TheRPGSite

Greetings!

Here, Professor DM discusses recent financial news concerning Hasbro and Chris Cocks, and brings the flamethrower against WOTC and 6E. His sarcasm and bristling contempt for the whole "Digital Direction" that WOTC is taking D&D is bold and on full display. And to think some people proclaimed that Professor DM was some kind of WOTC shill. Professor DM has for some time now moved his program away from WOTC. It is good to see.

And, well, Professor DM is also a big fan of SHADOWDARK. He also encourages people to play Shadowdark, and other independent RPG's that are not WOTC.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I enjoy most of his videos.  He was definitely fired up for this one!  I hope more and more of his followers ditch WotC and look for alternative games.

I've got all my older editions and other RPGs to play. Let them compete with the video game market. I think I know what the result will be.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 27, 2024, 12:36:34 AMI've got all my older editions and other RPGs to play. Let them compete with the video game market. I think I know what the result will be.

Just as the AAA side of it is collapsing... Perfect timing guys!

As usual he's a day late. I didn't see the Cocks quote and yet I predicted this exactly.

While it's good that many are letting the mass know what Wotc is up to most players like myself will simply go 🤷and keep playing whatever edition we are currently playing.

I mean, wouldn't Wotc removing themselves from the tabletop sphere be about the best possible outcome at this point?

Quote from: Abraxus on July 27, 2024, 10:59:57 AMWhile it's good that many are letting the mass know what Wotc is up to most players like myself will simply go 🤷and keep playing whatever edition we are currently playing.

And/or buying whatever the newest thing shows up on the shelves, so long as new stuff keeps showing up on the shelves...

Quote from: ForgottenF on July 27, 2024, 11:56:24 AMI mean, wouldn't Wotc removing themselves from the tabletop sphere be about the best possible outcome at this point?

For the hobby? Hell yeah! The ones who will suffer will be game store owners. With the wotc disciples all sitting home playing via computer and buying electronically, Games shops will need to really promote other tabltop games in the store such as skirmish miniatures games and board games. On the plus side, game shops will stop being packed full of hobby tourists.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on July 27, 2024, 10:08:31 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on July 27, 2024, 11:56:24 AMI mean, wouldn't Wotc removing themselves from the tabletop sphere be about the best possible outcome at this point?

For the hobby? Hell yeah! The ones who will suffer will be game store owners. With the wotc disciples all sitting home playing via computer and buying electronically, Games shops will need to really promote other tabltop games in the store such as skirmish miniatures games and board games. On the plus side, game shops will stop being packed full of hobby tourists.

Hobby Shops are now Collectible Card Vendors who offer tourneys.  And even then, its heavily biased towards magic for sales.  There is Pokemon, Heroscape and Yugioh for instance, but MTG is the main seller.

A lot of Hobby Shops offer D&D play as a courtesy because the guys buy their stuff from Amazon and just take up space more times than making a sale.  Better shops have started to charge a nominal fee for Adventurer's League or they sell food and drink to make up the difference, and I'm glad they do.

Getting back to the thread, if WotC goes full digital and ignores tabletop they will lose a funnel of kids who started playing because it was free, now its not free, its very expensive and those kids will go elsewhere.  WotC is killing its funnel of new players for short term gains.  They'd be smart to support both tabletop and digital.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on July 28, 2024, 11:37:49 PMGetting back to the thread, if WotC goes full digital and ignores tabletop they will lose a funnel of kids who started playing because it was free, now its not free, its very expensive and those kids will go elsewhere.  WotC is killing its funnel of new players for short term gains.  They'd be smart to support both tabletop and digital.

Losing players that spend no money now and may never do so isn't a guaranteed future loss. Pushing out projects aimed at them (as they have been doing) - that don't get bought - is more likely to cause short-term losses. So, it seems they're screwed either way.

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 28, 2024, 11:46:01 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on July 28, 2024, 11:37:49 PMGetting back to the thread, if WotC goes full digital and ignores tabletop they will lose a funnel of kids who started playing because it was free, now its not free, its very expensive and those kids will go elsewhere.  WotC is killing its funnel of new players for short term gains.  They'd be smart to support both tabletop and digital.

Losing players that spend no money now and may never do so isn't a guaranteed future loss. Pushing out projects aimed at them (as they have been doing) - that don't get bought - is more likely to cause short-term losses. So, it seems they're screwed either way.

It means they will age out with a smaller and smaller cohort of customers.  You need players playing the game including those who don't pay to play.  Without those players, there is no game in the first place.  Even those who borrow someone's PHB because they are poor.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on July 29, 2024, 12:41:52 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 28, 2024, 11:46:01 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on July 28, 2024, 11:37:49 PMGetting back to the thread, if WotC goes full digital and ignores tabletop they will lose a funnel of kids who started playing because it was free, now its not free, its very expensive and those kids will go elsewhere.  WotC is killing its funnel of new players for short term gains.  They'd be smart to support both tabletop and digital.

Losing players that spend no money now and may never do so isn't a guaranteed future loss. Pushing out projects aimed at them (as they have been doing) - that don't get bought - is more likely to cause short-term losses. So, it seems they're screwed either way.

