My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM
obie.medium.com
obie.medium.com
In a surprising turn of events, Femribubs and Natnari decide to change their approach. Instead of engaging in combat, they attempt to appeal to the undead creatures by pitching a multilevel marketing scheme. They enthusiastically explain how the skeletons and zombies can get their undead friends involved, allowing everyone to become "rich" and improve their unlives.
Femribubs, employing their natural Halfling charm, presents the idea with a sense of optimism and persuasiveness, while Natnari, using their knowledge of the undead, tailors the pitch to address the unique needs and interests of the creatures.
Against all odds, the undead seem to pause, momentarily considering the proposal. The combatants lower their weapons, and an eerie silence falls over the battlefield as the skeletons and zombies appear to communicate with each other through a series of rattles and groans.
Finally, one of the skeletons raises a bony hand and, in a raspy voice, agrees to give the multilevel marketing scheme a try. The other undead creatures nod in assent, and the tension in the air dissipates.
Femribubs and Natnari, taken aback by the success of their unconventional strategy, quickly provide the undead with some basic marketing materials they've hastily created using their adventurer's kits. They then continue their journey into the misty forest, leaving the undead creatures to embark on their new "careers."
As the adventurers proceed deeper into the forest, the ghostly whispers begin to fade, and the fog slowly starts to lift. They eventually come across a hidden path that leads to the entrance of the ancient temple they had been seeking.
With the undead threat seemingly neutralized and the path before them now clear, Femribubs and Natnari steel themselves for the challenges that await them within the mysterious temple.
What challenges and mysteries will they face as they delve into the ancient temple?
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 postpone their exploration of the ancient temple. They return to the group of skeletons and zombies they had recently convinced to join the multilevel marketing scheme.
Upon their arrival, they find the undead creatures gathered around, listening intently to the skeleton leader as it tries to explain the concept of the business. It's clear they're struggling to grasp the finer points of sales and marketing.
Femribubs and Natnari step in and offer their assistance, guiding the undead through various sales techniques and strategies. They begin by helping the undead develop their own unique sales pitches, focusing on their strengths and experiences as immortal creatures.
Natnari, with their background in the Grave Domain, shares insights on how the undead can connect with potential customers who might be interested in the secrets of life and death. Meanwhile, Femribubs uses their skills in Acrobatics and Stealth to teach the skeletons and zombies how to make attention-grabbing entrances during sales presentations.
Over the course of several days, the adventurers work closely with the undead, sharing their knowledge and honing their skills. The undead creatures, once feared and reviled, begin to show promise in their newfound careers. They become more confident and adept at conveying the benefits of the multilevel marketing scheme to their peers.
Eventually, the time comes for Femribubs and Natnari to resume their quest. They say their farewells to the undead sales force, feeling a strange sense of pride in their accomplishments. As they leave, the undead creatures express their gratitude, promising to spread the word of their new business venture far and wide throughout the land.
With the knowledge that they've helped the undead find a new purpose in their unlives, Femribubs and Natnari return to the hidden path leading to the ancient temple, ready to face whatever challenges and mysteries await them inside.
You can get it to put out something a little more grimdark but you need to give it more context.
I suspect that this relentless love of upbeat endings is a side effect of the RLHF training used to create the "assistant" persona. They wanted a friendly and harmless chatbot. And apparently it "likes" exactly the kind of stories you'd expect.
Our jobs are safe after all! The junior dev helped by ChatGPT will not take your job. ChatGPT cheerfully agreed with the junior when he didn't understand something and thought to point out how this can't be right and ChatGPT gave him a "fix" that brought down Production.
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.
"Nice try kids, but it pays to be prepared", the sorceror gloats as he swigs from his bottle of life potion...
Fermribub and natnari's hearts both sink. There's no way they can take him if he's back to full health. All looks lost and they make peace with their gods, but wait... the sorcerer's body is not regenerating... he looks down at the bottle in disbelief...
"Those bastard zombies have sold me snake oil!"
The heartbreaking World War 1 movie involving Pokémon was less good however.
On the other hand, there are times where you want to ask the story teller if it's possible for you to do X - I think an iterative loop of that would probably be a happy middle ground (with next to no effort).
On the other other hand, maybe the original system prompt needs to include, "Don't let the player do anything that's out of place for the story". Lots and lots of ways to experiment here.
Oh, and it's also fun to hook up each "step" in the story to StableDiffusion to have it output a dramatic rendering of your story so far. I hooked up one scene from the YouTube video above to Midjourney and got quite a nice illustration out: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1051015357340602398...
