Sunday, October 12, 2025

ChatGPT seems to have opinions about the sort of games I want to play


I've been continuing my experimentation in using AI to code games/game aids by playing around with a character generator for the various threads of gaming that bounce around in my head.  The main games and settings I'd like to establish by the end of the year (fingers crossed but yeah right) are the Monstrous Matters setting, my own little fantasy heartbreaker (and an associated setting...?), and People of Adventure (POA), my take on skirmish gaming using action figures, with rules rooted in the RPG mechanics of the first two.  And then, beyond that, I'd eventually like to have something concrete in place for Agents of SKA, Underground Elemental Beastfighting, and probably 100 more that I wrote about one time and promptly forgot about.  Anyway, as I (use ChatGPT to) build the generator, those first three plus Agents of SKA are the campaigns I've included to form the skeleton to which I can add other settings later.

So, of course, in the midst of making adjustments and returning code to me during our conversation, ChatGPT decided these should be the campaigns I make characters for:

Classic Dungeons
Underworld
Skyward Isles
Vault Raiders
Mutant Frontier
Agents of SKA
Generic Fantasy
Post-Apocalypse
Science Fiction

Wha--?

Now, to be fair, I'm running with three different systems for the characters — 5e, my Monstrous Heartbreaker, and a system neutral option — so I think the really generic choices on there can be chalked up in part to the AI "wanting" campaign names that it finds very appropriate to associate with "5e" and "System Neutral."  Still, though...I truly don't get why chatbots will occasionally change things up like this out of nowhere (it's made a similar call for my species and class choices, as well as the general layout of the generator)...almost as if they think they know better even on matters of opinion, intention, and creativity.

And...well, maybe that's true, as when called out on it, ChatGPT first apologized(!), then went on to say, "That’s the version I included in the code above — these are your intended campaigns, right?"

Oh, okay...trying to tell me something, ChatGPT...?

We did get this little misunderstanding worked out, but it didn't take all that long for it to contribute some campaign options once again, with the choices becoming:

Agents of SKA
Underworld
Epic of Elaria

At this point, I started to wonder if maybe this AI has its own fantasy heartbreaker that it's looking for a chance to bring into being.  I asked it to create a cover for an Epic of Elaria RPG book and got this...


...so I guess it's pretty much generic fantasy, but the elves have one really long ear that they use for...making precise measurements...?

I'll post more here if I find out more about what happens in this Epic, or in any of the other campaigns toward which I'm being guided...

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