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LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

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Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#81

Post by thom »

PaulHoule wrote: post #43
JohnMakin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Personally I can't stand to run a D&D game as players take it all too seriously. I will run Toon , Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia any day, the latter without a scenario as I can kill off their all their clones in my very dangerous Alpha Complex and have them rolling on the floor laughing the whole time with a help of a stack of prerolled character sheets and some random encounter tables. (I'd expect an LLM to be able to…

I DM for early teens and I would kill for a D&D party that took it all too seriously. :)

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#82

Post by mywittyname »

lowsong wrote: post #75
mog_dev wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine for people like me who do not have anyone nearby willing to play D&D

I've been in a weekly D&D game for over a decade. I don't keep playing it because of the game of D&D (certainly not, I could rant for a long time about the game's myriad shortcomings across many editions). I play it because of the friends I play it with, because of the social connection that exists in and around the game. To play a tabletop RPG without that isn't the same thing, and to play with LLM is bankrupt of me…

People play games for a variety of reasons. While you enjoy the social aspect, others may find that to be the worst aspect of the game (or just don't have a social circle).

I grew up playing D&D alone in my room using LEGO. It was great and I still have some of the sets I built as dungeons and monsters that I built from reference pictures in the Monster Manual.

Video games are different from solo role playing. It's like trying to substitute shooting hoops in the driveway with NBA '24.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#83

Post by mlyle »

giantrobot wrote: post #76
TeMPOraL wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two reasons: 1) "LLM DM" isn't merely mean substituting for human DM in a D&D session. The same capability can be used as a component in a video game, to breathe life into the game world, have it interactively react and evolve along with the player. EDIT: Take a game like Rimworld, that relies on a scripted RNG dubbed a "storyteller", to decide what random events to hit you with and how hard. It's fun early on, but i…

> An LLM DM is exactly what could add that story, make overcoming challenges feel meaningful and allow for player decisions to actually impact the world deeply. No it's not. I don't think you're going to find an LLM with a large enough context window to have a meaningfully involving story spanning multiple sessions. An LLM isn't going to craft a story element tailored to a character, or more importantly, an individua…

His example:

Rimworld is a great universe where we think about characters' stories, and there's really just like, a couple dozen attributes and straightforward ways they interact with the game.

An LLM context window could easily have 20 times as much interpersonal state, and make it interact in much more unexpected (but plausible) ways. That's going to be a surprising and rewarding gaming experience once someone figures it out.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#84

Post by lemoncookiechip »

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?

It's that: Spacial awareness, struggling to maintain the personas (and often talking for the player/s), difficulty improvising, pacing issues, lack of initiative, and just an over reliance on prompting to keep going correctly.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#85

Post by variaga »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #39
esafak wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That was a scene from the movie "Real Genius"

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#86

Post by PaulHoule »

thom wrote: post #81
PaulHoule wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I can't stand to run a D&D game as players take it all too seriously. I will run Toon , Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia any day, the latter without a scenario as I can kill off their all their clones in my very dangerous Alpha Complex and have them rolling on the floor laughing the whole time with a help of a stack of prerolled character sheets and some random encounter tables. (I'd expect an LLM to be able to…

I DM for early teens and I would kill for a D&D party that took it all too seriously. :)

Try a simpler game. I think a lot of people think TTRPG = D&D and the world is worse off for it.

There are numerous tactics that work to face the "not serious" problems you have in a game for "young adults".

For instance, serious players get resentful when somebody not serious comes in late, forgets their character sheet, etc. You could lose either or both of them, but with a little prep you don't have to. In Paranoia it's easy to shove a preroll into their hands, give them a 1-2 minute briefing from "The Computer" and build up tension around this character who mysteriously appears (and if the new player complains that they don't know the rules tell them they're not allowed to know the rules!)

Toon is the epitome of "not serious" and, like the other two games I've mentioned, is a game where you can buy one book and have everything you need, including your first scenario.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#87

Post by drak0n1c »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #54

I try to variance of this where I was the DM and the llm played the player characters. It went okay but it was also a bit lame.

An ideal entry role for LLM in tabletop may be NPC companions/followers in the party that players/DM don't care for roleplaying or find tedious. Set it to listen in on conversations or VTT chat, and interject dialog on a rate-limited basis. Could lead to unusual situational ideas or at least humorous moments.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#88

Post by drak0n1c »

For those averse to LLM defeating the social aspect of tabletop roleplaying, perhaps a better entry role for an LLM agent is as NPC party companions/followers. Set up the agent with a detailed character sheet and hidden backstory/motivations and set it to listen in on conversations or VTT chat, and interject dialog on a non-spammy basis. Could lead to unusual situational ideas or at least humorous moments.

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#89

Post by klik99 »

thom wrote: post #77
klik99 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the previous posters point was that an LLM DM is boring due to it's generality and lacks the specific quirks of having a human DM with their own viewpoint and understanding of the players, which I agree with. I did some experiments with earlier ChatGPT models for world building and DMing and found it to be so boring, getting it to do anything interesting or giving any kind of push back was so hard. Since they…

Yep, my experience using ChatGPT as a helper is very good. It can very quickly cook up a custom monster, give it relevant stats, and create some flavourful actions and attacks to make it unique. Lately I've been trying to hook this up to D&D Beyond, as it's just some fairly simple POST payloads. If I can get to the point where I can describe a vague encounter, and run it in the Beyond encounter tracker with zero effo…

If you make progress on the api part, would be awesome to see a write up on HN about it, I'd be really interested in how this develops!

Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters

#90

Post by pbronez »

cdiamand wrote: post #16

Last year, I built a DM for myself using the OpenAI api and an elevenLabs voice generator. I asked it set my character in Baldur's Gate, so it could pull upon the huge amount of DnD source material it had been trained on. A few takeaways: 1. An LLM based DM can give the player essentially infinite richness and description on anything they ask for. 2. There is difficulty in setting the rules for the LLM to follow that…

I did something similar, but tried to get several agents to play a DnD round together. It basically worked, but was insipid.
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