Shadowdark General Thread [+]

[Ruin Explorer]

So disagreeing with you about the ethics of one issue makes it impossible or disallowed to have ethical concerns about another?

I don't think there is disagreement over the ethics of that issue, actually. Certainly none has been expressed by the relevant poster. Merely that there is a significant perceived degree of inconvenience, and I offer that said inconvenience is perhaps overstated.

Also "come with clean hands" is a very basic principle of human interaction - it's one of the main elements of good faith. You can't really complain about ethics and classism when you're apparently suggesting it would be classist/unethical to judge you for using a tool that is itself inherently unethical (and frankly, even OpenAI's own internal emails suggest even they thought what they were doing was least "a-ethical" as it were - but they have some weird and terrifying faux-moral philosophies going on there, like "effective altruism" - which is neither effective nor altruistic!) and based directly and unarguably (and it is unarguable) on the exploitation of actual workers and their work by the ultra-wealthy.

I think there are a number of people who don't think about AI art all that much or don't see it's use as some kind of monstrous act that would perhaps surprise you.

No, it wouldn't. But we're talking about selling RPGs (c.f. "saleable" etc.), and the people who buy RPGs and modules are not the same as the general public. At all. Especially indie and small-press RPGs. They tend, for example, to be much more concerned with issues like social justice, much more pro-LGBT, and yes, much dubious about AI than the general public. They also are more likely to value cool or weird art over the bland, overworked, oddly horny and instantly forgettable stuff AI now spews out.

 

[Reynard]

Has anyone ever seen a tool online that lets you create random Shadowdark dungeons with the "handful of dice method" as shown in the book? I really like the method and have used it successfully to create adventures for convention games in as little as half an hour. But I was wondering if anyone had automated it, perhaps even including a map generator.

 

[Bae'zel]

Has anyone ever seen a tool online that lets you create random Shadowdark dungeons with the "handful of dice method" as shown in the book? I really like the method and have used it successfully to create adventures for convention games in as little as half an hour. But I was wondering if anyone had automated it, perhaps even including a map generator.

That would be really cool, but bonus points if you can choose a "theme".

Goblin dungeon vs. evil cultists vs. ancient undead ruin etc...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

By the way, I found this earlier, entirely unrelated, but it may be of interest to people here:

Google Sheets link

It's a guide to finding Public Domain images.

Also featured this which made me laugh:

 

[Reynard]

By the way, I found this earlier, entirely unrelated, but it may be of interest to people here:

Google Sheets link

It's a guide to finding Public Domain images.

Also featured this which made me laugh:

View attachment 407983

Well, that's super freaking cool.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think there is disagreement over the ethics of that issue, actually. Certainly none has been expressed by the relevant poster. Merely that there is a significant perceived degree of inconvenience, and I offer that said inconvenience is perhaps overstated.

Also "come with clean hands" is a very basic principle of human interaction - it's one of the main elements of good faith. You can't really complain about ethics and classism when you're apparently suggesting it would be classist/unethical to judge you for using a tool that is itself inherently unethical (and frankly, even OpenAI's own internal emails suggest even they thought what they were doing was least "a-ethical" as it were - but they have some weird and terrifying faux-moral philosophies going on there, like "effective altruism" - which is neither effective nor altruistic!) and based directly and unarguably (and it is unarguable) on the exploitation of actual workers and their work by the ultra-wealthy.


No, it wouldn't. But we're talking about selling RPGs (c.f. "saleable" etc.), and the people who buy RPGs and modules are not the same as the general public. At all. Especially indie and small-press RPGs. They tend, for example, to be much more concerned with issues like social justice, much more pro-LGBT, and yes, much dubious about AI than the general public. They also are more likely to value cool or weird art over the bland, overworked, oddly horny and instantly forgettable stuff AI now spews out.

I'm talking about the people who buy RPGs. The number who don't treat AI art as a morally bankrupt deal-breaker would perhaps surprise you. If you don't believe me, go look at how many Kickstarters with AI art have somehow nonetheless been funded.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, so 'Shadowdark' and '+ thread' are things, right? I'm sure there's another thread for people to lock horns over the AI issue.

In other news, I've been reading Mythic Bastionland and I really like how it handles the ideas of Myths, so I'm going to steal it and adapt it as another way to handle keyed hexes in Shadowdark. Here's a sample I did as proof of concept: