I'm with Yurei on that one. An AI DM becomes a video game.
The whole point of having a DM is to handle whatever the players may come up with where a computer game is built to manage and thus limit the outcome in its own boundaries so that it can react to what has been predicted by the programmers. Remove the players creativity and you've removed the purpose of the game itself...
If some of you have played Bloodbowl 1 and 2, you have probably realized how terrible the AI is and they have been working on it for years. I could even argue that the 95 dos game had actually a better AI. Compare this to what D&D would require, it is not even thinkable if you ask me.
If you'd want to build an AI, the first thing you'd want to provide is how to handle the Rules but also every possible scenario how the rule may be affected by other variable that may factor in. That alone would be a piece of work and it is not always obvious as there are many question that ends up being answered on twitter or else. That alone could provide a great tool for a GM.
The second thing that comes to mind building an AI, is if you're planning on working in specific settings such as The Forgotten Realm, being able to give the lore of every region including cities would be in itself a great piece of art. That again, could be a great tool for a GM. The party decides to go to Longsaddle suddenly and you're wondering what you're supposed to describe, type it in on the AI and you'd have something in hand to make it closer to the lore.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what AI is capable of. What makes AI both so useful and so revolutionary is that it can react to situations to programmers never thought of or hardwired into the system. It's called "machine learning" for a reason. The AI literally learns for itself how to do all this, usually by looking at data (though there is also reinforcement learning which still in many ways an emerging technology). For an AI to work, all you need to do is give it large amounts of data and give it the simple equations that govern back propagation (they're basically just the chain rule from calculus). If you don't believe me, check out chatGPT, word2vecc, midjourney, or even alphazero: they all can handle basically anything you throw at them, even weird and strange things that the developers would have never imagined yo using it for.
You're comparing the general concept "AI" to something that could in the loosest definition be considered an AI but if far weaker and more dependent on human inputs then the current AIs that exist. There aren't any really great AIs in the field of role playing mainly because it's not that important in context of all the other things AIs are used for. There just hasn't been a lot of serious research on this.
But even what has been made goes beyond this generalization of AI you are making. Comparing AIs to gloomhaven is an unfair comparison because gloomhaven is both a board game which cannot access the power computing power of a computer, and thus could never actually have an AI (ANNs take crazy amounts of computing power to run), AND never was advertised as being "an AI RPG." If we look at actual examples of AI RPGs, one of the best examples is AI dungeon. Sure, it's not great and not D&D, but it's definitely not a video game, at least not in the way as in it is not like D&D. It can react to most player decisions and change the plot accordingly. It doesn't just follow input programmed by the developer and can actually tell a cohesive story in which the player has the driving force and can significantly alter the plot in any number of ways, just like D&D. It's not meant to be D&D and has a ton of room for improvement, but I think it shows that an AI DM is possible. With a lot more research, effort, and funding I'm sure an AI DM that can act fairly similarly to a normal DM is possible.
There is also a difference between what you see in movies and the reality. You are right that AI field is evolving quickly but you also have to keep in mind that right now we are hearing about AI that rules Chess and Go game where the boundaries of the game are limited. Which is in turn why i did bring BloodBowl as an example of a game more complex than Chess and Go. Sure, Cyanide may not have the biggest budget for the game but neither is D&D when you compare with the budget that Google has.
D&D requires understanding human interaction as you will keep on interacting with NPCs. It require the understanding of a joke, what it is allowed to talk about, creating logical dialog, context and so on... It requires creativity but also consistency and credibility. Of course, if all you ask of the AI are dungeon creation and combat encounters, then it becomes much easier if you ask me. It is a much more complex task than playing a game of chess if you're asking the plethora of task that a DM needs to handle. So, yes, in other word, it depends on your expectations
I encourage people to look into those old epic text-based video games and tell me that a digital DM is different.
I will, but I can tell you before even starting that AI is a rapidly evolving field which has seen gargantuan innovation even in the last few years. AIs like StableDiffusion, ChatGPT, and AlphaZero would have been thought impossible in 2010 even. Plus with rapid advances just in the computing power, deep neural networks were basically just made possible in the 2000s. I think the term "AI" is often used for something that is not really what AI is capable of, leading people to misunderstand the difference between something that can learn on it's own like an ANN and something wherein the programmer must input all the rules for the AI to follow manually like for example most text-based games I've seen before.
