RPG Evolution: The AI DM in Action

How might WOTC launch an AI-powered DM assistant?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

We know Wizards of the Coast is tinkering with Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered tools for its multiple properties, including Dungeons & Dragons. But what might that look like in practice?

Interactive NPCs​

Large Language Model (LLM) AIs have been used extensively to create non-player characters of all stripes on Character.AI. It's not a stretch to imagine that Wizards might have official NPCs included as part of the digital purchase of an adventure, with the rough outline of the NPC acting as parameters for how it would interact. DMs might be able to create their own or modify existing NPCs so that the character drops hints or communicates in a certain way. Log outputs could then be available for DMs to use later.

There are several places today where you can create NPC bots powered by AI that are publicly available, although the DM might need to monitor the output in real time to record the conversation. Character.AI and Poe.com both provide the ability to create publicly available characters that players can interact with .

Random Generators​

There are already dozens of these in existence. What's particularly of note is that AI can go deep -- not just randomize what book is in a library, but provide snippets of text of what's in that book. Not just detail the name of a forgotten magic item, but provide stats for the item. For WOTC products, this could easily cover details that no print product can possibly encompass in detail, or with parameters (for example, only a library with books on necromancy).

AI RPG companion is a great example of this, but there are many more.

Tabletop Assistants​

Hasbro recently partnered with Xplored, with the goal of developing a "new tabletop platform that integrates digital and physical play." Of particular note is how Xplore's technology works: its system "intelligently resolves rules and character behaviors, and provides innovative gameplay, new scenarios and ever-changing storytelling events. The technology allows players to learn by playing with no rulebook needed, save games to resume later, enables remote gameplay, and offers features like immersive contextual sound and connected dice."

If that sounds like it could be used to enhance an in-person Dungeons & Dragons game, Xplored is already on that path with Teburu, a digital board game platform that uses "smart-sensing technology, AI, and dynamic multimedia." Xplored's AI platform could keep track of miniatures on a table, dice rolls, and even the status of your character sheet, all managed invisibly and remotely by an AI behind the scenes and communicating with the (human) DM.

Dungeon Master​

And then there's the most challenging aspect of play that WOTC struggles with to this day: having enough Dungeon Masters to support a group. Wizards could exclusively license these automated DMs, who would have all the materials necessary to run a game. Some adventures would be easier for an AI DM to run than others -- straightforward dungeon crawls necessarily limit player agency and ensure the AI can run it within parameters, while a social setting could easily confuse it.

Developers are already pushing this model with various levels of success. For an example, see AI Realm.

What's Next?​

If Hasbro's current CEO and former WOTC CEO Chris Cocks is serious about AI, this is just a hint at what's possible. If the past battles over virtual tabletops are any indication, WOTC will likely take a twofold approach: ensure it's AI is well-versed in how it engages with adventures, and defend its branded properties against rival AI platforms that do the same thing. As Cocks pointed out in a recent interview, WOTC's advantage isn't in the technology itself but in its licenses, and it will likely all have a home on D&D Beyond. Get ready!

 

[LesserThan]

The biggest challenge and holdback to people DMing has more to do with creativity and the ability to react to people's choices along with role playing multiple NPCs in game in my experience.

Actually it is not. For the whole, not your experience.

It is D&D specifically. The demands of the elephant in the room are the challenge to these things. In other systems you see more creativity not because they offer better play, or fewer compwting players, but because games that are not D&D or its offspring have more freedom from society to explore other things. D&D has more recently become the system to opress creativity and ideas that do not align with the current "meta".

If D&D moved away from a "forced perspective" and allowed more acceptance of differing views without an onslaught of the internet piling on people like a pack of wild dogs to tear them apart, then more people would feel freer to be crative and explore more things without the fear bred into making even the smallest mistake with the game or social faux pas.

I remember reading about Critical Role having this sort of thing turning people away from DMing.