It means they will age out with a smaller and smaller cohort of customers.  You need players playing the game including those who don't pay to play.  Without those players, there is no game in the first place.  Even those who borrow someone's PHB because they are poor.

Are they doing the thing where a DM can invite a certain number of non-paying players to access the game materials under the DM's (payed) account?

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 29, 2024, 01:14:03 AM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on July 29, 2024, 12:41:52 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 28, 2024, 11:46:01 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on July 28, 2024, 11:37:49 PMGetting back to the thread, if WotC goes full digital and ignores tabletop they will lose a funnel of kids who started playing because it was free, now its not free, its very expensive and those kids will go elsewhere.  WotC is killing its funnel of new players for short term gains.  They'd be smart to support both tabletop and digital.

Losing players that spend no money now and may never do so isn't a guaranteed future loss. Pushing out projects aimed at them (as they have been doing) - that don't get bought - is more likely to cause short-term losses. So, it seems they're screwed either way.

It means they will age out with a smaller and smaller cohort of customers.  You need players playing the game including those who don't pay to play.  Without those players, there is no game in the first place.  Even those who borrow someone's PHB because they are poor.

Are they doing the thing where a DM can invite a certain number of non-paying players to access the game materials under the DM's (payed) account?

I don't think we know enough about their virtual play model yet to know how they will charge. Considering how non-existent their playtest stuff was for DM content, the new edition seems to consider DM's as an afterthought. Not quite sure that they would rely on them as their main source of revenue.

I find that PDM sometimes enjoys the smell of his own farts too much, but this is not one of those videos. He makes a compelling case for WotC going full digital.

The comments section, both here and on his YouTube video, have a preponderance of old men yelling at clouds as well as young people yelling at capitalism.

WotC is a business. Businesses exist to make money. There are legitimate criticisms to raise about predatory monetization practices, but you can't fault the for trying to make a buck. The reality is D&D has been fully digital since 2000, but you couldn't make money that way back then. Most of the complaints about virtual tabletops are the exact same people making the exact same argument they lost 20 years ago about pdfs.

Quote from: Corolinth on July 29, 2024, 10:16:12 AMI find that PDM sometimes enjoys the smell of his own farts too much, but this is not one of those videos. He makes a compelling case for WotC going full digital.

The comments section, both here and on his YouTube video, have a preponderance of old men yelling at clouds as well as young people yelling at capitalism.

WotC is a business. Businesses exist to make money.

I have grown to despise this statement, because it leaves out a critical point.

Businesses exist to make money by providing a good or service that people want.

QuoteThere are legitimate criticisms to raise about predatory monetization practices, but you can't fault the for trying to make a buck. The reality is D&D has been fully digital since 2000, but you couldn't make money that way back then. Most of the complaints about virtual tabletops are the exact same people making the exact same argument they lost 20 years ago about pdfs.

They are either going to do another half-assed attempt and crater, or at best be competing in a market with a metric fuckton of mobile games that do the whole "Pay X monee to get a shiny sparkle for your character!" thing much more cheaply and efficiently.

And either result means they are leaving the TTRPG market and thus are irrelevant to those of us who are consumers of such product. Except maybe to poke fun at their antics.

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 29, 2024, 01:14:03 AMAre they doing the thing where a DM can invite a certain number of non-paying players to access the game materials under the DM's (payed) account?

All evidence points to no. Wizard's is fully looking into AI DMs. They're all in on it. ChatGPT is apparently a passable DM from what some have said.. The moment Wizard's can get one functioning enough to run prewritten and programmed Adventures, they'll cut human DMs out entirely.

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 29, 2024, 04:48:12 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 29, 2024, 01:14:03 AMAre they doing the thing where a DM can invite a certain number of non-paying players to access the game materials under the DM's (payed) account?

All evidence points to no. Wizard's is fully looking into AI DMs. They're all in on it. ChatGPT is apparently a passable DM from what some have said.. The moment Wizard's can get one functioning enough to run prewritten and programmed Adventures, they'll cut human DMs out entirely.

They also said it was under monetized and complained that most players don't buy the books IIRC.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on July 29, 2024, 06:17:20 PM

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 29, 2024, 04:48:12 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 29, 2024, 01:14:03 AMAre they doing the thing where a DM can invite a certain number of non-paying players to access the game materials under the DM's (payed) account?

All evidence points to no. Wizard's is fully looking into AI DMs. They're all in on it. ChatGPT is apparently a passable DM from what some have said.. The moment Wizard's can get one functioning enough to run prewritten and programmed Adventures, they'll cut human DMs out entirely.

They also said it was under monetized and complained that most players don't buy the books IIRC.

Yup, so cutting out GMs completely and doing nothing but releasing new content for Players in the form of Microtransactions while an AI DM runs everything for them? That's the WotC Dream.

The reality is that they don't know what they have.  They don't know how it works.  They don't know why people like it.  They don't understand why people buy it and wouldn't buy it themselves.  It's a recipe for success if I've ever seen one.

Quote from: David Johansen on July 29, 2024, 10:57:52 PMThe reality is that they don't know what they have.  They don't know how it works.  They don't know why people like it.  They don't understand why people buy it and wouldn't buy it themselves.  It's a recipe for success if I've ever seen one.