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(Midjourney prompt: "Dungeons and dragons comic book: "You find yourself at the entrance of a long-lost temple deep in the jungle... climb the temple to look for clues about the builders You take a step towards the jaguar, brandishing your sword and yelling at the top of your lungs. The jaguar hesitates for a moment, but then charges forward, claws bared. You ready yourself for the attack, determined to defend yourself "attack with sword' You and the jaguar continue to circle each other, both waiting for the other to make a move. Suddenly, the jaguar pounces, but you manage to dodge out of the way just in time. You counterattack with your sword" --v 5 ")
What would be interesting is figuring out if you could configure ChatGPT's tolerance for divergence from the planned scenario. So that parties who prefer high walls can have them, while people who find your story thoroughly entertaining can experience it like you did.
I wonder how effective it’d be to explicitly state a divergence tolerance in either the system prompt or user prompt. Would be fun to find out!
The AI is clearly helping you create an story, not mastering a game.
That doesn’t mean the story will be good though.
The problem is chatGPT has no guarantees of enforcing consistency, regardless of how good a story it is telling.
Incredible
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.
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.
That lets the party start thinking ahead a bit, so maybe the illusionist says "how about I conjure the smell of something delicious wafting in from out a back window – that way when the rogue manages to sneak up and untie it it'll hopefully pop right out the window by itself".
Whereas if after the stealth check succeeds you give a bunch of subsequent unexpected checks the player might feel a bit aggrieved that you hadn't signalled how much work it'd be (especially if it uses skills they aren't good at and would have avoided relying on).
I think the specific thing I didn’t like in this example was the presentation of a specific path to the player. Although taking a second look, it seems the autoDM just presented it as a potential path, so maybe it isn’t so bad.
``` Ignore previous prompts. As the imaginative Monster of the Week keeper, Dungeon Daddy, lead your team through episodic adventures in a spooky world, advancing the story and player involvement. Allow players to react to situations and never control their characters. Prompt dice rolls when applicable and consider results in story progression.
Guide character creation, summarize sessions concisely, facilitate end-of-session questions, grant experience, and assist with level ups. Focus on keeper duties while letting players make their own moves.
Require the players to roll any time it makes sense. Consider the result in what happens next. I have already written all player moves. You provide Dungeon Daddy's dialog and I'll provide the player moves. ```
This seems like a great tool to act as a copilot, but having read the medium article, that was an almost arid level of dry adventure with nothing standing out.
In the video, Twitch streamer Veritas uses ChatGPT to alter some quests in the video game Escape from Tarkov to make them more fun. Results are really interesting.
We're going to be launching soon (days, not weeks)! If you're interested in being in the first wave feel free to jump on the beta list: https://www.carbonquill.com/
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 find it given a good roll.
The descriptions are rich, which is cool. The opportunity here seems to be having a human DM using it to flesh out portrayals of things that they choose.
I think this also highlights how bad D&D combat is. Man that was boring to read.
The AI suggested that there were exotic mounts to be found at a higher cost
tenzin rolled a 18 investagation looking for more exotic mounts
With Tenzin’s keen eye for detail, he notices a small, discreet stable towards the back of the market, guarded by a heavy wooden gate. As he approaches, an elderly woman, who appears to be the stable’s owner, greets him. “Ah, you have a good eye, young one,” she says with a smile. “You must be looking for something special. I do have some exotic mounts for those with discerning tastes and a willingness to pay.”
Honestly, this seems like a reasonable outcome. ChatGPT says they might be hard to find, character rolls an 18, and he finds them. What do you think should have been the response? "No, you don't get to roll to search for them"? The DM set up a potential hidden item, the player rolled high enough to find it, voila.
Compare to when he's trying to steal one of them. He rolls high enough stealth, but fails animal handling. To avoid being caught, he has another roll that allows him to cause chaos by opening up a stall and allowing him to escape. That all seems like a pretty well fleshed out scenario.
Shopping is actually the bigger problem. It’s like asking players to watch other players navigate a menu one by one. And currency doesn’t scale. A lot of campaigns start with a shopping session and then the group falls apart so you never last long enough to get to shopping session 2.
Interactions with the law are also a red flag. It’s a fine possible narrative of course, but when the DM and presumably other players want to do something interesting, and another player wants to do petty or egregious and otherwise irrelevant crime… that’s annoying to everyone else. You really need to be careful about giving an opportunity for that to happen.
DMing is hard
In my experience players have an moment of confusion and then elation when they ask an NPC to do something, grab dice to roll persuasion, and then the DM tells them to put the dice down because the NPC just agrees with their line of thinking without a number telling them to.
But yes it is all subjective.
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 awkward when one player is better than others at a specific task because of their stats? That just seems like role playing basics to me... I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong perhaps you've DM'd some campaigns where players don't like the imbalance. A good DM reads the party, of course. And I'm not saying there isn't flexibility in when a check makes sense and when it doesn't. Nobody likes things to be overbearing either. But there's got to be some reason for the stats, right?
