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The Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D

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Re: The Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D

#11

Post by grawprog »

dreen wrote: post #8

Of course the article is actually about writing a digital DM not a player. But isn't the main problem with this defining win conditions? Pretty easy to define win condition for chess or go. Now, I haven't really played DnD (much to my sadness), but how do you win? edit: I know the answer but I'm making a point with my question

Every d&d game i've played tends to end either with the players becoming godlike and destroying the world, more often everybody dying, or everyone getting bored or busy in life and just stopping.

>but how do you win?

When you've provided a fun and engaging experience for your players?

I do mean this seriously. Being a DM is about making sure the players are having fun and always giving players something interesting to do. It shouldn't be too easy or too hard. The things should have some variety, you have to be able to adapt to what your players decide to do. Just because you have some cool stuff planned doesn't mean they'll find it, you can guide them a bit, but don't funnel them and accept they may not see your cool stuff, you can always save it for another time.

I guess my point is, keeping player fun and engagement high while allowing the game to run its natural course would be what I would think of as the win condition for a dm. Finding a way to measure this and provide this seems like a fairly difficult task though.

Re: The Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D

#12

Post by bretpiatt »

dreen wrote: post #8

Of course the article is actually about writing a digital DM not a player. But isn't the main problem with this defining win conditions? Pretty easy to define win condition for chess or go. Now, I haven't really played DnD (much to my sadness), but how do you win? edit: I know the answer but I'm making a point with my question

It's even more nuanced than that, the DM Players relationship is one where nobody really wants to "win". The ideal play is a session where the players are pushed to their limits, maybe one of the PCs dies (and maybe as the DM you send them on another quest then if they decide as a group they want to try and get that PC resurrected).

Building a AI DM that can follow a scripted pre-written dungeon would still be a challenge, building an AI that can understand how the players are experiencing the gaming session to know if they want things moving faster, or they want more elaboration, or more unexpected experiences... you're really getting to the point of Ava (Ex Machina) and even beyond Data (Star Trek).

Re: The Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D

#13

Post by danso »

FryHigh wrote: post #2

I didn’t realise D&D was this challenging. On the flip side, this is what people said. Forget Chess - Go is the one. Forget Go - D&D is the one.

I haven't played D&D in a looong time, but making a human-like dungeonmaster seems like the textbook example of a hard problem for AI.

Re: The Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D

#14

Post by bargle0 »

dreen wrote: post #8

Of course the article is actually about writing a digital DM not a player. But isn't the main problem with this defining win conditions? Pretty easy to define win condition for chess or go. Now, I haven't really played DnD (much to my sadness), but how do you win? edit: I know the answer but I'm making a point with my question

You win when you have fun and get invited back.

Re: The Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D

#16

Post by pavel_lishin »

DennisP wrote: post #5
FryHigh wrote: post #2

I didn’t realise D&D was this challenging. On the flip side, this is what people said. Forget Chess - Go is the one. Forget Go - D&D is the one.

For humans, maybe it's not. But making an AI that's good at free-form interactive storytelling won't be easy.

> For humans, maybe it's not.

Being a DM - or a player - can be very challenging indeed.

Re: The Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D

#18

Post by dreen »

grawprog wrote: post #11
dreen wrote: post #8

Of course the article is actually about writing a digital DM not a player. But isn't the main problem with this defining win conditions? Pretty easy to define win condition for chess or go. Now, I haven't really played DnD (much to my sadness), but how do you win? edit: I know the answer but I'm making a point with my question

Every d&d game i've played tends to end either with the players becoming godlike and destroying the world, more often everybody dying, or everyone getting bored or busy in life and just stopping. >but how do you win? When you've provided a fun and engaging experience for your players? I do mean this seriously. Being a DM is about making sure the players are having fun and always giving players something interesting t…

This is kind of the point I was making with my question. Playing DnD is not about winning. Being a DM is not about reaching some sort of conclusion. So it's essentially impossible to make an AI good at this without achieving true general AI (not within our lifetime for sure)

Re: The Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D

#19

Post by ausbah »

I think creating an AI dungeon master has a wide range of difficulty depending on how open ended the game is intended to be.

The more structured and rules based the game is, the easier it is to create a dungeon master - the more free form and "on the fly" the game is the harder the task. So while creating a dungeon master may be "easy" if the rules and story are heavily enumerated, it likely won't be very fun as it doesn't capture the free-formedness that makes D&D so fun.

Re: The Real Challenge Is Teaching AI to Play D&D

#20

Post by pavel_lishin »

ausbah wrote: post #19

I think creating an AI dungeon master has a wide range of difficulty depending on how open ended the game is intended to be. The more structured and rules based the game is, the easier it is to create a dungeon master - the more free form and "on the fly" the game is the harder the task. So while creating a dungeon master may be "easy" if the rules and story are heavily enumerated, it likely won't be very fun as it d…

It would likely become a very different game, where the meta-objective is to prompt the AIDM to go more off-the-rails than you the players.
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