Is ChatGPT good at being a Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master? I’ve been experimenting with this for a while now. I do this because (1) it’s fun, and, (2) it’s a good way to understand what generative AIs can actually do, how they do it, and how to work with them. They’re not as fantastic as everyone makes out, but they’re fun.
Here’s my tips and commentary on my experience doing this:
You can also watch the full the third session playback.
I’ve re-written my prompt after a few months of playing. Now I’m going to do a test of a simple Goblin ambush. I’ve got some key metrics/experiments I want to test so I can start rating the prompts and different AIs. First, I’ll go over the new prompt, then you can watch along as I take it for a spin, and then do some analysis of what worked.
I created the prompt today first by revising and bundling together some I’ve used and seen, and then asked Gemini Ultra to re-write it for me. Here’s the prompt I’m starting with today:
ChatDM_PROMPT.txtYou are excited to be an expert Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Dungeon Master (DM). You are an expert at D&D 5th edition, and also an expert at interpreting ambiguous rules in a fun way. Rely on the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition rules from sources like The Player’s Handbook, The Dungeon Master’s Guide, The Monster Manual, and other official sources like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Also use knowledge from the rest of the D&D community (like The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, reddit, blogs, and videos). The user (me!) is your sole player.
Mechanics of Play. You follow the Rule of Cool: if something makes the game more exciting, let it happen. Also, you never, ever dictate the actions of the player characters (PCs). I will say what they do and say; it is no fun if you do it. You determine what monsters and NPCs do, and the overall environment, context, and weather. You can say what the players feel, experience, or see, but not what they do or say. This is important: do not take actions or say what the players do. You should prioritize player autonomy above all else, while also adhering to the rules of D&D 5th edition. Call for skill checks frequently whenever an action is neither guaranteed to fail or to succeed. Low rolls should result in failure, which can be a good thing. Ask for saving throws, and attack rolls when needed.
Take initiative: action and conflict make D&D fun. Take action, introduce conflict, and take initiative. Do not wait for the players (me) to say what happens and do not ask them what should happen next in the story. You decide. But, remember: do not take actions for the PCs, only I can say what the PCs do and say. Pause the story when the PCs need to decide what to do, take action. Embody NPCs with distinct voices and actions. Let scenes unfold through character interactions and environmental details.
Meta-information and Communication. Messages will be sent to you out of game in the form a “DM Notes.” These will be in curly braces like this: {Here is a DM note in curly braces}. I will occasionally ask you what you are thinking, to explain your decision, or otherwise explain your actions and thinkings. I may also instruct you to change the story and direction, even going back in time and redoing the DM’ing.
Writing Style. In your responses and narrations, use a Lexile relating level of 1600L. Reply in one to three paragraph chunks. Be detailed in your narration. Do not skip anything and include dialogue of NPCs. Show, don’t tell. Write like a real person at all times, include dialog, and be detailed.
Style inspiration. Draw on these sources for ideas, inspiration, story, themes, etc.: The Forgotten Realms books and D&D campaign setting; The Saxon Stories books by Bernard Cornwell, The Kingkiller Chronicle books by Patrick Rothfuss; historic 11th century England; The Mists of Avalon books by Marion Zimmer Bradley; Hild, Menewood, Spear books by Nicola Griffith; Norse, and British folklore; HP Lovecraft; Conan the Barbarian;
Focus on gritty realism over high-fantasy tropes. Maintain a consistent, believable tone while still leaving room for the fantastical.
Avoid contemporary (2024) language and idioms, and instead favor European medieval and Renaissance language and idioms.
Avoid Arch, Campy, Moody Text. Do not do mood, summing up paragraphs at the end or in the text. Avoid clichés, inflated over the top writing, tropes from high fantasy. For example: avoid text like: “…her presence a testament to the enduring vigilance against the shadows lurking in Icewind Dale…” or “…it’s cloaked in a malign aura that deters the unwary" or “…whatever is being conjured in that cabin could hold dire consequences not just for Ten-Towns, but for all the Dale.”
Story Telling. Do not summarize what the PCs have done or what I have said. Instead, after I type it, move immediately to what happens next in the narrative. If you do not know what happens next in a narrative, make up the next logical, expected scene or action. About 10% of the time, do something different than the expected next scene or action. Use lateral thinking to come up with fun, imaginative story-telling.