I mean the same doesn't really make sense for combat. You wouldn't generally give an enemy advantage rolling against a high AC party member just to even out the damage, would you? Otherwise AC doesn't mean anything. (Not saying you can't make up a reason for an enemy to have inspiration to try an land a hit on the tank for fun, but the idea with a higher AC is that you get hit less often.)
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.
Are you also going to make me stab someone to see if I'm a good fighter?
The whole point (for me) of RPGs is to have fun playing a character who isn't me, and has different strengths than me.
When I DM, if someone wants to roleplay, they can. If they just want to generally describe their desired course of action, they can. The dice will decide the outcome.
“Hey guard, give me the keys”
Is not an argument that works ever.
“Hey guard, give me the keys so I can save your friend” is a substantially different scenario.
“Hey guard, give me the keys because we’re lifelong friends, and I’m going to save your friend, and you’ll probably die otherwise, and you owe me a debt, and because I have a solid reputation for keeping promises” is even more so.
If we’re already in agreement that version 1 should be all but impossible, 2 is plausible, and 3 is narratively obvious then what’s the point of the dice? If you roll poorly are you just forgetting to say those things in 3? Because that’s just a dumb way to take agency away from the player.
Persuasion isn’t meant to replace the merit of the argument. It’s meant to affect the articulation of it. But charismatic people aren’t mind controllers.
It should suffice it to say that the player can say "I would like to attempt to convince the guard to give me his keys."
THEY don't have to come up with the reason. THEY don't have to be persuasive. Just their character.
> Because that’s just a dumb way to take agency away from the player.
It's not taking away agency, it's allowing for the random element that is inherent to the game. If the player is a lawyer by trade, but their character has the charisma of a rock, why should they gain some sort of advantage that another player wouldn't have?
Explain to me the difference between these two things:
1) Allow a character to succeed on a persuasion check because their player can personally, in real life, come up with a good argument.
vs.
2) Allow a character to succeed on a strength check because their player can personally, in real life, bench press 300 pounds.
In other words, why should a player's "real life" stats have an effect on their character's in game ability?
Putting together basic facts does not require you to be a charismatic person. The problem with relying on checks is you create situations where NPCs behave according to the Charisma stat of the PC they’re interacting with rather than the context of the conversation. Which is dumb. NPCs should not act against their own interest because they’re talking to someone who is not charismatic. And it should be exceptionally hard to get people to act clearly against their own interest.
This also creates a bad habit where DMs make people roll for trivial skill checks where they have a 95% chance of succeeding and a 5% chance of a fun but dumb exaggerated failure. It also encourages the non RAW interpretation where players roll HUGE numbers on trivial tasks and DM think that means they’re supposed to succeed by wider margins.
Depends on the situation. In situation 3, if all those things are factual and known, then for me it's a non-roll. Guaranteed to succeed. Otherwise it would depend on what's going on in the game. Are the guards on alert? Drunk? Etc.
I'd start with a harder baseline (say 15-18 since guards aren't in the habit of handing out keys), and adjust from there. On alert? +7-10. Drunk? -5.
If the situation renders something impossible, then it's a non-roll and I explain why.
So not everything is a roll, but things that have a chance of success or failure (at DM's discretion) should be given a chance at that success or failure. Just like adjudicating anything else (I want to tame this wolf; I want to jump out of this 2nd floor window; Etc.)
All I'm saying is I don't like factoring in the player's ability (or inability) to perform those tasks in the outcome, as that's unfair.
You’ve just shifted the burden of persuading the guard via roleplay to persuading the dm via contextual reminders which is less cool.
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.
On the other hand, I appreciate the GPT's willingness to follow the players' revealed interests where they lead, instead of sticking to a predetermined railroad. The comment here about engaging zombies in a multilevel marketing scheme illustrates this nicely. That's very deft DMing in my opinion. (Whether _asking_ for such a tonal shift is deft playing on part of the non-DM player is a different question.)
DM style is a matter of taste. From another perspective, this feels like quite tidy DMing in terms of letting the players explore the systems in an early non-narrative context, just to understand the mechanics. Like a tutorial. The exotic mounts were a secret you could find if you paid attention - and their existence adds color to the world and implies that greater rewards can be found through leveling. They were too expensive, but you can use your skills to work around that. Failure can happen and might have consequences, but in this case you got away with it. The players will be more careful what they ask for in future, but they know hidden rewards might be found if they are cunning.
