Soul in Shadows Session 1 - The Shadow of the First Draw
After a lot of preparation, I am ready to start a solo D&D campaign where I am the player and ChatGPT is the DM!
We will be playing Dungeons & Dragons 2024. I have never played it (I've played tons of 5e 2014, 4e, 2e, and basic). I've barely skimmed the 2024 books. ChatGPT says it knows the rules, but I bet it is lying.
I pumped the bot with rules from this site and told it to save and remember them.
My Goal: Go from level 1 to level 20, legit. However long it takes!
We created the world, the backstory, and my character in a series of posts:
- The A.I. Campaign Session Zero
- The A.I. Campaign Session 0.1 - The Campaign Trailer
- The A.I. Campaign Session 0.2 - Character Creation
Now we begin.
This is how the campaign started.
I want to start off with a couple of quick summaries to give you and overview of how this went.
First, a summary of the issues ChatGPT had:
- Level 1: I don't think it understands encounter scaling. I think it tried to throw a displacer beast at me, which is far too powerful for level 1 characters.
- OOC: If I don't specifically say "OOC comment," it mostly thinks I am talking to an NPC in the game.
- Gibberish Map: ChatGPT made an image of a map which makes NO SENSE.
- Verbose: This was a lot of reading - it was like a novel.
- Not Using Spells: There wasn't much use of actual D&D magic - frankly I don't think the bot knows much about D&D spells.
- NPCs Were Unflappable: The NPCs seemed to roll with anything I said as if it was part of what they hoped for.
- Art is Messy: The art is AI slop, and Chat GPT doesn't have a firm understanding of when it is going overboard with an art prompt.
- It's a Book: I decided to cut and paste the entire session and save it. I might save it in .pdf books.
That may sound like this was a terrible session of D&D, but it wasn't. It was kind of fun! It just needs more D&D, and a little more adventure!
So, what actually happened in this session? Here is the short version:
- Find the Soul: The Queen summoned me to her tower, and told me it was time for me to seek out the soul of a former queen (this queen had drawn the void card from the deck of many things, and her soul was stolen).
- NPC Ally: The Queen wants me to travel with Thalen, an NPC cleric of Ioun.
- Go to the Woods: We were told there is some mystical something in the woods relating to the Void (A previous queen drew the Void card from the Deck of Many Things, which took her soul and stashed it somewhere, rendering her comatose).
- Displacer Beasts?! In the woods, we run into some displacer beast cubs and make a hasty retreat.
- Herb Witch: We meet with an NPC herb-witch from my backstory. She opens a portal into the Void (or something). Thalen and I go in. That's where we stopped.
The Queen Calls for Dane
My Origin: A Queen of Tarokhold drew from the Deck of Many Things. She drew the Knight card, which normally summons a 4th level fighter to be her guardian. But when she drew it, a baby appeared - my character.
Shortly after that, she drew the Void card, which stole her soul and put her in a coma. A new Queen took over and both the former Queen and my character were forgotten.
Now, I have turned 21. The current Queen, Arelia Bloodmark, has requested my presence at the Fate-Spire Tower. She sent a priest of Ioun named Thalen (who will be my NPC sidekick) to get me.
I'm not really sure why the Queen would send this priest of Ioun to get me. How was he even near the Queen to start with? The only church in this town that I know of is of the Raven Queen.
Text to Speech: I pretty quickly decided to use the option for a text-to-speech reading of these responses. The bot is doing a good job o far, but each turn is like reading a page or two from a novel.
The voice is sort of like a wine mom, not optimal for D&D. It is cool that ChatGPT has this option, though.
The Meeting: The Queen talks very cryptically, as the priest of the Raven Queen watches. There is also a walking chest that acts like a happy dog (this chest contains the Deck of Many Things).
The Queen has the gall to say to me:
“Twenty-one years ago, the Deck spat you into my predecessor’s arms. A glitch of fate. A wild joke. A warning. Perhaps all three.”
She goes on to ask me what I want. I tell her I want to find Witch-Queen Badelia's soul.
“I inherited a corpse with a pulse, Dane.
A throne haunted by a soul-shaped absence.
A Deck that would rather consume me than obey me.”
A lot of the dialogue is like this. It's good in small doses but the bot overdoes it.
The Queen explains to me that someone else is looking for Badelia's soul. I think that's a fun twist:
“The Void stirs.
And someone — or something — has begun searching for the object containing Badelia’s soul.”
She lifts one finger and traces a silent sigil in the air.
A ghostly image forms:
A shadowed figure dragging something heavy through a dark corridor.
A circular object glinting faintly.
The orb.
Badelia’s prison."
There is a strange note - the bot claims that Ena, the priest of the Raven Queen, can't leave the Fate-Spire Tower. Why? The priest of the Raven Queen is stuck outside their temple?
