I've probably played for over 24 hours combined at this point, and I am seeing the same problems repeated.

1. Combat Encounters - They frequently do not trigger if I am the aggressor, and when my party members attack, they frequently damage themselves instead of their target. If the NPCs attack me first, I don’t recall ever having this problem. Nothing seems to scale as the player levels up. There is zero challenge in combat unless you’re solo. If you’re in a party, it’s effortless. Clerics very rarely use their spells, almost exclusively attack with melee. On the rare occasion they heal, it doesn’t always restore HP.

2. Items and Inventory - I have only once been given or found an equippable items as a reward. It was armor not suitable to my character without editing it. 99% of all loot is carved boxes, keys, maps, tomes/journals, or some kind of puzzle item that doesn’t seem to have any real use other than examining it for flavor text. Basically, you will not get gear unless you add it yourself. Shops can sort of work when you are rarely awarded money, it isn’t tracked. And if you add it yourself, it barely matters as the item system is so rudimentary. If it isn’t damage, AC or a stat, it doesn’t exist. 15 GP seems to be the standard GP reward on the rare occasion you find any, which isn’t tracked.

3. NPCs and Story - So far the stories always progress the same. I am given an endless stream of carved wooden boxes and keys that I never end up really needing. Sometimes tomes or journals. NPCs show up often at very odd times I guess in an attempt to keep things moving. But it often has the opposite effect of actually slowing things down and increases the odds of some kind of tangent occurring that takes you off to do something else. Often I’ll be dealing with a story NPC, they sprinkle the same breadcrumbs in front of me and I say goodbye and leave and in the very next message as I walk out the room a new NPC shows up cramming more breadcrumbs down my throat. Sometimes telling me to go somewhere completely different. In the intro/free access campaign, every single time I went into Ezra’s tavern there was a hooded NPC watching me. It must have happened 9 times in a row. Each hooded character was more or less the same NPC with a different name, but more or less the same goals and personality. As far as moving a quest along, I’ll examine a carved wooden box, and I’ll get into. I’ll examine it again after a roll, and get a little more info. And sometimes I have to again do more and yet another roll for the same item and on my 10th carved wooden box I just got burnt out on the repetition.

4. Franz - does a pretty decent job at responding to the situation and your words in a very reasonable fashion. I have been impressed on more than one occasion. For example, I was once in a chamber with a Sorcerer party member who seemed a bit suspicious and my rolls lead me to believe they were being deceptive, and when I pressed them to open up, they continued being evasive even after I more or less demanded they cut the BS and tell me what is going on. I then roleplayed my character getting frustrated with their evasiveness and told the barbarian just this: “Grimbold, close the door.” Franz described how the situation how everyone in the room suddenly felt the tension increase and the Sorcerer NPCs eyes were darting around looking for an escape route and fidgeting uncomfortably. They finally relented and revealed the truth to me. It could easily have read it as simply closing the door, but the way it took the context of the conversation to understand that was more of a menacing way of showing that you’re not going anywhere until I get the answers I want. That was good. But most of the time he forgets my party members are even there unless I say something to try and bring them into the conversation. I have killed an NPC, only for them to show back up, for me to remind Franz that they are dead, only for them to show up again yet again. Franz also doesn’t spend a lot of time on describing things and I think it’s responses are often too short to provide good atmosphere and more in depth conversations.

Overall I am very impressed with how well it works, but it’s still a good bit away from being a really solid experience. I am really looking forward to how it evolves over the year. As it is, the main draw this option has is that it has an inventory and item system, better character system where and spell selection/management and a better encounter system (when it works) and better flowing combat as a result. However, with a good initial prompt I have had more interesting encounters and story flow (and adaptability with me going off the rails) using just GPT4.0 by itself. ChatGPT It just hasn’t done well keeping track of inventory, or user input on spells, but it seems much better at generating stuff on the fly to smoothly incorporate into the narrative I was more or less building myself as I went. However, if you use below GPT4, the quality sharply drops.

Anyway - I hope the positive aspects of this post help balance out the negative, but it’s my honest feedback and I tried to be constructive with it. I really am impressed with what you’ve accomplished and like I said, stoked to see it evolve and I’ll definitely be following it things progress. However, I’d encourage you to allow for a way to check back in periodically without paying, like AI Realms does, even if it just lets you get a taste.

Thanks for your time.