D&D (2024) Using AI for Your Home Game

[cbwjm]

What are they using AI for? Like, as far as I can see, AI has impacted exactly three markets

No idea about @ECMO3 games, but ours have used AIs for some images to set a scene or show a character. Some AI art is actually pretty good and certainly great when you're trying to find an image to show what you're trying to describe but you juat can't find the right image online.

I've used it for prompts and random tables, so has my DM in the current game. It's not like we're just relying on AI for the writing, but to get some ideas flowing, it can be an incredibly useful tool.

 

[S'mon]

I often use AI for NPC art, and it can be pretty good, though obviously real artists are usually better. I find it hilarious when people say it's immoral to use AI generated art for personal use, because AI exploits real artists, but are happy to lift real art off the internet... in my view both are fine for personal use.

I don't use AI to generate setting details & text, I feel I can do those much better myself.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I have written modules for convention play, and I am not insulted by my writing being compared with AI generated text. I will keep writing, and keep generating text, and keep being creative!

Same here. If an AI can at some point generate write a module (or a frame on which I'd like to expand, the same way I do with published modules) at the same level of quality of what I could whip up during a prep session, I'd love it and I totally fail to see why I should feel insulted in any way. A car is faster than I can run, and I don't see them as abhorrent.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I'll just add, although people seem to have blocked me, that MY PLAYERS really enjoy the AI portraits for NPCs and the AI maps for overland travel, towns, etc. I use in my games.

Same here. They are usually very happy, and scene descriptions where helped by images of places I used. It doesn't replace word description anymore than an illustration in a book doesn't replace the text, they complement each others.

Even when it was not as good as I'd have wished, the general opinion at my table was "AI did well given the complexity of the task", not "we should have paid someone to do better".

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

History did not vindicate the Luddites. They were correct about losing their jobs, but that is fundamentally different than being vindicated.

We are saying we should have followed luddites now? I am at loss for word. Maybe roleplaying has idealized times past too much, but it was awful for people to live in the early 19th century. Even the poorest persons in Europe today are much better off than your average 19th-century laborer.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I particularly appreciate how AI can handle the prep work I don't enjoy, freeing up more time for what I do love - those organic moments of player interaction at a live table.

Unlike you, I like prepping. I think it's part of the enjoyment of being the GM. But I am all for having prep-helper AI, I might not use them (contrary to other uses of AI that I am embracing), but I wouldn't want the tool not to exist on the principles that I think as a human I enjoy doing something, since the existence of the tool won't stop me for doing it my way.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

No it won't. I have played one session of Forged in the Dark briefly and for me it was not as fun as D&D. As someone who plays over 20 hours a week I don't have time to spend on something that is not as good.

Oh, and if I did referee Forged in the Dark I would use AI for my art anyway* .... which would necessarily mean it lacked all creativity right!


* Note: when I talk about AI with Forged In the Dark, I mean real AI generated images, not the Forged in the Dark AI rules for developing NPCs.



So you meant a Strawman. Either there are real people this applies to or there aren't.

The only bullies I see are those claiming I am "stealing" by using AI art.

I don't ignore anyone. The people you refer to just don't actually exist IRL among people I talk to or associate with.

Maybe I will meet one of these mythical AI technobullies sometime, but until I do I am certainly not taking your word for it.


Stopping progress is what destroys lives. Many more people worldwide would have and still would be freezing if the Luddites had been succesful ..... but suire they would be ok and comfortable, because when you get down to it those standing up to progress do it from a position that "it is all about ME"

Well, one thing going for the Luddite is that they lacked the hindsight. For us, it's easy to conclude that it was selfish and ultimately self-defeating to opposing the textile mills or most of the technological increase from which their grandchildren benefit and make their lives better. At the time they acted, they could know the outcome of the technological progress would be good... The last time such a transformative thing happened was when humanity invented agriculture (while hunter-gatherer worked actually less than farmers...) millenia before.

Saying they should have succeeded in blocking technological progress at the 1800 level in 1800 is easier to understand than saying they should have succeeded at that when speaking in 2024.

The Luddites were not fighting for people in 3rd world countries. They were being selfish and fighting for themselves.

