WotC: We Are Not Making AI Dungeon Masters

Adding to the recent spate of YouTube-based claims about WotC's plans for Dungeons & Dragons were some additional claims -- (a) that D&D Beyond would have $30 subscription fee; (b) that homebrew content would not be permitted on lower tiers; and (c) that DDB was actively working on AI Dungeon Masters.

Some of this was based on a (long ago debunked) slide from a presentation last year.

WotC has made some clarifications:

Hey, everyone. We’ve seen misinformation popping up, and want to address it directly so we can dispel your concerns.

Rumors of a $30 subscription fee are false.

No one at Wizards is working on AI DMs. We love our human DMs too much. If you’re looking for a DM, we suggest heading to our Discord where DMs and parties are looking for players.

We have designers whose core job it is to compile, analyze, and then act upon your feedback. Your feedback has made the game better over the past decade, and your feedback is central to D&D’s future.

Homebrewing is core to D&D Beyond. It's not going away, and we're not going to charge you for it. Your homebrew is, and always will be, yours. We’ve always been excited to see your creations both on and off D&D Beyond!

There is still no clear statement regarding the Open Gaming License v1.0a, however.

 

[Velderan]

Agreed. Which is why I think WoTC feels they need to be more restrictive. Right or wrong.

I'm sure, I just think they're off the mark on what exactly they need to worry about. Their ampersand being used by another publisher? Absolutely not. A spell called magic missile that does 1d4 damage per missile? yawn

 

[eyeheartawk]

Agreed. Which is why I think WoTC feels they need to be more restrictive. Right or wrong.

It is 50% their reasoning as to why they're doing this.

The other half is likely to control the market to ultimately further digitally monetize the userbase.

The IP thing just doesn't make any sense. Their actual IP is already carved out in the OGL as not shared so it's already all theirs anyway.

Nobody is allowed to make a new version of an owlbear as it is, without a special agreement with WOTC.

 

[Voadam]

Nobody is allowed to make a new version of an owlbear as it is, without a special agreement with WOTC.

A special agreement like the OGL? Owlbears have been open game content that can be used and modified for over 20 years now. Here is the 5e version.

Owlbear​

Large monstrosity, unaligned

Armor class 13 (natural armor)
Hit points 59 (7d10 + 21)
Speed 40 ft.

20(+5)	12(+1)	17(+3)	3(-4)	12(+1)	7(-2)
STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA

Skills Perception +3
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages —
Challenge 3 (700 XP)

Keen sight and smell. The owlbear has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight or smell.

Actions​

Multiattack. The owlbear makes two attacks: one with its beak and one with its claws.

Beak. Melee weapon attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 10 (1d10 + 5) piercing damage.

Claws. Melee weapon attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) slashing damage.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Well, the latter, at least. For the former, they may need to say something like, "Gee, we are sorry. We seem to have gotten erroneous information and, our bad, we didn't double check it before posting something that impugned the survey process' integrity."

my issue is a lie will travel the world 10 times before the truth is dressed and ready to go. This is why reporting needs to be serious or not done. I bet come 2024 we will still have people remember the "they dont read them" that don't remember seeing the "oh right that was wrong"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Funny enough, the second Maleficent film already had a legally distinct bird-bear hybrid (basically a raven-bear):

next up the paragin and the growler bear have the fastest ambush predator alive... no pics since no one has survived being close to one...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I imagine it would be difficult to Disney-fy Cthulhu...

Yugioh is kids friendly (in the US) and uses more then a little bit of Cthulhu themes and concepts.

Infact, one of the funniest things I ever did to my players was take a season long arc from Yughio GX, mix in an episode of Ducktales and file off the serial numbers and run it as a Cthulhu adventure... the best part is, as the final dark rider was about to appear, one of the players caught it... and blurted out in shock where I got my insperation.

Not as good as my 3e (not 3.5) gummy bear adventure where no one got it until the halfing asked if disguise self would let him pretend to be one of the dukes oger gaurds and everyone laughed at the idea of a small oger... then two them figured it out.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Like if SpaceX puts out a statement swearing they’re not building a warp core.

but people would be like "they wouldn't say that unless they really ARE"

 

[TheSword]

The uncertainty, fake news and scaremongering is what you get when you have people with extremely polarized views reporting on what might happen instead of what has happened.

Wizards of the Coast shouldn’t be criticized for a price point until they launch a price point. They have their own product testing and marketing to work these things out and they should be able to go through a process to find that price. Shifty unnamed WotC contact thinks price might be X is not news.

But I’m sure it gets views and therefore advertising revenue for the presenter.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Just out of curiosity.....

1. We know that a lot of the recent leaks have been clickbait-y attempts that are, at best, questionable, and at worst have relied on documents that are known to be fraudulent.

2. We know that WoTC has specifically stated that they are not doing this.

But more importantly ... AI isn't easy. It's not like Hasbro can snap their fingers and get a Deep Learning division working, or have a corpus of work to study.

AI is advancing rapidly, but the players in the game are fairly well-known. AFAIK, companies like OpenAI (makers of ChatGPT and Dall-E among other things) are fairly well capitalized, have been around for a while, and are valued highly (last I heard, that company was valued at $30 billion or so).

It's almost like someone was like, "Hey, AI is big now. This controversy is a thing. Why not combine them?"

 

[FormerLurker]

Honestly I don’t begrudge them that. They’re businesses trying to make money in a highly competitive space.

That doesn't mean it's okay to spread dubious rumours and pass them off as reliable as other previous rumours you reported.