She ends up showing me a map:
“You will begin where her soul vanished from living memory.”
She steps aside, revealing a spiraling map etched in hovering crystal:
A path leading out of Tarokhold…
into Brightwood…
toward the edges of Whispering Glade…
and then splitting — one trail fading, one pulsing faintly.
A trail disturbed.
Recently.
Arelia points at the pulsing trail.
Arelia:
“Someone opened a path to the Void.
Someone not of this dominion.
Find who.
Find where.
And find what they took.”
Readable: This is written in a way where even people like me (I can not handle reading walls of text) are able to read along - it is very breezy.
This feels a bit like a novel, but it's not bad at all. It feels very fleshed out and real so far. Very dramatic.
Takes Time: I've been playing for about an hour. I want to go from level one to level 20! This might take a very long time.
I'd cut and paste the whole thing here, but it is incredibly long. I should probably save it on my computer though, in case something happens. I could put it into a pdf maybe.
Making the Map
I leave the chamber and meet with Thalen. I draw the map on parchment. Thalen tells me:
“I grew up in the little hillside cloister outside Tarokhold — the Shrine of the Thousand Threads. We study prophecy there. Ioun’s doctrine.”
He taps the holy symbol on his chest.
“‘Seek truth. Preserve knowledge. Aid heroes.’”
The clerics of Ioun sent him to learn under Ena (who is a priest of the Raven Queen, not Ioun). I don't get that at all.
Basically, Thalen heard the legend of my character and thought it was cool.
I asked Chat GPT to make an image of the map. Here it is!
So... does that map make any sense at all? No, right?
I ask Thalen if he understands it:
"“…No,” he admits softly. “Not even a little.”
He taps the spiral path with one finger.
“This isn’t a map,” he says. “It’s a maze. Or… a metaphor. The Whispering Glade is real—Brightwood’s heart—but this…” He circles the spiral again with a puzzled expression. “It’s like she didn’t want you to walk somewhere. She wanted you to understand something.”
Travel: I tried to ask ChatGPT a question about travel time and what my character knows, but it thought I was talking to the NPC.
I told it to forget that last response and I asked more clearly. This is the only time so far that I asked it to disregard something it wrote.
It turns out that the forest is only a few hours away. Thalen gives me more lore:
“But yes. I’ll keep an eye out. Queen Arelia didn’t give details because she couldn’t. Divination near the Deck warps. Even the Raven Queen’s sight struggles.”
Thalen seems to know everything I need to know, it's quite ridiculous.
Danger in the Woods
We start making our way through the woods, looking for the vague magic something. We realize that we are being followed.
I make a perception check. I make my first die roll of the campaign! I roll a natural 20!
Scaling: We ran into our first major problem. I think ChatGPT is trying to throw a displacer beast at us! This is far too powerful for our level.
I had asked it if it knew monster stats, and it said yes, but I think I need to feed it a bunch just to be sure. It might not understand power scaling, or it might be making a much weaker version of a displacer beast.
We basically threw some food at the displacer beast kittens and the mom, and retreated, and the bot allowed it to happen despite me rolling a 4 on an Animal Handling check.
The Herb-Witch
Dane gets angry when the Her-Witch calls him a "mistake". The bot makes her look completely different every single time it makes art of her! Art prompt by ChatGPT, art by Krea AI.
We meet up with an NPC from my backstory - Bramblemaw the herb-witch. She talks to me all cryptically, and calls me a "mistake". My character gets mad. This is quite similar to the conversation I had with the Queen
Too much dramatic dialogue like this:
“You are a man.
You are real.
You weren’t meant to be a puppet in armor—
you were meant to grow into your own knighthood.”
It's not terrible, but a bit boring. eventually she uses her vague, non-rules-compliant NPC herb witch magic to create a portal to The Void, which is apparently where I need to go.
The Void
This one is pretty bad. Bramblemaw creates a portal to The Void. Art prompt by ChatGPT, art by Krea AI.
I dramatically thank her and she makes more cryptic comments. Then Thalen and I prepare to walk through. It's been about 2 hours, so we stopped there.
Experience Points: I'm pretty sure I got 0 XP from this session. ZERO! I'm never going to hit level 20 without some tweaking!
Overall: Right now, this is more like a novel than a D&D game. I am also extremely concerned that ChatGPT doesn't know what it's doing with the plot.
This isn't a great start, but I am up for trying to make it better. I think, with some guidance, the bot can make this really fun.
Things I need to do before the next session:
- Show it the XP rules/encounter scaling rules.
- Show it some low level monsters appropriate for me
- Show it the Displacer Beast Kitten from Wild Beyond the Witchlight.
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