Dungeons and GPT
Dec. 31st, 2025 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aggienautSo, i had some D&D related mechanisms i wanted to playtest, and also my friend Mick had started us on an official campaign "Lost Mine of Phandalvin" before deciding he wanted to run his completely homebrew world campaign and abandoning that, which has ever since left me hanging and wanting to finish said campaign. But it's notoriously hard to get a bunch of people together and I'm not sure they'd want to be subject to my experimental mechanics ... but hey maybe chatgpt could be the Dungeon Master for me! Spoiler: it's crap at this but i like how my homebrew mechanics are working out.
1. ChatgpDM
so i have the digital version of said campaign so i thought I'd cut paste large chunks of it to chatgpt and from there it could DM. Well it's pretty good at keeping track of mechanics does make occasional mistakes but i think not more than a human, just keeps one on one's toes double checking what it says.
The biggest problem is it just can't be persuaded not to give spoilers such as "if you roll a 15DC investigation here you'll find a trap" and "there's a secret passage to the west." And then it also completely hallucinated a secret passage one time. Also it's heavily biased towards nonviolence, after i TRIED to pick a fight with local ruffians and they just wouldn't fight me i had to read the scene directions myself and point out it says they attack regardless of player actions. I could go on but long story short chatgpt is not suited to this purpose.
Hmmm yeah i think I'd totally play d&d with a trained pigeon.
I know some would say D&D is fundamentally meant to be interpersonal and it would be sacrilege to try to play it solitaire, but I've always liked the story element of it most. I might try Claude as a DM, haven't experiment much w it but hear it's good. Okay but enough about AI for now let's talk about these mechanisms. But first:
2. What's in a Name?
I've always relished rude sounding character names, from my first, In the first go at ole Lost Mine of Philanderer, a hobbit named Dillweed Tosscobble, to a dwarf named Feldspar Smeltdelver, but I'm very proud of my latest character name, a bugbear named Nard Reacharound (bugbears have extra reach you see).
3. Pike, Extended Addition
I'd been feeling like the pike as written was boring, just a spear but not? Pikes being really really long, i decided to give the pike double reach, but then also unusable at normal close melee range of 5ft or indoors. Then in a gratuitously reachy building i armed my bugbear with it so he has triple reach (hence the name, Reacharound). I think it's a good set of tradeoffs, in effect he doesn't get to use it much since most combat is indoors. If an enemy closes to 5ft range Nard must drop his pike ("the shaft") and draw his greatsword "Rawdog." Also if there ever was a mounted opponent it would probably have some advantage against mounted.
4. True Grit
The most interesting idea i wanted to experiment with was a method of gaining HP, Rather than just automatically on leveling up, basically when a character takes damage, they have a (damage just received)/(total hp) chance of gaining another max hp. Doesn't trigger unless either they have been reduced to less than 10 hp or half their total hp, but the first hit that reduces them to eligible range credits also for the damage that didn't (i can explain more in a comment but basically this is to prevent people just grinding away taking low level hits on purpose to gain HP.) So far the three classed characters I'm running are only level 2 but the HP they've gained this way almost exactly equals what they'd have gained the other way, but i find it more satisfying this way. The one big downside is its often like a 4/13 chance that can't be manually rolled for.
5. Proficiency
The classed characters have the normal proficiency bonuses they should have but i also gave them a run of the mill commoner to make up for the small size of the party. He's not proficient in anything, so i thought I'd give him a mechanic I'd been wishing the roguelike game Nethack had: in Nethack you gain proficiency by scoring hits with a given weapon. I've often thought it would work better if you gain proficiency from MISSES. Ie you learn most from your mistakes, and will learn best by continuing to challenge yourself. He hasn't gained weapons proficiency yet but because most combat is over in a round or two I've set it so he'll gain a +1 at 4 misses, the (normal) +2 at 8 misses, +3 at 16, etc...
And for armor, which also involves proficiencies but doesn't suit such a mechanic, I'm thinking if he just gains 300xp (the amount to gain ones first leveling) whilst wearing said armor.
Connor the Commoner only HAS 4hp though so I'm trying not to get too attached, he may well not survive receiving his first hit.
6. The Sum of all Fears
I might have posted about this before, I'd made a list of 100 fears so they can be easily rolled for, every player character or significant NPC gets a fear. We've got characters with a fear of geese, squirrels, heights.. heroic knightly NPC Sildar has a fear of left handed people which i think is very funny. so far it hasn't had a narrative influence but I think it makes all the characters feel more well rounded.
As chatgpt is proving unsatisfactory as a dungeon master, I feel like fully being my own dungeon master is a bit too much of a closed loop. I had tried DMing a game for my friend Trent but even doing that via zoom for one person i felt too time consuming and anxiety inducing for me, having to have everything ready (though more players might have made that easier actually as their actions wouldn't have been so unpredictable). I'm thinking of seeing if any friends would be willing to participate in a slow but constantly ongoing game via whatsapp, though Trent doesn't seem keen, has not responded the several times i brought it up lol.
