I’ve been a tabletop roleplayer since 1979.  I started with the D&D Basic Set (J. Eric Holmes, not Moldvay or Mentzer), and then moved on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  I played a lot AD&D, then went off and tried other games, such as Fantasy Games Unlimited‘s many offerings (Aftermath!, Bushido), Cyberpunk 2020, and later Vampire: the Masquerade, with a fair bit of Traveler thrown in.  And just about everything else.

I came back to D&D in the 3.5 era, played some 4e, and have done a bit of 5e as well.  Lately I’ve been running Shawn Tomkin’s games (Ironsworn, Starforged, and Sundered Isles).

As I’ve grown older, however, the opportunities to roleplay have grown more limited, for several reasons:

• There’s a lot more going on in life compared to when I was in high school or college.  The days when I had long stretches of 8-10 hours with no commitments are a distant memory, to say nothing of entire weekends or week-long breaks. Also, I’m a GM by heart rather than a pure player, which is always the most time-consuming part of the hobby, and this magnifies that time crunch.
• Friends have moved on, both in terms of what they like to do and geographically.  I’ve gotten some folks together on Roll20, but that sometimes introduces a new wrinkle: time zones.  My old roleplaying gang is spread out over the country, and between busy professionals’ schedules and 3-hour time differences, it’s challenging.
• To some extent, expectations are higher.  When I was a in high school, random battles and ticking off levels was an end unto itself.  Nowadays, if I’m going to invest hours of my time in anything, I want more of a payoff and that, in turn, demands more investment up front.
• There are other outlets to scratch the itch.  Until really the mid-2000s, computer roleplaying games were pretty primitive.  Now they’re getting pretty impressive.  For me, playing Skyrim or Baldur’s Gate is not the same, but I think for a lot of people it satisfies whatever desire they have.  The game is always available, you can set it down any time, and it does all the hard work.

Then Came AI

ChatGPT was barely born before I started seeing people posting on Reddit about using it for roleplaying.  Early on, it was somewhat context-crippled but today some models can keep a tremendous amount of state – probably more than your favorite DM’s notes ever held.

Now, to me, it’s not the same by a long shot.  The fun of playing a RPG with friends was laughing with them, making in-jokes, and years later telling stories about that one time in Bob’s campaign where we nearly all died.  It’s the social aspect of gaming that I enjoy more than the game itself.  The experience of roleplaying with AI has really sharpened this realization for me.

Maybe that’s why I was never a big convention gamer.  I’ve been to a few but gaming with strangers isn’t the same as gaming with friends.  Sure, it’s social, but it’s also transactional and the focus is on the game.  For me the focus is on the friends around the game.  Gaming is just a spectacularly creative way for us all to have fun together.

So what would gaming with AI be like?  I mean, I have played a variety of Bethesda RPGs, Baldur’s Gate, etc. but those games are always limited by what the studio programmed into them, both in terms of player agency and the surrounding world.  Fallout 4 may feel like a big world, but it’s still a walled garden.

What if you could roleplay with complete freedom of action, in a rich world, using “all the rules,” with a GM who never gets tired and is infinitely creative?

That’s the promise of AI gaming.

I should note that here we’re talking about roleplaying as a player.  I think it’d be interesting to do this as a GM where you lay out the world and have AI players roleplay in it, which would appeal to the world-builder in me.  But that’s a different story.

AI Options

An AI GM doesn’t really need a lot for this to work:

• An understanding of the rules.  This can easily be accomplished with a RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) where the rules are sucked into the AI and emphasized as a source of searchable info.  In my experience, competent AI models that easily do this.  For example, I uploaded the Ironsworn rulebook in a custom GPT on ChatGPT and then asked it to make various rolls, moves, and character creations and what it produced was flawless from a rules perspective.  The again, Ironsworn is a pretty simple game and it has a structured, JSON-defined version of its rules (datasworn).  In other words, the GPT doesn’t have to understand the rules because it’s being fed the rules in computerese.
• The ability to generate a world, populate it with characters, and lay out interesting adventures for players.  Well, it is called generative AI for a reason.  This part is pretty straightforward.  You can do this today with ChatGPT if you don’t care about tracking a character sheet, experience, stats, etc.

You could hook this up yourself, using either a custom GPT on ChatGPT or a similar service, or running your own AI model and using Silly Tavern.  Silly Tavern automates a lot of the context-keeping and if you want your own conversational model, all the hard work is already done for you.

