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Ha, I had the same idea a few hours ago. One thing I noticed is that the DM will let you do basically anything without fighting you on it. For example I was amb

Ha, I had the same idea a few hours ago. One thing I noticed is that the DM will let you do basically anything without fighting you on it. For example I was ambushed by some zombies and skeletons and I attempted to pitch them on a multilevel marketing scheme. Here is the result (my characters are Femribubs and Natnari): 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?

Rebelgecko 4y ago
Did it make you roll for persuasion or anything like that?
wefarrell 4y ago
I decided I wasn't done with the undead MLM scheme and instead of going to the temple I said: 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.
- bentcorner 4y ago
  FWIW, the last few paragraphs of the response is something that I found was extremely common output for "DM AI". Whatever the situation, if it's kind of open ended, it'll say you did the thing really well, and you came to learn a bunch of new stuff, discovered who your friends really were along the way and everything was sunshine and rainbows. You can get it to put out something a little more grimdark but you need to give it more context.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read. Well done.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  I didn’t keep it but GPT-4 once pitched me a very convincing cross-over between Die Hard and Jurassic Park culminating in a tense face off between a machine gun armed John McLane and a T-Rex. The heartbreaking World War 1 movie involving Pokémon was less good however.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    All's Quiet On The Diglet Front
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      The Good Soldier Slowbro
sgrove 4y ago
I haven't put much effort into it yet, but I've found it to be somewhere in the middle of an independent story teller and a human-amplifying story teller. For example, having it give you options that you can choose from (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vff-8H-cZ7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vff-8H-cZ7w ) can help keep the story focused. 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/1051015357340602398/1087756855679406100/sgrove_Dungeons_and_dragons_comic_book_You_find_yourself_at_the_088d053c-588d-46e5-8886-0f58555237f8.webp?width=1402&height=1402 https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1051015357340602398... ---------------- (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 ")
dcow 4y ago
It's not strictly wrong to let the story go wherever the players want as a DM, as long as you can keep up. In fact I'd say one of the traits of a good DM is knowing how much to let the story diverge from their plans, and to be able to think quickly and respond to the players on the spot. If the direction is entertaining, most parties are okay with exploring it. How tightly you keep the story on the rails is part of the game. In D&D sometimes you play the DM as much as you do their scenario. 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.
- daydream 4y ago
  > What would be interesting is figuring out if you could configure ChatGPT's tolerance for divergence from the planned scenario. 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!
bee_rider 4y ago
That sort of struck me with the linked story. They saw some wolf footprints, and then essentially summoned the monsters to fight by setting up an ambush in their current location.
- behringer 4y ago
  If you ask it to randomly pick a twist ending, a normal ending, a funny ending, or a scary ending, it would probably do it.
- swid 4y ago
  I noticed they bought four horses without enough money to do so. (It correctly said two characters would have to borrow 20 gold each, but only 10 gold remained in the party, leaving them 30 short).
  - BizarroLand 4y ago
    Yeah, there needs to be some interface where you the human can set certain values or a source of truth for both you and the AI to reference and possibly manipulate if the prompt requires it.
kingkawn 4y ago
This is so funny it actually is very encouraging about the future of this tech
marcosdumay 4y ago
The next adventurers will have a hell of time trying to avoid all those zombies trying to sell them food preservatives! The AI is clearly helping you create an story, not mastering a game.
dataangel 4y ago
Have you tried telling it that sometimes it should push back on the player if what they are requesting is unrealistic-within/inconsistent-with the world of D&D?
- klik99 4y ago
  I tried this last week and despite constant reminders to sometimes fail and provide challenges to overcome, it never worked. Frankly I’m amazed the OP chat worked so well, anything with numbers that fall over time just failed when I tried. Maybe the key was “you are no longer a friendly assistant, you are now a DM” and just the sheer amount of existent text on 5e made it work. I just gave up looking for challenge and just solved problems by the most ridiculous roundabout way just to see how gpt would make it happen
  - shusaku 4y ago
    In general GPT seems bad at enforcing constraints. But also, by its nature it just makes things up on the fly, so how could it keep the story consistent if it has no plan from the start?
    - pedrosorio 4y ago
      You don’t need a plan from the start to keep something consistent. So long as the story is consistent so far and you don’t add any inconsistencies, that’s all there is to it. Simple induction principle. 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.
brundolf 4y ago
> improve their unlives Incredible
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 1attice 4y ago
  This is what got me too. 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.
avereveard 4y ago
Possibly the system prompt has helpful and other pleasantries. May need to describe the type of dm at the beginning, with accent of keeping the story on track and making the world dangerous and unforgiving
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Another odd bit was, when they said they wanted to steal the lizard thing, instead of role-playing the scenario, it just gave them a list of the rolls they’d have to make. I haven’t played a ton of D&D, but at the tables I’ve been at, you’d typically discover the challenges as you go. 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.
  - whiteandnerdy 4y ago
    If I'm going to ask the player to do something multi stage I will usually flag it so they know that there's a few places where things might go wrong. "OK well sneaking up to it is going to be the first hurdle; after that you're going to need to figure out how to get the giant lizard to cooperate as you smuggle it out the back". 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).
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      I basically agree I think, or at least agree to within normal-group-variance. Which is to say, at least with my friends, is someone said “I want to roll stealth to steal the lizard,” the DM would probably say something along the lines of “it’ll be more complicated than a single roll, you’ll have to get in there, get the thing free, there might be unforeseen problems (it is a barely tamed lizard monster after all).” I think we would probably not need to be warned in the first place and would go right into planning the heist anyway, because who doesn’t love a heist? 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.
mind-blight 4y ago
I found that giving GPT explicit instructions about die rolling hemp a surprising amount. I also crafted a prompt that told chat GPT to switch between different modes (narrative, dialog, and combat). The rolls helped prevent it from just doing what I said, though it still biased towards that
cephalization 4y ago
I’ve been slowly working on this at https://infinitemystery.app https://infinitemystery.app
_spduchamp 4y ago
Oh great! What have you unleashed!? Now we're going to have to deal with hoards of AI zombies selling us multilevel marketing schemes!
- splistud 4y ago
  [dead]

