2024 rules. I did catch it out once when it used a 2014 wording rather than 2024. It also pointed something out to me that I had not realised about my character build a couple levels in. It also politely said it would hold the combat and wait while I fixed the error.

3. It handles combat well and lets the dice fall as they will. Otherwise it took me a couple days to realise that it remained what some people call "a people pleaser". I noticed that even in the most difficult or awkward problems/puzzles, whatever I came up with worked perfectly, which did put a damper on it a little. I wanted the option to be wrong and take any consequences. Some of the tension, which had been building nicely, was lost.

All in all, it's nice and it came up with a clever concept and has run it well. Even role-play between myself and NPC's has been top notch. I can't get ChatGPT to hold a real world debate but it does well when role-playing it. It's been fun for a short while but it's not 100% what I want from an AI Dungeon Master in the long run.

Some of what you wrote here gave me the following thought about AI “inspiring creativity”:

Assuming that our own creativity is a function, at least in part, of all the bits and pieces we have acquired through experience, then anything that contributes new bits and pieces can contribute to our creativity.

What I experienced with my AI GM was not tired tropes…no innkeeper asking me to kill rats in the basement…but rather things that felt, at least to me, novel and fresh. And it sounds like that was your experience, too.

Now some AI skeptics/critics might say, “Then obviously the AI stole the idea from some uncompensated human, and if you had just purchased the adventure(s?) from which that illusory creativity derived...etc." Which, honestly, is probably a pretty rich topic for discussion.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think the most compelling aspect of an AI GM over just using other solo tools is that it feels like a "person" and therefore the play is much closer to "real" role-playing than GM emulator solo is. You can ask questions in natural language and get an answer from someone besides yourself. And that has value to people, and some kind of power.

I tried something in one of my AI sessions that I thought probably wouldn't work. When it did work I explicitly asked the AI if it was changing the story in response to my actions to make sure I succeeded. I got back a quite lengthy explanation of how it was adjudicating. (Short answer: no, not really, but also allowing some wiggle room for inspired ideas, which it justified by citing characteristics of OSR play.)

 

[The Firebird]

I tried something in one of my AI sessions that I thought probably wouldn't work. When it did work I explicitly asked the AI if it was changing the story in response to my actions to make sure I succeeded. I got back a quite lengthy explanation of how it was adjudicating. (Short answer: no, not really, but also allowing some wiggle room for inspired ideas, which it justified by citing characteristics of OSR play.)

You should see what my GM says when I ask if they are changing the story to make sure I succeed.