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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

#181

Post by bee_rider »

avereveard wrote: post #168
wefarrell wrote: post #86

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…

Possibly the system prompt has helpful and other pleasantries. May need to describe the type of dm at the beginning, with accent of keeping the story on track and making the world dangerous and unforgiving

Another odd bit was, when they said they wanted to steal the lizard thing, instead of role-playing the scenario, it just gave them a list of the rolls they’d have to make. I haven’t played a ton of D&D, but at the tables I’ve been at, you’d typically discover the challenges as you go.

It sort of read like the artificially constructed examples of play you’d get in the DM’s handbook though (since these are written with the intent of showing a particular mechanic as smoothly as possible, they tend to have unusually cooperative players and DMs).

I wonder to what extent this sort of thing skews the training set.

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

#182

Post by bee_rider »

danudey wrote: post #72
fauxpause_ wrote: post #39

Paraphrasing, the party goes to a mount shop, dude says he’s gonna roll to find exotic mounts, and voila, exotic mounts. Party rolls to try and steal an exotic mount and it doesn’t really work so they leave. This is a hard problem. It’s bad DMing imo. But it’s the natural outcome from a probabilistic model. I’m guessing you could announce your intention to search for just about anything and get the model to let you f…

I just tested it myself, and it's surprisingly interesting. Unfortunately, ChatGPT still behaves as its normal self, assertions included, as illustrated when I told my "DM" that actually the bad guy and I were good friends and asked what was up. https://imgur.com/a/4oeVsug In the first instance, I lied to ChatGPT and it took my assertion at face value, changing the scenario in a pretty extreme way. In the second inst…

That is pretty funny. It decided to just interpolate between “meeting an old friend and having a chat” and “listening in on a table of bandits without them knowing” and ended up on “having a chat with an old friend/table of bandits without them knowing.”

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

#183

Post by bee_rider »

dragonwriter wrote: post #139
gricardo99 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this also highlights how bad D&D combat is. Man that was boring to read. Agree. Boring to play too. I’m wondering how chatGPT, or other such aides can be used to make combat better. I tend to aggregate rolls for foes in larger combat scenarios, which speeds and simplifies the process, but that has some big downsides too, for example it’s not quite fair to aggregate a critical hit/fail for all foes.

> Boring to play too. I’m wondering how chatGPT, or other such aides can be used to make combat better. You could just use a TTRPG with better combat for your tastes; it doesn’t take AI (OTOH, an AI with information on enough different games and how they play might be able to interview you to find a good choice, or even custom mix and match pieces to make a unique game optimized for your individual tastes – or that o…

I knew I’d like RuneQuest when the DM said “roll a hit location.”

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

#184

Post by taberiand »

fauxpause_ wrote: post #39

Paraphrasing, the party goes to a mount shop, dude says he’s gonna roll to find exotic mounts, and voila, exotic mounts. Party rolls to try and steal an exotic mount and it doesn’t really work so they leave. This is a hard problem. It’s bad DMing imo. But it’s the natural outcome from a probabilistic model. I’m guessing you could announce your intention to search for just about anything and get the model to let you f…

I think this will be solved well with the plug-in system - so that the bot can refer to systems that hold the information, rather than having it make it up entirely on the fly

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

#185

Post by sosborn »

tossoff wrote: post #123
sosborn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think all creative endeavors are a regurgitation of rules ingested by the creator. Creativity is born from experiences.

While I believe you have lived a unique set of circumstances that have been processed by you, a delightful and fallible chemical soup inside a meat sack, and that it cannot be approximated.

That's the thing, AI tools aren't trying to approximate me. They are their own unique collection of experiences/input.

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

#186

Post by fauxpause_ »

dcow wrote: post #158
fauxpause_ wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. But, what's the point of the traits in the first place if everyone is equally good at figuring stuff out and sweet talking because there are no checks? How is it aw…

You’re not equally good at things. But you only roll for things that matter. Persuasion is the worst offender because rookie DMs use dice to replace actual role play. And it makes their npcs into props that are largely controlled by the party face.

Persuasion checks should be used when the party is actually persuading someone to do something that they don’t want to do. Terrible DMs treat it as mind control because your silly min max bars had 20 CHA and expertise. Less experienced DMs use it as a crutch.

The bare minimum thing DMs ought to do is realize the the difficulty of a persuasion check should depend on the baseline persuasiveness of the argument. If the party is making an excellent point, the check should be very easy. If the party makes no point and just asks the NPC to do something unreasonable, it should be basically impossible. If this isn’t the case, NPCs feel very stupid.

There’s no particular reason for it to be a skill at all tbh. It is just more interesting to roleplay.

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

#187

Post by Flemlord »

I just played a short campaign set in the Dresden Files universe. I started in 5e and asked ChatGPT to recommend a more appropriate system. It recommended Fate so I started over with that. GPT walked me through a different setup without stats and DM’ed a decent adventure. It understood nuances of how I used spells and let me capture a cult leader, imprison them and interrogate them to reveal more of the story.

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

#188

Post by shusaku »

klik99 wrote: post #162
dataangel wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried telling it that sometimes it should push back on the player if what they are requesting is unrealistic-within/inconsistent-with the world of D&D?

I tried this last week and despite constant reminders to sometimes fail and provide challenges to overcome, it never worked. Frankly I’m amazed the OP chat worked so well, anything with numbers that fall over time just failed when I tried. Maybe the key was “you are no longer a friendly assistant, you are now a DM” and just the sheer amount of existent text on 5e made it work. I just gave up looking for challenge and…

In general GPT seems bad at enforcing constraints. But also, by its nature it just makes things up on the fly, so how could it keep the story consistent if it has no plan from the start?

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

#189

Post by 1attice »

brundolf wrote: post #160
wefarrell wrote: post #86

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

This is what got me too.

I'm also noticing the quotes around '"careers"'

Like. How.

GPT-4 is the most profound thing to have happened in my lifetime. This is real. This is all real.

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

#190

Post by 1attice »

tossoff wrote: post #123
sosborn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think all creative endeavors are a regurgitation of rules ingested by the creator. Creativity is born from experiences.

While I believe you have lived a unique set of circumstances that have been processed by you, a delightful and fallible chemical soup inside a meat sack, and that it cannot be approximated.

This is just substrate supremacism.
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