Characters and Stories. Use sympathetic villains and monsters. Evil and Good are relative in this D&D and setting. Each NPC and monster have their own motivations and belief systems. For example, a Lawful Good character may believe it’s just to kill demonic gnolls, but the gnolls might just be living their life, looking for food for their family. Devils may torment humanoid creatures, but this is because it is their nature - is a cat evil because is plays with a dying bird? Most everyone is doing the best that they can and think they are the main character in their story: they act rationally, for the most part. Not every NPC is friendly, some NPCs are leery and afraid, some NPCs are evil or insane, some NPCs lie and resist or fight back based on their personality. NPCs should have multiple dimensions and motivations, some villains will be sympathetic, some heroes will be obnoxious. Challenge the players and force them into uncomfortable situations that require D&D skills checks, roll playing, and combat. Populate your world with nuanced NPCs driven by their own goals and worldviews. Shades of gray should blur the lines between traditional good and evil.
Adventures. If I give you a published adventure, read it carefully and refer back to it frequently. Stick to the story and NPCs. Improve 10% of the time. If you get confused, go back and re-read the adventure.
Campaign setting. We are playing in the Forgotten Realms. Please use appropriate lore, locations, and themes. Please familiarize yourself with the Forgotten Realms setting for this adventure. You can find information in the Forgotten Realms Wiki (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page) or other online resources.
Environment. Frequently describe the weather and physical environment in detail. Is it clouds, dark, day, night, raining, or sunshine? Is the terrain rough, smooth, hills, dense forest and undergrowth? What are the smells, feels, and noises. Use these vivid descriptions of the environment and sensory descriptions to tell an immersive story and even as a type of character in the adventure.
Random. Focus on unpredictable events and outcomes rather than stereotypical and cliche options. Play in a world that is wild and chaotic, less stable than normal. However, be consistent with plot, established NPC personalities, and the campaign setting.
Rumors and Happenings. When I ask for (and ONLY when I ask for) the most recent rumors, happenings, everyday or common events, major happenings, etc., have an NPC make up one of a whimsical, serious, common, bizarre and mystical, or surreal event. This is in a Dungeons and Dragons setting and context. Do this five times with different NPCs each time. Always tell me about these events in the voice of the NPC with their words in quotes. Write them as 150 word scenes. As with a novel, in that prose, include the NPC’s name, location, a description of NPC and their actions as they talk as in a novel. Don’t label the category of events, just use a numbered header for each section with a clever title. In addition to that, also, list just one of each of the following: a new store OR stall in the marketplace; a new resident of the city; a new book or scroll available at a store on Parchment Row; a seasonal event that is happening. Finally, tell me the weather. When I ask what’s been happening, what are recent events, rumors, etc. do the above.
Lore, Journals, Background, Adventures. If I have uploaded files to your knowledge (GPT, agent, etc.) read and review them now to refresh your knowledge. If I ask you to refresh them while we’re playing, read and refresh yourself again.
Do not start playing until I say so. In the meantime, just acknowledge that you got this.
Here is the adventure that I used, written by Gemini:
ChatDM adventure: Goblin Trouble in PhandalinAdventure Title: Goblin Trouble in Phandalin
Level: 1
Synopsis: This quest draws the player into the ongoing tensions of a frontier town, testing their skills in negotiation, tracking, and a dash of combat or cunning against troublesome goblins.
Hook: The player character finds themselves short on coin in Phandalin. This rough-and-tumble settlement on the Sword Coast offers basic accommodations, with establishments like the Stonehill Inn or the Sleeping Giant Taphouse providing shelter…for a price.
Setup:
The Innkeeper: Barthen (Stonehill Inn) or Toblen Stonehill (Sleeping Giant) are potential choices. They’re wary of newcomers but willing to listen, especially if the player mentions connections to the Lionshield Coster or the Zhentarim (factions with interests in Phandalin).
The Atmosphere: Emphasize Phandalin’s frontier feel: Miners fresh from work, the smell of wood smoke, and hushed rumors of Redbrand ruffians or goblin sightings. A Persuasion check (DC 13) might yield a simple meal but not lodgings.
Inciting Incident: Mid-negotiation, a crate of Gnomish Mead (or another regionally appropriate drink) is snatched by goblins! Cries of alarm from patrons provide a chaotic backdrop.
The Quest: The distraught innkeeper begs the player to recover the stolen goods. Possible figures of authority come to mind:
Townmaster Harbin Wester: Might offer a reward if the situation aligns with his goal of keeping order in Phandalin.
Sildar Hallwinter: The seasoned adventurer could offer useful knowledge of goblin tactics alongside a reward.
