Sorry for the lack of posting, I can actually do things or I can write about doing things, so for the last week I’ve been doing the former! I plan to conclude this series on AI and Character Generation with a video demonstrating Classic d20 generating a Character, hopefully for next Wednesday’s update.
In this week’s Professor DM, he talks about using AI to generate characters for a Tomb of Horrors campaign, and then goes further about using it generate an entire 10 room dungeon. (Link should be to about 6:53 in the video)
Transcript of the important bit, with my highlighting:
But, there is an Achilles’ heel. So, those AI tools that [Hasbro’s] Chris Cox is talking about that he uses for his own D&D game.
I recently ran Tomb of Horrors again for a few friends this summer, and I had to pre-generate a bunch of 14th level characters for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and I used Gemini AI to do it. And within seconds he was able to create a 14th level fighter, 14th level cleric, magic user, and thief complete with appropriate magic items. Not too many, not too few. All the stats and the figures worked out.
I remember doing this kind of thing way back in the ‘80s on orange character sheets, and it would take hours to make a high-level character. Now it can be done in seconds, and I’m sure it could be done for D&D 5.5. So, the question becomes, why do you need a character generator on D&D Beyond? …
I remember third edition, it came with this disc in the back of the books and you’d have to upload it on your computer and use that to make characters and I thought it, “Wow, this is so great. It’s just so It makes onboarding new players and just creating new characters such a snap.” But, you don’t need a disc anymore. The computer will just do it for you.
And that’s on the player’s side. On the game master’s side, I put in this prompt, “Create a 10-room isometric view dungeon.” And boom, it created this. Right down to the spider webs and sources of illumination.
And it includes traps and multiple paths. That’s something I’ve always recommended on this channel. If you’re going to do a dungeon, you got to have multiple paths that the players can take so that they feel like they’re in control. And without even being told to do it, Google Gemini already knew how to do that.
And I’m sure if I wanted to, it could fully stock the dungeon with appropriate monsters for the character’s level in my party, which could potentially put many dungeon cartography tools out of business.
My position on this is very clear: I’m a huge proponent of using technology (especially AI) to assist the Dungeon Master (and players). I don’t believe it should be used to replace the Dungeon Master: the whole point of the game is to get people sitting around a table playing the game.
The issue (in a broad sense, not personally) with how Professor DM is using the tool is its “one and done” nature. I push the button and generate the character. I push the button and generate the dungeon. But he gets there in the last paragraph.
I think AI slots in where we use dice and random tables. Creating dungeons and characters (especially NPCs) needs to be a conversation between the AI and the DM.
DM: Here’s my campaign world. Here’s the current characters. Here’s their history. Done correctly, this will actually be implicit - the DM will know the AI knows this information.
AI: Here’s some ideas for the next session (A, B, C…)
DM: I like C, but can we make it set in the Red Mountains?
AI: OK, here’s some dungeon cave ideas - here’s some ideas for factions, for traps, for goals
DM: I like X, Y, Z - can you expand W?
AI: (and so forth)
Classic d20 doesn’t use AI for character generation, we just have lots of tables of name parts, and which spells are offensive, defensive or miscellaneous.