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

[Charlaquin]

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!

“It’s not stealing if I was never going to pay for it anyway!”

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

“It’s not stealing if I was never going to pay for it anyway!”

You got it!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

No artist has ever made money by producing illustrations for my home game. Nobody is getting replaced.

this is why I feel there are 2 ways you can make an ethical use of AI currently... one is private use.
My group has used Roll20 since Feb2020... we used a bunch of generic tokens and stole art from pintrest, and even stole art from products (like comic books) then me and my friend found 2 different art programs... about a dozen of us (spread between games I play/run and ones I only hear about from those I run/play with) all use AI art for our Roll20 games... we also still use comic books and generic searchable art.

If tomorrow it became impossible to steal art (from a comic a company or the use of AI_) we would not pay artists money to illustrate our games we would go back to generic tokens...

Has AI enhanced the games... yes, it gave us pictures a little more customized to look at. It also gave us some new ideas (type a prompt expecting A and get something out of left field but save it saying... maybe I will make an nPC around that). but it hasn't taken any money from anyone...

The second is actually how WotC proposed to work it... if you train yours ONLY on art, and works you own or are public domain, then you can even sell what it makes... you own (or nobody owns) all of the work being scapped... I don't know if it will be good at all, there used to be a funny thread here about the worst mod/adventure ever written, and if it learns to make bandits that are not singing or skipping I doubt it will sell well..

 

[Clint_L]

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.

Okay, so I assume the clothes that you are wearing are all handcrafted, or made by you or your spouse? Because there are artisans who you could be supporting, instead of buying factory made stuff, which is produced thanks to algorithms that emulate patterns developed by humans. Automation always costs jobs and emulates skills and creativity previously exclusive to human workers. And I actually don't think there is much of moral argument to be made that the printing press was not good for society.

Are you picking and choosing which automation to be outraged about?

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.

See above. I'm assuming that you eat your dinner off plates that you made yourself, or directly paid the people who did? 'Cause you can, you know. My spouse makes and sells pottery.

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

I get that you are a very narrowly focused moral absolutist on this particular technology, but calling someone's SO a "thief", twice, is crossing the line.

 

[Clint_L]

“It’s not stealing if I was never going to pay for it anyway!”

It's not stealing if it does not fit the legal definition of theft. You are slinging a pretty serious accusation around based on some pretty narrow and convenient personal definitions.

 

[Charlaquin]

Okay, so I assume the clothes that you are wearing are all handcrafted, or made by you or your spouse? Because there are artisans who you could be supporting, instead of buying factory made stuff, which is produced thanks to algorithms that emulate patterns developed by humans. Automation always costs jobs and emulates skills and creativity previously exclusive to human workers. And I actually don't think there is much of moral argument to be made that the printing press was not good for society.

Are you picking and choosing which automation to be outraged about?

See above. I'm assuming that you eat your dinner off plates that you made yourself, or directly paid the people who did? 'Cause you can, you know. My spouse makes and sells pottery.

I get that you are a very narrowly focused moral absolutist on this particular technology, but calling someone's SO a "thief", twice, is crossing the line.

I’m not accusing anyone of doing anything they are not themselves claiming to be doing. Taking the fruits of someone else’s labor without due compensation for that labor is theft.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Someday our grandkids may look at AI art and think of it the way we look at the printing press and the internet because it just 'always was' after this.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I wrote an article to be published Monday on Sly Flourish (but you can get a sneak preview right here) talking about generative AI and our RPGs. And plan to talk about it on my show.

To summarize, I think its worth remembering the cost of generative AI systems:

• The use tons of power and water.
• The were built off of creators who didn't agree and got no compensation.
• They're filling the internet with slop.
• Bosses are using crappy AI systems to replace real workers.

Whatever you think about them or whether or not you use them, I think its worth knowing those four things and asking if its worth the cost.

I'm not here to tell people who say generative AI is useful to them that it really isn't. We each get to make that judgement.

Of 3,700 GMs and players I surveyed, about thee in ten use generative AI either while preparing or playing their RPGs. Comments, as you can imagine, are really divisive.

