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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

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 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.

nebulous1 4y ago
> Paraphrasing, the party goes to a mount shop, dude says he’s gonna roll to find exotic mounts, and voila, exotic mounts. The AI suggested that there were exotic mounts to be found at a higher cost
- simonh 4y ago
  The issue is that you’d probably get that result, or a similar it equivalent one, wherever you go in the game world. It isn’t going to have the concept of distinct characteristics of different places unless to tell it to. Everything is going to be generic and bland by default.
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  That’s true. I did miss this. I still think it is bad. I also suspect the general idea of the complaint I had is probably true. But this case isn’t egregious.
  - nebulous1 4y ago
    Honestly, having just played around with it, it absolutely would have just magic'd up some exotic steeds if they'd requested it cold. I tried things like "look at Dave", Dave having never been mentioned before, and it happily described Dave.
    - Sharlin 4y ago
      It can probably be dissuaded from doing so by using a prompt that makes it clear that non sequiturs are not allowed and players cannot just conjure things out of thin air at will. Not without an appropriate spell, anyway.
hex4def6 4y ago
These are the most common options available at the stables in Aelondar. If you’re interested in more exotic mounts or transportation methods, they may be harder to find and come 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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  I think this is a classic baby DM script tbh. Rolling to find mounts at a vendor is dumb. You should only roll for significant challenges with meaningful differences where failure is meaningfully likely and interesting in its own right. If failing makes a situation less interesting it shouldn’t be an option. 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
gonehome 4y ago
It's a very good DM "co-pilot" though especially for flavor/backstory. 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.
- Jeff_Brown 4y ago
  As a player I wouldn't want to have to wait for the DM to figure out what to ask ChatGPT, read it, think about it, figure out what details from ChatGPT to include, and work them into a response for me.
- techdragon 4y ago
  Having tried to get ChatGPT to flirt, and kind of managed to get it to flirt, yeah it’s got a really strong habit of trying to tell you it can’t do stuff. One of the funniest moments of the “FlirtBot” experiment was when it said something mildly enticing to open a topic of conversation, including some extremely tame innuendo, apologised for being so sexual because it’s an AI (typical phrasing and words we’ve all seen) and then proceeded to follow that with some hilariously bad 90s chat room type text… I was bracing for it to spit out “a/s/l” as I watched the text appear. 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.
echelon 4y ago
Completely different take. We're about to enter an era of unparalleled gameplay flexibility. All this needs is a backbone of persistence and planning. That's it.
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  Flexibility is the problem. Good DMs build very tall walls.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    I've read "flexibility" here compared to a computer RPG, not a people RPG.
    - fauxpause_ 4y ago
      I think that’s not much different. Players don’t want to hear the local shopkeeper’s thoughts and feelings imo. It’d be tedious. They canonically don’t have any useful information for you. It would just mean that they take a long time to talk to and worst case require you to respond with a level of sequitur and politeness. I could see it for waifus I guess. I’m prepared to be wrong on this.
      - jameshart 4y ago
        As a human DM, your shopkeepers 'canonically' don't know anything because you would have to devote brainpower to animating them with lives and relationships and things. You're thinking... 'Oh no, they're asking him about his family, and if I give him a brother, I have to give him a job and if I'm not careful, I might say something like "he says his brother has a job in the city watch", and someone will write that down, and then later they'll decide they need to bribe a watchman and they'll want to find the brother and... damnit, the shopkeeper will just say "I'm sorry, I'm too busy to chat"'. 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...
danudey 4y ago
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 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 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.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Weird thought, but maybe Bing's version would be better at this, given it's extreme comparative stubbornness?
- dudeinhawaii 4y ago
  I've had decent luck adding rules and boundaries to prevent things like "level 1 throws a fireball". 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.
gricardo99 4y ago
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.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
  Modern D&D is really a miniatures game (WoTC's bottom line really wants it to be a miniatures game), and as such basic "you go I go" combat is a complete waste of time in it. Skip the first few levels and only bother running encounters where positioning, AoE and range actually matter. Sure, you might throw a generic wild animal encounter in with a beginner group to teach them how the basics of combat work, but that's the sort of thing you run at most once with each group.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Modern D&D is really a miniatures game 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).
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  I run a complete home brew system. I just keep max health low and combat potential low. Every time you receive an injury you suffer a noteworthy injury, die, or start dying. A random human with a knife should always be threatening… because it is. A guy with a knife is actually really scary. A guy with a gun even more so. 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.
TomK32 4y ago
Obie and Tenzin manage to each borrow 20 gold pieces from the other two who only have 5 left...
- obiefernandez 4y ago
  Yes this was a “bug”
technothrasher 4y ago
> 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. 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.
weavejester 4y ago
I've been experimenting with this recently. You've got to be explicit about how you want ChatGPT to behave, particularly how it handles failure. For example: "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."
taberiand 4y ago
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

