Comment by klik99
4 days ago
I think the previous posters point was that an LLM DM is boring due to it's generality and lacks the specific quirks of having a human DM with their own viewpoint and understanding of the players, which I agree with. I did some experiments with earlier ChatGPT models for world building and DMing and found it to be so boring, getting it to do anything interesting or giving any kind of push back was so hard. Since they are an averaging of all knowledge / previous creativity you end up with a smooth surface, but part of what makes stories interesting are the rough edges.
However I also agree with you that being a DM is a prohibitive amount of work for someone, say, with kids and a job. It would be awesome to have an LLM as an assistant, maybe feeding in parts of the story and querying it for ideas when you're in a bind. But having it run as a full DM, at least right now, will likely lead to a boring experience.
Yep, my experience using ChatGPT as a helper is very good. It can very quickly cook up a custom monster, give it relevant stats, and create some flavourful actions and attacks to make it unique. Lately I've been trying to hook this up to D&D Beyond, as it's just some fairly simple POST payloads. If I can get to the point where I can describe a vague encounter, and run it in the Beyond encounter tracker with zero effort, that would be amazing, and a lifesaver when the party goes off and does nutty stuff. Beyond that, its story ideas are fairly generic but fine if you really have no time, and it can do a decent job of the occasional flowery monologue if you need it.
If you make progress on the api part, would be awesome to see a write up on HN about it, I'd be really interested in how this develops!