Chris Cocks is super-excited for generative AI saying that all his "friends" use it and that's a clear sign they need to embrace it. Wolfgang Baur at Kobold Press, however, said "We don’t use generative AI art, we don’t use AI to generate text for our game design, and we don’t believe that AI is magical pixie dust that makes your tabletop games better."

So lots of divisiveness even in the industry at large, though my anecdotal view tells me creators hate it more than average RPG gamers.

As far as LLMs are concerned, I really don't think they serve us as well as good old-fashioned book reading, cross-referencing, rolling on random tables, and coming up with our own ideas. I think the "magic" of AI is like real-world magic - misdirection and pizzazz. The way it writes and speaks like a human tricks us into thinking we're getting more than we really are. At least that's how I see it.

The best LLM is our own brain.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I have not tried using it anywhere, but I can see where it can help with prep and images for a home game.

Yep, that's basically all I use it for. Give me a quick, basic visual (usually of a character or location) because that helps my friends remember things better; or, ask ChatGPT for suggestions on adventure ideas or combat elements. I often ignore most if not all of what it suggests, but both paths are valuable for getting me started. AI is helpful for breaking writer's block, even if only "no, that's a terrible idea, this would be MUCH better."

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.

My budget for buying art is negative. I not only don't have money for it, but even if I tried to save up money for it, that money would 99.999% of the time need to go to something more important first, like medical bills, school debt, or helping friends and family with emergencies. So, the amount of art I was using before was either zero, or was me scouring the internet for something someone had already made and saying, "This isn't correct, but it's halfway decent." Am I "replacing artists"? I would never use this art for anything remotely official, and if I could afford actual art for this, you can bet your bottom dollar I would get it because then I could be just earnestly proud of it. Hell, the only reason I started using it more than for my own personal enjoyment is because I learned that my players would benefit from having a visual aid.

Have I somehow misunderstood the arguments? Because I'm fairly sure I get them. AI training data stinks of theft from artists. AI artwork being used for something that people pay for is basically flipping the bird to real artists and is genuinely unacceptable. But what am I, personally, taking away from an artist I literally couldn't hire in the first place despite being quite happy to do so if I were able?

 

[Charlaquin]

My budget for buying art is negative. I not only don't have money for it, but even if I tried to save up money for it, that money would 99.999% of the time need to go to something more important first, like medical bills, school debt, or helping friends and family with emergencies.

Yeah, absolutely. Art is expensive and most of us can’t afford the luxury. That’s because it requires specialized labor most of us don’t have the time or inclination to learn to do and then do. Which is why using an artist’s work without paying them for it is stealing that labor value.

So, the amount of art I was using before was either zero, or was me scouring the internet for something someone had already made and saying, "This isn't correct, but it's halfway decent."

That is also art theft, unless the art you found whilst scouring the internet happens to be open source, which it usually isn’t.

Am I "replacing artists"? I would never use this art for anything remotely official, and if I could afford actual art for this, you can bet your bottom dollar I would get it because then I could be just earnestly proud of it. Hell, the only reason I started using it more than for my own personal enjoyment is because I learned that my players would benefit from having a visual aid.

You are extracting value from their labor without compensation. The small scale of your use of that labor value does make it of negligible harm to them, so from a purely utilitarian standpoint it’s probably fine. From a rule utilitarian standpoint though, I think it is a bad practice. We could have a more equitable society if, as a rule we did not allow for the extraction of others’ labor value without due compensation.

Have I somehow misunderstood the arguments? Because I'm fairly sure I get them. AI training data stinks of theft from artists. AI artwork being used for something that people pay for is basically flipping the bird to real artists and is genuinely unacceptable. But what am I, personally, taking away from an artist I literally couldn't hire in the first place despite being quite happy to do so if I were able?

Again, this argument amounts to “it’s not stealing if I wasn’t going to buy it anyway.” No, it’s still stealing. I get it, you want art to use for your games and you can’t afford to pay an artist to make it and don’t have the ability or time to make it yourself. I’m in the same boat. But, I think that it is unethical to take that value from someone without compensation, unless it’s offered freely. So, I stick to art that is offered freely, or that I can make myself, and accept that sometimes that will mean going without art.