Making a Module using ChatGPT

[Beoric]

I do think this highlighted most of the limitations even while managing to impress. It doesn't understand what a dungeon means in the context of these games. Generating a dungeon will always give a torture room, a guard room, some cells, etc. You have to be very specific about what you're feeding it to give it variety, and even that's going to be derivative. Still it will create fusions we wouldn't have expected.

You could feed it a list of rooms, though, like the lists in the 1e DMG or Courtney's Tricks and Traps publication. Or maybe try to use it to generate tricks?

 

[Beoric]

After I wrote that I decided to ask the bot to generate a trick. Unfortunately, on the first pass I accidentally hit "return" too early. This is what I got:

Me: Please generate a "trick" room in the style of a TSR-era Dungeons and Dragons module that contains three of the following elements:

Bot:
Sure! Here is a trick room in the style of a TSR-era Dungeons and Dragons module that contains three of the following elements:

1. Illusory walls: The walls of this room appear to be solid and unremarkable, but they are actually illusory and can be walked through by those who know the secret. Any character attempting to break through the walls without realizing they are illusory will be dealt 1d6 points of damage.
2. Teleportation circles: The floor of this room is inscribed with a series of intricate symbols and patterns, each of which corresponds to a different location within the dungeon. Any character stepping on one of these symbols will be instantly transported to the corresponding location.
3. Trap doors: The ceiling of this room is dotted with numerous trap doors, each of which leads to a different location within the dungeon. Any character standing beneath one of these trap doors when it is triggered will fall through, taking 1d6 points of damage in the process.
4. Mimic chests: The room is filled with a variety of chests, each of which appears to be filled with valuable treasure. However, several of the chests are actually mimics in disguise, waiting to attack any character who tries to open them.
5. Animated objects: The room is filled with various objects that have been brought to life by magical means. These objects will attack any characters who enter the room, using their own unique abilities and attacks.
6. Illusory floor: The floor of this room appears to be solid and unremarkable, but it is actually an illusory construct that can give way at any moment. Any character stepping on the illusory floor will fall through, taking 1d6 points of damage.

 

[Beoric]

Me: Ok, now generate a "trick" room in the same style, but incorporating a unique trick created by you. The trick must incorporate three of the following elements: ALTAR MACHINE ARCH MONSTER CEILING PASSAGE CONTAINER (barrel, jar, vase, etc.) PEDESTAL DOME PILLAR OR COLUMN DOOR, PIT DOOR, SECRET POOL FIRE ROOM FIREPLACE STAIRWAY FORCE FIELD STATUE FOUNTAIN TAPESTRY FRESCO, MOSAIC, OR PAINTING VEGETATION FURNISHINGS WALL IDOL WELL ILLUSION ATTRIBUTES AGES MOVES/ROLLS ANIMATED ONE-WAY ANTI-MAGIC PIVOTS TWO POSSIBLE WAYS APPEARING/DISAPPEARING POINTS ASKS POISON ATTACKS POLYMORPHING CHANGES - ALIGNMENT RANDOMLY ACTS - ATTRIBUTE RELEASES - COINS - CLASS - COUNTERFEIT - MINDS FROM BODY - GEMS/JEWELRY TO BODY - MAGIC ITEM -SEX - MAP COMBINATION RESISTING - GENERAL COLLAPSING - SPECIFIC DIRECTS RISING/SINKING DISINTEGRATES SUGGESTS DISTORTED - WIDTH/LENGTH SUSPENDS ANIMATION - HEIGHT/DEPTH TAKES/STEALS ENLARGES/REDUCES TALKS - INTELLIGENTLY/NORMALLY ENRAGES - NONSENSE ELECTRICAL SHOCK - IF METALLIC - POETRY & RHYMES - MAGICAL - SINGING FALSE - SPELL CASTING FLESH TO STONE - YELLS/SCREAMS FRUIT SHIFTING GASEOUS SHOOTS GEASES SLIDING GRAVITY - GREATER SLOPING - LESSER SPINNING - NIL SYMBIOTIC - VARYING TELEPORTS GREED-PRODUCING WISH FULFILLMENT INTELLIGENT WISH FULFILLMENT, REVERSAL INVISIBLE

This was just a cut and paste from a pdf of the 1e DMG Appendix "H".

Bot: Sure! Here is a trick room in the style of a TSR-era Dungeons and Dragons module incorporating a unique trick created by me:

The trick room is a large chamber with a high dome ceiling, adorned with intricate frescoes depicting mythical creatures and landscapes. In the center of the room stands a massive altar machine, resembling a giant stone wheel with intricate symbols carved into its surface.

