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

[Lanefan]

“I get the arguments against using AI to replace artists, but AI is great for making character art!”

Literally that’s replacing artists. Art has value, making it takes labor. Pay artists for their labor, learn to do it yourself, or get used to not having art. Otherwise, you are, in fact, taking work from artists.

Learning how to use an AI art generator solves the bolded piece for me.

Also, my SO is an artist and plays in my game yet doesn't (or hasn't yet) draw her own characters; preferring instead to use (or modify) whatever I can scrape up online.

 

[Charlaquin]

Learning how to use an AI art generator solves the bolded piece for me.

That’s not doing art.

Also, my SO is an artist and plays in my game yet doesn't (or hasn't yet) draw her own characters; preferring instead to use (or modify) whatever I can scrape up online.

There are depressingly many artists who are comfortable with stealing other artists’ work.

 

[Clint_L]

That’s not doing art.

There are depressingly many artists who are comfortable with stealing other artists’ work.

I feel like your use of a keyboard is taking work from scribes.

 

[cbwjm]

AI I find is a game changer for running or playing in RPGs. I've used it to help develop adventures, art, campaign settings. I can turn a half-baked idea into something cool with AI just by asking questions and then developing upon the answers.

 

[Lanefan]

That’s not doing art.

It's as near as I'm ever likely to get, given I've the approximate artistic ability of a socket wrench.

But I am capable of taking a piece of existing digital art (be it from AI or wherever) and tweaking it - usually by removing unwanted elements - to be more what I want.

There are depressingly many artists who are comfortable with stealing other artists’ work.

So because an artist doesn't want to do the art for her own characters, she's a thief? That's a bit rich.

 

[NaturalZero]

AI I find is a game changer for running or playing in RPGs. I've used it to help develop adventures, art, campaign settings. I can turn a half-baked idea into something cool with AI just by asking questions and then developing upon the answers.

I've seen some pretty great custom monsters that come out of Midjourney. If you're trying to come up with a concept, you can get something wild and build a whole narrative around that.

 

[damiller]

I have started to use it to help me write random event charts. And have been pleased with the assistance it has give me in that regard because my adventure prep has become basically goal + random events. This is a story technique called the interrupt routine (discussed in the Risus Companion and Keith Johstones improv book "Impro" and is basically the concept behind Mouse Guard's mission prep)

 

[Charlaquin]

I feel like your use of a keyboard is taking work from scribes.

That’s not a job people have in the modern world. There’s an academic discussion to be had about whether the invention of the printing press, the typewriter, and the word processor were all net goods for society in their time or not, but use of those technologies today isn’t directly harming anyone’s livelihoods. The same cannot be said of AI.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's as near as I'm ever likely to get, given I've the approximate artistic ability of a socket wrench.

But I am capable of taking a piece of existing digital art (be it from AI or wherever) and tweaking it - usually by removing unwanted elements - to be more what I want.

Right, because art is a skill, and you are unwilling or unable to do the work to learn that skill. Instead, you are extracting value from other people who have done that work and not compensating them for it. Otherwise known as stealing.

So because an artist doesn't want to do the art for her own characters, she's a thief? That's a bit rich.

Like I said, art theft is depressingly common among artists.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Sure. It’s just that when someone tries to claim they understand arguments against AI replacing artists in the same breath that they say they’re using AI for art for their home games… sorry, but no, it sounds like you don’t in fact understand those arguments.

No artist has ever made money by producing illustrations for my home game. Nobody is getting replaced. The only artist who has made art for our home game is one of the players who likes to draw and draws his own characters. He still does that, the rest of us have switched from google image search to AI art for our character images.

So AI art has given us a clear improvement in the visual quality of our game materials with no loss to anyone. That a big win for technology!