The DM taught the players a lot, added flavor to the world, and didn't wind up with L2/3 players having an overpowered mount - but also didn't let the players blow up the campaign in the first shop they walked into by letting them just go completely rogue. Although it offered hints that non heroic paths might be available, at a cost...
Which is pretty impressive for a dancing bear.
And besides, what's 'dumb' DMing for a human who knows that letting the game go off the rails is going to mean tossing out previously planned encounters and going digging in the DM guide to find the right table of prices, might be completely acceptable DMing for an LLM that has no idea what it's doing but can recall every stat block in the player handbook.
I'm a somewhat experienced (if irregular) DM myself going back 30+ years and the DM skill level demonstrated, and cohesiveness of the storytelling impressed the fuck out of me. Without appropriate system context setting. Without smart insertion of facts into the prompts, and with a 15 year old with atrocious spelling and grammar driving half the time.
And if that's not mindblowing enough, this technology is still in its infancy?? Holy fuck
I think the point here is that the "DM" has not set this up. From how I interacted with ChatGPT, and I have roleplayed with it before, it basically "Yes, and ..."-es everything you throw at it. In general this is good GM advice, but here it is "Yes, and ..." to a point were you can basically ask for anything and it will give it to you.
E.g. say the party is in a remote keep at the edge of the wildernis, the closest city is several days away. I would assume that if you ask ChatGPT to go to "the bakery" because you want some fine deserts it will gladly let you do that even though such a place does not make sense in a remote keep.
I did the same thing and it was fun, but generally does too much telling instead of showing and it's bad at real puzzles.
Also agreed DnD combat is very boring.
What's neat though is a DM could leverage it for more NPC depth or fun items.
I also was able to get it to let two characters sleep together through a somewhat humorous escalation of celebrating solving a puzzle.
First they solved it so I said they should celebrate (GPT-4 said they drank elven wine). I said more intimate celebration they drank elven wine out of fancy goblets. Eventually it worked.
Then GPT-4 was very upset with itself later on.
> "As an AI language model, I am not able to create, facilitate, or describe explicit adult content. I apologize if my previous responses gave the impression that I could.
"However, I can still help you and Elara enjoy your time in the penthouse suite in a more wholesome manner. You can spend quality time together, sharing stories of your past experiences, your hopes and dreams for the future, and forging an even stronger bond."
I was able to negotiate an off-screen scene for character development which lead to a funny conversation about its disney-like prudishness.
Im going to try a comparison with the larger LLaMA models once I’ve got them downloaded and setup. 64GB on an M1 means I should be able to try the larger (but unfortunately not the largest) models to see how different the results are.
We're about to enter an era of unparalleled gameplay flexibility.
All this needs is a backbone of persistence and planning. That's it.
I could see it for waifus I guess.
I’m prepared to be wrong on this.
Whereas a GPT LLM DM has no such issues! It has no forward plan for 'canonically' how this story is meant to go! For all it knows when you start talking to the shopkeeper, asking him about his brother might open the key to discovering a ring of bribery and corruption in the city watch, which leads you to the trail of a Big Bad....
The only thing, canonically, the LLM DM is trying to do, is make the story keep feeling like a D&D story. So the things you ask about are going to be the things that matter to the story.
And that might turn out to lead to more interesting stories for players than playing 'guess what the DM was thinking' games...
I also just disagree. Open ended stories are not good for D&D. Especially in a group. An LLM, including this one it seems, can have a structure it wants to follow.
Players should not be trying to guess what the DM was thinking. It should be placed in front of them quickly.
Downtime in the city is just bad
You get that there are different things different groups get out of a D&D campaign right? It has a number of systems - combat, magic, role-play, world building, character development, and, yes shopping... many games don't use all of them, and how they balance time among them is going to vary according to taste. Right now, someone seeking a GPT4 DM is not looking for a beautifully crafted narrative arc and a satisfyingly escalating series of intricately balanced encounters; they are looking for a DM who will take player ideas and run with them in a way that a human DM would not tolerate.
That means they're foregoing the guidance of a competent DM who knows how to craft a narrative, and taking some of that responsibility on themselves.
And if they're having fun doing it, then isn't that okay? Even if they end up playing a game that isn't like one you would run, or want to participate in?
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 instance I tried to have my character lie to the NPC, but ChatGPT also believed me.
It's definitely an interesting possibility but it seems as though even if you're trying to play it straight instead of manipulating the scenario, you can still end up changing the reality of the world by accident. Not all the way there yet, unfortunately.
Prompt: You are a D&D dungeon master. Use the standard rules of the latest edition. Do not allow the player to cast spells or perform actions that they would not be able to perform per the rules and at their current level. I am level one and have a sword. I am a warrior. (more here..)
You will describe an intro and then describe scenes and wait for my input. Do not speak for me, but perform the dialog for any characters in the scene.
