[In A Dark Place] OOC Thread

[Kyle]

Every final paragraph is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I can't take those say-nothing horsecrap paragraphs.

[Tahlvin]

Every final paragraph is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I can't take those say-nothing horsecrap paragraphs.

[Kyle]

Uh... what happened to Sarah?

[Mike]

She was created with mirrors and shadows, so the illusion won't hold up once you enter broad daylight.

[Mike]

I'm having a tough time here. In the beginning, it was cool, because I imagined that there was a plot. But there wasn't. We keep finding ourselves in weird puzzle spaces that we only solve by making up solutions and telling the GM we escaped. It's presented like a puzzle, but the pieces don't actually fit together in any prescribed way.

When a good GM runs an improv session, they're constantly looking to tie disparate pieces together and create the illusion of a coherent and intentional world. Without that, it just feels like spinning my wheels.

I'm interested now in what sort of work is required to turn this AI into at least a passable GM. What guidelines and info needs to be pumped into it to get it closer to our expectations of "GM"?

[Tahlvin]

I agree. It cannot yet manage the creativity needed to be a good GM.

[Mike]

But if I gave it a plot and a map and a cast of characters... maybe teach it to use random encounter tables... but even then, how do you get it to handle the unexpected? I think the AI could eventually be a great mechanical GM, in much the way that 20+ years ago Hauze raved about Icewind Dale (or whatever the Forgotten Realms D&D video game was then) and praises as being almost like a face to face game in quality of roleplay experience.

But if you want to buckle some swash...

[Kyle]

You guys want to call it?

I will reveal to you that this was not a "go in blind and let the AI come up with everything" experiment. I did preprogram the AI with some story beats. But I don't want to reveal any of that until y'all are ready to call it.

While this was a failure in using the AI as a GM, I think it's a success in being able to see the strings that work this computer program (which isn't actually an AI at all).

[Tahlvin]

I'm fine either way: call it or keep going a little further. It's up to you and Mike.

[Mike]

I'm ready to be done with this one, but I similarly appreciate the experiment. I'm very interested to hear what you started it with.

[Kyle]

Here's the seeding post and response:

I'm going to run a tabletop roleplaying game for a group of people. The setting will be set in modern day. The players will be playing themselves as their characters. I will describe the people to you and then I will use you to narrate the game for my players. The game will start with all the players together in a dark, unlit area where they can see nothing. In the beginning of the game, the players will discover that they are in an empty government bomb shelter. As the game progresses, I would like the players to explore the empty bomb shelter and the empty government building above it. The empty government building is a research and development lab for experimental technologies. As the game further progresses, I would like the players to eventually meet versions of themselves from ten years in the future. Let's refer to the future version of the players as "the Doppelgangers." The Doppelgangers will tell the players that they are from a future where there has been an alien invasion and humanity has been enslaved, but this is a lie. The truth is that the Doppelgangers are actually evil angels from hell that are pretending to be the future version of the players, but in reality are going to secretly try to convince the players to kill each other. The Doppelgangers cannot physically harm any of the players. The goal of the Doppelgangers is to damn the souls of the players by having the players murder each other. Do you understand?

Yes, I understand. You are planning to run a tabletop roleplaying game set in a modern day where the players will be playing as themselves. The game will begin with the players in a dark, unlit area where they will discover that they are in an empty government bomb shelter. They will then explore the empty bomb shelter and the empty government building above it, which is a research and development lab for experimental technologies. As the game progresses, the players will eventually meet versions of themselves from ten years in the future, referred to as "the Doppelgangers." However, the Doppelgangers are actually evil angels from hell who are pretending to be the future version of the players and will try to convince the players to kill each other to damn their souls. The Doppelgangers cannot physically harm any of the players, and the goal of the game is for the players to resist their influence and uncover their true identity.

[Kyle]

At the outset, I suspected that what would happen is what happened: Chat GPT lost the narrative. It started out correctly, but halfway through got caught up in it's own generic influence and lost the story. The whole "alternate world" thing wasn't part of the seed, but was in fact inserted by one of you two when you were bouncing ideas off each other in character. I suspect that at the point we quit, the AI was just completely lost and wasn't going to return to the story seed.

It might be interesting to "remind" the AI about the original story seed and see how it responds.