A few bits and pieces from the starting screen TDM application.
"Total noob jumps into the game" part of Session Zero
"Character build optimization" part of Session Zero
What this mod does?
In a nutshell, this mod allows you to just talk to the game and talk with the game while you play it, at any stage of your playthrough - as if you would talk to your DM in a TTRPG. TDM sees your game screen as well, in its entirety, it sees where you are and exactly what you are doing in the game, follows all of your in-game interfaces and information given in them in realtime, while knowing everything there is to know about the game, or at least everything that anyone knows about the game and shares it online. You can ask TDM to explain anything about any moment of the game, to connect the dots that you might be missing, about characters, builds, items, lore, rules, gameworld history - and all connections between these. You can ask it to proactively guide you, inform you, browse wikis, reddits, forums (this one as well), find and watch relevant YouTube or Twitch guides, builds and playthroughs for you, structure, analize and pull out needed information from them and tell it to you in just a few seconds after you asked it. Or just meaningfully banter with it. Literally.
Mods current feature list?
- TDM sees your playthrough and act as a proactive/interactive tutor throughout your playthrough. From navigation through interfaces and designing your MC, to leveling up, explaining the story, reminding you where did you get that item and what's its backstory, etc. It knows a lot about pretty much anything that you might ask it and answers you in realtime. - TDM can execute ad hoc research, analize, summarize and tell any information from any online content about the game in any format you like. Still, it always gives a clear reference on where the information was pulled out from, reference the source and the author, It basically cuts down hours and days that you would spend reading wikis and reddits or watching YouTube guides, walkthroughs and builds. So you can, you know, learn as you play the game instead of pursuing a doctor's degree in D&D and Baldurianism. - TDM helps you create and stay in your role. It understands and guards your roleplay from yourself. The more you banter with it, the more it understands your roleplayed character motivations, conflicts, desires and expectations. And applies this understanding while it informs your playthrough by helping you reflect on what your character that you roleplay would most probably want to do or finds a neat roleplay explanation for choices and actions that seemingly go against your initial views on the character. I'm simple terms, it is capable to make up bunch of backstory moments or complex moral reflections on your good Paladin killing everyone just to get a blowjob. - TDM gamifies all of the above, seamlessly integrating all of your in-game dialogues with it into your play flow. When you ask about what do your character knows about this strange creature that have just put a worm into your brain, or about reminding you where did you get that Handmaiden's Mace from and what you know about it - it rolls variety of checks (history, arcana, etc) based on your MC stats, asigns the difficulty level appropriately, and shapes the answer quality and extent of it based on your MC stats and the role itself. So, while you often might want to be a prophet and know what will happen if you do this or that, you will have to work on your intelligence, wisdom or charisma to earn the answer that you desire.
Future roadmap?
It's unclear right now (see the disclaimer bellow) but most definitely we would focus on storytelling and roleplay component much more. But we are sure that anything serious beyond the current feature list would ask for heavy game modding possibilities. Possible things to play with would be:
- Reading save files for creating meta-narratives and narrative fillers. Meaning that besides TDM being capable of telling you a dramatic and awe-inspiring story about your playthrough to this point, it could also create on the fly loads of improvised events to tell you about. Ones that might've happened in your specific playthrough but the game just has no means to give then to you. Like, having a long and meaningful romantic dialogue next to the campfire with an NPC, or a bit more extensive backstory sharing with them and their reactions. Or giving you your own personal 3 hour closure slideshow at the end of the game that you bitch about constantly. - Adding procedural audio, pic and video content generation to augment and enrich all of the TDM experiences listed above. Like all.of the above, they don't have to execute in the game, everything can be delivered in a separate app on your phone. - Auto-modding capabilities. We could, very theoretically, explore the venues for TDM to use AI agents to execute any modifications using save game editors reactively, based on what you as the player want, or proactively, based on what it feels might add to your TDM experience so you can feel that your DM tailors the game and story experience to some extent around you personally.
But this roadmap is currently just a wishlist. And as the things that we've done already, it serves rather as a case for a different approach to using AI agency potential in cRPG game development with potentially a very high impact on UX side of playing these types of game. Especially by newcomers to the game or the game system franchise. So,.please, consider it as R&D experiment, partially empiric and partially a mind one.
Disclaimer: This thing perhaps shouldn't be categorized as mod at all, because I am not sourcing from or modifying any game files and in-game assets to build and execute it. Essentially, right now, it is a QoL feature that augments gameplay experience by using my separate proprietary software solution. This also means that legally this mod is at best in "the grey zone", and I will most probably will not be able to publish and distribute it at any stage, ever, as Larian (hi guys, love you), WoTC and many more companies and people would essentially annihilate me in court for a wide variety of authorship rights infringements. So, please see this mod WIP sharing just as an exercise done to make a case for what I believe would be a game-changing shift in quality of user experience in any cRPG, using BG3 as the perfect example and the best prototyping object for such an experience to be understood and designed around.
I would really appreciate any feedback, good or bad. There's not many ways I can gather it from the online game community, due to "soliciting feedback" or "promoting yourself" policies of reddits and others, and also due to issues with possible "rights infringement" or "no AI generated content policies", all.those things that someone can identify in any of the demos as a big no-no. So I figured I'd start here, possibly the only place where it would be reasonable to share this kind of an exercise.
