AI in PbP

...although they do use different hardware.

AI models represent data as vectors. A vector is an object with a bunch of numbers. We can think of a DND character's abilities as a vector of ability scores, HP, skills (e.g. [16,12,8,14,11,10,24,0,0,1,2,0,1,...]).

When you stick a bunch of numbers together, you get a matrix. AI models do this to process their data as matrices, as it's then possible to perform mathematical operations on a whole lump of data. It allows processing of information as a gestalt. Going back to our example, we could imagine a matrix which adjusts HP based on CON, and then apply it to a party (where a party is a bunch of vectors jammed together into a matrix).

I don't know if you remember how to perform matrix algebra from school, but if you do, then you might remember that finding numbers in the result matrix can be done in any order (although we tend to work left-right, top-bottom out of cultural habit). This allows matrix operations to be parallelised.

This is where GPUs come into play. GPUs are built to allow massive parallel processing and are optimised for this sort of processing. It's also why Nvidia (a GPU manufacturer) has become a very valuable company on the back of the AI boom - they provide hardware to help make general matrix multiplication parallel and non-linear.

Now, of course, within those myriad parallel streams, there are still sequential operations, but massive parallel processing of matrices is still fundamental to current AI models.

I didn't mean this to come across as an "ackchyually...", but more of an answer to anyone who ever asked their maths teacher, "when am I ever going to need to calculate an eigenvector?"

Exactly, FS. If the art generators were ethically trained, I would be among the first to embrace AI art. For someone who can't draw a non-Euclidean line with a French curve (i.e., me), AI art would be a godsend. I still wouldn't use it in professional products (I'd rather pay to hire a real artist), but for things like PbP games, where I need a lot of pictures, it would be great!

I think we've gotten quite off topic of if/how we use Al in our PbP games.

I ran a game about a year/year and a half ago that was 100% AI generated, that was the premise and pitch to players.

The players created characters, using AI, including class/subclass creation. I created the entire campaign ONLY using AI.

We wrote the initial campaign prompt together then I put it into the system to spit out the story usually after every post, I copied and pasted the posts from GP to the model and asked it to describe or decide what happens next. Sometimes it took a few "clean up" prompts or manual editing but overall it worked out fairly well. And this was ChatGPT 3.0. I bet 5.0 would do even better.

This was VERY minimalistic AI playing, I allowed the AI model to guide the play a lot. But I felt like it was fun and it came up with some interesting scenarios using this method though definitely not perfect. I could very easily see how this could translate with some training to a player being 100% AI controlled, but that from my experimentation isn't as fun and when I have "attempted" it in the past, it felt hollow and the model just asked more questions/messed up pov of the post/failed to commit to anything.

I prefer writing 4-5 paragraphs then using the AI model to help my writing have a distinct style or character to it. I would use it to get accents in writing form consistent, adding flowery language but not making the decisions themselves. I have found this has actually helped my own writing actually, where because I don't need the AI model as much as I once did for this type of stuff.

I have no doubt that it is possible to run a decent game with an AI GM, or AI players, or both, even without human assistance. AI Dungeon existed before ChatGPT, after all; it's a tried concept even if it'll always have flaws. :D A few years ago I probably would've even been enthusiastic to play in something like that! Alas, now it just feels wrong.

That said, that's not really what I meant. I was thinking more about a model fully trained on GP games from the ground up, not an already trained model being prompted in specific ways to get desired results. It probably won't work with writing, but it would be an interesting thing to see how a model like that will approach decisions - how GP's collective consciousness operates. XD

I recently tried having ChatGPT write an adventure for my campaign. I ended up using the base idea, but nothing else. It just felt artificial when I read through what the computer wanted to use. I will say this: While it felt, as I said, artificial, the computer did an excellent job of structuring the adventure and even provided stats for the central villain.

The only Al used in my PbP:

That's weird...

Oh, Goddess me. This is famous Al thread now, isn't it?

On a "AI in PbP" related note - do you feel like ST/GM/DM's or players have to divulge their use (and amount) of AI usage or is it optional?

AI to generate statblocks Yes
AI to generate encounters No
AI to generate plot hooks Yes
AI to generate campaigns No

Remember all the AI is doing is crunching numbers faster.

I would say that given the decisive nature of AI, it's courtesy and good practice to divulge that information. I wouldn't say it's required, but you also don't get to complain when your players leave because of its use.

Which reminds me, I need to add a note that I've used ChatGPT to do the grunt-work of converting tables to GP use.