Other games, GMs are more free to do as they wish without fear of the D&D crowd coming after tyem. So many videos exactly stating this, even as far back as the 1980s, that the D&D crowd force some view as the right way to play a TRPG than is even more, ONETRUEWAY, than the old Traveller crowd was.

D&D is not the only game, and as a tyrant demanding all TRPGs to comply or voluntarily submit for reprogramming, it needs to be toppled.

No, I am not paranoid, YOU ARE!

Short version, D&D has gotten too big for its britches and D&D players too often try to control how all TRPGs are played, and both WotC and players need to cut it out.

 

[Dire Bare]

Actually it is not. For the whole, not your experience.

It is D&D specifically. The demands of the elephant in the room are the challenge to these things. In other systems you see more creativity not because they offer better play, or fewer compwting players, but because games that are not D&D or its offspring have more freedom from society to explore other things. D&D has more recently become the system to opress creativity and ideas that do not align with the current "meta".

If D&D moved away from a "forced perspective" and allowed more acceptance of differing views without an onslaught of the internet piling on people like a pack of wild dogs to tear them apart, then more people would feel freer to be crative and explore more things without the fear bred into making even the smallest mistake with the game or social faux pas.

I remember reading about Critical Role having this sort of thing turning people away from DMing.

Other games, GMs are more free to do as they wish without fear of the D&D crowd coming after tyem. So many videos exactly stating this, even as far back as the 1980s, that the D&D crowd force some view as the right way to play a TRPG than is even more, ONETRUEWAY, than the old Traveller crowd was.

D&D is not the only game, and as a tyrant demanding all TRPGs to comply or voluntarily submit for reprogramming, it needs to be toppled.

No, I am not paranoid, YOU ARE!

Short version, D&D has gotten too big for its britches and D&D players too often try to control how all TRPGs are played, and both WotC and players need to cut it out.

The "D&D Crowd" is going to come after you if you don't play the game "right"? But not for other RPGs?

No.

"The Mercer Effect" is simply folks wanting to play in games run by Matt Mercer, or a DM with similar levels of skill. It is not a creativity limiting effect, but contributes to the existing problem of folks not having the confidence to DM, much less DM at the level Matt Mercer demonstrates on Critical Role.

Right now, simply going by live-streaming shows alone, there is a LOT of creativity in the D&D space, playing the game with different styles, different themes, and even different genres.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

It is D&D specifically. The demands of the elephant in the room are the challenge to these things. In other systems you see more creativity not because they offer better play, or fewer compwting players, but because games that are not D&D or its offspring have more freedom from society to explore other things. D&D has more recently become the system to opress creativity and ideas that do not align with the current "meta".

I remember someone tried to repeat the survey that started the "5e has DM shortage" on Pathfinder 2e reddit and results were similiar to 5e, through there were less participants.

"The Mercer Effect" is simply folks wanting to play in games run by Matt Mercer, or a DM with similar levels of skill. It is not a creativity limiting effect, but contributes to the existing problem of folks not having the confidence to DM, much less DM at the level Matt Mercer demonstrates on Critical Role.

Also recently I would argue we are seeing Reverse Mercer Effect - DMs who are plain bad, not in the "doesn't know what he is doing" way but deliberate "acts like a creep" or "tries to force on players gross naughty word" way, who will dismiss criticism or being called out with some variation of "Go play at Matt Mercer's table if you don't like it".

At the end of the day, if your solution to GM shortage is to replace them with AI, then I never want anything to do with your game. I love GMing and I cannot imagine how humilating it would feel to buy product of company that openly said they don't want me here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The central and much-overlooked problem with current AI remains.

Somebody has to pay for it.

This stuff isn't genuinely free (the "free" models that exist are "free" because you are the product - by using them, you're increasing their value and helping them to refine and publicize their product). It doesn't grown on trees. It's all processed extremely heavily off-site. It means that any service which offers this is basically going to have to be either a loss-leader, or subscription-based, and if it doesn't make enough money, it's going to to go away. This wouldn't be true if it ran locally, but we're a pretty long way from that (despite Microsoft really wanting it to happen - ask again in 5-10 years).