What games do you recommend me looking into? I've never seen a text-based game that leveraged machine learning, but maybe there were some I never knew about.
A lot of older games used this - there's a Hitchhikers Guide one my father harps on about.
Agree about AI being misunderstood, but... DDB has a bad track record in terms of software development #homebrewer
I play this game because of the interactions I have with the other players / dms at the table. Having a computer just run me through a game seems pretty unappealing. Unless it's a complete mess, then I could see it as a fun romp for a laugh.
Sure, it's not going to be for everyone. Those who don't want it will likely be able to opt for a cheaper tier which is fine.
But even what has been made goes beyond this generalization of AI you are making. Comparing AIs to gloomhaven is an unfair comparison because gloomhaven is both a board game which cannot access the power computing power of a computer, and thus could never actually have an AI (ANNs take crazy amounts of computing power to run), AND never was advertised as being "an AI RPG." If we look at actual examples of AI RPGs, one of the best examples is AI dungeon. Sure, it's not great and not D&D, but it's definitely not a video game, at least not in the way as in it is not like D&D. It can react to most player decisions and change the plot accordingly. It doesn't just follow input programmed by the developer and can actually tell a cohesive story in which the player has the driving force and can significantly alter the plot in any number of ways, just like D&D. It's not meant to be D&D and has a ton of room for improvement, but I think it shows that an AI DM is possible. With a lot more research, effort, and funding I'm sure an AI DM that can act fairly similarly to a normal DM is possible.
Well now I have something new to look into, so this thread has paid dividends 😎
The problem I see with this is that this AI thing they supposedly want to do is that I look at most of the AI that are on the market at the moment are not near the level of critical thinking to actually pull it off not even within the next 5 years.
But if I'm wrong and they can and if they can convince you to buy into that, then they have a way then to introduce loot boxes into D&D. e.g: 'hey you found a chest that isn't a mimic. YOU ARE CURRENTLY PLAYING THE FREE VERSION OF THIS DUNGEON PLEASE GIVE US THE 3 FUN NUMBERS ON THE BACK OF YOUR CARD AND YOU CAN OPEN THIS GOLDEN CHEST FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF $2.99... OH LOOKS LIKE YOU GOT A +1 GREATSWORD & 3 HEALING POTIONS IF YOU HAD THE BATTLE PASS YOU COULD OF ALSO GOTTEN OUR IN GAME CURRENCY AND THIS SHINY SUIT OF ARMOR!' and the usual micro transaction garbage, 'want a new character slot? that's gonna cost ya', or 'ooooh look at this new sub-class we just released! give us some money first though', or 'while we wait for this new scene to here are 3 unskippable ads... want to skip them pay our $30 (That figure is a trap by the way to make the actual price seem a lot better) per month subscription so you don't have to see them and get these small trinkets on the side.'
It seems like another ploy to make less content and get more money. Its also kinda obvious with the way things have been going, the new heads at WotC are money hungry predators. don't buy into this hogwash. #OPENDND #DNDBEGONE #THISAINTOVER
I feel like everyone has missed my point which was while I like the idea of an A.I. DM, I don't think WotC could do it justice. Seeing as how A.I. dungeon while fun isn't even close to being good enough to take over for a true DM. Also at this point even if they could give us a good DM I wouldn't use it on principle because of the skeevy shit they just pulled and the current rumors.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
I feel like everyone has missed my point which was while I like the idea of an A.I. DM, I don't think WotC could do it justice. Seeing as how A.I. dungeon while fun isn't even close to being good enough to take over for a true DM. Also at this point even if they could give us a good DM I wouldn't use it on principle because of the skeevy shit they just pulled and the current rumors.
I wouldn't use it now either, but that means that now is the time for them to invest in it, they certainly have the resources.
As folks around here are so keen to remind them, they may not be able to copyright the rules of the game themselves, so branching out to other things that will be unique to D&D is the ideal path forward, like a proprietary VTT and proprietary AI DMing tech.