nebulous1 4y ago

> Paraphrasing, the party goes to a mount shop, dude says he’s gonna roll to find exotic mounts, and voila, exotic mounts. The AI suggested that there were exotic mounts to be found at a higher cost

simonh 4y ago
The issue is that you’d probably get that result, or a similar it equivalent one, wherever you go in the game world. It isn’t going to have the concept of distinct characteristics of different places unless to tell it to. Everything is going to be generic and bland by default.
fauxpause_ 4y ago
That’s true. I did miss this. I still think it is bad. I also suspect the general idea of the complaint I had is probably true. But this case isn’t egregious.
- nebulous1 4y ago
  Honestly, having just played around with it, it absolutely would have just magic'd up some exotic steeds if they'd requested it cold. I tried things like "look at Dave", Dave having never been mentioned before, and it happily described Dave.
  - Sharlin 4y ago
    It can probably be dissuaded from doing so by using a prompt that makes it clear that non sequiturs are not allowed and players cannot just conjure things out of thin air at will. Not without an appropriate spell, anyway.

hex4def6 4y ago

These are the most common options available at the stables in Aelondar. If you’re interested in more exotic mounts or transportation methods, they may be harder to find and come 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.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fauxpause_ 4y ago
I think this is a classic baby DM script tbh. Rolling to find mounts at a vendor is dumb. You should only roll for significant challenges with meaningful differences where failure is meaningfully likely and interesting in its own right. If failing makes a situation less interesting it shouldn’t be an option. 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

gonehome 4y ago

It's a very good DM "co-pilot" though especially for flavor/backstory. 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.

Jeff_Brown 4y ago
As a player I wouldn't want to have to wait for the DM to figure out what to ask ChatGPT, read it, think about it, figure out what details from ChatGPT to include, and work them into a response for me.
techdragon 4y ago
Having tried to get ChatGPT to flirt, and kind of managed to get it to flirt, yeah it’s got a really strong habit of trying to tell you it can’t do stuff. One of the funniest moments of the “FlirtBot” experiment was when it said something mildly enticing to open a topic of conversation, including some extremely tame innuendo, apologised for being so sexual because it’s an AI (typical phrasing and words we’ve all seen) and then proceeded to follow that with some hilariously bad 90s chat room type text… I was bracing for it to spit out “a/s/l” as I watched the text appear. 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.

echelon 4y ago

Completely different take. We're about to enter an era of unparalleled gameplay flexibility. All this needs is a backbone of persistence and planning. That's it.

fauxpause_ 4y ago
Flexibility is the problem. Good DMs build very tall walls.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  I've read "flexibility" here compared to a computer RPG, not a people RPG.
  - fauxpause_ 4y ago
    I think that’s not much different. Players don’t want to hear the local shopkeeper’s thoughts and feelings imo. It’d be tedious. They canonically don’t have any useful information for you. It would just mean that they take a long time to talk to and worst case require you to respond with a level of sequitur and politeness. I could see it for waifus I guess. I’m prepared to be wrong on this.
    - jameshart 4y ago
      As a human DM, your shopkeepers 'canonically' don't know anything because you would have to devote brainpower to animating them with lives and relationships and things. You're thinking... 'Oh no, they're asking him about his family, and if I give him a brother, I have to give him a job and if I'm not careful, I might say something like "he says his brother has a job in the city watch", and someone will write that down, and then later they'll decide they need to bribe a watchman and they'll want to find the brother and... damnit, the shopkeeper will just say "I'm sorry, I'm too busy to chat"'. 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...

danudey 4y ago

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 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 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.

moffkalast 4y ago
Weird thought, but maybe Bing's version would be better at this, given it's extreme comparative stubbornness?
dudeinhawaii 4y ago
I've had decent luck adding rules and boundaries to prevent things like "level 1 throws a fireball". 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.

gricardo99 4y ago

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.

YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
Modern D&D is really a miniatures game (WoTC's bottom line really wants it to be a miniatures game), and as such basic "you go I go" combat is a complete waste of time in it. Skip the first few levels and only bother running encounters where positioning, AoE and range actually matter. Sure, you might throw a generic wild animal encounter in with a beginner group to teach them how the basics of combat work, but that's the sort of thing you run at most once with each group.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Modern D&D is really a miniatures game 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).
fauxpause_ 4y ago
I run a complete home brew system. I just keep max health low and combat potential low. Every time you receive an injury you suffer a noteworthy injury, die, or start dying. A random human with a knife should always be threatening… because it is. A guy with a knife is actually really scary. A guy with a gun even more so. 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.

TomK32 4y ago

Obie and Tenzin manage to each borrow 20 gold pieces from the other two who only have 5 left...

obiefernandez 4y ago
Yes this was a “bug”

technothrasher 4y ago

> 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. 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.

weavejester 4y ago

I've been experimenting with this recently. You've got to be explicit about how you want ChatGPT to behave, particularly how it handles failure. For example: "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."

taberiand 4y ago

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