They lacked the foreknowledge of the jobs that would be created through tech progress. Their worry was certainly understandable at their time. They were ultimately wrong but didn't know (and didn't benefit from the level of education modern humanity enjoy).

They didn't even get to enjoy RPG sessions. Back to the point of this thread...

 

[ECMO3]

The luddites broke machines so they wouldn't face mass unemployment in the wake of widespread disruption and not be held at the whims of factory owners, the type of people who, y'know, would lock fire escapes so people died in terrible factory fires

I am not questioning their intent I am questioning the outcome they sought. If they had succeeded the world would be much worse off today.

Like, are we forgetting '1800s factory owner' is pretty evil in terms of occuaptions? I'm unsure we particularly want to be jumpiong to their defence

Sure it is and we would still have them (and no clothes) if the Luddites succeeded.

Roleplaying is improv with dice. I'm gonna tell you the secret: you don't have to spend all that much time preparing adventures, you can just do a basic outline of them, prepare some set-pieces if they're needed, and let the players drive things around. There's plenty spontaneous about being a DM and that's where half the fun is, seeing how far off the rails your players have thrown things

I know what I like, but there is a big difference between improv and roleplay. Here is a good video from Ginny Di that that discusses this topic:

What are they using AI for? Like, as far as I can see, AI has impacted exactly three markets

Art and one of them uses it for maps (I don't generally).

1: Making pictures, which universally give off cheap and lazy vibes because that's the reputation of AI artwork: Cheap and lazy. Like, I think people are more receptive of Poser artwork than they are of AI artwork, and if you've been around you know how 'well' Poser artwork tended to be perceived. Weren't there a few RPGs who did the whole Poser art thing?

Well art is in the eye of the beholder and AI images are pretty decent generally. if I spend 15 minutes fiddling with AI in an interative fashion to make 20 images one of them will generally be better than if I commission an artist to make the image.

 

[Morrus]

I like how you chickened out from shutting me up because it would make you admit being wrong, only to then demand I shut up the same way you demand it from only person who made a good point in this thread.

I beg you, play better games than whatever you're running right now. Run a campaign in Powered by the Apocalypse or Forged in the Dark, it will change your life.

However, AI only steals through plagiarism.

What part of "I did not mean a specific person" you do not understand? Besides, go toany place where AI bros meet and you'll see it's full of bullies with resentment against real creatives. I had experiences with them many times already, and if you want to ignore it because it doesn't fit your worldview, it just proves you're not debating in good faith.

Yes, I have said that a DM who commits act of using AI is never a creative DM. Because they choose to betray their own creativity for the sake of stupid toy. You are never creative when using AI, you could been creative when running games properly. You chose to betray your creative side. Which is tragic.

That sounds like insecurity and imposter syndrome talking.

Yes it vindicated them because we now realize what was done to brute-force automation was EVIL and Luddites were 100% right to protest it. Progress is not worth destroying lives. I'd rather it was implemented slower but people did not free and starve after losing their jobs.

What a vile, selfish thing to day. It tells me you look down on people from 3rd world countries, that they should be grateful for getting hand me downs, as if the only reason they're 3rd world countries wasn't the principle of unequal exchange, in which their own natural resources were taken, forcefully or through coersion, at loos to them by the so-called 1st world countries. The "progress" and "prosperity" of the 1st world nations was built on exploitation of the 3rd world ones, to claim they should be grateful for "hand me downs" is deplorable.

And yet people have frozen as a result of forcing the change to make it happen. not only are you saying their lives are worthless as long as you can pretend more lives will be saved in the long run, but you also use this to justify destroying lives for the sake of a fancy toy that provides zero actual value.

What the hell are you thinking, dude? This is just obnoxious. Back. Off.

 

[LordEntrails]

Like, as far as I can see, AI has impacted exactly three markets

Do you mean in the RPG space? Or in all markets?

There was already in this thread of a 4th example of AI use in the RPG space. Using AI to generate summaries of play sessions.

In all markets? Well, the RPG space and the impacts you identified are just the tiniest use for what AI is actually impacting. I won't bore you with details as you can Google it, but just some of the markets that are seeing major impacts from AI are: defense, advertising, journalism, engineering & vehicle safety.