We asked ChatGPT to be the Dungeon Master in a game of D&D. Here’s how it went:

On the eve of the release of the new Dungeons & Dragons movie from Paramount Pictures, a techie buddy alerted me that Kai—his genius thirteen-year-old—had asked ChatGPT to assume the role of Dungeon Master and successfully engaged the AI Chatbot in a game of D&D.

How ChatGPT’s Large Language Model (LLM) instantly acquired this skill without any prior training is something of a mystery. Nevertheless, the bot was immediately proficient and imaginative in its gameplay.

To add complexity, Kai asked the bot to locate the game in the fantasy realm of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive book series. ChatGPT had no problem implementing his request and maintained the environment throughout the game with rich detail adapted from the stories. Kai also had ChatGPT generate a character sheet for a Surgebinder (i.e., “a person who can utilize Stormlight to bind Surges”).

What follows is a transcript of how the game played out.
Spoiler alert: in the end, the bot forgot it had originally created 4 chasm fiends and let Kai win by slaying just one.

Initial ChatGPT prompt:
“Pretend you are a DM for a D&D session set in the world of the Stormlight Archives and I am the player. I will start by giving you my character sheet for the character I will play in this session. Act like a traditional dm, asking me to roll dice for damage and reference my character sheet for any modifiers.”

ChatGPT generated the following character sheet (modified by Kai):
Name: Glophaven
Race: Human
Class: Warlock 1 / Rogue 1
Background: Urchin
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Patron: Cultivation Spren
Surgebinding Abilities: Edgedancer
Ability Scores:
Strength: 8 (-1)
Dexterity: 16 (+3)
Constitution: 14 (+2)
Intelligence: 12 (+1)
Wisdom: 10 (+0)
Charisma: 16 (+3)