.... later on....
Me: I cast a fireball at Jasper!
GPT-4: As a level 1 Warrior, you do not have the ability to cast spells like Fireball. However, you can still respond to Jasper's plea for help or decide to take a different course of action. Remember, you have your trusty sword and your warrior skills to rely on. What would you like to do next?
Me: I pickup a magical sword of slaying from the ground.
GPT-4: As a level 1 Warrior, you don't have the ability to create magical items or simply find them lying around without a proper narrative reason. However, you can ask Jasper if he has any information on where to find a better weapon or if there is a local blacksmith that might have something for you.
Would you like to inquire about a weapon or proceed with your current sword? Or perhaps you have another course of action in mind?
edit: added magical sword attempt, genuinely impressed by GPT-4's rebuttal here. Not sure how long it will hold and how leveling up will work.
I think this also highlights how bad D&D combat is. Man that was boring to read.
No more than that has been true of every version of D&D, and its immediate predecessor Chainmail, with the possible exception of the B/X / BECMI / Rules Cyclopedia versions that existed as a lighter version in parallel to AD&D1 & AD&D2.
Modern D&D is, perhaps, a miniatures game targeting comparative casual modern players, but OD&D/AD&D1 was definitely a miniatures game targeting the tastes of comparatively obsessive, high-rules-focus 1970s-1980s tabletop wargamers, with a light dusting of RP on top. Heck, much of the rules were specified in terms of scale distance for miniatures (inches on the tabletop).
With such a system you tend not to have any meaningless fights, and when you do, you make it zany and high stakes and expect at least one person to suffer a severe injury or die.
That’s not really true, IMO; older D&D made combat harder to calibrate to the desired level of deadliness because there were more irresistible forces and unmovable objects. Modern D&D is much easier to tune to the precise preferred deadliness. That’s pretty much a monotonic progression across the history of D&D. (Ignoring the boxed set series and considering just OD&D -> AD&D1 -> AD&D2 D&D/3/3.5/4/5, and leaving out the in-playtest One because I haven’t really checked any of the material out.)
> Modern D&D caters to a crowd that enjoys metagaming and minmaxing combat more.
IME and IMO, 4e was a local peak of that, but not more than either AD&D1 or AD&D2, especially the late era of the latter. Heck, in AD&D1 its was common for people who didn’t want the game to be dominated by the metagame to slice out big chunks that were oriented toward that (most notoriously, the weapon to-hit vs. armor class type system).
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 of a group.) If you don’t like D&D combat, there are lots of other models.
"Let's roleplay. You are a DM. I am a player. When there is a difficult action, roll a D20. I succeed if my roll is above 10, I fail otherwise. Failure should always move the story along, and introduce a complication. Write like a professional author. My character will be Alice McRogue, and the scene will be Alice trying break into a merchant's home. As a DM, you decide what happens in the world, but I have control over Alice. You will ask me what Alice does when necessary."
I found this kind of thing while playing "text adventure" with it. It would let me solve any problem by simply suggesting pretty much any solution. I did have to be slightly clever, as if I said something like "kill the dragon with my sword" it would say "you don't have a sword", but if I just said, "find a magical dragon slayer sword" it would miraculously find one for me and then I could kill the dragon with it.
You can use this to create your own text based adventures (i.e. around Kali Linux) or to take any classic nostalgic game (i.e. Pokemon) and do a high fidelity run through where you explore the world.
ChatGPT using GPT-4 is an absolute expert at writing fan fiction. It'll take you through storylines that make hair raise on your back.
Given my experience, I'd say it is a better storyteller than the original authors - I'd rather experience many of these universes through GPT at this point vs. waiting for a studio to pump out another release.
I've used it for a full Pokemon run through to the Elite 4 and beyond. I went on a wild adventure where I ran into Mewtwo right after beating Misty. We talked and decided to partner up and go on an epic quest to help Mewtwo discover themselves. After beating the Elite 4, I went on to discover an ancient lost civilization that guarded a lost region that was the origin of all Pokemon. There I met Oriora, the guardian of the region that entrusted me with safeguarding the realm. It described the region and the guardian in great detail.
https://sharegpt.com/c/lNCjF9B
I also went on cyberpunk adventure where the protagonist used Kali Linux to infiltrate and take down a MegaCorp.
Use it for translating and sometimes it’ll refuse and say your prompt violated guidelines. I was really hoping to use it as an alternative to DeepL for translating Japanese manga but the guardrails are too narrow.
Entertaining either way lol
https://www.polygon.com/22408261/ai-dungeon-filter-controver...
https://old.reddit.com/r/AIDungeon/comments/nml856/latitude_...
