I think this is a classic baby DM script tbh. Rolling to find mounts at a vendor is dumb. You should only roll for significant challenges with meaningful differences where failure is meaningfully likely and interesting in its own right. If failing makes a situation less interesting it shouldn’t be an option.

Shopping is actually the bigger problem. It’s like asking players to watch other players navigate a menu one by one. And currency doesn’t scale. A lot of campaigns start with a shopping session and then the group falls apart so you never last long enough to get to shopping session 2.

Interactions with the law are also a red flag. It’s a fine possible narrative of course, but when the DM and presumably other players want to do something interesting, and another player wants to do petty or egregious and otherwise irrelevant crime… that’s annoying to everyone else. You really need to be careful about giving an opportunity for that to happen.

DMing is hard

Respectfully, I think you're flavoring the DM role quite a bit. The DM in my current campaign often requires checks for things even when there's no obvious downside. The implicit downside is that the character who fails has to find a new way through the situation, change strategy, etc. IMO it adds to the game to have more roles and more probability based outcomes. You have to balance letting the characters do whatever they want with some level of rails to keep the game on track.

Shrug. I think it’s a bad practice. People can have a lot of fun regardless of course. It is most “bad” for things like perception, and persuasion. In D&D specifically it creates awkward scenarios where one player is very good at things that come up all the time and has a high chance of succeeding at things unless he rolls truly terribly.

In my experience players have an moment of confusion and then elation when they ask an NPC to do something, grab dice to roll persuasion, and then the DM tells them to put the dice down because the NPC just agrees with their line of thinking without a number telling them to.

But yes it is all subjective.

> It is most “bad” for things like perception, and persuasion. In D&D specifically it creates awkward scenarios where one player is very good at things that come up all the time and has a high chance of succeeding at things unless he rolls truly terribly.

But, what's the point of the traits in the first place if everyone is equally good at figuring stuff out and sweet talking because there are no checks? How is it awkward when one player is better than others at a specific task because of their stats? That just seems like role playing basics to me... I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong perhaps you've DM'd some campaigns where players don't like the imbalance. A good DM reads the party, of course. And I'm not saying there isn't flexibility in when a check makes sense and when it doesn't. Nobody likes things to be overbearing either. But there's got to be some reason for the stats, right?

I mean the same doesn't really make sense for combat. You wouldn't generally give an enemy advantage rolling against a high AC party member just to even out the damage, would you? Otherwise AC doesn't mean anything. (Not saying you can't make up a reason for an enemy to have inspiration to try an land a hit on the tank for fun, but the idea with a higher AC is that you get hit less often.)

You’re not equally good at things. But you only roll for things that matter. Persuasion is the worst offender because rookie DMs use dice to replace actual role play. And it makes their npcs into props that are largely controlled by the party face.

Persuasion checks should be used when the party is actually persuading someone to do something that they don’t want to do. Terrible DMs treat it as mind control because your silly min max bars had 20 CHA and expertise. Less experienced DMs use it as a crutch.

The bare minimum thing DMs ought to do is realize the the difficulty of a persuasion check should depend on the baseline persuasiveness of the argument. If the party is making an excellent point, the check should be very easy. If the party makes no point and just asks the NPC to do something unreasonable, it should be basically impossible. If this isn’t the case, NPCs feel very stupid.

There’s no particular reason for it to be a skill at all tbh. It is just more interesting to roleplay.

What I dislike about this way of doing things is you've moved the game mechanic into real life. It's not good enough for the character to persuade, now the player must persuade.

Are you also going to make me stab someone to see if I'm a good fighter?

The whole point (for me) of RPGs is to have fun playing a character who isn't me, and has different strengths than me.

When I DM, if someone wants to roleplay, they can. If they just want to generally describe their desired course of action, they can. The dice will decide the outcome.

That is why persuasion is not a good thing to resolve with stats. Because you’re playing a role playing game. You inevitably have to come up with an argument to engage in persuasion.

“Hey guard, give me the keys”

Is not an argument that works ever.

“Hey guard, give me the keys so I can save your friend” is a substantially different scenario.

“Hey guard, give me the keys because we’re lifelong friends, and I’m going to save your friend, and you’ll probably die otherwise, and you owe me a debt, and because I have a solid reputation for keeping promises” is even more so.

If we’re already in agreement that version 1 should be all but impossible, 2 is plausible, and 3 is narratively obvious then what’s the point of the dice? If you roll poorly are you just forgetting to say those things in 3? Because that’s just a dumb way to take agency away from the player.

Persuasion isn’t meant to replace the merit of the argument. It’s meant to affect the articulation of it. But charismatic people aren’t mind controllers.

No, this is where we disagree.

It should suffice it to say that the player can say "I would like to attempt to convince the guard to give me his keys."

THEY don't have to come up with the reason. THEY don't have to be persuasive. Just their character.

> Because that’s just a dumb way to take agency away from the player.

It's not taking away agency, it's allowing for the random element that is inherent to the game. If the player is a lawyer by trade, but their character has the charisma of a rock, why should they gain some sort of advantage that another player wouldn't have?

Explain to me the difference between these two things:

1) Allow a character to succeed on a persuasion check because their player can personally, in real life, come up with a good argument.

vs.

2) Allow a character to succeed on a strength check because their player can personally, in real life, bench press 300 pounds.

In other words, why should a player's "real life" stats have an effect on their character's in game ability?

So what’s the DC of the check to get the guard to agree? Is it hard because that’s a baseline very dumb request? Or is it exceptionally easy because all of the facts from v3 are true?

