I’ve used an llm to help my niece, who is a performer, and has a flair for story, but no rpg experience dm as a human - llm team up. It was very successful
LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
121–130 of 144 posts
Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
#122I am baffled as to why anyone would want this, or anything like it. Sure, it's a cool technical demo. But... the point of D&D is a social game played with others. Even if you play a D&D-like video game such as Baldur's Gate 3 (which I'd argue is a fundamentally different experience to playing a tabletop RPG anyway), you're experiencing a world and a story that someone else has crafted. What's the point of replacing t…
There's a saying in DnD:
"Bad DnD is worse than no DnD"
I'll agree. I've had bad groups and, wow, yeah. I'd rather have just doom scrolled my phone for 4 hours.
So, an AIDnD is wonky now, but it's better than bad DnD (at least with some futzing about that I have done myself).
To really reach here: I think you're placing value on the thing due to the effort involved. That's kind of an old school Marxist way of assigning prices to goods. I'm trying to point out that the value isn't that way for everyone. The 'new' market way of assigning prices is 'whatever someone will pay for it'. And in that very tortured analogy, that means that AIDnD is just as valid if someone likes it enough to do it. The background effort isn't part of the determination of value, necessarily.
Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
#123The single greatest appeal of Pen and Paper RPGs is human interaction, where obviously the DM has the most important role.
We have a solution for playing RPGs when you have no DM. It is called a "Video game", you can even play it with your friends.
What I have used LLMs for is helping me prepare for certain things, giving ideas for organizations, quests, characters, etc. . They are pretty good at that, although I would avoid relying on them during actual gameplay.
Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
#124Earlier 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…
I tend to agree. I used to run Call of Cthulhu in high school, and there was a lot of preparation involved in running a good scenario. Some people are good at winging it and making stuff up as they go along. I never was. The best experiences for me and my players was always when I'd meticulously designed my own scenario, or used a store-bought scenario and read it thoroughly. Either way, hours of prep. I would love t…
> one person in a group of players maintains the role of a master storyteller, but the AI is ready to fill in details or suggest ways to get the players back on track
As a player and very occasional DM myself, filling in details and trying to get players back on track is where is the fun and challenge. AI could definitely be useful to handle all the paperwork (fight resolution and so on) though
Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
#125This 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…
One of the growing trends these days is solitaire RPGs -- where people play alone as both player and Game/Dungeon Master. Typically this isn't done by AI but by rolling on various tables (sometimes called "GM Emulators"). Not everbody has the time or even enjoys the extrovert pressure of a traditional social RPG. A related concept is the "cooperative RPG" which does have multiple players but no DM so everyone can pla…
This is interesting.
I grew up with “choose your own adventure” books which were like a solo adventure: (If you go on the north road turn to page 34 if you follow the river page 57)
Many board games now have a solo mode with an automated player with tables and dice to help randomness.
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3238902/what-is-the-best-so...
Obviously there are adventure video games. Some of the new ones often have interesting back stories, really amazing world building and dnd like adventures. Horizon zero dawn, the Witcher, Star Wars outlaws among many others. “baldurs gate” really gave me dnd vibes (I played through that one multiplayer).
Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the growing trends these days is solitaire RPGs -- where people play alone as both player and Game/Dungeon Master. Typically this isn't done by AI but by rolling on various tables (sometimes called "GM Emulators"). Not everbody has the time or even enjoys the extrovert pressure of a traditional social RPG. A related concept is the "cooperative RPG" which does have multiple players but no DM so everyone can pla…
This is interesting. I grew up with “choose your own adventure” books which were like a solo adventure: (If you go on the north road turn to page 34 if you follow the river page 57) Many board games now have a solo mode with an automated player with tables and dice to help randomness. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3238902/what-is-the-best-so... Obviously there are adventure video games. Some of the new ones often…
That style of book led to one type of solo adventure -- the "numbered paragraph" type that is basically a choose your own adventure book except that combat and other such situations are resolved using the RPG rules. Those still exist, but more recently, the goal is to make things more open ended and flexible, at the cost of having the player make decisions on what things mean -- like the player might roll on some tables that say "orcs" and "merchants" and the player needs to invent their own explanation of what that means -- do they encounter orcs attacking merchants? Or orcs who are merchants?
Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
#127Yay, can't wait to read this. I spent a lot of time tuning prompts for gpt4 DM sessions, and I had a lot of fun. It has SO much potential, and I was pleasantly surprised!
I am not really considering mainstream commercialization, but I just found it really fun to interact with. We just need a customized model full of fantasy text and a little DM RLHF. It's essentially just a story-telling llm, which obviously will need some work before consistent narratives can be delivered to the user.
Not an AI expert or anything, just wanted to share my excitement about this. I urge you to try it out, if you're into this kind of thing. Tell ChaptGPT it's a DM, explain the rules, give it some context on how deliver the narrative and player choices. You can give some story or character exposition to give it a baseline. Its not too bad.
Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
#128I am baffled as to why anyone would want this, or anything like it. Sure, it's a cool technical demo. But... the point of D&D is a social game played with others. Even if you play a D&D-like video game such as Baldur's Gate 3 (which I'd argue is a fundamentally different experience to playing a tabletop RPG anyway), you're experiencing a world and a story that someone else has crafted. What's the point of replacing t…
> the point of D&D is a social game played with others
That's one of the points, or a benefit maybe, but its not the WHOLE point. Some people just enjoy RP and fantasy worlds, so a single-player campaign would still be enjoyable (to me, at least, but maybe I'm weird). I def don't see this replacing DMs in real groups any time soon.
Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine for people like me who do not have anyone nearby willing to play D&D
Right, but why not play BG3? You know that an LLM is not going to provide any meaningful narrative, or craft a thought provoking story.
> You know that an LLM is not going to provide any meaningful narrative, or craft a thought provoking story
The title of the paper is "Exploring the POTENTIAL of LLM-based agents..." Right now, yeah, just play BG3. But the context of the discussion is its potential, which is certainly worth discussing imo.
Re: LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters
#130[dead]