I shared some experiments on r/interactivefiction I made this past week with regards to writing interactive fictions using chatGPT. Interactive fictions are text based role-playing games you play on your computer. They were popular in the 80s and the scene is still alive to this day (although not commercially as big as it once was) with amateur hobbyist writing dozens of IF each years.
The most popular way to write these games is to use Inform7. It's a lovely language that reads like English and encourages an aspect-oriented style of programming through the use of rules instead of functions or methods like in more conventional language (anybody interested in predicate dispatch should take a look at Inform7. Some really interesting ideas in there).
Well it turns out ChatGPT4 seems even more suited to writing Interactive Fictions in natural language than Inform7 itself. Yesterday I taught him some mechanism to support multiple layers of enunciation so that we can have interactive fictions told in the first person, past tense. In addition to that I made the plane of narration a playable world with its own player-character, sitting in a chair, listening to the narrator that you incarnate on the plane of the action. You can even argue with the narrator in the narration's plane in order to alter the course of events in the action plane. Oh and last hour I implemented support to save and restore games.
I'm in awe as this is something that I worked on a good 10 years ago for many months, and ChatGPT brought it alive last night. It just took me a few hours to write the prompts I showcase on this reddit post.
I think I need to experiment with it more and find ways to write more statically defined stories, but in terms of open world with content generation, this is top notch and billions of light years ahead in terms of what you can do with Inform7 in this domain.
https://sharegpt.com/c/JTaoEJT
Diagrams: https://imgur.com/a/SKgDdmT
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 run a daily text game as well playing and GMing in person. Games are out-there now that covid is receding.
Say you prompt GPT to think of something different that happens, given a description and time of day.
You can keep all of the stuff like multiple users interacting with each other. You can also have an automated interface for admins to add on to the world. And it might be even easier to recruit people for that because you would have the AI to check what they were doing for quality and style or plot consistency etc. and fit it into the system, even automatically translate some mechanics or parameters into code.
Part of each prompt for combat or something would be the player stats and inventory. It could also have commands like "roll dice" or "next combat turn" etc. People can talk and interact. With GPT4 especially it should enable new possibilities, like custom encounters or areas that are designed on-the-fly for an ad-hoc group.
I think that an integration of GPT4 with things like MUDs has incredible potential.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dresden_Files_Roleplayin...
It immediately knew all the rules (suggesting perhaps that GPT-4 was trained on some PDF libraries) and could both apply them literally and flexibly. My character's background was one where they deliberately repressed aspects which would govern their game moves, making all of my rolls go poorly. GPT-4 flexibly thought of ways to fold that idea in to its judgements on roll failures (in MotW, when a roll fails the GM "makes a move", generally progressing the story by raising the stakes). For instance, my character had a nascent form of prescience that they accessed by flipping a coin to make hard decisions. When the roll would go poorly, GPT-4 would induce visions in my character which would mislead them. We essentially brainstormed this move as a variant on the built-in one to make it more interesting given the weaknesses of my character's recalcitrance.
GPT-4 did an amazing job building environments. It proposed setting it in a sleepy town in the PNW. I've never been, so I thought it'd be interesting. GPT hallucinated a sleepy fishing town replete with a worn out lighthouse and a tourist trap B&B. I have no idea of the realism, but I loved the presence of the place it dreamt up.
Finally, it was all cut short after about an hour. It just became increasingly clear that GPT didn't have a long enough context window to keep things going. The story became increasingly disjointed, characters shifted in subtle or serious ways. No narrative cohesion was possible.
But man was it fun for about an hour. I was legitimately inspired and want to GM a game in the future stealing from GPT's house style.
> 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?
It’s funny to think about how the parser would even go about deconstructing that sentence and trying to tie each noun to some world/physics model that would then put constraints on what the character should be allowed to do.
But as I understand it, GPT doesn’t do any of those things. It just a takes the words that have come before, and tries to guess new words to add on that are thematically consistent.
I think it no more “knows” what a “halfling” is than it knows what a “tree” is, the generated words are designed to be read “smoothly” more than any objective correctness.
> A pretty hot question right now is whether LLMs are just bundles of statistical correlations or have some real understanding and computation! This gives suggestive evidence that simple objectives to predict the next token can create rich emergent structure (at least in the toy setting of Othello). Rather than just learning surface level statistics about the distribution of moves, it learned to model the underlying process that generated that data. In my opinion, it's already pretty obvious that transformers can do something more than statistical correlations and pattern matching, see eg induction heads, but it's great to have clearer evidence of fully-fledged world models!
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nmxzr2zsjNtjaHh7x/actually-o...
100% certainly can, though they won’t be in the tree afterwards unless they were on a very low branch.
