Following up on my previous video on How to leverage AI for RPGs, I wanted to see if the recently released GPT-4 version of ChatGPT can write a full Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) adventure - complete with boxed text, interesting NPCs, unique monsters with stat blocks, puzzles, rumor table, etc.
You can see the result of my experiment in the video below:
Conclusion
Overall, I thought that ChatGPT did impressively well at writing a full DCC adventure, using a format consistent with published modules. And while GPT-4 does not represent an order-of-magnitude improvement over the previous GPT 3.5 version, there’s a noticeable difference in how much context it was able to keep. But even it ended up stumbling eventually.
I can think of some workarounds to try in my next experiments. First, I might be a bit more prescriptive when generating locations. Second, I might have to manually feed in the necessary context for each location, rather than assuming it is able to refer back to the entire text.
I might try first generating a rough outline, without boxed text and detailed descriptions. Then, I can feed the entire context into the chat prompt when generating each location description. That should help it generate more consistent and cohesive output.
Overall, my sense is that Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can be a very effective partner in writing your own adventures. You still need to use your own judgment, and you probably want to put your own stamp on the results, but if nothing else, it should be a nice starting point, or help fill in some details when you’re missing a creative spark.
I certainly don’t consider myself a great adventure writer, and I’ve never published an adventure. But I feel like GenAI has significantly improved my ability to come up with interesting ideas, and made me more creative as a result, which I feel is a good thing!
The Adventure: The Whispering Totem
Once I have a chance to tweak the ChatGPT generated output a bit, to make the adventure at least somewhat cohesive and consistent, I will publish it here on the blog. Feel free to bookmark the following URL and check back soon:
Update 4/18/2023: I did my best to polish the generated DCC adventure, and you can find it at the URL below. Note that I have not run this, and there are still many rough edges…