However, in my experience these approaches take a bit of work.  If your main goal is to play D&D, you might consider an AI that is custom-made for it: AI Realm.

AI Realm

I saw this advertised in various Reddit subs.  (Reddit gaming subs, btw, are a hotbed of AI controversy.  Seems to me that half the readers say that AI is a great tool and they enjoy using it, and half say it’s brain-dead and an intellectual thief.  Some subs celebrate AI for gameplay, others ban discussion of it completely.)

AI Realm is an AI that features the following:

• A nice web interface that organizes your campaign
• An AI backend that you don’t have to manage
• The D&D 5e ruleset
• Optional audio
• Image generation
• Free play

Let’s walk through those:

Web interface: It’s a chat-oriented experience, much like talking one-on-one with a GM.  If you pay for a subscription, you can play with freinds (several of you with the same simultaneous AI GM, though I haven’t tried this).  There’s a separate dice-roller for those who like to have the experience of seeing a polyhedral spin across the screen.  If you’re more of a physical dice roller (and who isn’t?) it’s all honor system, so you can roll dice on your table if you prefer.  When you come to a need to roll, the AI GM say something like:

Roll a Stealth check to see if you can follow the figure without being detected. Roll a 1d20 + your Dexterity modifier (3) + your Stealth proficiency bonus (2). Let me know the total.

AI backend: AI Realm will work with various APIs, including Gemini, ChatGPT, etc.  You don’t directly pay for this and you don’t need to subscribe to those APIs.  The interface keeps track of your campaign.  What’s really happening under the covers is that it’s continually collapsing down the context to essentials and sending this context as a bundle for each chat interaction.  This is the way Silly Tavern works as well.  So it keeps a history of everything that’s happened to date and summarized it continually, reducing all the details of your encounter with the orc brigands to a summary of that encounter.  All this history goes back and forth with the AI to keep state.

D&D 5e: Of course, it’s not officially D&D, just D&D 5e-inspired for copyright reasons.

Optional Audio: The game will read its responses to you in various voices (if you wish), and you can talk to it via microphone.  I played with this a little but didn’t go deep into it.

Image Generation: Who doesn’t love a good visual aid?  This can really add atmosphere.  While AI in general does a good job of painting word pictures, creating images on the fly is a great use of technology.

Free Play: The free tier has 30 messages a day, which is enough to give it a try.  If you’re really going to play, you’ll want to sign up for a subscription, which is $8, $15, or $25/month depending on which subscription level you choose.  Higher tiers give you more or unlimited messages, allow your friends to play with you, do more image generations, etc.

So How’s the Roleplaying?

I spun up a human rogue with this background:

Dask Grimholt was a member of a traveling circus whose troupe was killed in a bandit attack.  He’d drifted into a big Lankhmar-esque city and was now operating as an independent thief.  He knows the local Thieves’ Guild will take a dim view of non-members encroaching on their turf but he hates to shares his spoils.

Character generation was easy.  I noticed I started at 5th level.  Not sure why that is.  Maybe so characters don’t die so easily.

I was given options for GM…some of which were…odd…but just went with Normal:

And finally I was justing the default AI model:

And then we started!  By default, you use AI Realm’s campaign world (Al’mundi), however you can alternatively weave your own world by uploading a description and info.  I used Al’mundi.

One thing to keep in mind is that this isn’t Roll20, where you’d buy licensed content.  So don’t expect to play in the Forgotten Realms or something like that, or say “I want to run Storm King’s Thunder“.

Here’s how the AI GM started the campaign:

The day begins under the fiery hues of a setting sun, illuminating the bustling port city of Emberden. Sweeping gulls cry out over the shore, their silhouettes cutting through the orange glow of a sky partially veiled by an ever-thickening haze of chimney smoke and briny mist. The streets of Emberden are alive with the chaos and texture of trade: fishmongers hawk their wares with loud, guttural calls, sailors joke or brawl outside rowdy taverns, and sharp-eyed pickpockets slip between drunken merchants with deft ease. The docks themselves creak and groan under the burden of massive ships laden with treasures and cargo.

Further inland, away from the chaos of the docks, the city gives way to crooked alleys lined with ramshackle, leaning buildings. Here, crime festers and alliances are forged in shadowy corners. It is in this restless hive of schemes and whispers that you sit now, perched on a dilapidated rooftop overlooking the Sprawling Lantern-a tavern known for its seedy patrons but also a place where rumors and opportunities flow as freely as the spiced rum.

