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LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

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Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#31

Post by derektank »

2099miles wrote: post #3

This is so interesting that people want this. This is beyond the guy saying “people don’t like making music so we made ai so it’s easier and faster to just prompt it to make music” . Like in my experience the best part of d&d is the dungeon master who knows their friends making a story and details specifically for fun and the fun of the group. And the interactions between players and the dm is where I derived the mos…

DMing is, in my opinion, very time consuming. Prepping an adventure, familiarizing yourself with the rules, trying to incorporate character backstory in to the narrative, all takes time. As someone that can only play D&D if I am DMing, because none of my friends have the desire or inclination to do so, I would be very happy to pay money for an LLM dungeon master that lets me just play the game without all the prep time. I just don't have 4 extra hours a week like I did in college.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#32

Post by CuriousCosmic »

Kuinox wrote: post #26
Aeolun wrote: post #2

Based on my experiences with this. Keeping context relevant is the hardest part. Your human GM will remember that funny remark from the session 3 years ago, but the LLM?

Neuro-sama, an AI VTuber streamer, manages to do this. There are topics brought along multiple streams and manages to remember details of previous streams.

With soemthing like Neuro-sama I wouldn't doubt that Vedal is doing a lot of liftwork behind the scenes to keep sufficient context available to Neuro-sama's LLM.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#33

Post by empath75 »

2099miles wrote: post #3

This is so interesting that people want this. This is beyond the guy saying “people don’t like making music so we made ai so it’s easier and faster to just prompt it to make music” . Like in my experience the best part of d&d is the dungeon master who knows their friends making a story and details specifically for fun and the fun of the group. And the interactions between players and the dm is where I derived the mos…

Try doing this while you're driving with the gpt4o advanced audio mode. It's a nice way to kill 40 minutes or so without having to look at a screen. Just tell it you want to play an RPG with it, give it a setting, describe your character and go. It'll mostly be more of a choose your own adventure than a real RPG, but it can sometimes be quite entertaining.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#34

Post by wuliwong »

A while ago I was playing with chatgpt and had it create me a text based game. It took some coaxing but eventually it actually created a pretty compelling beginning to a game at least. This wasn't D&D, I had chatgpt just make the rules but the interesting part was creating a compelling story. Maybe it would have fallen apart after a little bit of game play but it was neat. I could see the fun of having completely unique and instantly created modules to run through.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#35

Post by utiiiD »

2099miles wrote: post #3

This is so interesting that people want this. This is beyond the guy saying “people don’t like making music so we made ai so it’s easier and faster to just prompt it to make music” . Like in my experience the best part of d&d is the dungeon master who knows their friends making a story and details specifically for fun and the fun of the group. And the interactions between players and the dm is where I derived the mos…

Agreed on DM making the experience special. The cognitive load on a DM is very high though. They have to digest information on the game setting and the monsters, synthesize scenes and react to players' interactions all the while staying true to the narrative. I think LLM's can play a big part in assisting human DMs by either providing low-fidelity ideas for "inspiraton", commonsense based on their training on D&D texts and literature or high fidelity text in some cases to be directly presented to the players.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#36

Post by potatoman22 »

cloudking wrote: post #11
Aeolun wrote: post #2

Based on my experiences with this. Keeping context relevant is the hardest part. Your human GM will remember that funny remark from the session 3 years ago, but the LLM?

Maybe this is a solution https://www.letta.com/

A context-based retrieval/memory system would be cool, too. Pull in relevant events based on the group's location and NPCs they're with.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#37

Post by moralestapia »

2099miles wrote: post #3

This is so interesting that people want this. This is beyond the guy saying “people don’t like making music so we made ai so it’s easier and faster to just prompt it to make music” . Like in my experience the best part of d&d is the dungeon master who knows their friends making a story and details specifically for fun and the fun of the group. And the interactions between players and the dm is where I derived the mos…

>This is so interesting that people want this.

Go outside. There's people for everything.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#38

Post by erosivesoul »

JohnMakin wrote: post #25
2099miles wrote: post #3

This is so interesting that people want this. This is beyond the guy saying “people don’t like making music so we made ai so it’s easier and faster to just prompt it to make music” . Like in my experience the best part of d&d is the dungeon master who knows their friends making a story and details specifically for fun and the fun of the group. And the interactions between players and the dm is where I derived the mos…

> This is so interesting that people want this I love being a DM but it is no mystery to me. Being a DM is a lot of work. And occasionally, a lot of annoyance. You not only have to facilitate (and sometimes create from scratch) an engaging story that keeps people coming back, you have to wrangle busy schedules and personalities that is often annoying. Lots of times you'll have a bunch of people willing to play, but n…

That would be my takeaway too. There is room for AI DMs, but they need to get a lot better before they're really fun to play with. I tried a few AI RP just to see how it works and it was pretty boring.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#39

Post by michaelcampbell »

esafak wrote: post #19
2099miles wrote: post #3

This is so interesting that people want this. This is beyond the guy saying “people don’t like making music so we made ai so it’s easier and faster to just prompt it to make music” . Like in my experience the best part of d&d is the dungeon master who knows their friends making a story and details specifically for fun and the fun of the group. And the interactions between players and the dm is where I derived the mos…

The modern thing to do would be to automate the game, watch the bots play each other, and make a reaction video for TikTok.

Isn't this a modern take on the yarn that ended up with students all just bringing a tape recorder to the lecture hall after the lecturer just played a pre-recorded tape as the lecture?

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#40

Post by krisoft »

2099miles wrote: post #3

This is so interesting that people want this. This is beyond the guy saying “people don’t like making music so we made ai so it’s easier and faster to just prompt it to make music” . Like in my experience the best part of d&d is the dungeon master who knows their friends making a story and details specifically for fun and the fun of the group. And the interactions between players and the dm is where I derived the mos…

> Like in my experience the best part of d&d is the dungeon master who knows their friends making a story and details specifically for fun and the fun of the group.

Sure.

There are two reason why I can think of someone making a Dungeon Master LLm.

One is that when there is no cake we eat bread.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a DM, and I love playing d&d with my friends. I totally agree with the sentiment you are sharing. But people who are willing, and able to DM for others are not evenly distributed. There is a lot more people who would like to play TTRPGs than people who is willing to step into the DM role.

So in that sense think of this as a substitutions for those games which would not happen otherwise, because they don't have a DM. Or the only person who would DM them is an ass. Or their DM has burnt out.

Is some game better than no game? Sometimes. Depends on how good that game is. And we won't know how good the substitute can be without trying. Heck maybe more people will play, and they will realise how easy is to DM actually.

The other reason is the sheer challenge of it. Dnd has a lot of rules. There are the obvious ones you can read in the book. But there are also un-written rules. Like object-permanence. If a goblin steals a diamond ring from us, and we slay them within minutes they damn well have the diamond ring on their bodies somewhere. If three displacer beasts ambush us and we slay 2 there damn well be 1 more accounted for in some sense.

There are also "story-writing" rules. If we went through hell and high-water to obtain an arrow of dragon slaying after the blacksmith told us about the legend of it, he better not just pull one out of his ass the next time we see him. If the whole lore of goddess X is that they are kind and caring then they should better be at least not cruel when we meet them. These are all hard for an LLM. They are also easy for a human to evaluate. Because we just feel when they are not right. Therefore it is a good challenge to evaluate how good we are at this "making a bucket of sand smart" task.

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