They wouldn't buy it themselves?  Ha!!!  What a way of putting it.  Even they, don't want it....

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 29, 2024, 11:06:17 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on July 29, 2024, 10:16:12 AMI find that PDM sometimes enjoys the smell of his own farts too much, but this is not one of those videos. He makes a compelling case for WotC going full digital.

The comments section, both here and on his YouTube video, have a preponderance of old men yelling at clouds as well as young people yelling at capitalism.

WotC is a business. Businesses exist to make money.

I have grown to despise this statement, because it leaves out a critical point.

Businesses exist to make money by providing a good or service that people want.

And it really gets our goat that people actually do want a virtual tabletop, because VTT is the Wrong Way To Play(tm). We just can't accept it, so it has to be a Bad Business Decision(tm) that will bankrupt the company.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 29, 2024, 11:06:17 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on July 29, 2024, 10:16:12 AMThere are legitimate criticisms to raise about predatory monetization practices, but you can't fault the for trying to make a buck. The reality is D&D has been fully digital since 2000, but you couldn't make money that way back then. Most of the complaints about virtual tabletops are the exact same people making the exact same argument they lost 20 years ago about pdfs.

They are either going to do another half-assed attempt and crater, or at best be competing in a market with a metric fuckton of mobile games that do the whole "Pay X monee to get a shiny sparkle for your character!" thing much more cheaply and efficiently.

And either result means they are leaving the TTRPG market and thus are irrelevant to those of us who are consumers of such product. Except maybe to poke fun at their antics.

I'm sure the current success of 5E and Pathfinder have absolutely nothing to do with the fully searchable online rules repositories that both games have. Nobody wants to play that way, after all. They want to spend time flipping through books to make characters and reference rules. They also want to measure distances on a table with a tape measure or a piece of string, they don't want a computer calculating that on the fly.

Paying money for a shiny sparkle thing for your character is Games Workshop's entire business model. It's also the business model for Reaper Miniatures. Oh, and also Hero Forge. Come to think of it, it's also the business model for all the dice makers who sell those colorful swirly dice instead of plain black numbers on white plastic. Shiny sparkle things is a pretty robust business model. As for mobile games, there's a lot of them. Enough to see that it's obviously more complicated than that, and the argument that WotC's VTT is going to fail because of mobile gaming just doesn't carry water.

If WotC goes tits-up, and it's possible they might, it's going to be because they pissed off the Marxists by doing a capitalism, while simultaneously pissing off everybody else with the woke virtue signaling they've been doing to distract the Marxists from their capitalism. I wouldn't count on the VTT being shit quality.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on July 29, 2024, 06:17:20 PM

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 29, 2024, 04:48:12 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 29, 2024, 01:14:03 AMAre they doing the thing where a DM can invite a certain number of non-paying players to access the game materials under the DM's (payed) account?

All evidence points to no. Wizard's is fully looking into AI DMs. They're all in on it. ChatGPT is apparently a passable DM from what some have said.. The moment Wizard's can get one functioning enough to run prewritten and programmed Adventures, they'll cut human DMs out entirely.

They also said it was under monetized and complained that most players don't buy the books IIRC.

This is almost certainly true.

My experience is entirely anecdotal, but as I think back to my in-person games over the past ten years, at least half of my players did not have books for any of the games we played.

100% of the people in my in-person groups who own gaming books also run games.

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 29, 2024, 04:48:12 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 29, 2024, 01:14:03 AMAre they doing the thing where a DM can invite a certain number of non-paying players to access the game materials under the DM's (payed) account?

All evidence points to no. Wizard's is fully looking into AI DMs. They're all in on it. ChatGPT is apparently a passable DM from what some have said.. The moment Wizard's can get one functioning enough to run prewritten and programmed Adventures, they'll cut human DMs out entirely.

WOTC is going to be spending an assload of cash in the digital sphere as training AI is neither fast nor cheap.

GenerativeAI+LLM's are only going to get better at speaking to humans based on the context we put in.  We are 3-5 years from having tournaments being solely AI run if there is a complete lack of humans to run the games.   The ways people will 'game' the system will be epic. Looking forward to it.

Is this a good thing? yes. The better a machine is in talking to people the better it will be for people to get into the hobby who are incapable of finding a DM to run a game due to a myriad of factors.

Does this mean the death of the hobby? hell no. People still play in person and conventions exist for a reason where tens of thousands of people go to get their game on.

As far back as 2011, if not earlier, there has been a goal of removing the DM from the equation. At least we didn't get the collectible 4.5E that Kierin Chase was pushing at the time. The pre-proto 5E days where wild. The IP almost got shelved.

Quote from: Corolinth on July 30, 2024, 12:36:02 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on July 29, 2024, 06:17:20 PM

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 29, 2024, 04:48:12 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 29, 2024, 01:14:03 AMAre they doing the thing where a DM can invite a certain number of non-paying players to access the game materials under the DM's (payed) account?