As the evening stretches on and the lamps in the streets sputter to life, you catch sight of familiar faces down below-two enforcers of Emberden’s Thieves’ Guild, their leather vests adorned with silver pins marking their rank. They scan the streets with purpose, their gazes sharper than you’ve seen before. Though you’ve avoided them thus far, their persistence lately suggests they’re gearing up to send a far less subtle message to independent thieves such as yourself.

Instinctively, your hand brushes over the hilt of your shortsword beneath your cloak. Just then, you spot something even more interesting: a figure, cloaked in deep green and carrying an oversized satchel, slipping into the Sprawling Lantern quickly, glancing nervously over their shoulder before disappearing through the creaky wooden door. The way they moved, urgent and measured, puts you on edge-they didn’t look like your average drunk or sailor.

The guild’s men loiter below, muttering to one another as lantern light dances on their scarred faces. The alley hums with tension. Above, the stars begin to pierce the twilight haze.

What would you like to do?

That’s not bad.  Paints a picture and gives a lead.  Saying something like “tell me more about Emberden” gave a little more backstory.  You can ask questions, or just tell it what you want to do.

I jumped in, and had nice interactions with the guild and Mr. Green Cloak.  Did a bit of sneaking around, pumped a reluctant bartender for info, and then forced a combat encounter to test out how well AI handles that.

Combat

This is where things got a little…dicey (pun intended).

First, when I rolled to backstab as a rogue, it said:

Roll an attack roll with your shortsword! Roll a 1d20 + your Dexterity modifier (3) + your proficiency bonus (2). Let me know the total.

But what if I roll a 1?  That’s always a fail.  Following the provided instructions, I could never roll a 1.  I would have to know to tell it I rolled a 1.  I did that as a test, and the GM said I’d fumbled by backstab, crashing into the stone wall next to my intended victim and giving him plenty of time to whirl around and draw his dagger.

Second, when I was hit, it asked me to roll damage when my enemy hit me.  That’s a little odd.  Usually the GM would say “you take 3 points of damage”.

But more worrisome is that it was confused about the rules:

The figure swiftly draws a dagger from beneath their cloak. They lunge towards you, aiming a precise strike at your chest.

rolls for attack

I rolled a 16 for the attack roll of the figure in the green cloak.

The figure’s dagger finds its mark, piercing your defenses!

Roll for damage! Roll a 1d4 and add your Strength modifier of 0. Let me know the total.

That’s not right.  My strength wouldn’t modify my attacker’s damage total.

So combat seems a little off.

You can also activate a more advanced combat system that uses a traditional grid map.  However, the options are more outdoors-oriented.  There’s 5 pre-made maps and none of them really fit an urban style-adventure, much less the winding alleyway I was in.

Conclusion

Overall, it seems AI Realm‘s strength is in storytelling.  Spinning up a new story and putting your character in the heart of it works well, as does iterating and developing that story.  I can’t say it’s some superhuman GM but it’s certainly as good as a lot of casual games I’ve run into over the years.

The fumble (pun intended) on the combat rules disappointed me, because if there’s one thing I’d want an AI to do right, it’s handle all the details.  The minutia of adding this modifier here or applying this rule there are chores that I’d eagerly let a computer handle.  In a big ruleset like D&D’s, I’m always worried that I’m forgetting some rule or not applying something right.

So does AI Realm scratch my gaming itch?  To be honest, I was always conscious that it is an AI GM.  Knowing how AI works, I was always aware that it was generating without a soul instead of roleplaying and enjoying the experience.  It made me realize how important the meta of roleplaying is.  I want to talk about the game with my friends – what happened, what surprised us, what conclusions we’d draw, what worked and what didn’t, what the game system does right and what it gets wrong, etc.  You can’t do that with an AI GM.

You might say “do you feel the same playing Oblivion, Baldur’s Gate, or Fallout 3:New Vegas?”  I don’t, because those are kinds of “human challenges” setup by other humans.  And of course, there’s the visual interface – it’s just completely different.  Skyrim is a video game.  AI Realm is AI-powered storytelling.

Whether it scratches your itch is something you’d have to decide.  I do wish the project well.  I think this type of product space will continue to grow.  Unfortunately, I suspect Hasbro will eventually come out with their own AI-powered D&D experience and sue anyone else trying to compete with them, which would be a shame.  Hopefully that doesn’t happen and AI Realm continues to perfect their product.  There are a lot of people on its reddit sub who seem to like it.

Since you can play for free for a bit, why not give it a try.

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.