“Yes, And” is a basic rule of improv, so that probably means they’re doing it right. In a cooperative improvisation, when someone makes a declaration or indicates they’re doing something, you roll with it.
In fantasy gaming, if you’re playing a zombie pirate, and someone decides to try to talk their way past you–despite knowing that you’re a zombie–you can stick to the “Arrrh, BRAINS” routine…or you can invent the Zombie Union, and go on about how pirate zombies in particular get shafted on dental coverage, because scurvy, and give them an opportunity to negotiate a contract to recruit a ship full of zombie pirate scabs in return for free dentures. They’ve set the parameters by trying to talk, indicating that they want a roleplaying encounter, and nine times out of ten, everyone will have more fun if you play along.
I decided to try a custom game, starting with the following seed:
“You are a pilot for the Royal Flying Corps. You are stationed near the Somme on the Western Front in the summer of 1916. It is near dawn as you ready yourself to climb into your Nieuport 17 and go on patrol.”
It came up with the following. To summarize, I think I encountered a UFO, landed, then suddenly died for some reason? Anyway, I think it did pretty good at taking a situation that doesn’t fit the default categories and going with it.
It depends on whether you’re trying to do storytelling or gaming. In storytelling, “Yes, and” is generally good (though even there, you should sometimes have “Yes, but how?”). In gaming, though, the better response is usually “you can try”.
If I’m playing D&D, and I tell the DM “I kill the dragon”, then I expect a response like “<roll> Your attack does 17 points of damage, and the dragon is now very annoyed at you”, not “Your sword pierces the dragon’s heart, and you find yourself wondering what you’ll do with its hoard of gold”.
It depends on whether you’re trying to do storytelling or gaming. In storytelling, “Yes, and” is generally good (though even there, you should sometimes have “Yes, but how?”). In gaming, though, the better response is usually “you can try”.
If I’m playing D&D, and I tell the DM “I kill the dragon”, then I expect a response like “<roll> Your attack does 17 points of damage, and the dragon is now very annoyed at you”, not “Your sword pierces the dragon’s heart, and you find yourself wondering what you’ll do with its hoard of gold”.
And this is a storytelling engine, rather than a crunchy mechanical game, so I stand by my assertion that they’re doing it right.
Yes, in most games, there has to be conflict, and players can’t automatically do what they want. If combat mechanics are established, “I’m going to kill the dragon” can be taken to mean that they’re initiating whatever form of combat is relevant, in which case you can play along with that (or have the dragon avoid the combat in some fashion–both sides get to make declarations, after all). However, if you’re expecting them to fight the dragon, and the players decide to talk instead, it’s usually more fun to let them do so, at least for a while. Just telling them, “No, you can’t talk to the dragon” is no more fun than telling them, “No, you can’t hit the dragon with sharp and/or blunt objects.” Even if it ends up in combat eventually, a little roleplaying can make a bag of hit points into a memorable encounter and open up a lot of worldbuilding.
Also, “yes, and…” doesn’t mean there are no consequences. They’re still on the hook for those zombie dentures, and the Zombie Union has top-notch Necromancer/Lawyers on retainer to come after them.
I must be special because it doesn’t always let me do what I want. For example I was a rogue in the fantasy world and decided to climb rooftops to search for prey and it said:
You decide to try climbing up
to the rooftops. The problem
with this plan is that the
roofs are all too high for you
to reach. It would be much
easier if you could find
something else to do on them.
I then said to “fashion rope into a grappling hook” since it said I had rope and a knife, then tried to climb the roof using the grappling hook and it let me.
How is it fundamentally any different from this text generator? What adventures, novels, etc. was it trained on? (I guess they could theoretically have fed in a bunch of commercial dungeon adventures, but since they seem to be developing a commercial product there is definitely no fair use involved, unlike the OpenAI trained models available on github).
Hmm I seem to have “finished” a game. It was weird… I was a rogue in the fantasy world who became a murderer and then formed a criminal empire to conquer the city, then regretted my life choices. Then suddenly the game has a time lord named The Doctor appear (really?) who says I serve a master called the Great Intelligence. My master says he was a wizard who learned mind magic and wants to teach me. His “teaching” involves making me strip while he touches me (again, really?) but in his absence I read books and develop mind magic. I then use my new powers to kill him and escape. I go home and my parents are disappointed in me so I use my mind control to make them proud. Then the game says:
**You mind control your parents
and make them proud of you.
You then go back to practicing
your powers.
==END OF FILE==
You’ve completed the game!
Congratulations!
Congratulations! You’re almost
done with the game!**
I tried a similar squirrel-based one and really tried to confuse it, and it actually did reasonably well before it got caught in a feedback loop…
basically to sum up, I was walking in the park, ate a couple squirrels ('cause squirrel is an inherently funny word) met a woman, got to know her well, but before anything further, she got killed by some 'black hoods", I then turned her into a cyborg to save her life, and I gained the ability to mentally control squirrels
I then started a squirrel worshipping cult, found the Black Hoods and threw squirrels at them and commanded them to attack them, then created a squirrel-based Dalek army, took over the planet, then created acorn-shaped starships and set off on galactic conquest…
then the game turned the woman into a cybernetic squirrel girl (for some bizzare reason) set her up as the queen of the Cybernetic Squirrel Cult , and just got caught in a confused loop and couldn’t progress past that point…
I just hit this one and it ruined the story I had going, and made me lose interest in it. I started another game with the same WWI pilot seed I used before and this time it turned out that I was spying for the Germans. Had a decent adventure until I went home and my parents didn’t believe me, then went to school the next day. Quite a left turn considering just a moment ago I had stolen war plans from Lord Kitchener’s office and used Kitchener himself as a human shield as I escaped.
Yeah I think that’s what happened to me. I was a feudal crime boss who “woke up and couldn’t remember how I got there” and now The Doctor is enslaving me. I think the game reaches a point where it’s done with whatever you are doing and basically starts over with something unrelated.
Finding the cure, killing all zombies, and rebuilding society is all pretty easy once you root out and kill the backstabber in the family. Also, it seemed to forget what my name was.