A Sentient Skateboard Rolls Around Middle-Earth – Roleplaying with Chat GPT

I have never played tabletop RPG’s. But I’ve always wanted to try. So, I borrowed two rulebooks from the library. Alas, I just couldn’t decipher how they worked. As modern problems require modern solutions, I thought that surely an AI can run an RPG session. Because I have no friends to pester, this seemed like the ideal solution. With the prompt lashed open, I delved into the adventure!

So here we are, in Middle-Earth, the bastion of traditional fantasy and whatnot. I considered being a hobbit or a valiant wizard. But that’s not very exciting. So, as a leftfield choice I decided to be a skateboard, on a mission to avenge his parents that Sauron’s minions had mistook for firewood. Also, part of my destiny included vowing to perform the perfect 2160°. Chat GPT wasn’t fazed by this at all, but did note that it was a somewhat unorthodox choice.

I started on the trail of the Fellowship of the Ring. Following the group for a while, I decided to spring into action and show them my skills by performing an ollie never seen in Middle-Earth. This left them in awe and even Gandalf was impressed. As everyone was still recovering from my awesomeness, I sneakily pilfered the One Ring from Frodo and slid off undetected into the mines of Moria.

By this point I had noticed that while the AI did deliver long swathes of flowery fantasy prose, it let every one of my actions succeed. This was fun for sure, but not very gripping or exciting. So, the prompt had to be modified. I asked it to give more dice rolling and choices. Immediately the pace of the story slowed, as there were dice rolls to observe and choices to be made as I descended deeper into Moria. Once I even had to make a die roll to keep my balance on a rickety bridge.

But where were the epic battles? Where every die roll is a matter of life and death? With this in mind I decided to engage a goblin patrol and assault them. Finally, some action! Unfortunately, I had used my ability of “Rolling Sound” to amplify my presence, which caused the goblins to panic and escape. What a bummer. Another bummer was that the previously noted problems didn’t vanish. Every die roll seemed to be a success. Maybe the difficulty should have been set at the beginning of the session? I did ask it to be more random about the results, which had some effect.

After some more or less weird and wacky hijinks, I was beside the tower of Sauron with an army consisting of Gandalf, Santa Claus, The Terminator, and all the world’s skateboards. Sauron tried throwing everything and the kitchen sink at me, but at the end was no match for my prowess. A perfect 2160° fell the Dark Lord and I promptly took his place, ruling Middle-Earth with an iron fist (or wheel). I tore down all the cities to build skating ramps in their place. The people didn’t seem to mind.

How would I describe this experience? As I’ve never played RPG’s my notions were from popular culture and hearsay. Compared to those, this game master seemed very lenient and wasn’t going to punish me for doing anything silly or stupid. This was somewhat problematic as there wasn’t really any urgency in anything. Doing some research, it seems that this is common with Chat GPT, as it tends to go ahead with everything, trying to please the prompter. One can get around this by applying a set of (rather complex) rules, that the AI must follow. Some people have kindly written these for everyone to try. They can make the interface look very much like an old computer text RPG!

Apart from these interesting concoctions, I’d say its main use is as a source of inspiration or ideas, rather than a rule-abiding dungeon master. In this regard it’s an immense asset, as it seems to be able to handle any setting one can think of. I got carried away by a swashbuckling pirate adventure, which would’ve made for an excellent campaign. As these prompts can be run rather quickly, it’s a helpful way to choose which way the adventure will progress.

Whether the adventures of our ruling skateboard ever continue remains to be seen. After making our way through Middle-Earth, uniting unexpected allies, defeating a sinister evil and hearing Gandalf tell elven dad jokes at campfire, the journey has left a void in me. Maybe there are other worlds in need of rescuing. Perhaps a galaxy far, far away? Who knows where the die goes?

 

 

Pictures:

Featured image, Figure 1 and Figure 3: made by the author using Bing AI (Dall-E 3)

Figure 2: a screenshot taken by the author

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