Putting together basic facts does not require you to be a charismatic person. The problem with relying on checks is you create situations where NPCs behave according to the Charisma stat of the PC they’re interacting with rather than the context of the conversation. Which is dumb. NPCs should not act against their own interest because they’re talking to someone who is not charismatic. And it should be exceptionally hard to get people to act clearly against their own interest.

This also creates a bad habit where DMs make people roll for trivial skill checks where they have a 95% chance of succeeding and a 5% chance of a fun but dumb exaggerated failure. It also encourages the non RAW interpretation where players roll HUGE numbers on trivial tasks and DM think that means they’re supposed to succeed by wider margins.

> So what’s the DC of the check to get the guard to agree?

Depends on the situation. In situation 3, if all those things are factual and known, then for me it's a non-roll. Guaranteed to succeed. Otherwise it would depend on what's going on in the game. Are the guards on alert? Drunk? Etc.

I'd start with a harder baseline (say 15-18 since guards aren't in the habit of handing out keys), and adjust from there. On alert? +7-10. Drunk? -5.

If the situation renders something impossible, then it's a non-roll and I explain why.

So not everything is a roll, but things that have a chance of success or failure (at DM's discretion) should be given a chance at that success or failure. Just like adjudicating anything else (I want to tame this wolf; I want to jump out of this 2nd floor window; Etc.)

All I'm saying is I don't like factoring in the player's ability (or inability) to perform those tasks in the outcome, as that's unfair.

If you agree that 3 makes for an easy roll, then it’s only an easy roll if you remember it and have thought it all through. If the player points it out when asking the guard, they have achieved the same outcome by making sure you and the guard you are role playing understand the situation via real world persuasion.

You’ve just shifted the burden of persuading the guard via roleplay to persuading the dm via contextual reminders which is less cool.

I think that there’s a lot of value in NPC’s not doing irrational things just because of dice rolls. You might need a dice roll to convince them to do something crazy (get the guards to attack a dragon), but not for something normal (apprehend the thief).

I’m a big fan of passive perception too, where based on their scores some characters will notice stuff, and other characters will not. It’s certainly never as random as D&D makes it out to be, but I guess that’s kind of the charm. I just can’t stand it.

I agree with all these criticism. But I also know many human DMs who make the same stylistic decisions as GPT did here. It's definitely not good Burning Wheel, but it might be ok D&D?

On the other hand, I appreciate the GPT's willingness to follow the players' revealed interests where they lead, instead of sticking to a predetermined railroad. The comment here about engaging zombies in a multilevel marketing scheme illustrates this nicely. That's very deft DMing in my opinion. (Whether _asking_ for such a tonal shift is deft playing on part of the non-DM player is a different question.)

When you see a bear dancing, you don't nitpick its choreographic decisions. Because the bear. is. dancing. Do you see? It's a bear. dancing.

DM style is a matter of taste. From another perspective, this feels like quite tidy DMing in terms of letting the players explore the systems in an early non-narrative context, just to understand the mechanics. Like a tutorial. The exotic mounts were a secret you could find if you paid attention - and their existence adds color to the world and implies that greater rewards can be found through leveling. They were too expensive, but you can use your skills to work around that. Failure can happen and might have consequences, but in this case you got away with it. The players will be more careful what they ask for in future, but they know hidden rewards might be found if they are cunning.

The DM taught the players a lot, added flavor to the world, and didn't wind up with L2/3 players having an overpowered mount - but also didn't let the players blow up the campaign in the first shop they walked into by letting them just go completely rogue. Although it offered hints that non heroic paths might be available, at a cost...

Which is pretty impressive for a dancing bear.

And besides, what's 'dumb' DMing for a human who knows that letting the game go off the rails is going to mean tossing out previously planned encounters and going digging in the DM guide to find the right table of prices, might be completely acceptable DMing for an LLM that has no idea what it's doing but can recall every stat block in the player handbook.

this. so much this.

I'm a somewhat experienced (if irregular) DM myself going back 30+ years and the DM skill level demonstrated, and cohesiveness of the storytelling impressed the fuck out of me. Without appropriate system context setting. Without smart insertion of facts into the prompts, and with a 15 year old with atrocious spelling and grammar driving half the time.

And if that's not mindblowing enough, this technology is still in its infancy?? Holy fuck

I’m not debating whether it’s impressive. Sure, it’s impressive. But it’s not good.

I've been pondering layering the DMGPT over a world simulation back end with character and simulation cards that prompt the AI in how it should behave. I think this might make for a more persistent and cohesive experience. It would also facilitate conversations, questing, actual relationships between NPCs, etc.

One of the reasons I’m downloading LLaMA is to toy around with this idea. If it’s any good I don’t want to be limited by ChatGPT and their API and pricing model.

> The DM set up a potential hidden item, the player rolled high enough to find it, voila.

I think the point here is that the "DM" has not set this up. From how I interacted with ChatGPT, and I have roleplayed with it before, it basically "Yes, and ..."-es everything you throw at it. In general this is good GM advice, but here it is "Yes, and ..." to a point were you can basically ask for anything and it will give it to you.

E.g. say the party is in a remote keep at the edge of the wildernis, the closest city is several days away. I would assume that if you ask ChatGPT to go to "the bakery" because you want some fine deserts it will gladly let you do that even though such a place does not make sense in a remote keep.

I think you're wrong about this. We experimented with nonsensical/cheating in other sessions and it's aware of your context and doesn't let you do stuff that you can't do. (Try it yourself and see. Quite mindblowing and defies the whole "only a super fancy markov chain" thing that some critics throw at it.)

Hmm ... might be GPT4 over GPT3.5? I have not tried the former for roleplaying yet.

See this comment too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35380063