Three Months of Solo Dungeons & Dragons with ChatGPT

I've played solo D&D with ChatGPT for three months. It's not that great at the pure mechanics (for example, combat), but it has some great uses. This video is a little screwed up, but the audio is fine, and the content is even better...if I don't say so myself.

Index:

00:00 - Using ChatGPT for Solo D&D for 3 Months
00:06 - ChatGPT is only OK at Solo D&D
00:45 - Creating NPCs, items, back stories, and worldbuilding
01:51 - Collaborative storytelling: world-building by adventuring
02:42 - Journaling in character
03:12 - Establish the character's writing style
04:21 - Using a journal to train ChatGPT
04:40 - Running Adventures
06:06 - Using published adventures
06:52 - Combat, skills checks, anything involving dice
07:18 - Roleplaying both sides
08:23 - Knowing too much
08:47 - Laying the groundwork for idle imagination
09:26 - Better prompts, but I'm lazy
10:13 - Training ChatGPT to be a better Dungeon Master

You'll get a good idea of how to play dnd with chatgpt.

[AleWeierstrass]

Thanks for sharing this. I've ran a D&D campaign last year and I would take some rough notes of the events on each episode. I got lots of value from GPT by doing two three things:
a) Asking it to summarize the session and highlight open quests/questions.
b) Ask GPT to play out what would happen next with regards to a certain character or plot.
c) Take the summaries of multiple adventures and then use that to chart long term plots or to summarise the adventure.

Like you mentioned, the iterations are very helpful. On a separate note, I was able to get cool "achievements" from the notes. By logging who does what attack, failures and crits, you get a good granular view of "who dealt the most damage" or "who was the most injured player". GPT is good at picking those up.

[trumanroe]

Awesome video! I had wondered about how ChatGPT would handle a full solo adventure. I love the idea of the journaling and to have ChatGPT fill in days by itself.

[ethrael]

First time watching your videos. I like your take on this, and your style of presentation. I'm a big fan of people that present the pros and cons without making a list. Keep it up.

[samburchard]

I have tried playing D&D with Bard AI several times and it sometimes does well at first as a player or a DM, but it eventually jumps into full story telling mode and just writes the rest of the story. I did have luck with it creating an adventures to run for my players with some prompting from me. I have used it to help me as a DM writing dialogue for my villains. I had a bard that would say little poems about all of the characters in the game, that I had Bard AI pre-write for me. That was a lot of fun. I will keep it open on my lap top behind my DM screen to create NPC's and such. It is a great DM assistant.

[Ascendant]

I have been having a blast playing with roleplaying with Chat GPT lately. I find that it's great at role playing a character you have created, especially after taking that character on adventure. This allows you to basically roleplay against your own characters, and it's pretty amazing.

[thecote]

I'm thinking over a longer update about what I've learned since this video, the prompts I'm using, and how I'm using ChatGPT for Dungeons and Dragons solo roleplaying.

[ΓιάννηςΜεταξάς-ρφ]

It always mentions "Nexus", it loves that word.

[boardsandstuff]

I use chat gpt to help develop narrative elements for rpgs. I handle mechanics and use game master assistant for yes or no questions. This makes for a fulfiling adventure that, in my opinion, is a close one can get to an rpg session feel. Using roll tables for loot

[quickanddirtyroleplaying]

Regarding wanting to maintain that separation of player knowledge/tactics vs. character knowledge/tactics, it may be more suitable to treat the PC as an NPC. This way, you can go into full GM mode and be just as surprised when the protagonist(s) do something unexpected or, better yet, more congruent to their character but at the risk of suffering some major setback. The traits system of Pendragon could be a very helpful template to extrapolate from or to use directly during dramatic moments.

[Nightfire]

I found that Chat GPT great for converting anything from 4th ed D&D to any other version. I finally got the stats for the 4th ed Star Spawn for my Pathfinder 1e games. I also love how Chat GPT helps when it comes to obscure ideas for monsters, templates, classes, pantheons, plains of existence and other things. Within the last few days I ended up world building with gods, plains and creatures based on math. Now I can have monsters that are in the shape of 2D and 3D shapes! And another template for elementals and creatures based on the periodic table of elements. Which on example they gave was a Chlorine Wrath, a Xenon Shade, Mercury Naga and a Iodine Lycanthrope. How awesome are those monsters!

[MaybeLater]

I find it good for descriptions, creating multiple plot hooks at once and creating NPCs and their basic back story. It can also give you ideas for campaigns as well....

[sleepinggiant]

I am surprised to hear that no one has taught ChatGPT to roll dice. If it can't handle combat, that's a huge chunk of the game.

[magejoshplays]

Yeah, i created the DM Tool Kit plugin for that reason. It's a diceroller for chatGPT via plugins or GPT actions.

[High-Tech-Geek]

Doesn't your journal become too large for ChatGPT rather quickly? Also, wish you would have shown examples with you interacting with ChatGPT as you described everything. Visual understanding is much easier.

[markhall]

I use Chat GPT to generate custom tables e.g. “ten things that could threaten the safety of a town in England in the 17th century”, “ten things that pirates are concerned with”, “one hundred problems that an individual might face in their personal life” sometimes it lists fewer than you ask for and you have to prompt for more.

[Xaphedo]

I absolutely agree that we need better ways to communicate our expectations and goals to these models. Advanced prompting can fix many issues, as you said, but I'd much rather it had a stronger focus on exploring, defining, and keeping to user intent. Hopefully upcoming models will feel more like an actual co-author and less like a prediction machine.

One other type of development I'm very much looking forward to is the ability to have different agents (indipendente instances of the model) handle different aspects. The most obvious application for this would be separating the other characters, giving each only exactly what they would know from their own experience and perspective. But it could also help with different worldbuilding or game mastering tasks, for example one could be double-checking that the session 0 premises are always followed, another could provide suggestions on the fly for more unexpected or interesting turn of events, another still could be recording everything that happens, summarizing it and cataloguing it so it can be used to keep the context of the other agents current and accurate.

It's still all unripe technology and I can't wait to see where it will take us in even a couple of years' time.

[WoahMate-dlex]

With the latest update (improved memory and consistency) I wonder how it'll perform. I

[marioevildm]

as an Evil DM I use Bing GPT 4 DALL-E3 to create NPC, items, village, scenes in all type of image, I all so use it to create full stats NPC 💜💜

[Saccillia]

I have been curious if this new ai could be used to implement or supplement some aspects of dungeons and dragons. While this will never replace a true table top in the flesh experience, it can help a lot.

[rafaelcupiael]

That, or... just play Ironsworn :) :) :)

Great video! <3

I'm playing solo in a different way (by voice - like doing a game stream), so I use GPT mainly for elaborating on NPCs, locations, magical effects etc. And for prep :)
Currently I'm soloing Trophy Dark Incursions and it's going suprisingly great :D

Keep up with the good content!