As the characters enter the room, they are greeted by a series of pillars or columns arranged in a circle around the altar machine. Each pillar is topped with a glowing crystal, and as the characters approach, they realize that the crystals are shifting and changing color in a hypnotic pattern.

As they try to investigate further, they notice that the floor beneath their feet is slowly tilting and shifting, as if the room is tilting on an axis. Suddenly, a hidden door in the ceiling opens, and a staircase descends from above, leading to a secret passage.

As the characters ascend the staircase, they are confronted by a strange, machine-like monster resembling a giant, clockwork construct. The monster attacks them with a series of mechanical limbs and gears, its body shifting and transforming as it moves.

As the characters fight for their lives, they realize that the altar machine is starting to glow with a bright, pulsing energy. Suddenly, the room is filled with a burst of magical energy, and the characters are transported to a different location within the dungeon.

As they try to make their way back to the trick room, they find that the hidden door and staircase have disappeared, and the room is now filled with a series of traps and illusions designed to confound and mislead them. Can they make it back through the trick room and escape the dungeon, or will they be trapped forever in its shifting, treacherous corridors?

I could work with that.

 

[Beoric]

So, I wanted more detail on how the room would behave when the PCs got back to it. Here was my first attempt:

Me: Provide more detail about the traps and illusions, that are designed to confound them when they get back to the trick room.

Bot: Sure! Here are some additional details about the traps and illusions that are designed to confound the characters when they get back to the trick room:

1. Illusory walls: As the characters try to make their way back through the trick room, they find that some of the walls they previously passed through are now solid and impassable. These illusory walls are designed to mislead the characters and send them off course, causing them to waste time and energy trying to find a way around.
2. Teleportation circles: As the characters walk across the floor of the trick room, they may suddenly find themselves standing in a different location within the room, as if they have been transported by some unseen force. These teleportation circles are activated by pressure plates hidden beneath the floor, and are designed to disorient the characters and make it difficult for them to navigate the room.
3. Trap doors: The ceiling of the trick room is dotted with numerous trap doors, each of which leads to a different location within the dungeon. As the characters walk beneath these trap doors, they may suddenly find themselves falling through, taking 1d6 points of damage in the process.
4. Mimic chests: The room is filled with a variety of chests, each of which appears to be filled with valuable treasure. However, several of the chests are actually mimics in disguise, waiting to attack any character who tries to open them.
5. Animated objects: The room is filled with various objects that have been brought to life by magical means. These objects will attack any characters who enter the room, using their own unique abilities and attacks.
6. Illusory floor: The floor of this room appears to be solid and unremarkable, but it is actually an illusory construct that can give way at any moment. Any character stepping on the illusory floor will fall through, taking 1d6 points of damage.

Which is identical to the list above. Clearly you need to ask for a unique entry (the Bot is apparently lazy), so I tried this:

Me: I meant, please create a unique encounter in the trick room, as it appears when the characters return to it, using traps and illusions that are designed to confound and mislead them.

Bot:
Sure! Here is a unique encounter that could take place in the trick room as the characters return to it, using traps and illusions that are designed to confound and mislead them:

As the characters make their way back to the trick room, they find that the room has undergone a transformation. The frescoes on the walls and ceiling are now swirling and shifting, depicting distorted and nightmarish landscapes and creatures. The pillars or columns that once stood in the room are now gone, replaced by a series of shifting, illusory walls that seem to move and change shape as the characters approach.

As they try to navigate through the room, they are confronted by a series of traps and illusions designed to confuse and mislead them. The floor beneath their feet shifts and tilts, causing them to lose their balance and stumble. The ceiling is dotted with trap doors that open and close at random intervals, forcing the characters to duck and weave to avoid falling through.

As they make their way through the room, they are attacked by a variety of animated objects - barrels, vases, statues, and more - that come to life and attack them with their own unique abilities. These objects are immune to physical damage and can only be defeated by magical means.

As the characters try to fight their way through the room, they are confronted by a powerful illusion that fills the room with a thick, choking fog. This fog is infused with powerful magical energy that can warp reality and deceive the senses. Any character caught in the fog may find themselves hallucinating and experiencing vivid, terrifying visions, causing them to doubt their own senses and lose their way.

Can the characters navigate through the trick room and escape the dungeon, or will they be trapped forever in its shifting, treacherous corridors?

There are a couple of interesting things here. One is that the Bot does not understand the implications of "up" and "down"; it thought it was reasonable that you could fall through trap doors on the ceiling. The other is that there were similarities with the original room; I assume this is because it has a limited data set of D&D adventures to draw on. I suspect that if you use it a lot, you would have to seed it with your own elements.