All evidence points to no. Wizard's is fully looking into AI DMs. They're all in on it. ChatGPT is apparently a passable DM from what some have said.. The moment Wizard's can get one functioning enough to run prewritten and programmed Adventures, they'll cut human DMs out entirely.

They also said it was under monetized and complained that most players don't buy the books IIRC.

This is almost certainly true.

My experience is entirely anecdotal, but as I think back to my in-person games over the past ten years, at least half of my players did not have books for any of the games we played.

100% of the people in my in-person groups who own gaming books also run games.

Not saying it isn't true, pointing out that they want to "better monetize" the players, from what I can see this means "buy" the parts of the books you need to play the character you want to play.

Of course you're not buying shit, you're giving them money on top of a subscription to their VTT.

I might be wrong, but I don't think I am. I'm betting they'll bleed the people dumb enough to subscribe to their walled garden with micro-transactions up the wazoo.

Quote from: Corolinth on July 30, 2024, 12:27:31 PMI'm sure the current success of 5E and Pathfinder have absolutely nothing to do with the fully searchable online rules repositories that both games have.

And you'd be correct (except you thought you were being sarcastic).  I run an after-school D&D 5e club with over 50 teenagers regularly attending.  None, and I repeat none use D&D Beyond, a VTT, or electronic resources.  It's books, paper, and dice.  Now, that doesn't mean that this is true for all groups, or even a majority of groups, but the game still has large appeal without any of those "improvements."  When the primary demographic (the cyber-addicted teens of today) is just fine without them, you can't ascribe the success of the game to them.

5e is successful due to the ruleset being simplified (5e is way simpler than 3e or 4e, though not as simple as 1e or 2e) while still having some extended options for the optimizer-type players.  It is successful because of the growth of nostalgia and nerd-chic in the larger culture (via Stranger Things and "Big Bang Theory").  And it is successful because video game RPGs (with video games being the largest form of entertainment today) have accustomed gamers to the conceits and gameplay of TTRPGs, enough that kids are willing to give TTRPGs a chance.  And, as a minor role, TTRPGs have always had a reputation as being accepting (contrary to what the woke hobby-tourists assert in their power plays) of the social outcasts, which is both a blessing and a curse (as the modern woke have adopted RPGs as some kind of therapy).

Of the reasons for 5e's success, the actual game itself is responsible for only one of them.  And electronic aids, while they help with the simplification, don't determine the level of simplification in the edition...

Quote from: THE_Leopold on July 30, 2024, 12:45:43 PMGenerativeAI+LLM's are only going to get better at speaking to humans based on the context we put in.  We are 3-5 years from having tournaments being solely AI run if there is a complete lack of humans to run the games.

We absolutely are not "3 to 5 years away" from this. I say this as a data scientist who regularly works with AI models, and who not only understands the technology, but keeps up with the science and methodology behind it.

Will we possibly see attempts made within that timeframe? Of course. People think these things are fucking magic and lack the understanding not only of how and what the machine is doing under the hood, but also of how the brain works and how laughably lacking current approaches to AI are in approximating neurological functions that would actually make an AI a passable DM. These attempts will either be (1) under incredibly controlled situations and scenarios that ensure the AI doesn't lose important information to context window size, or (2) will eventually out themselves as not tenable for long-term TTRPG play due to there actually being no causal reasoning happening.

In order for this to really happen and be tenable, we need a fundamental paradigm shift in the AI/ML space. Something on the level of transformers and attention, but geared towards either causal reckoning or some kind of long-term memory storage and retrieval system but in context of a model. Given the general tendencies of the techbros, however, I doubt such a thing will be forthcoming: everyone seems convinced that LLMs and stable diffusion are on the level of the holy grail, when they really, really aren't.

Quote from: Corolinth on July 30, 2024, 12:27:31 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 29, 2024, 11:06:17 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on July 29, 2024, 10:16:12 AMI find that PDM sometimes enjoys the smell of his own farts too much, but this is not one of those videos. He makes a compelling case for WotC going full digital.

The comments section, both here and on his YouTube video, have a preponderance of old men yelling at clouds as well as young people yelling at capitalism.

WotC is a business. Businesses exist to make money.

I have grown to despise this statement, because it leaves out a critical point.

Businesses exist to make money by providing a good or service that people want.

And it really gets our goat that people actually do want a virtual tabletop, because VTT is the Wrong Way To Play(tm). We just can't accept it, so it has to be a Bad Business Decision(tm) that will bankrupt the company.

While I personally am not interested in a VTT, I have no issues with one existing and even being successful. What I'm skeptical of is WOTC being able to make a "good" VTT that's successful and "good". So far their track record of online tools is that they generally suck.

Quote

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 29, 2024, 11:06:17 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on July 29, 2024, 10:16:12 AMThere are legitimate criticisms to raise about predatory monetization practices, but you can't fault the for trying to make a buck. The reality is D&D has been fully digital since 2000, but you couldn't make money that way back then. Most of the complaints about virtual tabletops are the exact same people making the exact same argument they lost 20 years ago about pdfs.

They are either going to do another half-assed attempt and crater, or at best be competing in a market with a metric fuckton of mobile games that do the whole "Pay X monee to get a shiny sparkle for your character!" thing much more cheaply and efficiently.

