D&D General Would you buy an AI-generated Castle Greyhawk "by" Gary Gygax?" Should you?

[Paul Farquhar]

If I remember correctly, that was part of Tracy Hickman's issue with how D&D was largely ran at the time. I recall him explaining the inspiration to create Ravenloft came after playing in a game with an unnamed vampire in a random room in some dungeon and he felt the vampire should have a name and a story.

Gygax did write Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth though, where the vampire does have a name and a story.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No and no.

Any further questions?

 

[Zardnaar]

No and no. I wouldn't buy Castle Greyhawk by Gary Gygax himself.

 

[Cergorach]

Something I hardly see mentioned in these kinds of discussions is: why the heck would I buy someone's AI slop when I can just generate my own AI slop (not that I'd personally want to)? Because they go over and edit it? How do I even know if they actually did that? Why even bother with the middleman?

Because 'someone's AI slop' isn't zero work and probably cost some money for subscriptions. The non-zero work includes prompting 'skills'. We have been able (and have done so) to create our own settings, our own adventures, and even our own rules for decades AND we still buy the 'slop' created by others for decades. 'Others' being TSR, WotC and the plethora of third party publishers before and after the OGL/DMs Guild...

Just because someone wrote it, doesn't mean it's good. Even the latest adventures for 5E from WotC contain errors and inconsistencies up the whazoo!

The prejudiced assumption is that AI will produce 'slop' and that a human writer that publishes a product and asks money for it will have 'quality'. I know the later is untrue. And what I've seen from my simple experiments is that ChatGPT can generate more storied and evocative descriptions then most official D&D writers do in official products. It just takes a bit of finessing and that can take time, and time=money. It's not literature, but neither is any published RPG product...

What if that 'AI slop' is 'better' and/or cheaper then an equivalent 'traditional' RPG product? What if that 'AI slop' fits better with what you want then the 'traditional' product? The point of AI imho isn't to replace anyone, it's to let you do more with your time. Let's say I'm really good at using AI tools and can be 10x more productive then via traditional methods? That also means I can produce products almost 10x cheaper (minus costs for AI tools) and can compete very well with 'traditional' products.

And we pay people daily for things we can do ourselves. I'm moving and need to paint a wall, I wanted to do it myself, but after the fact I could have better hired someone else to do it. It's not just about the time and the skills, but I'm unnaturally close to the walls and see every blemish and want to do it perfectly. A professional wouldn't do it perfectly, they would do it good enough, and I would never have a reason to inspect the entire wall at a distance of 10cm... The same goes for RPG stuff, we don't need 'perfect' we need 'good enough'.

To be honest, some of my favorite/treasured pnp RPG products aren't very good objectively. Some of the most fun novels I've read aren't literature, as a matter of fact I tend to avoid literature if I can help it... Some of it is even trash! But it's my trash that I like! If it's trash that you don't like, great, don't buy it or consume it. But we have a junk food category of food in the world and it's worth over a trillion dollars worldwide... Talk about slop...

 

[Mecheon]

What if that 'AI slop' is 'better' and/or cheaper then an equivalent 'traditional' RPG product? What if that 'AI slop' fits better with what you want then the 'traditional' product?

I mean, that's varied on what people think. Regardless though, when it comes to AI stuff, I roll on the "If someone couldn't be bothered writing it, then why should I be bothered reading it?" side of things

The point of AI imho isn't to replace anyone, it's to let you do more with your time.

Tell that to all the companies using AI for that very purpose and how 'well' its going.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

There are MANY episodes of star trek the next gen where they use the holodeck to create an approximity of someone to problem solve with (I think voyager did it with da vinci too)

And what other works along these lines would you buy, once the technology was good enough that the quality was on par with a human author's below-average day? Would you buy The Winds of Winter by an AI-generated George R. R. Martin? Would you buy new Lord of the Rings works by an AI-generated Tolkien?

I am going to get a lot of hate from my answer, but maybe-probably.

here is why I can't say for sure... the real GRR Martin, or Gary Gygax needed a strong editor, so if the AI gets even CLOSE to them so will that AI. In this case I would assume it would take a half way descent writer/editor at least 1/3 maybe 1/2 the time it would take them to write there own to fix and edited it... and TBH I don't trust modern companies to edit it, I feel like the nostolgia and rose tinited glasses would mean we would get the WORST of those writters.

Now having said that what I would buy is if WotC employee A (lets say CHris Perkins) sat at a computer that was trained on all the D&D stuff (mods, lore, articles ect ect) and he put in "give me an adventure in the style of X as if it was written by Y" then took it, edited it and playtested it, brought back the results and entered a more clear quiry with the playtest and edits, and got a second draft that he then edited playtested and then sent to publishing... and that is what I expect will be at some level the future.

AI as a tool is here to stay (I know people hate it). It WILL be used, and it will improve as it does. I am sure there will be some gimmick stuff like "Return of Gary" but over all it will most likely just be a tool newer writers will come up useing.