 

[Beoric]

A bit more:

Me: Now create a unique description of an adjacent room using monsters from the Dungeon and Dragons Fiend Folio.

Bot:
Sure! Here is a unique description of an adjacent room using monsters from the Dungeon and Dragons Fiend Folio:

The adjacent room is a large, dimly lit chamber filled with the stench of decay and decay. The floor is slick with slime and grime, and the walls are adorned with intricate frescoes depicting twisted, demonic figures engaged in acts of depravity and violence.

In the center of the room stands a massive altar, carved from black stone and adorned with gold and silver inlays. The altar is surrounded by a circle of braziers, each filled with a flickering flame that casts a flickering light across the room.

As the characters enter the room, they are confronted by a horde of monsters that seem to have been summoned from the depths of the abyss. These monsters include:

1. Hezrous: These immense, dragon-like creatures are covered in thick scales and possess powerful claws and teeth. They can spit acid and generate powerful blasts of flame, making them formidable foes in combat.
2. Gibbering mouthers: These grotesque, blob-like creatures are capable of generating a constant stream of gibberish and nonsense, which can confuse and disorient their enemies. They can also attack with their razor-sharp teeth and claws.
3. Grell: These humanoid-shaped creatures have rubbery skin and tentacles for hands. They are skilled hunters and can use their tentacles to ensnare and drag their prey back to their lairs.
4. Vargouilles: These small, winged demons have sharp, needle-like teeth and can emit a high-pitched scream that can drive their enemies mad. They are often summoned by powerful spellcasters to serve as guardians and scouts.
5. Dretch: These low-level demons are small, weak, and cowardly, but they are capable of summoning other demons to their aid. They are often used as pawns by more powerful fiends, and are typically found in large groups.

The characters must fight their way through this horde of monsters if they hope to escape the dungeon and emerge victorious.

It is worth mentioning that as far as I can tell some of those monsters do not appear in any version of the FF that I am aware of.

Me: Now rewrite the description using only one creature from the Fiend Folio. Provide the creature's motivations and fears, what it is doing, and its likely reaction to the intrusion of the player characters.

Bot: Sure! Here is a revised description of the adjacent room using only one creature from the Fiend Folio:

The adjacent room is a large, dimly lit chamber filled with the stench of decay and decay. The floor is slick with slime and grime, and the walls are adorned with intricate frescoes depicting twisted, demonic figures engaged in acts of depravity and violence.

In the center of the room stands a massive altar, carved from black stone and adorned with gold and silver inlays. The altar is surrounded by a circle of braziers, each filled with a flickering flame that casts a flickering light across the room.

As the characters enter the room, they are confronted by a single creature - a vargouille. These small, winged demons have sharp, needle-like teeth and can emit a high-pitched scream that can drive their enemies mad. They are often summoned by powerful spellcasters to serve as guardians and scouts.

The vargouille is motivated by a desire to protect the altar and the fiendish forces that it serves. It is terrified of being banished back to the abyss, and will do whatever it can to prevent this from happening.

As the characters enter the room, the vargouille is perched atop the altar, its wings flapping and its sharp teeth bared. It lets out a high-pitched shriek as it launches itself at the characters, determined to drive them away.

If the characters manage to defeat the vargouille, it is likely that they will find a hidden passage or treasure hidden within the altar. However, if they fail to defeat the vargouille, it is likely that they will be driven mad by its shrieks and become easy prey for other fiendish creatures lurking within the dungeon.

EDIT: I'm also noticing a difference between these entries and the ones I was getting when I asked it for a map key.

 

[Maynard]

You could feed it a list of rooms, though, like the lists in the 1e DMG or Courtney's Tricks and Traps publication. Or maybe try to use it to generate tricks?

Right, everything I've heard about people who make content with this stuff is you have to ask it for an outline, embelish the outline with new juicy details, then feed each part of the outline back to the machine to flesh it out completely with your new details.

 

[Hemlock]

Interesting to see that even AI can write a better kitchen than most of the dreck Bryce reads.

The "burst of flame" has no damage stats though; it's pure fluff with no effect. I feel Bryce would take notice of that fact.

It is worth mentioning that as far as I can tell some of those monsters do not appear in any version of the FF that I am aware of.

They all exist in the 5E MMs though. A good illustration of the limits of GPT: apparently it's aware that these monsters tend to be discussed adjacent to the Fiend Folio, without actually knowing what's in the Fiend Folio.

On the other hand, a human being who was trained on the same texts (blog posts, etc.) without access to the Fiend Folio might make the same mistake.