If you just want a combat rogue-lite, why not play Diablo instead?
Well, among other reasons - my friend and I can't pit our Gith Hexadin and Bugbear Gloomstalker against a cabal of mindflayers and their thralls in Diablo.
I'd be curious to see how long it would take to logic paradox crash an A.I. DM?
What would happen should that crash happen mid-session?
How many other games and players would be affected by a virtual DM server WARGAMES style overload?
How would the A.I. DM describe the bards Nat 20 check to bed the dragon??
Not worth 30 bucks to find out, but still inquiring minds ponder.
That kind of crash simply wouldn't happen. An A.I. DM would prioritize "Good Enough" storytelling, so if it couldn't come up with a good response to something within a few attempts, it would either complain, or fuzz the interpretation until an acceptable response is generated.
An important thing to consider is that people really aren't as original as they think they are. With a robust enough training set, it would probably create a large, but finite, set of player/world interactions that most people would be satisfied with. Those that deliberately seek to break the A.I. would certainly be able to find the very rough edges, but anyone actually playing the game would probably stay within the "safe zone" the vast majority of the time. With published adventures, the number of variables drop considerably.
The A.I. DM should be limited to published adventures for a couple years to build said training set, then expand to open world to test itself, then expand to custom worlds.
With the current state of ChatGPT and the A.I. Art programs, I'm a lot more optimistic than I would have been a few years ago.
You say: "I want AI in everything! It's just so convenient!"
I hear: "I hate when things have that indelible spark of creativity! I want everything to be made automatically, without creative people (because who even needs art anymore, right?) mucking up my AI-streamlined enjoyment!"
You're right OP, it's not. It's a tool available to anyone who wants it. Nobody would be forced to use such a tool, so why does it make people angry? How many times has a game been canceled because one or two players couldn't make it, when an AI campaign could have run a one-shot for those who could?
Let people play D&D how they want to play D&D. Be protective of D&D, but only don't attack things that are optional! Take a breather and look at the big picture. We all play D&D, because we like interacting with other players. An AI DM would take away from the social side of things, but it could also allow for socialization when a game night would otherwise be cancelled.
I play online boardgames like Terraforming Mars and Wingspan to mention a few. They are loaded with bugs and sometimes you get locked out of a game completely. AI DM's are a terrible idea as it will have all the same flaws (probably tons more) and so so many limitations. A boardgame has a finite set of moves whereas a TTRPG doesn't. The fact is that TTRPG's are meant to be played with a group of humans where the DM and players create a shared story together. How's that supposed to happen with an AI DM? Hasbro would be better served creating an open world video game based around the city of Waterdeep or something. Even allow for multiple players. Do that right and they have my interest. Not with AI DM's. Sorry.
You say: "I want AI in everything! It's just so convenient!"
I hear: "I hate when things have that indelible spark of creativity! I want everything to be made automatically, without creative people (because who even needs art anymore, right?) mucking up my AI-streamlined enjoyment!"
Can we get a broom for all this straw?
People excited for the potential of AI in this hobby don't "hate creativity."
I wouldn't have much interest in an A.I. DM for my own uses, right now, but I really support the development of one for what it could become.
Imagine training it to run a game, and then being used to Co-DM. The DM could narrate a scene, and the AI Co-DM could automatically generate ambient sound and lighting, or offer suggestions for brand new magic items, adventures, monsters based on the progression of the plot and the energy level of the players. Maybe the DM could offer the A.I. Co-DM a prompt like "Count Strahd monologues about his plans for 3 minutes, and reveals a dark secret about Player X's origins." The A.I. could then combine what it knows about the player's backstory, and the NPC to create an audio file in Strahd's voice that the DM could play.
By sacrificing a little bit of control, a properly built A.I. DM could add a ton of depth to a world of Human design.
I would probably try playing with an artificial intelligence Dungeon Master, but the people I play with are more important to me than the game itself, so I highly doubt it would be my favorite thing ever. That being said, a lot of other people might enjoy it, even if I don't. So it makes sense for people to fool around and see whether or not they can make something like this possible.