And either result means they are leaving the TTRPG market and thus are irrelevant to those of us who are consumers of such product. Except maybe to poke fun at their antics.

I'm sure the current success of 5E and Pathfinder have absolutely nothing to do with the fully searchable online rules repositories that both games have. Nobody wants to play that way, after all. They want to spend time flipping through books to make characters and reference rules. They also want to measure distances on a table with a tape measure or a piece of string, they don't want a computer calculating that on the fly.

As a table top wargamer, I find physcial books easier to use, dice and measuring tools are more satisfying than digital. I love to roll dice and I like to collect tokens and templates to use in my tabletop games.
I find online RP/Wargaming to be very frustrating and difficult. The software is usually arcane and hard to use, and the format makes it difficult to communicate with other players. It's just not the same as being in the same room interacting with another person.

I understand that other players are fine with online tabletop gaming, it's just not for me. I suspect I'm not the only one.

QuotePaying money for a shiny sparkle thing for your character is Games Workshop's entire business model.

I rarely buy Games Workshop products because their FOMO business model means the product I'd like to purchase is usually sold out, and when it is available, it's hard to justify the price.

QuoteIt's also the business model for Reaper Miniatures. Oh, and also Hero Forge. Come to think of it, it's also the business model for all the dice makers who sell those colorful swirly dice instead of plain black numbers on white plastic. Shiny sparkle things is a pretty robust business model. As for mobile games, there's a lot of them. Enough to see that it's obviously more complicated than that, and the argument that WotC's VTT is going to fail because of mobile gaming just doesn't carry water.

If WotC goes tits-up, and it's possible they might, it's going to be because they pissed off the Marxists by doing a capitalism, while simultaneously pissing off everybody else with the woke virtue signaling they've been doing to distract the Marxists from their capitalism. I wouldn't count on the VTT being shit quality.

I would. I fully expect it to be shit. I don't know exactly how or to what extent, but speaking as a former software test engineer (STE 1) it will be amusing to watch.

Quote from: GnomeWorks on July 30, 2024, 04:18:24 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on July 30, 2024, 12:45:43 PMGenerativeAI+LLM's are only going to get better at speaking to humans based on the context we put in.  We are 3-5 years from having tournaments being solely AI run if there is a complete lack of humans to run the games.

We absolutely are not "3 to 5 years away" from this. I say this as a data scientist who regularly works with AI models, and who not only understands the technology, but keeps up with the science and methodology behind it.

Will we possibly see attempts made within that timeframe? Of course. People think these things are fucking magic and lack the understanding not only of how and what the machine is doing under the hood, but also of how the brain works and how laughably lacking current approaches to AI are in approximating neurological functions that would actually make an AI a passable DM. These attempts will either be (1) under incredibly controlled situations and scenarios that ensure the AI doesn't lose important information to context window size, or (2) will eventually out themselves as not tenable for long-term TTRPG play due to there actually being no causal reasoning happening.

In order for this to really happen and be tenable, we need a fundamental paradigm shift in the AI/ML space. Something on the level of transformers and attention, but geared towards either causal reckoning or some kind of long-term memory storage and retrieval system but in context of a model. Given the general tendencies of the techbros, however, I doubt such a thing will be forthcoming: everyone seems convinced that LLMs and stable diffusion are on the level of the holy grail, when they really, really aren't.

I think you and Leopold are overthinking this. That isn't meant as an insult by the way.

I don't believe Wizard's plans on having an AI DM that can respond to any input a player puts in or actions they want to take... Far, far from it.

I think instead they're more gunning for something that can adjudicate pre-written Adventures with a very limited set of options and responses.

The new crop of D&D players won't care... They'll log on with their weird non-human characters, roleplay with one another over text and then go through the Adventure provided for them.

I honestly believe the casual 5e fanbase will be perfectly okay with this. No they won't be able to engage in deep roleplay with NPCs, or make any kind of crazy descision you could with a living, breathing, thinking Dungeon Master..

But they'll get to play their special character, pay 2 win for the special skins and custom outfits and magic items... Go through the Adventure with the DM to "Level up" and then "RP" in a thinly disguised chatroom posing as the local 'tavern'.

Wizard's wants to create a slower version of World of Warcraft with dice rolls. That's what this is going to come down to.

They'll still have the option for Live DMs who can create custom Adventures, tilesets and terrain and all that... Don't get me wrong..

But the whole point of the AI DM will be to run you through an Adventure with Limited options so you can level up your character and ERP with the Transgender Kobald Artificer in the Tavern afterwards.

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 30, 2024, 06:23:34 PMI think you and Leopold are overthinking this. That isn't meant as an insult by the way.

As I mentioned, I am deep in this field, not just as a job. This is a subject that I read about and contemplate outside of work. Compared to pretty much any other person, I will of course come off as overthinking it.

QuoteI don't believe Wizard's plans on having an AI DM that can respond to any input a player puts in or actions they want to take... Far, far from it.

I have had real people in real life talk to me with the notion that this is a possibility either now, or in the near future. It is entirely reasonable to assume that anyone who lacks the technical background to understand LLMs thinks that this is what's going on. This phenomenon is not helped by the fact that techbros keep overhyping LLMs and whackjobs claim their instance of chatgpt is sentient.