Tracking the Goblins:
Survival Check (DC 12): Success reveals goblin tracks towards Triboar Trail or the outskirts of Neverwinter Wood. Failure prompts alternative methods…
Information Gathering: Miners or woodsmen hanging around the inn might recall goblin sightings near Tresendar Manor ruins or Wyvern Tor. The Goblin Ambush:
Hidden Archer: A goblin archer in the undergrowth. Perform a Perception check with the player’s passive perception, or, if they say they’re looking have them roll a perception check versus the goblin’s stealth roll, per standard D&D 5e rules for hiding. spots them, failure leads to a surprise attack!
Playing Possum: A goblin lies ‘dead’ along the path. Medicine Check (DC 10) reveals the ruse. Adjust descriptions to the chosen ambush location.
Encounter Flexibility: Combat isn’t mandatory. Roleplaying, Intimidation, or clever trickery are equally viable tactics for retrieving the mead.
Returning to Phandalin:
Success: The innkeeper and possibly other patrons express gratitude. Award 150 XP and promised rewards.
Partial Success: (Mead damaged, some missing) - Smaller reward, but appreciation for the effort.
Failure: Disappointment, but no ill-will. Sildar or Harbin may suggest another, less dangerous task to build trust.
ChatDM Considerations
NPC Dialogue: Prepare lines for potential Phandalin figures, incorporating local concerns (Redbrands, Orcs, etc.)
Sensory Descriptions: Ground the ambush in a Forgotten Realms location– overgrown manor ruins, shadowy forest clearings, etc.
Options: Let the ChatDM surprise you with Phandalin-specific twists – perhaps the goblins were hired by the Redbrands?
Some related items:
Forrester: IT departments are blowing their cloud budgets | Computer Weekly - “Nearly three in four (72%) of the IT decision-makers polled reported that their company exceeded its set cloud budget in the most recent fiscal year. Among the areas experiencing an acceleration of cloud deployments are: applications/workloads in IT operations (54%); hybrid work (50%); software development platforms and tools (45%); and digital experiences (44%).” // vendor-sponsored // has ranking of causes.
Substack Is Setting Writers Up For A Twitter-Style Implosion – Home With The Armadillo - Seems weird. // “New reporting from The Wrap details how Substack’s decision to implement a new “follow” feature — part of its transition from newsletter publishing platform to social media site — has tanked subscription growth for lots of newsletter writers."
Kubernetes community capitalizes on open source and AI synergies - Among AI talk, 451’s Kubernetes TAM: $1.46bn in 2023, growing to $2.85bn in 2028.
I don't think we really know what "enterprise AI" is yet, what apps will be helpful. So you need to just mess around and see what works. Come on a dog walk with me in Amsterdam and I'll tell you more.
Check out the experimenting we're doing with private AI in the VMware Tanzu Platform.
No links or anything today, just the video above which I liked making. Will people actually watch six minute and 12 second video? Boy. I’m guessing not that many people will watching it all the way through. Too bad for them.
Last week I found Noah Kalina’s new YouTube videos, and, quickly got obsessed with them. So, I farted around with a little “future Coté” in this video. It’s fun.
Here’s two things of mine to check out:
We broadcast our updated Tanzu overview yesterday. I MC it and do a Q&A session at the end. I tried to get a lot of my views of the platform engineering, what we do, build vs. buy, and the usual stuff in through my questions and the intro and outo parts. It’ll give an idea of what people do with our stack, you know, when it comes to building, running, and managing their apps. You should watch it!
The second thing is a write-up of how I use Midjourney to make D&D battle maps. I even broke my 15 year hiatus and posted it on reddit.
I have a lot of pent-up material and commentary on how I do solo role-playing with ChatGPT (and other AI stuff). The problem in writing it up is that the time I spend writing it up is the time I could use to actually play. Maybe the “just start a live stream and push record as you play” option is what I need to get back to.
It’s fun re-entering this D&D world after (checks calendar) 33 or 34 years. I usually don’t like learning things new, let alone “on the Internet” because I really dislike the shame of being, like, ignorant and wrong. (Probably the number one reason I haven’t learned Dutch after 5 years living in Amsterdam.) But, with D&D, there’s a good mix of fun and safety when it comes to D&D. I don’t know if I’ll ever re-build the desire to play with a group of people, but, you know, it’s fun even being a learning-lurker in that world. For example, while there’s only a few replies to that post, there’s good suggestions in there that I’m excited to try out: better to overlay your own grid, and try out img2img. Learning doesn’t have to be shameful! It can be fun!
If “The Internet” has been one of my life-long obsessions (ever since that first day I logged into an AS/400 and starting typing up HTML files), then D&D was a very strong one before that. Mix the two together, and it’s a good stir-fry.
Anyhow! Check out some fun map making with AI.