 

[tetrasodium]

There are MANY episodes of star trek the next gen where they use the holodeck to create an approximity of someone to problem solve with (I think voyager did it with da vinci too)



I am going to get a lot of hate from my answer, but maybe-probably.

here is why I can't say for sure... the real GRR Martin, or Gary Gygax needed a strong editor, so if the AI gets even CLOSE to them so will that AI. In this case I would assume it would take a half way descent writer/editor at least 1/3 maybe 1/2 the time it would take them to write there own to fix and edited it... and TBH I don't trust modern companies to edit it, I feel like the nostolgia and rose tinited glasses would mean we would get the WORST of those writters.

Now having said that what I would buy is if WotC employee A (lets say CHris Perkins) sat at a computer that was trained on all the D&D stuff (mods, lore, articles ect ect) and he put in "give me an adventure in the style of X as if it was written by Y" then took it, edited it and playtested it, brought back the results and entered a more clear quiry with the playtest and edits, and got a second draft that he then edited playtested and then sent to publishing... and that is what I expect will be at some level the future.

AI as a tool is here to stay (I know people hate it). It WILL be used, and it will improve as it does. I am sure there will be some gimmick stuff like "Return of Gary" but over all it will most likely just be a tool newer writers will come up useing.

Like these episodes perhaps?

Warped Fantasies: Dr. Leah Brahms and the Illusion of Consent — Lady Science

Like many Star Trek fans, I prepared for Star Trek: Discovery by re-watching episodes of the franchise’s five previous incarnations, especially The Next Generation (1987-1994). While the Star Trek universe represents a peaceful, just future, I was surprised by how each show is also constrained

www.ladyscience.com

With all of wotc's recent talk about littering the dmg with player facing features to help them feel like a mini gm within the GM's actual campaign and near exclusive player focus on the dmg hype it seems like a pretty good example of the problems we can expect from the super AI wotc may or may not be building.

 

[Cergorach]

I mean, that's varied on what people think. Regardless though, when it comes to AI stuff, I roll on the "If someone couldn't be bothered writing it, then why should I be bothered reading it?" side of things

Tell that to all the companies using AI for that very purpose and how 'well' its going.

I on the other hand roll on the "Right tool for the job." side of things. I don't give two Fs on how much effort was put into X for me to use it, as long as X is useful to me. And someone could have gone to great lengths to have written something and it can be still absolutely terrible.

And as a person is still giving prompts, the core concept is still being directed by a human.

As for people making bad decisions... People aren't supposed to drink (a lot of) alcohol and drive, but it still happens and every day people still kill other people or themselves due to that behavior. People do stupid stuff. Companies are run by people.

There are many, many managers that think they know more then they actually do and are encouraged to seem to know more then they actually do. So when some manager says: "We're replacing these X amount of people with AI!" due to some slick corporate presentation where everything worked perfectly, without proper internal testing... We have the current situation where half-arsed implementations are being used in production. This is not just with AI/LLM implementations, this is just with about any IT/automation system in existence and that's been happening for decades. Even sales people from Microsoft have been caught straight up lying to their customers when those customers actually do some proper testing themselves.

In my IT job I actually use very little to no AI/LLM, because many companies do not have had their legal departments setup proper internal guidelines on what can and cannot be used. For many that means they're free to use what they want unhindered, for me that's a reason not to use anything until it's been properly looked at by the legal team. That means that as a freelancer, I've only used it when not working for another company (which isn't much). I've mostly been using it for hobby related projects and when you want good quality results, you often have to pay for it and often not that cheap. So it's not some magical wand that solves all your problems.

 

[darjr]

No. And luckily soon we won’t have too.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Like these episodes perhaps?

Warped Fantasies: Dr. Leah Brahms and the Illusion of Consent — Lady Science

Like many Star Trek fans, I prepared for Star Trek: Discovery by re-watching episodes of the franchise’s five previous incarnations, especially The Next Generation (1987-1994). While the Star Trek universe represents a peaceful, just future, I was surprised by how each show is also constrained

www.ladyscience.com

yeah the first of the two with this is a GREAT example, the chief engineer of the ship has a problem he can't figure out so he has the computer make a 'chatgpt' version of the design head and they trouble shoot together.
It is JUST an interface, all the info had to be in the computer already... but by personifying it the engineer was able to come up with a solution.

now when personifying a computer program did it start to run into 'Barkly' and holo suit territory... yup and that is gross (on many levels) however this is pretty much what we are seeing the begining of. a computer you could just search for info on putting it as "what such and such would say" made generating his OWN idea easier useing all the info.

The computer isn't even real AI (they go out of there way to prove this with Data and Lore) it just does stuff and talks and is WAY closer to alexa running chatgpt on a super computer then it is to skynet.

back in the day me and my friends joked if you hooked a ferbie up to a bank of cray computer system and kept teaching it, you could almost have the enterprise computer... and still be 100 steps before data

With all of wotc's recent talk about littering the dmg with player facing features to help them feel like a mini gm within the GM's actual campaign and near exclusive player focus on the dmg hype it seems like a pretty good example of the problems we can expect from the super AI wotc may or may not be building.