In my experience my players are excited about the rules and how their characters work - but not all of them learn well from "just reading the rules", like it literally does not stick. Just telling them to read the rules isn't going to do anything but make them feel shitty about the game.
Talk to your players about how to help them remember or have easy access to these rules. Make sure you don't get too accusatory, you do want to play with these people after all.
I would never see it as a replacement, but if you are having a lot of fun with it, why does it matter? Do what brings you joy.
The social aspect for me is WAY too big a part of RPGs in general. LLMs don't fulfill that at all for me. It is just a robot that knows what words goes in what order, there is no back an forth or creative creation between people with different life experiences or ideas of what "cool" or "interesting" is. Getting to chat with my friends and share in their creative space is so awesome. I am an online only player these days because it is the only way I can find time and connect with friends across borders - I don't feel online detracts from the experience, sure it is different than in person, but once you have a good group it's just a good time with friends.
Personally I have used LLMs as part of my GM prep. Mostly just to fill in things I don't really care about (like a minor detail of colours of unimportant objects a module left out) or to bounce ideas off, and to do a BUNCH of text formatting for me. It is a great tool to kickstart the process but I find I always have to sit down and actually do the work myself in the end.
I can see how being alone in a new place where you don't speak the language can very easily lead to an over reliance on good LLMs to take up some of that social space you might be used to. ChatGPT is an amazing thing, but we need to be aware for how and why we use it. Our monkey brains are easy to trick.
Trying to turn everything in a -punk genre got exhausting over a decade ago. Anything being "The future of tabletop role-play" is also just stupid hyperbole. It's like saying "The future of movies is superhero action". TTRPGs is a medium just like any other, we can have more than one genre and they can develop side by side without any single one having to "be the future of the medium".
However, this is kinda something I am a bit in to, but not as a full genre. What I really like is playing the character who fights the grimdark with hope and compassion - it's my default character archetype for Warhammer 40k games, it is my current Apocalypse World character, it is probably going to be some of my future characters as well. When everyone is trying to solve their problems with violence, being the one person who try to solve it with cooperation and compassion is so much fun and can really drive story. I think hope or optimism about the future is important parts to include in our campaigns and games but I find turning it in to a whole genre that only does that one thing can make it both too much and uninteresting.
As someone who don't know your players, do they normally try to talk down the enemies they fight?
You don't have to just put the mechanic in front of them, I find it really cool that the authors included a "If they say the right things there is a chance" it gives the villains a more real feel, they are not so manically set on their goal.
The Bard player still has to say the right things in the first place to make the check at all, there is not guarantee they will do that. But if they do... LET THEM this is literally their characters big thing! Why not let them do that specific thing? It feels backwards to me to have a "Well this fight has a conversation skill option but I am not going to let the character that has conversation skills participate".
IMO the rolls are not the interesting part of this, the party figuring out how they can get bad the guy to change their mind is.
I started playing towards the tail-end of 3.5 so, not a lot of D&D media around back then. As far as I can remember it was maybe that one episode of Dexter's Lab, maybe one or two other references here or there? Maybe some video games I didn't know where D&D stuff.
I started playing through a school club, we were already nerds that played video games all day and we were getting in to board games a bit more and when the school offered a roleplay club with an adult to teach us it was a no brainer to at least try it. We actually started on Warhammer Fantasy and World of Darkness, D&D came later.
The map making and map exporting might be worth it for me, I'll defo wishlist it! One of the things I am noticing is that a lot of the features you got overlap with the software I already use (FoundryVTT) and between already having DungeonDraft and Dungeon Alchemist. It's a hard space to break in to and I do honestly wish you the best.
The Workshop support is interesting, though I am guessing from your description that so far, it won't come even close to rival the module support that something like Foundry has.
You price point is very good though. Could be a solid entry point for a lot of GMs that want to get off Roll20. Oh yeah one thing that is not super clear from the Steam page as well is, does only the GM need to purchase the software or do players need their own copy too?
So this is the question I tend to ask, if nothing else to learn something about your tool. Why should it use it over more established competitors? I am specifically thinking something like Roll20 and FoundryVTT, the former being easily accessible and free with SRD content at your fingertips, and Foundry just being, well, Foundry. Hell even Owlbear Rodeo for a generic and easily accessible tabletop. For campaign management text programs like Notion.so and full on world managers like World Anvil are providing massively powerful tools too.
What it is Dungeon Maker provides that is either missing from these other options and is so useful that losing out on all the other stuff in them is worth the switch, or what does Dungeon Maker do so much better than the others that it is worth switching?
Not trying to be a jerk about it, it looks like you have a solid base, just curious about your ideas on these things.
After 15 years of playing I came to the very easy conclusion that, at the start of the game we talk about how we as a group would like to handle a missing player. What the group wants is often the best way.
My personal preferred method I always suggest along side that is "If a player is not there, their character is not there and we don't try to explain it in game, we just play." - it is in my experience by far the best way, not "But Pyke should still come with us and help us!" hour long discussions. No "Well sorry Dave, last session when you weren't there, Gimmerleaf died." garbage. No one is going to spend that PCs resources or make a judgement call on "what that character would do" or how they would react to things.
It keeps the agency squarely on that players court while letting the rest of you just keep playing without having a bunch of in game worries about an IRL issue that is not under your control.
It's.. Good fun? Solid reviews and well thought out opinions. I don't always 100% agree with him. I enjoy all the goofs in between, and having "the gang" available for some (if exaggerated) examples is very helpful when trying to make a point, and Jack is a good tool to break up the monotony of just one person talking.
I've recommended his videos on various occasions so, I guess I think it is good.
One of the rare channels on YT where I have actually "rung the bell".
It's like, impossible to pick a favourite. It is usually what I am running/playing at the moment which right now is Shadow of the Demon Lord, that game is doing so much for me, I am having a blast running it and my players is having a great time playing it. I am in a Apocalypse World game too and that is great - of games I am not currently playing Stars Without Number is like high on my list, but Alien RPG is great too, Call of Cthulhu is very good too, and damn if I could ever get to play in a Burning Wheel game run by and with friends I trust that would be high on my list too.
There is like 10 other games that are up there for me too, I can't pick just one favourite, things are just so different and interesting that I don't really wanna just pick one.
I mean yeah it is a language model that is trained on things other people write and learn what the next word should be from that (and some blackbox stuff). It's fun to play around with for sure, but we as user need to be better at understand what the tech actually is rather than just pretend it is a Sci-fi AI... Because holy shit it is not, all that AI stuff is marketing and tech people trying to make us think it is just like in that movie we like or whatever... Why I try and be so hard about LLM as the term rather than AI.