Two other, lesser issues:

There are already dozens of these in existence. What's particularly of note is that AI can go deep -- not just randomize what book is in a library, but provide snippets of text of what's in that book. Not just detail the name of a forgotten magic item, but provide stats for the item. For WOTC products, this could easily cover details that no print product can possibly encompass in detail, or with parameters (for example, only a library with books on necromancy).

AI is extremely bad at this, currently.

To call it "unimaginative and trope-y" would be insulting to stuff that unimaginative and trope-y. You can see this very easily for example if you ask an LLM to come up with a list of foods for a fantasy setting, or a potential locations. They'll all be both completely over-the-top to often insane degrees, fail to understand things like "eating mermaids is probably going to be considered cannibalism, dude", and they'll also be compleeeeeeetely generic and trope-y. Like the most obvious and dumbest ideas you could come up with. Just really staggeringly generic stuff.

Tables written by humans currently are quite a bit better than what AI tends to come up with here, at least with the current LLMs - looking at you particularly ChatGPT. LLMs are very good at doing things like giving you a generic overview of a situation, or a completely generic example of something. They're horrible at originality or real specificity, because they literally don't understand anything - they just put words together. This is why they'll think mermaid stew is totally cool (fantasy creature + food), because they don't know that a mermaid is also a person and we don't eat people.

With a human in-between, that's okay because you can filter out the AI's absolutely dumbass ideas, but with an AI DM, you stare into the naked idiocy of an LLM AI.

The other major issue is that any AI owned by a company like WotC, is likely to have quite a significant collection of "stop-words" and "no-go-areas", and some of these are going to be extremely dumb and silly. This has been an issue since the beginning - the ancient procedural AI game Facade (about visiting a couple for dinner), for example, would always make the hosts boot you, the guest, out, if you said the word "melon" in any context. I'm sure any WotC AI won't be that crude, but it'll absolutely be boneheaded about certain things, and no doubt people who use it will have to learn elaborate ways to "work around" it, rather than being able to consistently use it naturalistically.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Also recently I would argue we are seeing Reverse Mercer Effect - DMs who are plain bad, not in the "doesn't know what he is doing" way but deliberate "acts like a creep" or "tries to force on players gross naughty word" way, who will dismiss criticism or being called out with some variation of "Go play at Matt Mercer's table if you don't like it".

Christ are we? I'm not disagreeing, I haven't played with a completely unfamiliar DM for years, but are we? Is that a thing?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Christ are we? I'm not disagreeing, I haven't played with a completely unfamiliar DM for years, but are we? Is that a thing?

I've seen some attitudes that certainly seem to approach that, but its usually from the more negative end of the grognard demographic.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Christ are we? I'm not disagreeing, I haven't played with a completely unfamiliar DM for years, but are we? Is that a thing?

I have been seeing more and more stories from other players with DM reacting this way to criticism.

 

[LesserThan]

The "D&D Crowd" is going to come after you if you don't play the game "right"? But not for other RPGs?

No.

Yes, from what I have seem online the "D&D crowd" not only targets other D&D players, but other games players as well.

These are "players" of WotC and OSR both.

I rarely see Palladium Fantasy or Warhammer Fantasy, Cyberpunk or Vampire players making demands of the whole TRPG hobby. "D&D crowd" will make demands of EVERYONE. It is rather disgusting the way D&D "players" behave these days.

 

[LesserThan]

I remember someone tried to repeat the survey that started the "5e has DM shortage" on Pathfinder 2e reddit and results were similiar to 5e, through there were less participants.

What was the reason found in either?

Pathfinder 2 was an attempt to align with 5e, or get away from the OGL, or both?

 

[LesserThan]

The central and much-overlooked problem with current AI remains.

Somebody has to pay for it.

This is partially what I meant in regards to LLM and individual table rules versus ONETRUEWAY. You can not make a LLM that can adapt to different playstyles without building a multimillion dollar LLM trained specifically for each group.

AI, you take what you get with no input/customization, or do without.