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Heh, I remember when I noticed in my 4e games that all the modifiers basically amounted to "If you roll a 9 or better on the d20, you hit." D&D became quite the number cruncher in 3e and 4e. 5e has some of this, though I appreciate that it's toned down significantly (ability + proficiency is...

Yeah, people being displaced by technology is nothing new. And, also, it's always been a problem that we have a responsibility to solve, every time it happens. Part of how to solve it is to be clear that the suffering that being displaced by technology causes is not inevitable. It is a choice...

All I can impact is my own little world, and in that world, I'll be pushing for treating people better. That includes pushing WotC away from using AI to replace people by calling out this little interaction for what it is - dehumanizing.

I don't accept the fatalism. People make decisions. It's also not about stopping the technology. It's about doing our best to ensure that the uses it is put to are things that make life better and not worse. Inventing the airplane means inventing the airplane crash, but we can push for things...

This is a bit of a side tangent, but it's real bad, especially internationally, and getting worse here in the states. Agricultural jobs have been bad forever about this, hiring 14 year olds to work 12 hour days without adequate cooling, and that's bad but legal. There's also a growing host of...

As long as we make survival contingent on employment (food costs money, you need to buy housing, medical care isn't free), every firing is a significant survival risk to an individual (sometimes more than one individual in the case of families). All it takes is a few bad months to wipe out most...

I think that's a very reasonable take. :) But, we can point it out. We can talk about it. We can note that there's elements that suck about this and talk about how layoffs are a problem and about how we (well, I, and maybe some others) value products created by people with their own ideas and...

Yeah, things change. This isn't new. This isn't exceptional. And also, when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash. The people who are worried about what AI will do to human beings aren't wrong to be worried, they aren't making things up. People have been hurt by every major...

I mean, we can get very specific about what specific models were undermined by what specific labor disputes, but losing sight of the forest for the trees is part of how we keep making this mistake, so lets at least try not to repeat it in this conversation. The forest is: this isn't new or...

We gotta be real specific about what we're calling bad, because depending on the exact target, we could be talking past each other real fast. I think it would be bad if WotC used ChatGPT to write adventures (even if they used some editors/writers to "clean it up."). Sounded like you agreed with...

Now generate some art, some page layouts, and get in contact with a printing service, because you have there what someone interested in "bending the cost curve" for D&D would want. Feels like burning down a haystack to find a needle to me.

Planescape is an interesting case. You could make a case for all of the Factols, as a whole. They really embody the "both potential villain and potential hero" of the setting, and 15 or so of 'em show off some of the wild potential of the setting. You could also make a case for maybe Tarsheva...

I wonder why you want to do that instead of paying human beings for art, writeups, and statblocks. Time? Money? Convenience? Not concerned about the energy usage or copyright issues that are inherent to AI? Fun to try out a new tech toy? A little from all the above? Honestly curious! But, this...

Single combats don't last 10 rounds IMXP. I suppose I could FORCE one to last that long, but folks start to loose focus after 3 or 4 rounds, IMXP, so I don't know why I'd inflate it artificially beyond that. I dunno what to tell ya. 10 round combats aren't happening in my 5e games. The hard...

Depends on your end goal and a few decisions along the way. Say I'm a DM using Sigil and I want a 3d dungeon for my next dungeon crawl on Sigil. What are my potential options? Invest my time. Build it myself. Best possible results! But, maybe I don't have the time. Invest my money. Pay someone...

I'm finding it a little hard to parse "more output in a single 10 round combat adventuring day than in seven 3-4 round combats." D&D combat in 5e is about 3-5 rounds per fight, maybe up to about 7 if there's a significant legendary brick in your way or something. In that time, I usually see a...

I'm fond of how 5e is flexible enough and balanced enough around the encounters that if I have 1 or if I have 7, the PC's can feel a bit of a squeeze in each encounter. Multiple encounters tend to add to a feeling of struggle and fatigue, but even one encounter can be a potential party-killer...

There's a lot of unfounded assumptions in these sentences that you should deeply question. The question that got Cocks talking was about bending a cost curve. IE: reducing the development budget. IE: using fewer people to produce more things. If you don't imagine that a key reason investors...

It's OK to kill a goblin with a single sweep of the greatsword. It's OK to fix a common disease with a single spell slot. Diseases need CR and potency and (potential) complexity. But they also need to be able to enter the flow of play seamlessly and be actively remembered (even between...

D&D has never really had a great use of disease. The mechanical role of disease is as a way to inflict a condition that robs characters of the option of rest (rests don't restore you, they make you worse), and drain your resources over long periods of time (so, when between adventures, or...