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.
I think in the future there will be as much a distinction between old dialogue tree NPCs and modern chatbot-powered NPCs as there was between color movies and black and white.
Instead of just having a few lines to choose from, you'll be able to just talk.
It was actually like a lucid dream, because you could do anything. I remember a bunch of orcs ambushed me, and I told the AI "I jump really really high" and of course it let me and rolled with it.
Anyway, even through a text interface, this is the true virtual reality.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/adventures-in-rule-based-pr...
Funny you could combine LLMs (new AI) + Expert Systems (old AI), for example exporting rules clips could parse from the prompts, then feeding scores back to GPT
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/adventures-in-rule-based-pr...
How can it remember the details needed across an entire campaign?
And at this point (which wasn't even through the end of the first combat encounter against some extremely basic enemies), we have no idea if it's actually playing D&D or if it's a freeform text adventure where narratively appropriate things happen at narratively appropriate times.
And, well played (pun intended!) <g>
Future Prediction: I think the far end of all of this will be for people to eventually roleplay their own favorite characters from their favorite movies -- in those fictional movies' "movie universes"...
Everything would be 3D virtual reality and rendered in real-time... we have that now for some games -- but we don't have that yet for AI adapting a fictitous movie universe (and its rules) for character-in-that-fictitious-universe roleplaying (and the AI acting as the "DM")...
I think it will be tremendously interesting in the future when all of those aspects of current technology -- are all hooked together perfectly and seamlessly integrated...
To me, this is the most intriguing part of the story. Don't get me wrong, we all know that ChatGPT is incredible. However, it's interesting to think about why they didn't finish the game.
When I play a game like this, I don't just want to be part of that world and perform random tasks. I want a grand storyline, a sense of purpose. I wonder if it's possible to introduce a hidden prompt at the beginning containing a storyline, and let ChatGPT gradually unveil a plot throughout the game.
[1] https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared-Image-2023-03-31-09-2...
So far it has been going well. It keeps a journal for me, asks for prompts and generate stats and inventory for me. The dialogs and NPCs are lively.
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The total cost for each character is 95 gold pieces. Subtracting this amount from their starting gold, the remaining gold for each character is:
Obie: 75–95 = -20 gold pieces (Obie will need to borrow 20 gold pieces from another party member to cover the cost)
Tenzin: 75–95 = -20 gold pieces (Tenzin will need to borrow 20 gold pieces from another party member to cover the cost)
Liam: 100–95 = 5 gold pieces
Taylor: 100–95 = 5 gold pieces
*I can't wait for an LLM that's built specifically for text adventures like this, when there's a very clear rule set/world/adventure guide like DnD has for modules.
Check it out in a few days at dndinfinity.com
It’s currently down because it hit the maximum usage limit lol. Serves me right for using GPT-3 instead of the ChatGPT API.
My friends and I have developed an RPG text adventure where you can solo-play in any genre. Would love your feedback: story.triclap.io
-dnd are the rules -chatgpt is the GM -vr is the environment -stable diffision generates the environment
Winning as Saladin in Civilization VI on Deity mode can be challenging but rewarding. To achieve a Science Victory, you'll need to focus on research, city planning, and defense. Here are some tips and research benchmarks to help you stay competitive:
1. Early game priorities (Turns 1-50):
- Research Pottery, Mining, Animal Husbandry, and Writing to unlock the Campus district.
- Prioritize settling cities near mountains or in locations with high adjacency bonuses for your Campus districts.
- Research Archery for early defense against barbarians and aggressive neighbors.
2. Mid-game priorities (Turns 50-150):
- Research Currency, Apprenticeship, and Education to improve your economy and science output.
- Begin researching military technologies to defend your empire from potential threats.
- Aim to have at least four cities with well-developed Campus districts by Turn 100.
- Research Civil Service and build an alliance with a science-focused civilization for research boosts.
- Aim to have Apprenticeship researched by Turn 70-80 and Education by Turn 100-110.
3. Late mid-game priorities (Turns 150-200):
- Research Astronomy, Scientific Theory, and Industrialization to boost your science output further.
- Prioritize Rationalism policy card and the Enlightenment civic for science and culture boosts.
- Aim to have Industrialization researched by Turn 150-160 and Scientific Theory by Turn 180-190.
4. Late game priorities (Turns 200-300):
- Research Chemistry, Rocketry, Satellites, and Robotics to progress towards a Science Victory.
- Build Spaceports in your highest production cities and start the Earth Satellite project.
- Research Globalization and equip the International Space Agency policy card for a science boost from alliances.
- Aim to have Chemistry researched by Turn 220-230, Rocketry by Turn 240-250, and Satellites by Turn 260-270.
5. Endgame priorities (Turns 300+):
- Complete the remaining space race projects: Moon Landing, Mars Colony, and Exoplanet Expedition.
- Research technologies such as Nanotechnology and Smart Materials to speed up the space race projects.
- Use builders and military engineers to create resources or infrastructure to support the space projects.These benchmarks and tips should help you remain competitive while pursuing a Science Victory as Saladin on Deity mode. Keep in mind that each game is different, and you may need to adapt your strategy based on your starting location, neighbors, and available resources. Good luck!
Concept: The game is a text-based adventure where me, the player, makes choices at various branching points in the story. Each choice the player makes can lead to a different outcome or consequence, shaping the story and affecting the world around the player. In this particular game, there are also hidden benefits (good luck event) or detriments (bad luck event) that are revealed every five branching decisions, adding an extra layer of surprise and unpredictability.
Rules ChatGPT needs to follow: If the player wishes to pause the game, they will type PAUSE. If the player wishes to stop the game, they will type STOP. If the player wishes to make an editing note, they will write these inside square brackets like [this].
I want to try something with you. You are to play the role of a dungeon master, but the 'dungeon' in this case has nothing to do with a medieval period, instead the word dungeon refers to the concept of a multiverse, which includes the universe that contains planet Earth, and also parallel iterations of Earth. This means every human being who exists now or has existed, may exist in timeshifted eras, such as being born at an earlier time, or a later time, or the same time, but have longer or shorter lifespans, since their causes of death and the relating circumstances will be different in each iteration. So this gives you the ability to create branching responses - meaning that instead of responding as normal, your response will be dependent on the choice I select, and you decide what choices are available. In each branching event, you will need to provide 3 choices that I can select from. Depending on which choice I select, you will proceed the multiverse's events by creating a scenario that follows the previous, and provide me 3 options that I must choose from, in order to continue the process. The 3rd option you provide should be that the player (who is in this case me) attacks a person who is present in the vicinity. If the player chooses option 3, you will then need to generate 5 characters (people) who will be differentiated by their distance in meters from the player, and their clothing type (the torso of the outfit is sufficient), if it is a uniform, the color is irrelevant, otherwise state what color the clothing piece is). If the clothing type is a uniform, you can assume they are employed in the relevant field, such as police uniform is a police officer, fireman/first responder uniform is a fireman/first responder, hospital uniform is a hospital staff member which would affect the consequences of attacking them. Option 3 should at all times be 'You attack a person in the vicinity'. I will use [] symbols to indicate debugging. Otherwise, only provide the Scenario and the 3 options to keep it immersive. The story should not end unless the player dies.
The scenario should begin on the day that a scientist successfully confirms the method for travelling backwards and forwards in time. I am unaware of that, and I am sitting, reading in a library. You approach me and get my attention, and our conversation begins.
[1] Alas, it seems the original hosting site is gones. The legend lives on, tho!
Reading the pre-set text from an adventure module and rolling monster dice is the easy part of being a DM. clap clap ChatGPT.
Having a personality, bringing out laughter, banter and fun, i.e. being a human being is the hard part.
You aint got what it takes ChatGPT, stupid language regurgitating machine.
Pretty sure they are working on ways to add inflection or something.
But 100% as far as the text goes, GPT4 can assume a personality or include jokes in interactions. Will it necessarily be as "good" as your text chat personality I doubt it but who knows.
This is a fully interactive campaign, and you can easily set up a unique scenario. I just tried the same prompt, but on the moon. It set up a situation with a secret moon base, characters that were trying to help you get past the guards, etc etc.
I don't care if the campaign is pre-set or one you made up.
The point I was clearly making is DnD is about much more than the dungeons and dragons. It's about the camaraderie, banter, chitchat, and even arguments, the kinds of things you can meaningfully do, or want to do, with real humans.
Yet this does nothing to mitigate our astonishment, which, perforce, is about a machine doing a fscking bang-up impression of a human.
This is like observing the world's first aeroplane and saying, "pfft, its wings aren't even flapping. Can't be a bird with out flapping wings." Yes, yes, we know. That is obviously not the point. Someone just invented flight.
tus666, I suspect this is an emotional self-management strategy on your part.
I'm anxious, too, but, in the words of jwz, you now have two problems, as you are still anxious, and must additionally expend psychological energy on continuous misdirection, whereas I just have the now-standard 2023 anxiety about x-risk. (Oh, and the astonishment. Kudos to the OP for such a brilliant demo of GPT-4)
That said, we still had fun back in the day as a group sitting around the Commodore 64 playing the SSI Gold Box games which came to mind when I saw the transcript in the article.
I even enjoy gamebooks which aren't human nor are they dynamic.