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My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM

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Re: My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM

#171

Ha, I had the same idea a few hours ago. One thing I noticed is that the DM will let you do basically anything without fighting you on it. For example I was ambushed by some zombies and skeletons and I attempted to pitch them on a multilevel marketing scheme. Here is the result (my characters are Femribubs and Natnari): In a surprising turn of events, Femribubs and Natnari decide to change their approach. Instead of…

I decided I wasn't done with the undead MLM scheme and instead of going to the temple I said: They're not ready to go to the temple yet. They want to make sure the zombies and skeletons succeed in their new "careers" so they decide to help them work on their sales pitches To which the DM replied: Femribubs and Natnari, feeling a sense of responsibility for the success of the undead in their new "careers," decide to p…

This is honestly more entertaining than combat. Now I want to hear the TED talk from the skeleton leader.

Re: My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM

#172
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, I think you're flavoring the DM role quite a bit. The DM in my current campaign often requires checks for things even when there's no obvious downside. The implicit downside is that the character who fails has to find a new way through the situation, change strategy, etc. IMO it adds to the game to have more roles and more probability based outcomes. You have to balance letting the characters do whateve…

Shrug. I think it’s a bad practice. People can have a lot of fun regardless of course. It is most “bad” for things like perception, and persuasion. In D&D specifically it creates awkward scenarios where one player is very good at things that come up all the time and has a high chance of succeeding at things unless he rolls truly terribly. In my experience players have an moment of confusion and then elation when they…

I think that there’s a lot of value in NPC’s not doing irrational things just because of dice rolls. You might need a dice roll to convince them to do something crazy (get the guards to attack a dragon), but not for something normal (apprehend the thief).

I’m a big fan of passive perception too, where based on their scores some characters will notice stuff, and other characters will not. It’s certainly never as random as D&D makes it out to be, but I guess that’s kind of the charm. I just can’t stand it.

Re: My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM

#173

Ha, I had the same idea a few hours ago. One thing I noticed is that the DM will let you do basically anything without fighting you on it. For example I was ambushed by some zombies and skeletons and I attempted to pitch them on a multilevel marketing scheme. Here is the result (my characters are Femribubs and Natnari): In a surprising turn of events, Femribubs and Natnari decide to change their approach. Instead of…

> improve their unlives Incredible

[deleted]

Re: My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM

#175

Ha, I had the same idea a few hours ago. One thing I noticed is that the DM will let you do basically anything without fighting you on it. For example I was ambushed by some zombies and skeletons and I attempted to pitch them on a multilevel marketing scheme. Here is the result (my characters are Femribubs and Natnari): In a surprising turn of events, Femribubs and Natnari decide to change their approach. Instead of…

That sort of struck me with the linked story. They saw some wolf footprints, and then essentially summoned the monsters to fight by setting up an ambush in their current location.

I noticed they bought four horses without enough money to do so. (It correctly said two characters would have to borrow 20 gold each, but only 10 gold remained in the party, leaving them 30 short).

Re: My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM

#176
post #32

Kind of fun but also kind of deeply depressing. D&D and boardgames are great ways to socialize in our modern internet separated world - shifting these even more towards solo pursuits feels like it'd be a loss. I grew up on both MUDs and TTRPGs which served as awesome creative outlets for collaborative story telling - I do hope that we make sure we're not optimizing away creativity.

I actually disagree. The biggest issue I have with arranging a D&D campaign is that noone wants to DM. I've already said to my kids that should play in this manner and they are keen to try. Now we all get to play.

Re: My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM

#177
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the last few paragraphs of the response is something that I found was extremely common output for "DM AI". Whatever the situation, if it's kind of open ended, it'll say you did the thing really well, and you came to learn a bunch of new stuff, discovered who your friends really were along the way and everything was sunshine and rainbows. You can get it to put out something a little more grimdark but you need to…

Yes, ChatGPT seems to strongly prefer happy endings. Ask it to write a scene where a Montague bumps into a Capulet, and accusations start flying. One of the characters will successfully de-escalate. Or the price of Verona will show up with guards and stop the brawl. He'll even throw in some foreshadowing about how this will all end in tragedy. I suspect that this relentless love of upbeat endings is a side effect of…

> ChatGPT seems to strongly prefer happy endings

I always thought this a Hollywood thing. “Wrap up the loose ends and make it a happy ending.” Movies and series that end untidily are often my favourites.

Re: My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM

#178

It's both amazing and weirdly fallible - Tenzin, the rogue, jumps out of the tree to make a surprise attack, but in the next round of combat GPT-DM claims that he is still in the tree. Also: > Tenzin, still hidden in the tree, targets another wolf with his rapier. Does GPT4 not know that a halfling in a tree can't attack a wolf on the ground with a rapier?

No, it doesn't know that. It also is susceptible to being told that you hire a level 2,000 wizard who is familiar with the layout of the dungeon and you stop at the well of blessings and toss in a platinum coin in order to have invulnerability, then you go to the dungeon, where the wizard immediately seals the cursed object with his Mighty Seal of Anti Curse Yang Containment Wizardly Spell, and you then place the sealed cursed object into your spatial ring (that lets you carry any amount of loot without weight restrictions), along with all the loot from the dungeon that the wizard finds with his level 2,000 spells. ChatGPT doesn't have intelligence. It just types words.

Re: My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM

#180
The generated content was pretty good but it doesn't look like a very fun d&d session. Try reading through reading only the player actions, skipping the long winded DM monologues. The players make very few decisions. They might get to have in character conversations "off screen" that we aren't seeing but their interactions with the actual game world is very minimal.

To have a more realistic round of DND, you'd need more small, brief interactions, more like an actual conversation, which will blow through your message limit with 4 pretty quick.

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