Written from here on my phone, camped out for the fireworks!
1. ChatgpDM
so i have the digital version of said campaign so i thought I'd cut paste large chunks of it to chatgpt and from there it could DM. Well it's pretty good at keeping track of mechanics does make occasional mistakes but i think not more than a human, just keeps one on one's toes double checking what it says.
The biggest problem is it just can't be persuaded not to give spoilers such as "if you roll a 15DC investigation here you'll find a trap" and "there's a secret passage to the west." And then it also completely hallucinated a secret passage one time. Also it's heavily biased towards nonviolence, after i TRIED to pick a fight with local ruffians and they just wouldn't fight me i had to read the scene directions myself and point out it says they attack regardless of player actions. I could go on but long story short chatgpt is not suited to this purpose.
Hmmm yeah i think I'd totally play d&d with a trained pigeon.
I know some would say D&D is fundamentally meant to be interpersonal and it would be sacrilege to try to play it solitaire, but I've always liked the story element of it most. I might try Claude as a DM, haven't experiment much w it but hear it's good. Okay but enough about AI for now let's talk about these mechanisms. But first:
2. What's in a Name?
I've always relished rude sounding character names, from my first, In the first go at ole Lost Mine of Philanderer, a hobbit named Dillweed Tosscobble, to a dwarf named Feldspar Smeltdelver, but I'm very proud of my latest character name, a bugbear named Nard Reacharound (bugbears have extra reach you see).
3. Pike, Extended Addition
I'd been feeling like the pike as written was boring, just a spear but not? Pikes being really really long, i decided to give the pike double reach, but then also unusable at normal close melee range of 5ft or indoors. Then in a gratuitously reachy building i armed my bugbear with it so he has triple reach (hence the name, Reacharound). I think it's a good set of tradeoffs, in effect he doesn't get to use it much since most combat is indoors. If an enemy closes to 5ft range Nard must drop his pike ("the shaft") and draw his greatsword "Rawdog." Also if there ever was a mounted opponent it would probably have some advantage against mounted.
4. True Grit
The most interesting idea i wanted to experiment with was a method of gaining HP, Rather than just automatically on leveling up, basically when a character takes damage, they have a (damage just received)/(total hp) chance of gaining another max hp. Doesn't trigger unless either they have been reduced to less than 10 hp or half their total hp, but the first hit that reduces them to eligible range credits also for the damage that didn't (i can explain more in a comment but basically this is to prevent people just grinding away taking low level hits on purpose to gain HP.) So far the three classed characters I'm running are only level 2 but the HP they've gained this way almost exactly equals what they'd have gained the other way, but i find it more satisfying this way. The one big downside is its often like a 4/13 chance that can't be manually rolled for.
5. Proficiency
The classed characters have the normal proficiency bonuses they should have but i also gave them a run of the mill commoner to make up for the small size of the party. He's not proficient in anything, so i thought I'd give him a mechanic I'd been wishing the roguelike game Nethack had: in Nethack you gain proficiency by scoring hits with a given weapon. I've often thought it would work better if you gain proficiency from MISSES. Ie you learn most from your mistakes, and will learn best by continuing to challenge yourself. He hasn't gained weapons proficiency yet but because most combat is over in a round or two I've set it so he'll gain a +1 at 4 misses, the (normal) +2 at 8 misses, +3 at 16, etc...
And for armor, which also involves proficiencies but doesn't suit such a mechanic, I'm thinking if he just gains 300xp (the amount to gain ones first leveling) whilst wearing said armor.
Connor the Commoner only HAS 4hp though so I'm trying not to get too attached, he may well not survive receiving his first hit.
6. The Sum of all Fears
I might have posted about this before, I'd made a list of 100 fears so they can be easily rolled for, every player character or significant NPC gets a fear. We've got characters with a fear of geese, squirrels, heights.. heroic knightly NPC Sildar has a fear of left handed people which i think is very funny. so far it hasn't had a narrative influence but I think it makes all the characters feel more well rounded.
As chatgpt is proving unsatisfactory as a dungeon master, I feel like fully being my own dungeon master is a bit too much of a closed loop. I had tried DMing a game for my friend Trent but even doing that via zoom for one person i felt too time consuming and anxiety inducing for me, having to have everything ready (though more players might have made that easier actually as their actions wouldn't have been so unpredictable). I'm thinking of seeing if any friends would be willing to participate in a slow but constantly ongoing game via whatsapp, though Trent doesn't seem keen, has not responded the several times i brought it up lol.
Written from here on my phone, camped out for the fireworks!
