D&D General Would You Buy an RPG Product Printed on a Gutenberg Press?

[Sulicius]

Hey now

 

[Scribe]

For how long? How long do you think boycotting AI is going to work for? I know you hope that it could be permanent. And that you and those with your views could shutdown AI so it is never used in TTRPGs (and probably more places).

I dont believe we can shut it down, but this hobby especially, can be driven by the community. There absolutely is no need for AI work. Just look at the vast majority of OSR products, look at things like Shadowdark.

If the community itself decided 'nah, pass' then there would be no driving factor here.

Do you think the current 15 year olds will care?

No, but I'm not concerned with what they care about (I could not care less to be honest). I'm concerned with what people in positions to make these decisions today, think.

Ultimately, just as we saw with social media, this tech in many (not all!) applications, is a mistake, and for something like the RPG space, it is both unnecessary, and will be detrimental to the hobby in general.

 

[LordEntrails]

...I'm not sure how to respond.
Are we seriously trying to compare AI to the Gutenberg press? somehow?
Or is this a statement about printing methods regressing because of the new import taxes?

Absolutely it's a comparison. Useful but not exact. But hey, if you don't want to listen to ideas that threaten your views and engage constructively, don't engage. But if you do, here goes...

The Gutenberg Press (GP for short) enables people to obtain books at a price they could afford. Like AI art allows people access to custom images they could not otherwise afford.

GP removed the gatekeeping done by religious entities and a few large institutions who were the only ones that could publish anything in a meaningful way. And hence were able to gate keep or control what was and was not said. Which is similar to AI allowing people to create RPG adventures that they could not without AI assistance.

You can make similar comparison to the Cotten Gin, and the technologies of the Industrial Revolution, and manufacturing robots, and the photo copier, etc.

But again, those comparisons are only tools for a discussion.
I think the discussion should be change is coming, how do we limit the harm it will do?

 

[Scribe]

I think the discussion should be change is coming, how do we limit the harm it will do?

I think its a noble discussion.

I'd like to see a listing of artists looking for commission, maybe have them indexed based on costs, platform/rule set, and art style, so that people can more easily find humans to support.

 

[LordEntrails]

I dont believe we can shut it down, but this hobby especially, can be driven by the community. There absolutely is no need for AI work. Just look at the vast majority of OSR products, look at things like Shadowdark.

If the community itself decided 'nah, pass' then there would be no driving factor here.



No, but I'm not concerned with what they care about (I could not care less to be honest). I'm concerned with what people in positions to make these decisions today, think.

Ultimately, just as we saw with social media, this tech in many (not all!) applications, is a mistake, and for something like the RPG space, it is both unnecessary, and will be detrimental to the hobby in general.

Ok, thanks for engaging constructively.

So "we" can shut it down for today as a goal. I agree that might be possible. (I don't think it will actually happen, but consent that it might be possible.) So we can protect the creators of today.

I agree with that. But I will say that we as a community did a pretty poor job of protecting the RPG creators prior to AI. Look at all the complaints about writer's pay, and paying for artists, and the Go Fund me's to help out 'celebrity' creators who had a spate of bad luck or health problems. So, we did a bad job of it before AI, but now we are going to change that... ok. (yes serious doubts about that, but I'm all for it).

But you don't care about the creators of tomorrow? Interesting, but when does today become tomorrow? When you die? When all the current RPG Creators dies or retire?

Look, "we" do a bad job of supporting RPG creators today. The model we use barely works, and it's not going to work in 10 years. So if you want to help the creators for longer than today, how do we do that?

 

[Scribe]

But you don't care about the creators of tomorrow? Interesting, but when does today become tomorrow? When you die? When all the current RPG Creators dies or retire?

No, I do care. What I don't care about is the misguided opinions of children lol. The views of 15 year olds.

If the community were to establish that we want to support human creativity and we deny AI content, then that could become a standard.

Now as to pay models, I mean that's a whole other issue. There are people unwilling to pay $50 for a book that can provide hundreds of hours of content.

As a former 40K player, I cannot grasp that mindset, but I don't know enough at all about the economics of the rpg space.

 

[CleverNickName]

Absolutely it's a comparison. Useful but not exact. But hey, if you don't want to listen to ideas that threaten your views and engage constructively, don't engage. But if you do, here goes...

Oh it's not that I didn't want to engage; I was just curious about the angle. I've already discussed the "printing press/cotton gin" thing in another thread (probably several threads by now), and the matter is settled as far as I'm concerned. But the printing of physical books in the middle of a trade war is the newer Topic of the Week, and that was the subject I was more interested in.

 

[Charlaquin]

What an original line of reasoning that no one with concerns about the ethical, economical, and environmental impacts of large language models has ever heard before! I’m sure many hearts and minds will be changed by this insightful and empathetic piece of social commentary.

 

[briggart]

The similarities between AI and the Gutenberg press look mostly superficial to me.

While a press machine provided a fully autonomous setup, AI in its current implementation simply offers local interfaces to a strongly centralized system.

In the (I'm afraid not too) long run, this will lead to a greater imbalance of power within society rather than a more equal distribution, like the press did.

 

[gnarlygninja]

What an original line of reasoning that no one with concerns about the ethical, economical, and environmental impacts of large language model has ever heard before! I’m sure many hearts and minds will be changed by this insightful and empathetic piece of social commentary.

Absolutely, and as always there are no ahistorical assumptions being made to make the comparison look more in the favor of the person making it.