On the gripping hand, chat-GPT-generated content is not usable (trustworthy) until a human vets it first for logic and consistency, as Robert S. Conley is doing.

 

[Alexander Moonbeam]

After I wrote that I decided to ask the bot to generate a trick. Unfortunately, on the first pass I accidentally hit "return" too early. This is what I got:

Can we stop to appreciate the accidental wierd brilliance that is trap doors in the ceiling, which suck you up into other rooms?

 

[Hemlock]

Can we stop to appreciate the accidental wierd brilliance that is trap doors in the ceiling, which suck you up into other rooms?

Why does this remind me of Bard's Tale? Did this ever happen in that game, or is it just the existence of ceiling portals that feels familiar? Hmmm.

 

[Beoric]

Can we stop to appreciate the accidental wierd brilliance that is trap doors in the ceiling, which suck you up into other rooms?

I would probably make this some fleshy groping tube that swallows you whole and expels you an a different level.

 

[Hemlock]

Seen on the Internet: people asking ChatGPT technical questions.

Q from User A: Does one user have to wait for another user when a synchronous function is wrapped in a task?

A from ChatGPT: In F#, if a synchronous function is wrapped in a task, one user will still have to wait for the other user to complete the task before they can continue. This is because the task is still being executed synchronously, which means that the code execution is stopped until the task is completed. However, it is possible to use asynchronous programming techniques in F# to avoid having to wait for other tasks to complete. With asynchronous programming, multiple tasks can run concurrently and the code execution is not blocked while waiting for a task to complete. This can help improve the performance and responsiveness of your program.

Commentary from User B: Don't ask ChatGPT technical questions. It's very good at stringing words together, but has absolutely no concept of whether what it's saying is true.

Commentary from Hemlock: ChatGPT's "explanation" is superficially plausible as technobabble, but deeply untrustworthy in the same way as Star Trek technobabble. That is, unlike a good explanation, it doesn't become more clear as you study it more closely to determine e.g. what is meant by "code execution is not blocked," instead it becomes more clear that chatGPT is just generating plausible word-sequences and has no idea what it means by "code execution" let alone the ability to explain to you what it means.

An actual answer would be something more like "It's not clear exactly what you're trying to ask, but assuming that by 'user' you mean 'thread of code', it depends on when Thread 1 is going to consume Thread 2's output. Asynchronous code lets you do other things while you're waiting, but yes, if you want 2's results you need to wait until they're ready."

Don't ask chatGPT questions to which you wouldn't recognize a bogus answer.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/fsharp/comments/zjx3pc

 

[Beoric]

Yes, ChatGBT is simultaneously without guile, and a habitual and convincing bullshitter.

I saw a post where a prof had it write a term paper in the prof's field, which the Bot did complete with citations. It was sufficiently convincing that the prof could not be sure whether certain statements were true or not without doing his own research. There was a mix of real citations and citations that appeared fictional (they looked convincing but he could not verify that the works existed), but even the citations from verified works did not support the statements for which they were cited.

 

[Hemlock]

That's precisely why I would never try to run chatGPT output as an adventure. (As opposed to chatGPT-inspired content written/curated by a human I trust.)

I was going to explain in greater detail how much worse a bad module is than nothing at all (i.e. making up your own stuff on the fly) and then I remembered where I am. Everybody here already knows that separating the wheat from the chaff is hard work.

 

[squeen]

The same is being said about AI art. The counter-argument is that at this rate of progression, it won't be too long until it does (fill in the blank with something you say it doesn't do well).

 

[Hemlock]

The same is being said about AI art. The counter-argument is that at this rate of progression, it won't be too long until it does (fill in the blank with something you say it doesn't do well).

Just like "the singularity", I'll believe it when I see it. The people pitching that particular line of hype have a radically different conception of what a mind is--I might even say I can directly observe that their take on "the singularity" is incorrect. I can observe that my mind is not made out of atoms and electrons, even though my brain[1] and sensory systems feeding into the mind are. Those people would not agree with that statement of course; they'd hypothesize that my mind is an emergent property of the right atoms interacting in the right ways (and maybe they would mumble something about "quantum effects"). But I don't have to persuade them that they're wrong; reality itself will do that.

(There's more to say about the bad assumptions feeding into the narrative of singularity, even if minds were made purely out of atoms, but I'll forebear.)