If they can, great, you've expanded the game and added more cool new and enjoyable ways to play. If you can't, the world doesn't end. So I'm excited to see if AI DMs will ever become a real thing, so long as the TTRPG version of D&D remains the primary focus of Wizards of the Coast and the devs.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
Your statement here is irrelevant to the presence or absence of an AI DM. I do think there is an adjacent market to cater to who just wants to dungeon crawl, as evidenced by the DnD board games, Diablo, Torchlight. These games could get better with AI. I just don't see it as a substitute for the TTRPG.
There is also a difference between what you see in movies and the reality. You are right that AI field is evolving quickly but you also have to keep in mind that right now we are hearing about AI that rules Chess and Go game where the boundaries of the game are limited. Which is in turn why i did bring BloodBowl as an example of a game more complex than Chess and Go. Sure, Cyanide may not have the biggest budget for the game but neither is D&D when you compare with the budget that Google has.
D&D requires understanding human interaction as you will keep on interacting with NPCs. It require the understanding of a joke, what it is allowed to talk about, creating logical dialog, context and so on... It requires creativity but also consistency and credibility. Of course, if all you ask of the AI are dungeon creation and combat encounters, then it becomes much easier if you ask me. It is a much more complex task than playing a game of chess if you're asking the plethora of task that a DM needs to handle. So, yes, in other word, it depends on your expectations
I have to agree with you there.
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
Oh no! You've walked into the slathering fangs of a lurking grue!
Sure, it's not going to be for everyone. Those who don't want it will likely be able to opt for a cheaper tier which is fine.
Well now I have something new to look into, so this thread has paid dividends 😎
The problem I see with this is that this AI thing they supposedly want to do is that I look at most of the AI that are on the market at the moment are not near the level of critical thinking to actually pull it off not even within the next 5 years.
But if I'm wrong and they can and if they can convince you to buy into that, then they have a way then to introduce loot boxes into D&D.
e.g: 'hey you found a chest that isn't a mimic. YOU ARE CURRENTLY PLAYING THE FREE VERSION OF THIS DUNGEON PLEASE GIVE US THE 3 FUN NUMBERS ON THE BACK OF YOUR CARD AND YOU CAN OPEN THIS GOLDEN CHEST FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF $2.99... OH LOOKS LIKE YOU GOT A +1 GREATSWORD & 3 HEALING POTIONS IF YOU HAD THE BATTLE PASS YOU COULD OF ALSO GOTTEN OUR IN GAME CURRENCY AND THIS SHINY SUIT OF ARMOR!'
and the usual micro transaction garbage, 'want a new character slot? that's gonna cost ya', or 'ooooh look at this new sub-class we just released! give us some money first though', or 'while we wait for this new scene to here are 3 unskippable ads... want to skip them pay our $30 (That figure is a trap by the way to make the actual price seem a lot better) per month subscription so you don't have to see them and get these small trinkets on the side.'
It seems like another ploy to make less content and get more money.
Its also kinda obvious with the way things have been going, the new heads at WotC are money hungry predators. don't buy into this hogwash.
#OPENDND #DNDBEGONE #THISAINTOVER
An Obstacle between you and "your" money.
I think that as they try to program an AI for D&D they will slowly just end up with a D&D based WOW.
I feel like everyone has missed my point which was while I like the idea of an A.I. DM, I don't think WotC could do it justice. Seeing as how A.I. dungeon while fun isn't even close to being good enough to take over for a true DM. Also at this point even if they could give us a good DM I wouldn't use it on principle because of the skeevy shit they just pulled and the current rumors.
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
I wouldn't use it now either, but that means that now is the time for them to invest in it, they certainly have the resources.
As folks around here are so keen to remind them, they may not be able to copyright the rules of the game themselves, so branching out to other things that will be unique to D&D is the ideal path forward, like a proprietary VTT and proprietary AI DMing tech.
I'd be curious to see how long it would take to logic paradox crash an A.I. DM?
What would happen should that crash happen mid-session?
How many other games and players would be affected by a virtual DM server WARGAMES style overload?
How would the A.I. DM describe the bards Nat 20 check to bed the dragon??
Not worth 30 bucks to find out, but still inquiring minds ponder.