I would find it entirely believable if someone found evidence that some asshole at WotC or Hasbro in a suit believes this is a possible thing and is demanding that it be done, and also believable that the tech people attempting to implement it believe it's entirely possible and within their skills to make it so.

QuoteI think instead they're more gunning for something that can adjudicate pre-written Adventures with a very limited set of options and responses.

You don't need AI to do this. It's called a "video game" and we've had those since the 80s.

QuoteThe new crop of D&D players won't care... They'll log on with their weird non-human characters, roleplay with one another over text and then go through the Adventure provided for them.

I honestly believe the casual 5e fanbase will be perfectly okay with this. No they won't be able to engage in deep roleplay with NPCs, or make any kind of crazy descision you could with a living, breathing, thinking Dungeon Master..

But they'll get to play their special character, pay 2 win for the special skins and custom outfits and magic items... Go through the Adventure with the DM to "Level up" and then "RP" in a thinly disguised chatroom posing as the local 'tavern'.

To my knowledge, I've never met one of these people. I'm aware that they exist, obviously, but I find it hard to believe that this is anything more than a very vocal yet very tiny minority.

QuoteWizard's wants to create a slower version of World of Warcraft with dice rolls. That's what this is going to come down to.

But the whole point of the AI DM will be to run you through an Adventure with Limited options so you can level up your character and ERP with the Transgender Kobald Artificer in the Tavern afterwards.

If you're running a prewritten adventure and have predefined decision points where players select what to do from a menu -- again, that's a video game, and we've had these for as long as I've been alive. Or those "choose your own adventure" books, which are probably even older. You don't need AI to do this.

It is my understanding that the main draw of AI in a D&D-type situation is that the AI can create new scenarios and situations on the fly, without needing to think or page through books to do so. Because techbros like to show off how their models can shit out walls of seemingly-coherent text, and what is a D&D adventure if not, effectively, just walls of text? And that they can respond in real time and have seemingly-coherent conversations, which is the other half of being a DM.

It also doesn't help that yes, a current-gen LLM probably could run a given adventure or module and possibly be able to respond reasonably to player antics. Because those are small enough in scope that the model won't run off the edge of its context window, so you probably won't witness any huge continuity errors. But anything added by the model or extra crap it has to add because of player antics is going to have very loose causal connectivity, if any, and that is one of the major hurdles to having an actual AI DM.

Quote from: GnomeWorks on July 30, 2024, 07:00:51 PM

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 30, 2024, 06:23:34 PMI think you and Leopold are overthinking this. That isn't meant as an insult by the way.

As I mentioned, I am deep in this field, not just as a job. This is a subject that I read about and contemplate outside of work. Compared to pretty much any other person, I will of course come off as overthinking it.

QuoteI don't believe Wizard's plans on having an AI DM that can respond to any input a player puts in or actions they want to take... Far, far from it.

I have had real people in real life talk to me with the notion that this is a possibility either now, or in the near future. It is entirely reasonable to assume that anyone who lacks the technical background to understand LLMs thinks that this is what's going on. This phenomenon is not helped by the fact that techbros keep overhyping LLMs and whackjobs claim their instance of chatgpt is sentient.

I would find it entirely believable if someone found evidence that some asshole at WotC or Hasbro in a suit believes this is a possible thing and is demanding that it be done, and also believable that the tech people attempting to implement it believe it's entirely possible and within their skills to make it so.

QuoteI think instead they're more gunning for something that can adjudicate pre-written Adventures with a very limited set of options and responses.

You don't need AI to do this. It's called a "video game" and we've had those since the 80s.

QuoteThe new crop of D&D players won't care... They'll log on with their weird non-human characters, roleplay with one another over text and then go through the Adventure provided for them.

I honestly believe the casual 5e fanbase will be perfectly okay with this. No they won't be able to engage in deep roleplay with NPCs, or make any kind of crazy descision you could with a living, breathing, thinking Dungeon Master..

But they'll get to play their special character, pay 2 win for the special skins and custom outfits and magic items... Go through the Adventure with the DM to "Level up" and then "RP" in a thinly disguised chatroom posing as the local 'tavern'.

To my knowledge, I've never met one of these people. I'm aware that they exist, obviously, but I find it hard to believe that this is anything more than a very vocal yet very tiny minority.

QuoteWizard's wants to create a slower version of World of Warcraft with dice rolls. That's what this is going to come down to.

But the whole point of the AI DM will be to run you through an Adventure with Limited options so you can level up your character and ERP with the Transgender Kobald Artificer in the Tavern afterwards.

If you're running a prewritten adventure and have predefined decision points where players select what to do from a menu -- again, that's a video game, and we've had these for as long as I've been alive. Or those "choose your own adventure" books, which are probably even older. You don't need AI to do this.

It is my understanding that the main draw of AI in a D&D-type situation is that the AI can create new scenarios and situations on the fly, without needing to think or page through books to do so. Because techbros like to show off how their models can shit out walls of seemingly-coherent text, and what is a D&D adventure if not, effectively, just walls of text? And that they can respond in real time and have seemingly-coherent conversations, which is the other half of being a DM.