This is not to say that I doubt that AI art can get much, much better than it currently is, but it's still essentially an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards, plus some nifty algorithms to filter out the most egregiously nonsensical of the monkey outputs. From a technical standpoint I'm really impressed with chatGPT. From a gaming standpoint... I'm not optimisic about the GPT route producing usable (trustworthy!) gaming material largely because GPT is too powerful, i.e. not restricted enough. A good hexflower or ladder table could generate an interesting random map populated with interesting things to do, and I could have confidence that it will not do insane things like make three friendly NPCs (Loyalists) spontaneously morph into one hostile (Nemesis) and one friendly (Loyalist) with no explanation for what happened to the third one. I know that it can't do that because the ladder table has no entry for "NPC vanishes into thin air," but GPT is powerful enough that it can do things like that.

AI art is really promising as a way to essentially commission cheap custom art for those of us who can't draw and aren't going to use the art for anything worth paying a human $1000 for. It will be good for gaming in the sense that I'll be able to say "skull-faced hobbit with a laser gun riding a building-sized tarantula through a forest, with shrieking orcs running in all directions" and have a good chance of getting at least one result that isn't terrible. But that's mostly because it's pretty fast and low-effort to evaluate a painting as good enough/not good enough, unlike adventure module text.

skull-faced hobbit with a laser gun riding a building-sized tarantula through a forest, with shrieking orcs running in all directions:



Not great, but either I try again (or give up) or I decide that I like it enough to modify my adventure accordingly: instead of a tarantula, it's a treant-bug, and instead of a skull face the hobbit has a prosthetic hand with steel claws.

[1] I can observe that e.g. dredging up old memories and recognizing faces are both activities conducted largely or entirely by physical systems built out of neurons, obviously in the brain. I'm not denying that atoms are useful! But so is scratch paper, and my mind is not made out of scratch paper.

 

[The1True]

To be fair, that's what you're likely to get from a contract artist as well. I can't count the number of novels I've read where I've spent the entirety of the book wondering when the awesome thing on the cover is going to show up and it never does...

 

[Maynard]

I think the best application is in generators. You can very easily run a script to query chatgpt with an ad lib prompt. The end user fills in 5 or 6 key words that they want and your framework provides the necessary context for the machine to turn those key details into a fun dungeon or w/e

 

[Hemlock]

To be fair, that's what you're likely to get from a contract artist as well. I can't count the number of novels I've read where I've spent the entirety of the book wondering when the awesome thing on the cover is going to show up and it never does...

Well, mostly. If I paid an artist $1000 and got no tarantula, no skull face, no laser gun, and no shrieking orcs, they'd probably be in breach of contract.

I think the best application is in generators. You can very easily run a script to query chatgpt with an ad lib prompt. The end user fills in 5 or 6 key words that they want and your framework provides the necessary context for the machine to turn those key details into a fun dungeon or w/e

But I don't trust that dungeon.

The best use cases for chatGPT/generative AI are where validation is trivial. If an AI generates a map of a dungeon, that's easy to verify at least spatially: if rooms overlapped each other or weren't connected, your brain would notice that pretty quickly. In text it's less obvious, and things like NPC relationships that don't make sense won't be obvious either.

Or consider if there's a section of dungeon, the Blue Tower, which is only accessible if you have the Crystal Key. Now imagine that the Crystal Key is hidden in the Blue Tower.

ChatGPT will make all the mistakes I would hypothetically make if I had never read Procedural Generation In Game Design (https://www.amazon.com/Procedural-Generation-Design-Tanya-Short/dp/1498799191), plus more of its own.

 

[Maynard]

Well, theoretically the generator designer creates parameters that avoid those pitfalls. They've experimented with the ai enough to know how to avoid them. That's the value they bring to the end user.

 

[Hemlock]

Well, theoretically the generator designer creates parameters that avoid those pitfalls. They've experimented with the ai enough to know how to avoid them. That's the value they bring to the end user.

Even ChatGPT's designers aren't able to constrain it not to do stupid things like teach people to make dangerous and illegal substances (see

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1598380220943593472

for 30+ hilarious failures).

Trying to constrain it not to make things that are unfun to play seems even more futile, since you will have a hard time even describing all the possible unfun things.

I'm not trying to dissuade you from making a generator, and you might even have a lot of fun making one because it's so easy, but if you know enough programming to write something with actual constraints like "rooms must not overlap" and "monster should appear in group sizes as specified by the AD&D Monstrous Manual entry" you'll get more trustworthy results that are also easier to tweak to match your own creativity ("no more than 30 orcs at a time, unless in lair").

Here's an amusing examination of ChatGPT's attempt to write CSS:

Again, I wouldn't mind using chatGPT to generate creative prompts for a human writer to use, like "describe five memorable OSE-style pirate NPCs." But I wouldn't trust it to generate a dungeon or adventure.