Sometimes the person who always runs the game would like to walk into the dungeon without knowing what is waiting inside.
They want to create a character. Make a questionable decision. Discover the secret alongside their friends. Be surprised by the story.
That is one of the reasons I’m building AIDM.
I want it to give people more opportunities to play together. Human interaction is the point: the conversation between friends, the argument over an outrageous plan, the moment someone commits to an idea that everyone else thinks is going to get the party killed.
Those are the things I want to make more room for.
There are evenings when a human Dungeon Master simply isn’t available. There are groups where everyone wants to play a character, but nobody wants to take responsibility for preparing and running the adventure. And there are people who enjoy being the DM who would occasionally like to join their friends on the other side of the screen.
I think those people deserve another option.
If AIDM can help a group get together and have an adventure on an evening when they otherwise wouldn’t play, that is something worth working toward.
The people sharing that adventure are still the people making it matter.
About those orcs…
There is something about the reaction to AI that I find frustrating.
Sometimes the two letters seem to end the conversation before anyone asks what the tool actually does, what its limitations are, or why someone is building it. Fear, anger, and sweeping claims arrive before curiosity gets a chance.
I understand distrust. Trust should be earned. But I would like us to leave enough room to look at an actual project and judge it on its purpose and behavior.
Especially in a hobby that has enjoyed computer-controlled fantasy worlds for decades.
Think about Baldur’s Gate. Beyond that, there are games such as Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment; Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, and Pools of Darkness; Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor; and Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager.
Those orcs you were fighting weren’t actually alive.
Neither was the suspicious merchant, the skeleton guarding the passage, or the villain waiting at the end of the adventure.
People built software that let us encounter them, fight them, talk to them, and enjoy the fiction.
And we supplied something essential: our attention, imagination, decisions, and, when we played together, our relationships with the other players.
Of course, traditional game AI and modern generative AI are different technologies. Enjoying a computer RPG does not settle every question about modern AI. The writers, artists, performers, and developers behind those games also deserve recognition for their work.
My point is simpler: interacting with a computer-controlled fantasy world is already a familiar part of this hobby. We can consider another way of doing that without assuming the human part of the experience has disappeared.
The part I want to protect
Imagine you and your friends standing outside a ruined tower.
One person wants to sneak inside. Another wants to knock. Someone suggests setting a distraction that is almost certainly going to become a much bigger problem.
That conversation belongs to you.
So does the decision to trust a stranger, spare an enemy, abandon a quest, or spend far too much time investigating something that probably isn’t important.
I want AIDM to give those choices a world to happen in. I want the players to keep ownership of their characters—their intentions, their words, their relationships, and the decisions that make the adventure theirs.
A good human DM brings judgment, personality, shared history, and an understanding of the people around the table. I value that. I’m not asking anyone to give up a game they love.
I’m interested in the evenings when that game cannot happen, or when the usual DM wants to bring a character of their own.
Could those evenings become opportunities to play together too?
That is the space I’m working in.
What I’m putting the effort into
This purpose also shapes the less glamorous work behind AIDM.
A creature needs to behave sensibly enough that the players can stay interested in the encounter. A conversation needs to fit the situation. A trade needs to leave the character with the right belongings. When something goes wrong, the game needs a useful way forward.
Each of those ordinary expectations takes care, testing, and revision.
The experience I’m working toward is one where you spend more of the evening talking with your friends, making decisions, and being your character. The software has to earn its place by helping that happen.
AIDM is still a work in progress. I’ll keep showing what is coming together and being honest about what still needs attention.
You don’t have to like every use of AI to consider whether this particular use could be useful to your group. And you don’t have to agree with me to help shape the conversation.
If everyone in your group could be a player for an evening, what adventure would you want to share—and what would you want AIDM to leave entirely in human hands?
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