It also doesn't help that yes, a current-gen LLM probably could run a given adventure or module and possibly be able to respond reasonably to player antics. Because those are small enough in scope that the model won't run off the edge of its context window, so you probably won't witness any huge continuity errors. But anything added by the model or extra crap it has to add because of player antics is going to have very loose causal connectivity, if any, and that is one of the major hurdles to having an actual AI DM.

You're exactly right, it's just a video game. One with bad graphics and a slower interface.

But that's the thing. The video game people are the ones RUNNING Wotc now.

Microsoft and Activision/Blizzard veterans.

Wotc fired the majority of their writing staff now that the new edition is finished, they don't need them anymore.

Hell, did you look at the pre-order for the new edition? It's set up EXACTLY like a triple A pre-order spreadsheet. It even comes with an exclusive Skin for pre-ordering.

You may not have met these 5th edition players, but they exist. They're the ones with subscriptions to D&D beyond already.

They're the ones that are cheering on the complete removal of any and all racial bonuses and penalties.

They're the ones that wanted the removal of alignment and buy the Coffee shop adventure scenarios.

They are young Millennials and elder Gen Z. They're the ones that play video games and are going to get excited at the cash shop which will have exclusive skins for their virtual dice and virtual minis.

They just need an AI that works like one in the many many turn based rpgs out there that already exist, but is slightly more responsive.

That's why it will only run pre written and programmed Wotc adventures. That's why Wotc is hiring staff that know about AI like you.

The future for Wotc is selling rules piecemeal to players with recurrent subscriptions, and skins like Fortnite and call of duty for miniatures and dice.

I'm glad I dumped D&D back in 2000 with 3E because...

- I like different XP for different classes
- I like more than 3 types of saving throws
- I like not having a rule for everything and getting bogged down in the details. Rulings, not rules.
- I guess I'm officially a RPG grognard and I'm proud of it.

I hear ya!  I have been out of the WotC feed trough for a long time.  Too many games, too little time to spend it in a rut.

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 30, 2024, 06:23:34 PM

Quote from: GnomeWorks on July 30, 2024, 04:18:24 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on July 30, 2024, 12:45:43 PMGenerativeAI+LLM's are only going to get better at speaking to humans based on the context we put in.  We are 3-5 years from having tournaments being solely AI run if there is a complete lack of humans to run the games.

We absolutely are not "3 to 5 years away" from this. I say this as a data scientist who regularly works with AI models, and who not only understands the technology, but keeps up with the science and methodology behind it.

Will we possibly see attempts made within that timeframe? Of course. People think these things are fucking magic and lack the understanding not only of how and what the machine is doing under the hood, but also of how the brain works and how laughably lacking current approaches to AI are in approximating neurological functions that would actually make an AI a passable DM. These attempts will either be (1) under incredibly controlled situations and scenarios that ensure the AI doesn't lose important information to context window size, or (2) will eventually out themselves as not tenable for long-term TTRPG play due to there actually being no causal reasoning happening.

In order for this to really happen and be tenable, we need a fundamental paradigm shift in the AI/ML space. Something on the level of transformers and attention, but geared towards either causal reckoning or some kind of long-term memory storage and retrieval system but in context of a model. Given the general tendencies of the techbros, however, I doubt such a thing will be forthcoming: everyone seems convinced that LLMs and stable diffusion are on the level of the holy grail, when they really, really aren't.

I think you and Leopold are overthinking this. That isn't meant as an insult by the way.

I'm expecting a better form of MUD for response, the ability to have multiple people speak to a chatbot and respond back with results with the ability to do mathmateical randomity (roll dice), and to deliver procedurely generated maps and artifically generated images.

All of this is capable now to do in bits and pieces.  Tying this altogether is a non-trivial task and will require dump trucks of money and years of time to perfect.   Like Gnomeworks stated, having the AI have a long term memory to be storing the IO as well as referecing over time is not cheap.

Will this completely replace a human being for a thousand hour mega-dungeon campaign that is randomly generated and ever involving?  No chance in hell. ChatGPT barely is able to remember what version of RPG rules I'm using consistently.

Can i get a smarter version of a Lone Wolf or Choose My Own Adventure book? Yes.  This is the expectation and what WOTC will deliver, a consumer friendly version of  HAL9000  or Westworld is impossible at this time.

It's moving faster than you think, I'm alpha testing some AI GM stuff for an indie developer and dang, the chat AI has been pretty lucid and entertaining.  And, this is just one guy.

[disclaimer: It is still a chat bot and is not playing a tactical RPG on a grid.  That's a totally different level of competence.]

Quote from: zircher on July 31, 2024, 05:25:25 PMIt's moving faster than you think, I'm alpha testing some AI GM stuff for an indie developer and dang, the chat AI has been pretty lucid and entertaining.  And, this is just one guy.

[disclaimer: It is still a chat bot and is not playing a tactical RPG on a grid.  That's a totally different level of competence.]

