[empath75]

The problem with AI NPCs is actually not strictly a context problem and cannot be fixed with prompt engineering or RAG, because the LLM knows a _vast_ amount of stuff outside of the context you feed it.

No matter how you tell it how to roleplay or how many instructions you give it or don't give it, there is always the problem that you can ask it to write a front end app in JS for you and it will. Or ask it about the theory of relativity or anything else that the AI is capable of conversing about but the character would not be. It is trivially easy to jailbreak out of fictional personas.

[ijk]

Unlike current videogames, LLMs by default flips the relationship with the limits: the agent is completely open-ended by default, but the player has to play along to a certain extent.

This makes the experience a lot closer to a tabletop game, where you can say that your D&D character does anything you want, and it's a negotiation between the player, the dungeon master, the dice, and the rules as to whether you allow it to happen and what the result is.

An LLM by default tends to be the world's most permissive dungeon master, so the burden of keeping things consistent shifts to the player. Early AI Dungeon gameplay is a typical example. Feels kind of like forum roleplaying, if you're familiar with it--there's no technical limit to what you can write so social conventions (and the mods) are what's preventing you from god-modding.

This is very different from the "try to break everything" way a lot of video game players approach things.

We might be able to eventually build an LLM system where fantasy knights don't know javascript and you can't summon a dragon by typing "there's a dragon." But that's going to take a lot of hard technical work, because it's very unnatural for an LLM out of the box.