I’m trying to break into DnD. I’ve been doing some reading, playing what I can of a solo campaign with ChatGPT, and watching Dimension 20 lol. I just requested the 5e books from the library.
I would love if folks could point me towards some great resources for learning the ropes, DMing and making fun campaigns, making characters that don’t suck, all of that stuff. Would love to just immerse myself for a bit but also figure out how it all comes together.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is one way to learn some of the mechanics of 5e 
Honestly though, I think learning from a good DM would be easier and less abstract than trying to learn it purely from the texts. Do you know anyone who plays?
You could also watch some sessions. There are lots on YouTube and it might help immerse you in the concepts and mechanics.
A friend’s partner has played and DMd a bit but they’re never around. That’s why I’m watching the Dropout stuff, it’s easily consumable and I can learn a lot at once, especially watching an excellent DM good at improvising.
How does ChatGPT do as a DM? I thought about giving it a try not long ago but never actually did.
I feel like it will be miserable at the most important part of DMing, being able to adjust on the fly and improvise so that they can keep the campaign going in enjoyable directions. I also can’t imagine its prose is very enjoyable.
Agreed, watching something like that is useful.
I empathize, I want to get a game of Coyote & Crow going but I’ve never DM’d so trying to simply teach myself to DM via the game manual and supplementals had led nowhere fast, lol.
Not sure how much of a help it is, but as a player i can tell you the worst DM’s ive had were ones who read directly from the campaign books and did no improv of the story and were pretty monotone in their reading. One also basically tried to force us to play out a situation in a campaign book we werent comfortable with “because its part of the campaign” instead of skipping or changing it. Ive also played a game with a new DM and while it was fun enough, he was also kind of a push over sometimes and would let players re roll on things or change moves if it didnt work out which hurt the overall experience for both players and Dm.
Ive done a little bit myself, but im that weird guy who uses the pathfinder/Dnd rulesets to invent new ways of playing. Like i made a pokemon league based arena game with a bunch of odd side stuff that was very bare bones roleplay but people enjoyed. And a Call of duty Nazi Zombies wave based thing in a huge haunted mansion with a currency system to unlock doors and roll new weapons and tools, with lots of hidden secrets and even achievments.
That’s how I fear something like a ChatGPT DM would function.
That’s neat.
I totally could see chat being that way and loosing alot of the character and fun unless you really worked with it.
It was neat, a lot of fun. I dont have the notes and arenas n such anymore or id share it. I even added dumb mechanics like in the snow/ice arena you could do penguin belly slides to gain two spaces to movement, but regular move was worse due to deep snow.
You’re hoping to learn how to run a game? Matt Colville on YouTube has a series called Running the Game that has some interesting pointers. The way I got into it though, was by having a friend who ran a game for me. Been playing ever since.
My biggest pointer, honestly, if you want to learn how to be a game master, I think you should try an easier game than DnD. I have a few other games I’d like to suggest to you that are much easier to wrap your head around, and will be easier for you and any newbie players you have at the table.
Monster of the Week: This is a game that imitates “monster of the week” TV shows like Buffy or Supernatural. It gives very concise pointers on how to structure mysteries, and the only dice anyone will need are two six sided dice. You probably already own those. This is probably my favorite game.
If you really want medieval fantasy though, I would suggest Mork Borg. It’s a heavy metal inspired RPG that has one of the funnest gimmicks I’ve seen in a game. Every day, the game master rolls a die that determines if a prophecy comes to pass. If one does, then something really weird happens, like the ground turns to maggots, or all the glass explodes. After seven happen, the world ends and the game is done. It’s so crazy that it’s pretty silly.
I’ll keep going on about other games, but if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask me. I love talking about this stuff.
this is great but i would not recommend watching those online dnd shows to get a feel for the game, keep in mind they are like what a sports manga is to sports, not necessarily an accurate experience, but have fun!
GPT 3.5 was okay, but it kept fumbling some things, and basically every NPC interaction was the same. I kept having to correct it to update things like my gold and inventory, or proficiencies. It would be like “as this class with this thing, you get xyz” and then, for example, a weapon out of the list, that I had told it to pick, wouldn’t be there.
It was helpful for character creation I suppose, like it could quickly look stuff up for me and tell me about races and classes, etc.
I’m trying out GPT4 for a few things, and tried transferring the game to that. I asked if I could copy and paste what I’ve done so far, so I fed it my character sheet and background info and that went fine. Then, since there’s a character limit, I was like "I’m going to paste a bunch of messages one after the other. This is the story I’ve played so far. Please do not do anything - do not respond, do not advance the story, just absorb the info and when I say “I AM DONE PLEASE LET’S CONTINUE NOW,” we can continue with the campaign. Then it would be like “ok, got it,” I would feed it something and it’d say “got it, waiting for your next message and I won’t answer until your cue.” and I would paste another message or two, and then it would forget what I said, and try to pick up the campaign without the cue and without all the info.
So I actually have given up at this point. I’ll see if I can figure it out. It says it doesn’t remember stuff between interactions? So I don’t actually think it would work, right? Or is it just confused about what it can do? I don’t know, I got tired of trying, maybe I’ll try to figure it out over the holiday.
Slightly tangential, but messed around with DALL-E for some graphic resources. It is… a mixed bag.
A map with landmarks:
It made some cool weapons.
It does not understand how long bows work:
It is so bad at taking direction with characters. I tried so hard to get it to take the hat off this character, so I tried one last desperate attempt:
Finally, it can do some cool stuff with prompts about making a scene like it’s from a specific game system.
It actually looks like it has a lot of potential for simple things. On the first example, if you set a grid as part of the prompt, can you define the centre of a certain object as an (X,Y) of the grid?
Hmm. Probably? I imagine I would have to set all that in advance and do more work for that than I’d want to for using ChatGPT in the first place lol.
I can’t believe I never replied to this thread!!
I will say that there’s nothing like doing it to learn the ropes. I have a local brick & mortar tabletop gaming shop that does a D&D night every other week. Those tend to be “drop in and play” sessions and you could ask the staff if they have a night designated as for beginners. Additionally, there are Discord channels for finding gaming groups. Where I live, in the DC area, there is D&D DMV Meetup. https://discord.gg/Xw4T36np
I image there similar channels for other areas. People will often specify their level of experience and their willingness to play with people who don’t know the game.
I DM a group in the DC area but we’ve only ever met over a Zoom like platform designed specifically for playing D&D. So you don’t even have to meet in person, though in person is more fun.
