D&D General The DM Shortage

[Oofta]

I was actually thinking being able to run a group of players througha module sufficient to entertain them, not become sentient or be a perfect simulacra of a decent human DM. I don't think most players have that high of expectations of the game and therefore if they had to choose between "no game" and "Alexa as DM" they would choose the latter.

Depends on the module. A dungeon crawl? Maybe, as long as you want the same restrictions as a CRPG like Solasta or the old Baldur's Gate games. In addition you'd have to have some kind of interface with electronic avatars that the players manipulated so the AI knew when you were attacking or casting a spell. We've had that in various CRPGs for a long time.

But ask a goblin a question? It will be pretty clear you're speaking to an AI. Try to do something outside the box like my players do every 15 minutes? Not going to be allowed. Try to leave the dungeon? I don't think it could make a believable world outside of the narrow constraints.

You could have a CRPG that used D&D rules in a randomized dungeon. But try to run it as a tabletop game? Have an AI interpret speech to figure out that you want move 10 feet to get a better view and then cast a fireball at the enemy while also positioning the fireball to not include your allies? It's not that simple.

 

[Celebrim]

An AI could store it's answers and regurgitate them.

No. We don't yet know how to store answers. We could store them as words, but the AI can't really understand the words or how those words should influence what it says. So what would happen is just regurgitating a random answer out of context with the computer having no way of knowing how fit the answer was ahead of time. If we could store answers because we could translate them into meaningful symbols, then in theory a computer would be able to regurgitate them. But we don't know how to do that, so we can't teach a computer to do that.

It's also not clear that when we can do that that it will really be true that a computer doesn't forget. It's possible forgetting is a necessary part of having limited hardware, either for producing new answers in a reasonable time or because there is limited storage.

 

[Reynard]

It has a dungeon. With rooms. Containing monsters. It doesn't suggest any way to interact with the monsters other than fighting them. If you have zero hit points, you die. If you fail a poison save, you die.

As presented in the example, D&D is purely a game of fighting monsters until you die.

Except, you know, the kobold you can capture who they can get info from, or the explicit use of reaction rolls with another group and advice on how the PCs can negotiate with them, or the use of the morale rules. Also, there are NO save or die traps in this dungeon.

It's almost as if you did not read it.

 

[Reynard]

Depends on the module. A dungeon crawl? Maybe, as long as you want the same restrictions as a CRPG like Solasta or the old Baldur's Gate games. In addition you'd have to have some kind of interface with electronic avatars that the players manipulated so the AI knew when you were attacking or casting a spell. We've had that in various CRPGs for a long time.

But ask a goblin a question? It will be pretty clear you're speaking to an AI. Try to do something outside the box like my players do every 15 minutes? Not going to be allowed. Try to leave the dungeon? I don't think it could make a believable world outside of the narrow constraints.

You could have a CRPG that used D&D rules in a randomized dungeon. But try to run it as a tabletop game? Have an AI interpret speech to figure out that you want move 10 feet to get a better view and then cast a fireball at the enemy while also positioning the fireball to not include your allies? It's not that simple.

Fair enough. I don't have any practical knowledge of the skillset necessary to know. It feels like we aren't that far away, but I guess we have been saying that for a long time about a lot of things.

 

[J.Quondam]

An AI could store it's answers and regurgitate them. A human forgets. My memory is terrible, and I write too slowly to make detailed notes.

Of course, what are you doing here? Playing D&D or trying to tell if the DM is human or not?

Yes, that's how I see it. An automated DM does not have to be a generalized AI; it only has to be a passable DM.

There's no reason a DMing app wouldn't have additional processes layered on top of an AI to monitor for appropriateness; mediate between the humans and AI to minimize "tricking" the AI; do the "remembering" to better preserve context (so, for example, it might re-prompt the AI for a "better" answer); make table- or math-based decisions, and so forth. Basically, there are parts of DMing that are better handled by different sorts of automated processes, so it stands to reason that a DM app would leverage them all rather than rely just on an AI alone. For example, it might be thought of as a procedural rogue-like somehow built around an AI "core". I don't know. But however it's ultimately structured, there's no reason it has to be only an AI.

And the important point: whatever that DMing app ultimately looks like, for many players that would probably be enough to scratch their itch, especially for an informal pickup games or something. And quite possibly it could even be a better option than no DM, or a bad human DM. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I'd much rather have a AI DM that botches the rules or generates illogical NPC behaviors than deal with a human DM who's just a donkey-sphincter.

 

[Oofta]

Fair enough. I don't have any practical knowledge of the skillset necessary to know. It feels like we aren't that far away, but I guess we have been saying that for a long time about a lot of things.

Like I said. A generalized AI is 5-10 years away, just like commercially viable fusion energy. Both have been 5-10 years away for several decades now.

Maybe one of these years we'll be proven wrong.

 

[LordEntrails]

You keep repeating this like it is true when it is demonstrably not so.

I vaguely remember this. But it's funny, because that's not how we, or anyone I interacted with actually played.

It has a dungeon. With rooms. Containing monsters. It doesn't suggest any way to interact with the monsters other than fighting them. If you have zero hit points, you die. If you fail a poison save, you die.

As presented in the example, D&D is purely a game of fighting monsters until you die.

This is pretty much how I remember B1 & B2. B1 had a map, and if I remember, a table for generating room contents. And nothing but what appeared to be combat encounters. B2 had a bunch of monsters to fight, and no direction on how to mislead or socially interact with them. And the NPCs in town were nothing but names and short stat blocks.

So maybe it wasn't set up as adversarial, but it seems like they were the only way to play them and hence was a natural development (or so it seemed to us).

 

[MichaelSomething]

If anyone is interested in trying an AI Dungeon Master, there is AI Dungeon...

https://play.aidungeon.io/main/home

 

[Vaalingrade]

No. We don't yet know how to store answers. We could store them as words, but the AI can't really understand the words or how those words should influence what it says. So what would happen is just regurgitating a random answer out of context with the computer having no way of knowing how fit the answer was ahead of time. If we could store answers because we could translate them into meaningful symbols, then in theory a computer would be able to regurgitate them. But we don't know how to do that, so we can't teach a computer to do that.

It's also not clear that when we can do that that it will really be true that a computer doesn't forget. It's possible forgetting is a necessary part of having limited hardware, either for producing new answers in a reasonable time or because there is limited storage.

People see the results of a ton of dedicated coding and writing and scripting all string together on very specific use cases that all amounts to a digital hand puppet and aren't really aware of how fundamentally dumb computers actually are.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If anyone is interested in trying an AI Dungeon Master, there is AI Dungeon...

https://play.aidungeon.io/main/home

Yup, I've played with it and while it was interesting and somewhat entertaining, my main takeaway was just how far how AI has yet to go. Nowhere near the quality of even a mediocre (much less good) GM.