Rebelgecko 4y ago

Did it make you roll for persuasion or anything like that?

wefarrell 4y ago

I decided I wasn't done with the undead MLM scheme and instead of going to the temple I said: 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.

bentcorner 4y ago
FWIW, the last few paragraphs of the response is something that I found was extremely common output for "DM AI". Whatever the situation, if it's kind of open ended, it'll say you did the thing really well, and you came to learn a bunch of new stuff, discovered who your friends really were along the way and everything was sunshine and rainbows. You can get it to put out something a little more grimdark but you need to give it more context.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read. Well done.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
I didn’t keep it but GPT-4 once pitched me a very convincing cross-over between Die Hard and Jurassic Park culminating in a tense face off between a machine gun armed John McLane and a T-Rex. The heartbreaking World War 1 movie involving Pokémon was less good however.
- rcarr 4y ago
  All's Quiet On The Diglet Front
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    The Good Soldier Slowbro

sgrove 4y ago

I haven't put much effort into it yet, but I've found it to be somewhere in the middle of an independent story teller and a human-amplifying story teller. For example, having it give you options that you can choose from (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vff-8H-cZ7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vff-8H-cZ7w ) can help keep the story focused. 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/1051015357340602398/1087756855679406100/sgrove_Dungeons_and_dragons_comic_book_You_find_yourself_at_the_088d053c-588d-46e5-8886-0f58555237f8.webp?width=1402&height=1402 https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1051015357340602398... ---------------- (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 ")

dcow 4y ago

It's not strictly wrong to let the story go wherever the players want as a DM, as long as you can keep up. In fact I'd say one of the traits of a good DM is knowing how much to let the story diverge from their plans, and to be able to think quickly and respond to the players on the spot. If the direction is entertaining, most parties are okay with exploring it. How tightly you keep the story on the rails is part of the game. In D&D sometimes you play the DM as much as you do their scenario. 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.

