D&D: A Neural Network Created An Adventurer Named Pinderhand The Bugs
I’m never naming my own character again. Not after seeing this amazing list of names generated by a Neural Network after it was subjected to a dataset of user-generated character names. With almost 21,000 names to learn from, this Neural Network has finally achieved humanity’s true potential.
Artificial Intelligences will one day overtake humanity, and the surest sign of this is that they’re better at naming D&D characters than we could possibly ever hope to. I for one welcome our neurally networked overlords–but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen them in action with Dungeons and Dragons. Whether designing Monsters or their own Spells, they are a dab hand at the craft of the game.
What do you mean that’s not what an artificial intelligence looks like
Here’s how they handled player character names. But first a little background on how this Neural Network learned to make characters:
For each character, people entered a name, a race (human, dwarf, elf, etc), and a class (wizard, rogue, bard, cleric, etc). Some of the races and classes got to be quite inventive – there’s a penguin, a fey corgi, a black pudding, and a sentient bucket. So I gave this huge weird list to a neural network to see how convincing it could sound.
It turns out, the Neural Network took to naming characters and giving them races and classes like a duck takes to escaping bursts of light and making that dog laugh at you.
The hateful mocking never ends…
But dogs aside, some of these names are utterly fantastic. Here’s a list of ones that I’m pretty sure I’ve actually heard/am definitely going to steal for my campaigns.
They even got a Nickname. Like–that list runs the gamut of player character names I’ve ever encountered. Especially Hank, Jayne Arryn, and Rinas Mistfern. You just know what kind of player rolled each of those characters.
And then there are the ones where the AI took of the kid gloves and the real game, at last, began.
Stumbleduckle, Rune Diggler, and Jameless are all amazing. And of course we’ve all been in a game with a Magnus Tieforian the magnificent von Cloriam Cyital DuP Ever–but the real winner is Dawne Shift the Monkz–a Dwarf Barbarian. Or possibly The Cart, a Kenku Rogue who almost always gets put before a horse.
But where the Neural Network really shines is when it starts inventing its own classes.
I don’t know what a Dogminer is, but I want to play one. You can read the full article and find all of the names linked below. And please, please contribute to this fantastic project by filling out more of the forms which you can find tagged under D&D.
Neural Network Character Names
Contribute your Character Backstory to the Neural Network
Happy Adventuring!
