Suddenly, you see a dark figure standing by one of the trees. You spot the deer and are ready to finish your hunt when suddenly you hear an unusual noise coming from the forest. You have a hunting bow and a quiver of arrows. You are Walker, a ranger living in the kingdom of Larion. I did the one thing that every self-respecting D&D player does when confronted with uncertainty: > find tavern The game dropped me straight into the action: I named my character Walker, in honor of Strider, J.R.R. I chose ranger, as I have pretty much without exception since fifth grade. The game offers a choice of character class - noble, knight, squire, wizard, ranger, peasant, or rogue. I’m an old-school nerd, though, so I went with fantasy. You can choose from five genres, including zombies and post-apocalypse stories. (The game comes as a phone app, too.) AI Dungeon isn’t just for fantasy swords-and-sorcery-style role-playing. I clicked over to the web-based interface and was up and running in seconds. So I was genuinely excited to give AI Dungeon a try. Ranger, Peasant, or Rogue?Īs it happens, I was a teenage D&D nerd of rather startling intensity. It’s like talking to Siri, if Siri were a 7th-level half-elf wizard. Ostensibly, it’s spinning a new and original tale every time.

Instead, you’re really conversing with a “live” AI, which is using natural language processing to figure out what you want.

Unlike those older games, AI Dungeon doesn’t use a limited set of verbal commands. AI Dungeon is deliberately designed to evoke early PC-era text-based games like The Oregon Trail. There are no graphics or sound (yet), but that’s part of the appeal. It’s made a serious splash in the gaming world, with more than 700,000 players as of March. No other humans required.ĪI Dun geon is a text-based adventure in which the AI plays the role of Dungeon Master, generating narrative and dialogue in response to any action you choose to take. Tabletop D&D game nights are popular online and in real life - even on podcasts - for kids and grownups both.Īnd now, thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence, you can play D&D with an AI-powered collaborative storytelling machine. Nerd culture is ascendant and a recent wave of 1980s nostalgia has turned the pop culture dial back to those Spielbergian days of Doritos and 20-sided dice. The venerated role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons is enjoying a cultural resurgence.

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