If you just want a combat rogue-lite, why not play Diablo instead?
Well, among other reasons - my friend and I can't pit our Gith Hexadin and Bugbear Gloomstalker against a cabal of mindflayers and their thralls in Diablo.
That kind of crash simply wouldn't happen. An A.I. DM would prioritize "Good Enough" storytelling, so if it couldn't come up with a good response to something within a few attempts, it would either complain, or fuzz the interpretation until an acceptable response is generated.
An important thing to consider is that people really aren't as original as they think they are. With a robust enough training set, it would probably create a large, but finite, set of player/world interactions that most people would be satisfied with. Those that deliberately seek to break the A.I. would certainly be able to find the very rough edges, but anyone actually playing the game would probably stay within the "safe zone" the vast majority of the time. With published adventures, the number of variables drop considerably.
The A.I. DM should be limited to published adventures for a couple years to build said training set, then expand to open world to test itself, then expand to custom worlds.
With the current state of ChatGPT and the A.I. Art programs, I'm a lot more optimistic than I would have been a few years ago.
You say: "I want AI in everything! It's just so convenient!"
I hear: "I hate when things have that indelible spark of creativity! I want everything to be made automatically, without creative people (because who even needs art anymore, right?) mucking up my AI-streamlined enjoyment!"
You're right OP, it's not. It's a tool available to anyone who wants it. Nobody would be forced to use such a tool, so why does it make people angry? How many times has a game been canceled because one or two players couldn't make it, when an AI campaign could have run a one-shot for those who could?
Let people play D&D how they want to play D&D. Be protective of D&D, but only don't attack things that are optional! Take a breather and look at the big picture. We all play D&D, because we like interacting with other players. An AI DM would take away from the social side of things, but it could also allow for socialization when a game night would otherwise be cancelled.
I play online boardgames like Terraforming Mars and Wingspan to mention a few. They are loaded with bugs and sometimes you get locked out of a game completely. AI DM's are a terrible idea as it will have all the same flaws (probably tons more) and so so many limitations. A boardgame has a finite set of moves whereas a TTRPG doesn't. The fact is that TTRPG's are meant to be played with a group of humans where the DM and players create a shared story together. How's that supposed to happen with an AI DM? Hasbro would be better served creating an open world video game based around the city of Waterdeep or something. Even allow for multiple players. Do that right and they have my interest. Not with AI DM's. Sorry.
Can we get a broom for all this straw?
People excited for the potential of AI in this hobby don't "hate creativity."
Let me be totally clear: I'm not angry about this. I think it's enormously out of touch, is all.
I wouldn't have much interest in an A.I. DM for my own uses, right now, but I really support the development of one for what it could become.
Imagine training it to run a game, and then being used to Co-DM. The DM could narrate a scene, and the AI Co-DM could automatically generate ambient sound and lighting, or offer suggestions for brand new magic items, adventures, monsters based on the progression of the plot and the energy level of the players. Maybe the DM could offer the A.I. Co-DM a prompt like "Count Strahd monologues about his plans for 3 minutes, and reveals a dark secret about Player X's origins." The A.I. could then combine what it knows about the player's backstory, and the NPC to create an audio file in Strahd's voice that the DM could play.
By sacrificing a little bit of control, a properly built A.I. DM could add a ton of depth to a world of Human design.
I would probably try playing with an artificial intelligence Dungeon Master, but the people I play with are more important to me than the game itself, so I highly doubt it would be my favorite thing ever. That being said, a lot of other people might enjoy it, even if I don't. So it makes sense for people to fool around and see whether or not they can make something like this possible.
If they can, great, you've expanded the game and added more cool new and enjoyable ways to play. If you can't, the world doesn't end. So I'm excited to see if AI DMs will ever become a real thing, so long as the TTRPG version of D&D remains the primary focus of Wizards of the Coast and the devs.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Your statement here is irrelevant to the presence or absence of an AI DM. I do think there is an adjacent market to cater to who just wants to dungeon crawl, as evidenced by the DnD board games, Diablo, Torchlight. These games could get better with AI. I just don't see it as a substitute for the TTRPG.