daydream 4y ago
> What would be interesting is figuring out if you could configure ChatGPT's tolerance for divergence from the planned scenario. 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!

bee_rider 4y ago

That sort of struck me with the linked story. They saw some wolf footprints, and then essentially summoned the monsters to fight by setting up an ambush in their current location.

behringer 4y ago
If you ask it to randomly pick a twist ending, a normal ending, a funny ending, or a scary ending, it would probably do it.
swid 4y ago
I noticed they bought four horses without enough money to do so. (It correctly said two characters would have to borrow 20 gold each, but only 10 gold remained in the party, leaving them 30 short).
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  Yeah, there needs to be some interface where you the human can set certain values or a source of truth for both you and the AI to reference and possibly manipulate if the prompt requires it.

kingkawn 4y ago

This is so funny it actually is very encouraging about the future of this tech

marcosdumay 4y ago

The next adventurers will have a hell of time trying to avoid all those zombies trying to sell them food preservatives! The AI is clearly helping you create an story, not mastering a game.

dataangel 4y ago

Have you tried telling it that sometimes it should push back on the player if what they are requesting is unrealistic-within/inconsistent-with the world of D&D?

klik99 4y ago
I tried this last week and despite constant reminders to sometimes fail and provide challenges to overcome, it never worked. Frankly I’m amazed the OP chat worked so well, anything with numbers that fall over time just failed when I tried. Maybe the key was “you are no longer a friendly assistant, you are now a DM” and just the sheer amount of existent text on 5e made it work. I just gave up looking for challenge and just solved problems by the most ridiculous roundabout way just to see how gpt would make it happen
- shusaku 4y ago
  In general GPT seems bad at enforcing constraints. But also, by its nature it just makes things up on the fly, so how could it keep the story consistent if it has no plan from the start?
  - pedrosorio 4y ago
    You don’t need a plan from the start to keep something consistent. So long as the story is consistent so far and you don’t add any inconsistencies, that’s all there is to it. Simple induction principle. 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.

brundolf 4y ago

> improve their unlives Incredible

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
1attice 4y ago
This is what got me too. 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.

avereveard 4y ago

Possibly the system prompt has helpful and other pleasantries. May need to describe the type of dm at the beginning, with accent of keeping the story on track and making the world dangerous and unforgiving

bee_rider 4y ago
Another odd bit was, when they said they wanted to steal the lizard thing, instead of role-playing the scenario, it just gave them a list of the rolls they’d have to make. I haven’t played a ton of D&D, but at the tables I’ve been at, you’d typically discover the challenges as you go. 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.
- whiteandnerdy 4y ago
  If I'm going to ask the player to do something multi stage I will usually flag it so they know that there's a few places where things might go wrong. "OK well sneaking up to it is going to be the first hurdle; after that you're going to need to figure out how to get the giant lizard to cooperate as you smuggle it out the back". 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).
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I basically agree I think, or at least agree to within normal-group-variance. Which is to say, at least with my friends, is someone said “I want to roll stealth to steal the lizard,” the DM would probably say something along the lines of “it’ll be more complicated than a single roll, you’ll have to get in there, get the thing free, there might be unforeseen problems (it is a barely tamed lizard monster after all).” I think we would probably not need to be warned in the first place and would go right into planning the heist anyway, because who doesn’t love a heist? 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.

mind-blight 4y ago

I found that giving GPT explicit instructions about die rolling hemp a surprising amount. I also crafted a prompt that told chat GPT to switch between different modes (narrative, dialog, and combat). The rolls helped prevent it from just doing what I said, though it still biased towards that

cephalization 4y ago

I’ve been slowly working on this at https://infinitemystery.app https://infinitemystery.app

_spduchamp 4y ago

Oh great! What have you unleashed!? Now we're going to have to deal with hoards of AI zombies selling us multilevel marketing schemes!

splistud 4y ago
[dead]