By skyforbes Immediately after my first "Let's play a ttrpg campaign" prompt, challenges came. The whole time, I'd have killed to get a full guide on how to overcome those. So this post is that guide I wish I have. I'll try to make is as useful as possible.
If you are the creative type and would like to live stories, well… you're welcome 🙂
What is "Roleplaying with AI" for me?
Let's define this first. Barebones, it's this exact cycle:
A) You define a setting. Think your character, your companions, culture, religions, guilds, worlds, anything. Share it with AI and it's as if it studied it.
B) You narrate your character's actions.
C) AI narrates the environment and other character's actions/reactions. This pushes the story forward.
The whole cycle is supported by your ability to edit events, change your mind, define more about the setting, and customize the experience how you want.
There are also different cycles. Say, you want to be the narrator and have the AI be the player? You can.
How I'd setup my first story today
Now that we're set on what to expect when running this system, we can move to the "how to actually do it." I'll explain this as if you knew exactly nothing about AI. This way the post can help everyone.
1. Setup your AI chat environment
What we want here is to find a place to chat with an AI. To make this clear, if you have a ChatGPT account, you're already potentially set. Though I'll give you two alternatives too: Claude and Gemini.
I've been playing a lot, and no other model to this day surpasses Claude and Gemini. Those two can read between the lines and roleplay NPCs in a very human way.
I'll tell you Claude brought me to the brink of tears because it roleplayed so well that I connected with characters as if with humans.
Once you have your account set and a new, blank chat open, we can go on.
2a. Craft your first system prompt
You now have a blank chat in front of you. You must be asking yourself, "Now what?" And it's not a simple question to answer because the actual answer would be "Now you play over and over and improve your system as you go."
But before you can improve your system, you need a system to start with. What I'm going to do now is sharing a very barebones "System Prompt" for your AI pal. It's easier than it is intimidating.
If you're asking "What the hell is a system prompt," here's the answer: you can see the system prompt as a comprehensive list of instructions your AI has to follow. Not only will it contain basic stuff like "You will be my writing assistant/GM," but also that information about your setting we've talked about above.
To get you started, I've created a template prompt you can copy, paste, and fill in. You can find it here: https://pastebin.com/1Y6i5AAh
Here's the list of variables you'll have to fill in for the prompt to work:
– PLAYER_NAME: This is the name for your playing character. If you play as a party, just make this a list.
– PLAYER_DESCRIPTION: This is a brief description for your character. I will say this once here: make. it. brief. Every description you write should be as short and concise as possible. This is because AI performs worse as its context grows. It's a copywriting exercise much more than it is prose.
– SETTING_NAME: The name of your setting. This can be a region, a galaxy, a room, or anything else. It's the outer container location for your campaign.
– SETTING_DESCRIPTION: Here you describe your setting. What is the first thing you should know? What's the historical context? Who rules?
– NPCS_LIST: This is a list of names and descriptions for each important character in the world. Avoid creating entries for basic characters. You only need important ones (e.g. create the king, not a random bartender you'll meet once).
– LOCATIONS_LIST: Same as the NPCs list but for locations. If you are generic here, AI will come up with locations and details more often. It's not necessarily a bad thing, more a tool you should know about.
– MAGIC_SYSTEM_INFO: An example of data you can put in your world. If your world has a magic system, you can explain it here. Remember: be concise and clear. You're explaining it to a child in 5 minutes.
– SECTION_INFO: This is to showcase you can add as many sections as you need. Think pantheons, guilds, festivities, monsters, or anything else.
– ADVENTURE_PATH_INFO: This is optional. Omitting this will make the exprience more sandbox-ey. I usually specify a list of bullet points that drives the story from its starting point to the end of a narrative arc. AI isn't exceptional at coming up with long-term plots, so this helps.
– SUMMARY_CONTENT: I will talk in detail about this in the section 2b, when talking aobut memory. For now, just know this is a summary of older events for this campaign.
– GUIDELINES_LIST: Here you can specify custom behavior you want for AI. Think writing style, themes to avoid/focus on, or anything else. For example: "Keep your outputs below 200 words," or "Keep a gritty and realistic tone."
– STARTING_POINT: This is where you want to start your campaign. This can be as simple as "Let's start in a tavern," or as detailed as narrating the whole story of your character up to that point. It's useful to tell AI why you are where you are for immersion sake. Not required though.
Note: this prompt frames the AI's job as being a "tabletop roleplying game master." Don't worry if you're not familiar with that kind of games. I just found it is the best framework for this task – the one AI understands the best.
If you want to be the narrator, the director, or anything else, just change the prompt. You can ask ChatGPT to help you!
2b. Facing the memory problem
Memory is AI's main constraint when talking long stories. This can be a hard one to solve, and has been hell for me personally. But I've also leveled up considerably here. Especially recently.
Let's write down the problem clearly first: AI has limited space, which means you cannot go on forever. Duh, right?
Also, some tech for ChatGPT (but also other similar apps): the longer a chat, the sooner your daily usage will be drained. Another incentive to limit chats' length.
Anyways, the trick here is simple. A human does not remember every single detail about a story too. The human brain is just very good at picking just the right details to keep. We have just the gist of what the narrative has been until now.
What we're going to do is we'll mimic the "human memory system" and implement it into AI. Once again, far easier than it seems.
First of all, start thinking about your story as a collection of chapters, not one single thread. Think books, TV shows, and so on. They have chapters, episodes, seasons.
Given we'll move from chapter to chapter, this is how the AI's context is composed:
– The System Prompt. This you've crafted already in section 2a. But you're not done. Chapters events will introduce new elements. Say you visit a new city you didn't previously include in the setting definition. Or that bartender suddenly becomes an important character. When you move to the next chapter, you'll create references for those elements. You can expand on them, create backstories, and so on. Your setting will grow. But remember: descriptions must be kept concise.
– Summaries: Every time you decide to start a new chapter, you will ask AI to create a summary of what happened until now. Then, you will start a brand new chat for the next. Before starting, you'll share your system prompt AND your older chapters' summaries. That's what the SUMMARY_CONTENT variable is for. If the summary is long, I recommend you check it thoroughly. Make sure the important details, and only those, are present. Avoid overly long summaries. We've talked about why.
– Reminders: Finally, don't be afraid to remind ChatGPT about dynamics or details it might forget or not see. AI might mis-read the intended dynamic between you and a character, or might forget that your sword was a gift from your father. When relevant, just remind it those details. Don't let them slip, this makes a big difference!
3. Conclusion
If you're reading this, you have everything you need to start your first roleplaying story with AI.
Honestly, AI is the most game-changing tool I've ever had the pleasure to try for creativity. And this is why I'm sharing all of this. I'm now convinced AI can be the release for, at least my, creative itch.
Full disclosure, the link I've shared above is all my knowledge (this and more) into one single, automated tool. It makes things easier if you don't want to setup everything yourself. You can find it here.
And now the mental framework that made me succeed in finding my way to make AI work: "Be patient with it." It can be dumb, forgetful, and distracted. Sometimes it's like my campaign depends on a random child who does not have the most basic notion of natural human interaction. But I figured it needs just a little push sometimes. It doesn't understand a random dark cloaked figure that suddenly needs you to save the world is a bit forced? Just say so.
And with time, you'll also be able to learn about prompt engineering and how to take advantage of AI biases to direct your story subtly and immersively. But that's another story. Maybe I'll make another guide just for that 🙂
If this helps even just one person increase the amount of fun they have, then I call it a success.
Have fun!