I feel like I'd be more iffy about the plot hooks, rather than campaign building, since plot is the backbone of the game, the main thing to me, while robot created campaign sounds more like this:

I don’t want to play in anyone’s games who is generating actual ideas with AI. Like, come on — why don’t you just pay someone else to play your characters for you too? The whole point of the exercise is the creative fun. And do NOT come at me with that "ai prompt writing is creative" nonsense. Next thing, you’ll be telling me you are a digital artist because you plug phrases in an image generator. What a joke.

Gwen, what about for people who struggle with pen-to-paper creation? I, personally, struggle with that initial spark of creativity; I make up for it with random tables or just using existing modules. So what's the problem with starting with prompts from an AI, generated using specific queries and filters for the game in question, and expanding from there? In the end, the only part wasn't my own creation was a Spark Table, which wouldn't have been my own creation anyways?

Using AI to produce a list of ideas is not a deal breaker for me; it's not much different than just googling and finding a blog post, or having a random table to roll on. I use random roll tables more as sources of inspiration than to actually roll on when DMing. And if folks want to use AI in that way, I won't object.

What I don't want is a GM who lets the AI make the creative decisions for them, who copy/pastes the ChatGPT output into posts, and so on. I know it's useful; believe me, I know. But I have to take a principled stand on this.

Look, and this is not aimed at you CowleyC, but mostly those AI apologists above. I have taught critical thinking/reading/writing for 25 years. And I am telling you, students became measurably worse at these skills after the advent of social media, and have become vastly, frighteningly worse at them after ChatGPT and the like replaced their own ability to think critically. They can't read long form text AT ALL any more; they need ChatGPT to give them the TL;DR. They can't string ideas together into an independent train of thought; they need ChatGPT to formulate their broken speech into paragraphs. This is an existential threat to democracy, which fundamentally requires people to be able to evaluate candidates and policies and make decisions about them.

When we let AI make our decisions creatively, politically, and so on, when we let it think for us, we cede our minds, and our societies, to the tech bros who write the algorithms that govern these AIs. We are all willfully giving up our democracy in favor of a technocratic oligarchy, and all for the convenience of not having to do the hard work of thinking and creating for ourselves.

I confess, I use AI to generate character images, and sometimes to generate lists of names or phrases. And I am also well aware of how my own ability to read long form texts, think critically, etc has degraded over the past ten years. And yet I use these tools anyway. So if someone who is fully aware of the dangers of these things still uses them, we are doomed.

So no, I will not abide foolish arguments that the unchecked, unregulated, uncritical acceptance of AI in a society is a good thing. And, for those wider political reasons, I'd rather not overly rely on it for my gaming.

I use a lot of randomized lists, but all of them are stocked either with my ideas or those "borrowed" from other people (i.e., found on the web). They are never populated by AI.

Late to the discussion, and my thoughts are disorganized at best, but here goes:

I am viscerally repulsed by most AI-generated content...if I can tell it's AI-generated. And that's the scary part; I can't always tell. I do see the usefulness of it though. Out of curiosity, I have dabbled in it on my own.

I won't judge anyone who uses it as an aid, but I'll no doubt find AI-generated prose uninteresting even if I thought a human wrote it.

The players in my home game aren't writers, and I think (despite my best efforts to prevent this) they are intimidated by my writing, amateurish as it is. We got tgeir D&D5e characters all the way to 12th level without proper backstories. They finally had Ai write them up. I'm disappointed, but what can I do other than run with it?

Consider how much wilder your game could get if you fed all those to an LLM and told it to expand the theme based on a series of your human arbitrations. Then had it output them as a series you could base on die rolls.

So crazy it just might work.

The ecological / environmental and ethical sides of AI are what make me not want anything to do with it, as far as I'm capable. I'm aware that when I pick images from the intarwebs to illustrate my games, that some of them might come originally from AI, but there's little I can do about that.

^I agree, and what I’ve noticed is that GMs who use AI for more than just art are up-front about it.

I personally create my own content as a GM, and when feasible, I draw my own characters as a player.

That said, even without the use of AI, I still use content that is not my own creation. I post YouTube links to battle music in my games that the player can opt to listen to. If an NPC happens to look like Dr. Wiley from Megaman, I throw in a gif:I draw my own battle maps, but the emojis that represent the PCs are not my own creation:I even made my own 13-page rulebook. But I still used emojis, free-for-commercial-use fonts, and a system which is a Lasers & Feelings hack.My point…?

We all use tools. I am not an "AI apologist," nor do I rely on AI myself for my own reasons, but I’m fine with others using AI in a PbP that is played on a forum without money exchanging hands.