Synchronous Generation

Franz helped me create two instruction blocks (and then went through several tests with me) that I find incredibly helpful for 1) Keeping characters and locations accurate to campaign history, and, 2) Make Franz function much more like a human DM. The blocks read as:

Before giving any additional narration or flavor, break immersion and get any necessary clarifications from the player. For example, if the player asks to meet a character, first ask for details about the character and the location if they are not already known. Then, after receiving the necessary information, return to narrating the game.

and

Any time character dialogue or player description prompts the DM to generate either a location or a character, the DM is to break immersion and inform the player of their desire to generate, explain the reason and purpose for the content to be generated, and await player confirmation to generate the content.

On the surface, this seems counter-intuitive being that it gives Franz both license and agency to break immersion. But what I have found is that when sending in-character dialogue, the way my human memory and the speaking style of my character, Franz sometimes struggles to identify that I am referencing places and characters that I have already encountered or been introduced to, leading to him ‘filling the gaps’ and generating a character or location to fit my given narrative.

This loop has lead to several inconsistencies in game-state that have had to be corrected. With these instruction blocks, Franz hears a nickname my character has for a place or person that hasn’t been explicitly linked to said place or person, he then will ask me who/where I’m talking about.

Now, could I be a more diligent AI D&D player and make sure my references are always concrete? Absolutely. But a human player doesn’t think like AI and even with effort, I can still make mistakes. What would a human DM do in these situations? He would ask over the table for clarification. Is this a necessary tool for every single user of F&F? Certainly not. This is why I propose adding something like these blocks as a toggle option in the game settings. This could make a great middle ground option between the existing toggles of allowing/disallowing for generation at all.

Personally, I didn’t want to take Franz’s ability to generate completely away, I wanted to modify the when and why he generated locations and characters. Through my playtesting I am quite satisfied with the result, although it is admittedly not perfect. There are still some bugs, most notably Franz creating a duplicate location far from the original spot, but I think that was more an issue of specific pinpoint location rather than confusion of context, so it’s not perfect.

Anyway, this is all just my thoughts and experience, I’m not an expert in LLM’s, UI design, coding or anything like that, I’m just a long-time D&D forever DM who has loved getting to play a character. Thank you to whoever reads this, and thank the developers for the hands-down most robust AI driven narrative RPG.

All glory to Franz!