How competent does an AI need to be tactically? Standard video game AI should be sufficient.
As a board/wargame player in addition to being into RPGs, I know that I don't want to make a tactical combat too challenging, because some players aren't heavy into that aspect of the game. They just want to bonk monsters and be the heroes.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 31, 2024, 06:44:40 PM

Quote from: zircher on July 31, 2024, 05:25:25 PMIt's moving faster than you think, I'm alpha testing some AI GM stuff for an indie developer and dang, the chat AI has been pretty lucid and entertaining.  And, this is just one guy.

[disclaimer: It is still a chat bot and is not playing a tactical RPG on a grid.  That's a totally different level of competence.]

How competent does an AI need to be tactically? Standard video game AI should be sufficient.
As a board/wargame player in addition to being into RPGs, I know that I don't want to make a tactical combat too challenging, because some players aren't heavy into that aspect of the game. They just want to bonk monsters and be the heroes.

BG3 does tactical combat just fine, it's not perfect but it works.

True, but BG3 is a big budget game with a big team.  The LLMs used by chat AI is not designed for that kind of spatial work.  You have to create a game engine that the AI could talk to and interact in a meaningful way.

Quote from: zircher on July 31, 2024, 10:18:28 PMTrue, but BG3 is a big budget game with a big team.  The LLMs used by chat AI is not designed for that kind of spatial work.  You have to create a game engine that the AI could talk to and interact in a meaningful way.

No it isn't. No it isn't at all. Larian is not a large company, nor did they have a gigantic budget.

They mage Baldurs gate on a small box of budget with a small team. They are not a triple A company.

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 29, 2024, 04:48:12 PMChatGPT is apparently a passable DM from what some have said..

Those that were saying it could were lying through their teeth. We caught the ChatGPT staff on various fora pushing it hard and for a time they had a spambot giving glowing praise of how great a DM it was and then the examples were lower grade than a 10 year old and copied piecemeal from online writers.

Companies are already finding that this fake AI craze was a suckers deal.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on July 29, 2024, 06:17:20 PMThey also said it was under monetized and complained that most players don't buy the books IIRC.

That is because they apparently have no idea they actually were already monetizing D&D online.

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 31, 2024, 10:47:25 PM

Quote from: zircher on July 31, 2024, 10:18:28 PMTrue, but BG3 is a big budget game with a big team.  The LLMs used by chat AI is not designed for that kind of spatial work.  You have to create a game engine that the AI could talk to and interact in a meaningful way.

No it isn't. No it isn't at all. Larian is not a large company, nor did they have a gigantic budget.

They mage Baldurs gate on a small box of budget with a small team. They are not a triple A company.

News flash, there were 400 people on the BG3 team.  Larian is much bigger than you think.  They have seven studios around the world.

https://www.pcgamer.com/larians-baldurs-gate-3-team-is-10-times-bigger-than-when-it-made-divinity-original-sin/ (https://www.pcgamer.com/larians-baldurs-gate-3-team-is-10-times-bigger-than-when-it-made-divinity-original-sin/)

Quote from: M2A0 on July 30, 2024, 02:07:14 PMAs far back as 2011, if not earlier, there has been a goal of removing the DM from the equation. At least we didn't get the collectible 4.5E that Kierin Chase was pushing at the time. The pre-proto 5E days where wild. The IP almost got shelved.

Gamma world for 4e had the CCG glued onto it.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on July 30, 2024, 02:38:54 PMI might be wrong, but I don't think I am. I'm betting they'll bleed the people dumb enough to subscribe to their walled garden with micro-transactions up the wazoo.

Oddly enough on Beyond they removed the option to just buy parts you want. Now its all or nothing.

Quote from: Orphan81 on July 30, 2024, 06:23:34 PMI think you and Leopold are overthinking this. That isn't meant as an insult by the way.

I don't believe Wizard's plans on having an AI DM that can respond to any input a player puts in or actions they want to take... Far, far from it.

I think instead they're more gunning for something that can adjudicate pre-written Adventures with a very limited set of options and responses.

I doubt wotc has even thought that far. They will take the path of most lazy and either just plug ChatGPT in and think it will magically work. Then stupidly wonder why it doesnt.

Or they will rub 2 brain cells together, realize these "AI"s are a scam, and try to cover their asses with s sort of pick-your-path style program that branches, but not too much and will as you suspect be limited to specific modules.

Quote from: GnomeWorks on July 30, 2024, 07:00:51 PMI would find it entirely believable if someone found evidence that some asshole at WotC or Hasbro in a suit believes this is a possible thing and is demanding that it be done, and also believable that the tech people attempting to implement it believe it's entirely possible and within their skills to make it so.

Way the hell back in the late 90s/early 00s, a friend of mine was running a MUD and on it he had an AI puttering around. I met it myself while exploring and at first thought it was another player. It was conversational and could navigate the MUD if you asked it about a location.

The only way I realized it was not a player was the speed of the responses and how the responses had an ELIZA sort of feel in how it picked up on what you said. But it could hold a basic conversation.

The main problem was that as it added stuff to its database according to its creator, it used up a prohibitive amount of disc space.

Other MUD coders have tried similar on a more limited scale. Coding in mobs that pay attention to what is said in their viscinity/room and later might bring that up to the player.