Last week I read a blog post from an author who was pushing on ChatGPT-DM to run a game of D&D with little success. I didn’t exactly agree with how this author was interacting with the bot so I attempted a similar exercise. You can read a log of this exchange here.
While I had great fun engaging with the bot in the end I concluded that the bot itself has limited memory capacity and no logical decisioning needed for a game of D&D.
I had hoped to be able to teach the bot to do basic DM functions like make a reaction check and apply those results to the evolution of an encounter. It was not to be.
Finally I asked the bot to create a short blog post on our experience along with the challenges we faced:
Recently, I had the pleasure of playing Classic D&D with ChatGPT, a language model trained by OpenAI. We decided to create three characters: Neria, an Elf Lord, and her two bodyguards, Farman and Vaseline, who were also sea elf fighters.
Despite the challenges, we had a lot of fun playing Classic D&D with ChatGPT. The language model was quick to respond and provided us with interesting scenarios and challenges. We enjoyed the interactive nature of the game, and it was exciting to see how our characters’ actions influenced the game’s outcome.
Overall, our experience playing Classic D&D with ChatGPT was both fun and challenging. We encountered some difficulties with different rule sets, but we were able to overcome them and continue with our adventure. We look forward to playing more games with ChatGPT in the future.
https://chat.openai.com
Perhaps an embellishment, but no matter.
On the Tabletop 
Right, at this point it has no memory so can’t keep coherence in the adventure. Might be a great tool for a human GM. Instant room or shop descriptions etc.
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I posted a comment but I don’t think it went through. I just said that I agree, there is no memory so no coherence in the answers. It is like millar in expanse it is a different incarnation of the program each query you make. But it is a great tool for a human GM to riff off of. Like a drum machine.
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I tried using the bot for generating some dungeon rooms, but they are always very generic and don’t have interactivity beyond “Roll for Arcane vs DC15”. I don’t think the chatgpt is good for truly creative work, but it’s good for writing boilerplate and uninspiring stuff.
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Just listened to a podcast about using AI in game development. The host made a good analogy. Because ChatGPT seems to speak with authority, many think it’s similar to an encyclopedia where the answers are true and definitive. But instead the authority is all smoke and mirrors.
In the programming world, there is already a law suit against an AI to help with programming because the AI was trained on a wide code base, some of which is copyrighted code. And the AI has peoduced answers that include that copyrighted code.
So be warey of using any AI output verbatim.
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Good advice!
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I’m working whether it was my post – https://blog.peakrill.com/2023/03/ai-dm-artificial-intelligence-dungeon-master.html – which inspired you to try this? We seem to have had somewhat different intentions in the way we were using ChatGPT – I wanted it to run a game, and I’m not particularly interested in vanilla LotR-style D&D, I wanted it to demonstrate something more creative. I’m also not very interested in the character creation process, just in the story. Although funnily enough, the way that I got into computer programming (which led to a 25-year career) was by writing a Word macro to automate Warhammer Fantasy character generation!
I’m interested to know – did you go beyond creating characters with it? The biggest issue that I found was that it didn’t want you to fail – I could only get it to subject me to a trap or be hit by a monster by telling it that’s what I wanted to happen, and it certainly would never kill a character. It’s like the world’s worst dice-fudger 😂
I disagree with other commenters here that ChatGPT has no memory – the best part of it, I found, was its memory. Each interaction built in the existing story, and it kept referring back to earlier events in the adventure, and was very capable of remembering my inventory and expecting me to use items that I’d found previously.
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Hi! Your comment got swept into a spam filter and I just now came across it, sorry about that.
Yes I think it was you peakrill post that got me inspired to test ChatGPT. Super cool that we both had different experiences and approaches to this tool.
I didn’t move much beyond the character generation phase as the one or two sample encounters that I attempted were just plain vanilla and not to my liking. Although this might deserve more testing with a focus on the role play of the game and less on the mechanics of the same.
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