Casual Beginnings
Origins of Casual Legends
25 March 2024
I started experimenting with ChatGPT in May 2023, and my first idea was to make Daily D&D — go about daily situations as if they were in Dungeons and Dragons.
Roll the dice to make a perfect sandwich.
At the time, I had access to GTP3 only, and the results were funny but not that fun. I put it aside and forgot about it for a while.
Then GTP3.5 was released, and the app I was using got an update. I tried my old prompt again and noticed that it got a lot better. I started experimenting with it in a process, reducing the silliness of the Daily D&D idea and making it more and more like a fantasy RPG game.
I realized I had to get access to GTP4 and got a subscription to Poe (at the time, the most straightforward way to get access to advanced models in Hong Kong). Once I tried GTP4, I was hooked, and I started playing and improving the prompt daily.
ChatGTP4 was capable of following much more elaborate rules and acting like an agent. With Poe, I also got access to Gemini Pro, Mixtral, Claude 3, and MythoMax and experimented with them all, looking for the best storyteller and agent in one.
At this point, I realized it had probably been done before and learned about AI Dungeon and Friends & Fabels. I tried both and did not like the experience. AI Dungeon felt like a writing tool, while Friends & Fabels felt like I needed to set up a lot while I wanted to just get into the game and have fun.
I was (and still am) biased and liked something about my take more. I want AI to be at the centre of the emergent narrative. I feel like the game has to be very accessible and easy for casual players to get into. At the same time, it has to challenge players to contribute and co-create. I worked hard on a prompt that would suggest less and always give agency to the players, asking, "What do you want to do?".
At this point, I started getting the first players and iterated rapidly, getting regular feedback. I came up with the name Casual Legends and showed up with my idea at "AI Deploy Nights" and signed up for a hackathon.
With the help of a friend, I finally got access to a ChatGPT subscription and leveraged a code interpreter for dice rolls, DALEE for images, and text-to-speech for voicing the story. The game came to life with these tools, showing a glimpse of the future.
Next, I got into the Coze no-code tool and put together a chatbot for our Discord, where we tried to play multiplayer for the first time with Ben. It was chaotic, fun, and reminiscent of my early days playing D&D.
When the time for the hackathon came, I had a well-formed idea. We had to build our own Discord bot and design an App for the game that would solve our primary challenges: more extended memory and an overarching story.
More about how we solve these in one of the future posts!
-Ilya Belikin
