New genre: Generative Text RPG
gtRPG - Generate Text RPG, new genre
30 March 2024
Not every day, you witness the beginning of a new gaming genre.
Role-play games have been among the most popular for decades. Dungeons and Dragons played by millions and inspired some of the most successful games of all time, including World of Warcraft, Diablo, Final Fantasy, and, recently, the game of the year, Baldur’s Gate 3.
Now, there is a new form of RPG called gtRPG or Generative Text RPG.
Generative AI allows us to create unique narratives. The AI collaborates with the player(s), like a Dungeon Master in D&D, to create scenes, characters and encounters. AI creates elaborate fictional and fantastical worlds with each player’s unique experience because they, the players, guide the story with their choices. AI reacts to the characters, creating a world that makes sense for them as a good DM would.
We define generative text RPGs as games in which generation helps to create the game state, in other words, where co-creation with AI leads to a grounded and structured adventure.
Our colleagues from Friends & Fables created the definition and the subreddit and invited us to join them in building the community. I love that we at Casual Legends are starting in the industry with this collaboration.
There is so much to do in this new genre of games. Our primary challenge is to make the game last for the entire campaign (which in D&D sometimes means years of playtime).
Today, all large language models are constrained by the context window—the memory of a conversation. While it lasts for a short, engaging story, soon, players want more and hit the limits. As I write this, we are testing our first version with persistent memory and a database of character sheets—the beginning of the work that will probably take us the better part of this year.
Our goal at Casual Legends is to make this new gaming genre accessible. Join us on our Discord to try the game today. It is especially fun to play in a small group!
-Ilya Belikin