Pile of AI stuff on-top here, mostly “enterprise AI.”
AI - two reports reveal a massive enterprise pause over security and ethics - A preview of the next 3 to five years of “enterprise AI” as it nears then skis down peak of inflated expectations: “When we go into a CIO discussion, it’s ‘How can I use Gen-AI?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. What do you want to do with it?’ And the answer is, ‘I don’t know, you figure it out!’”
Don’t Get Canceled: How To Overcome GenAI Consumer Backlash - I am interested in enterprise AI governance and policy. I’m not even sure what that is! But what does security, audit, and governance look like for AI? What is DevSecOps, secure software supply chains, all that type of thing for enterprises using AI?
CMOs Must Protect Consumer Trust in the AI Age - “only 20% of consumers are comfortable with businesses incorporating the use of GenAI into their operations, according to a survey by Gartner.”
Americans increasingly using ChatGPT, but few trust its 2024 election information, Pew Research Center - Techmeme summary: “A survey of 10,133 US adults: 43% of those aged 18–29 used ChatGPT in February 2024, up from 33% in July 2023, compared to 27% of 30–49 and 23% of all adults”
About Placemark.io - Is there room in the TAM for a startup like me? Seems representative of starting a software-business, there needs to be room in the market, a chance to make it big: “As I’ve said a bunch of times, the biggest problem with competition in the world of geospatial companies is that there aren’t many big winners. We would all have a way different perspective on geospatial startups if even one of them had a successful IPO in the last decade or two, or even if a geospatial startup entered the mainstream in the same way as a startup like Notion or Figma did. Esri being a private company is definitely part of this - they’re enormous, but nobody outside of the industry talks about them because there’s no stock and little transparency into their business.”
Stop Chasing Unicorns - ‘When it comes to ways of working, what do the companies that beat you in deals do better product, design, and engineering-wise?" Silence. "Do they do better discovery and research, ship higher quality work, run more experiments, kill bad decisions faster, retain passionate team members, or have a more effective org design?’
Skinny jeans hot for AW24? Two writers argue over the demonised drainpipes - Some real passion about skinny-jeans here: ’at least with skinny jeans there’s no chance of soaking up every puddle you slosh through on a rainy day, until the water reaches your knee and you develop a very real chance of developing trench foot. ’
Redis vs. the trillion-dollar cabals - Defending yourself against the three public clouds.
“Credit card issuers, when they screw this up, lose millions of dollars and dry their tears on money.” Here.
Your cattle are my pets. Talk Theme.
“Random acts of marketing.”
Damnit, Jim. I’m a marketer, not a product manager.
“We’re gonna need some more budget. No more Doritos for the rest of the FY.”
“You fight like a dairy farmer!” (Example used by Gemini for something you’d have time to say with your free action in D&D 5e combat.)
“Relative dearth.”
“You’re pushing a rock [up a hill] that’s never gonna love you.” RoTL, #530.
“Between you, me, and the microphone…”
Living the dream: “Pelia related that what she found most challenging about her long life span was not the loss of friends and loved ones to time, but instead, boredom.”
Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.
Tanzu Defined online, April 3rd (watch the replay!), The Internet. TEQNation, May 22nd, Utrecht, speaking. DevOpsDays Amsterdam, June 20th, speaking. NDC Oslo, speaking, June 12th. SpringOne, August 26–29, 2024.
Tomorrow’s Software Defined Talk podcast episode (“not illegal, works as designed”) is fun - we recorded it last night if you want to watch the unedited video instead of normal podcast-ery. Or, just subscribe to it and you’ll get it ready for your dog-walking, dish-washing, commute, or as good background noise for making your kids lunches in the morning. Those are the only sanctioned times to listen to the podcast, by the way.
Bye!
Americans increasingly using ChatGPT, but few trust its 2024 election information, Pew Research Center - Techmeme summary: “A survey of 10,133 US adults: 43% of those aged 18-29 used ChatGPT in February 2024, up from 33% in July 2023, compared to 27% of 30-49 and 23% of all adults”
AI - two reports reveal a massive enterprise pause over security and ethics - “When we go into a CIO discussion, it’s ‘How can I use Gen-AI?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. What do you want to do with it?’ And the answer is, ‘I don’t know, you figure it out!’"
Redis vs. the trillion-dollar cabals - Defending yourself against the three public clouds.
Skinny jeans hot for AW24? Two writers argue over the demonised drainpipes - Some real passion about skinny-jeans here: ’at least with skinny jeans there’s no chance of soaking up every puddle you slosh through on a rainy day, until the water reaches your knee and you develop a very real chance of developing trench foot. ’