John Polacek

Chicago Web Developer

Senior Software Engineer at VEG

Shipping open source on Github

Follow me at @johnpolacek

D20 Adventures

Originally published on 6/1/2024
D20 Adventures Online RPG Platform

In my spare time I've been working on D20Adventures.com, training an AI to be an RPG GameMaster, starting with a short basic single character adventure. I finally got it to the point where I can consistently do a full play through without it going completely sideways.

I did a little writeup about how I built it on Medium.

The code is open sourced on Github.

Update 8/2025

I finished building the Adventure Plan editor, to allow people to create an Adventure Plan that can be run by the AI Gamemaster.

It essentially involves creating a bunch of encounter nodes and connecting them together with logic that explains when and how to transition between different encounters.

I did some initial testing with small adventure parties of four people.

Unfortunately, even with LLMs that have large context windows, the AI continues to get confused about moving the adventure along from one encounter to the next, seemingly ignoring clear instructions.

I've decided to put the project on hold while I work on other things. I plan to revisit again as new models with greater capabilities come out.