I used a la carte pretty often, purchasing items, spells, or subclasses that I wanted access to. And in many cases, it actually led me to eventually purchase some of the books as a whole later on. For example, I didn't buy Tasha's as a whole right away (digitally that is), just subclasses so I could use them in D&D Beyond. But then when a sale came along later, and since my purchase of the subclasses would be automatically applied against the balance, it felt like a good deal to pick up the rest of the book. The smaller purchase was actually a gateway to buying the whole thing over time. That won't be an option anymore. That is too bad.
A player with a single character in a multi-year campaign will spend shockingly little per year with a la carte purchases if they're only interested in purchasing things that go on their character sheet.
When the book only has 3 subclass options and only 1 is good- there is no reason for a player to spend $60 for book that’s 99%useless. They could solve this by making GOOD CONTENT and minimum 1 subclass per a class for every book but they’d have to stop firing all their writers and producers
I agree with Dael and that I do not want to buy an entire book for a lot of their books because its just not worth the cost, while there are bits and pieces of a book I may like. I generally use DBD beyond as a player and do not own a bunch of adventures so I like the items or subclasses and such that might be in an adventure book without buying the entire book. So that said I think it was a mistake to get rid of the ala carte portion of the marketplace and will affect my further purchasing on the site as a whole going forward.
Yeah, for me and the fact they've gotten rid of the bundles that definitely affects my purchases. I was thinking of getting the new vecna book but now I know I shouldn't.
I agree. I only use D&D Beyond as a player, so I only need the options for making characters that I and my players need. I will never look at or use the adventure books. When it comes to monsters I rewrite all their stat blocks into word so I can have them in a more logical fashion. (Currently page one has all the info I need when a monster attacks, and page 2 has the info I need for when the monster is attacked with space to keep track of damage for the monsters) With my poor eyesight, a tablet is just too small, and I don't have enough room for a laptop. And I prefer my notes being printed out so I can write on them at least at this point in time.
A note about using public domain art: start with the art! You might not find exactly what you need, especially when it comes to NPCs, but you can find a great piece of art and base your NPC on that. I'm a librarian and I work with digitalised documents and some of those illustrations would make an absolutely amazing TTRPG art. Before you dream up what your NPC looks like and you get frustrated that there's no art for them, dream up their story and base their looks on the art you have available.
Pre-internet we had to use this method all the time for reference art and character ideas. Post-internet this is an excellent way to discover even more about a character and surprise yourself.
That's fine if you want to do that, but if you already have something in mind, unless you are an artist yourself, AI is the most efficient way to realize your vision.
I'm 100% in agreement with James on that last question. Excellent breakdown of the issues! And Shawn makes a good point about the slippery slope issue too.
Go check out the FREE Fallout game that Jacob from XP To Level 3 did! He just did a presentation video for it. 👍 The campaign where they build that game (on their Arcane Arcade channel) as they played is excellent fun too.😃
I understand the desire to use images to convey ideas of things - I have players with Aphantasia and visual representations really help them. But rather than making an AI generated version of character art, I’ve found I can accomplish 90-95% of what I’m looking for by making a Heroforge mini and screenshotting that. I make minis for most of my NPCs in my game, and I’ve even recreated some moments from our campaign using a Heroforge mini screenshot, a map I’ve found or built in TaleSpire, and Gimp/photoshop.
@@deProfundisAdAstra It depends on what you’re asking. If you mean backgrounds for the mini portraits that you can download in HF, I usually just pick one of the backgrounds that looks relatively similar to the character’s vibe - if I pick an environment at all and don’t just pick a color gradient. The point is to use the mini to illustrate the character’s appearance, so the background in that case is not very important. If you’re referring to maps, I use TaleSpire for my VTT, and you can find tons of pre-made maps on TalesTavern and TalesBazaar, and then I can tweak those to better fit what I need. And if I want to recreate a moment from the campaign in photoshop, I can save the transparent background character portrait, take a screenshot of the TaleSpire environment, and combine the two in photoshop. HF also added (in pro at least) the ability to add multiple minis to one base, so it’s possible to make some very dynamic fight poses between two characters!
Years back I did use the DDB "Microtransactions" option. As a DM I had no interest in Storm Kings Thunder, but I wanted to monsters and magic items. It was a great budget freindly option.
16:17 This is an interesting situation that occurs all the time in the world. People get mad about perception, but don't realize they should be happy about the unintended consequences. Conversely, people are happy about perceptions and don't realize there are actually negative consequences.
Great comment from J Pizzabeats! I really want a virtual tabletop (I play remote) that emulates the super rough dry erase battlemaps of old. The more "realistic" the map, the harder it is actually to get players to engage their imagination. Ask them about it afterwards and they remember the map & tokens. Ask them about a battle with a very basic map, or no map at all, and they remember the fight as it took place in their imagination
Sadly the Business/Legal English word “Contributory” just doesn’t have the same ring as the Aussie Victorian word. 😞Thank you for expanding our horizons, Ben! We all learned something today. Great podcast. Really loved the level of enthusiasm this week. Would love an Eldritch Lorecast Morning Radio show. What would you call it? “[Adjective] Ben and the [animal/regional nicknames]’s Morning [weird noun]”? Would the regular listeners be called the Lorecastrians? Poor Dante would need to shoehorn overly loud transition sounds between each segment. On second thought maybe not.
For the discussion about AI for personal use at the end: It's fine if the podcast hosts don't need or want to use it, and all the other industry and environmental concerns still apply of course, but preaching about how others don't NEED it and that others shouldn't use it over scribbles because it's generic and bad are just the arguments of someone who doesn't want to see another point of view on the topic. Extremely strong bias and stuck in their ways. I use AI mainly for NPC portraits and for my PCs. It helps me feel more connected to the character than I would be if I took an artist's free drawing of the internet and gives me much more joy than staring at my ugly scribbles for the entire game. No amount of character in the scribbles is going to make up for that. I enjoy using it, that's all that matters. Nobody can tell me that I don't need it and or that using it is inherently soulless and bad.
Exactly. Of course we don't need to use it. But we can, and I don't see any good arguments as to why I shouldn't, except the old debunked AI learning is theft angle.
I find it so ironic that a hobby practically based on ip theft is trying to take a hardline stance against AI calling it theft. The Mad Max one-shot that I will be running for my players this weekend steals so much more than an AI art algorithm does, but few in the community would call that unethical.
I really wanted to get the College of the Road subclass from Humblewood but not much else from the book. It sucks that a la carte purchasing has been disabled.
I am really appreciating the discussion of AI here, I think one last reason not to use AI is because of the concept of "Enclosing the Commons." This was brought up on a podcast I was watching a few weeks ago and I think it's a *very* important aspect of this: it's not JUST that the entire training of these AI models has been documented to rely on theft, it's that there will come a point when the people who own these tools will turn around and perform "Enclosure." All of the prompts and training that you were doing for them for free will then be utilized in a walled off For-Pay service. They stole the assets, and they will steal the work that you do in helping to train and refine their tool once they drive competition out (as Shawn hinted at), and they will seize that work that you did for themselves and make all the money and leave you with nothing. Don't let them do it! There are so many talented artists out there you can contract with and we are better off for having them able to make a living on their art. (Also, those cabinets are cute! I have backed, and I have also commissioned a -NON AI- group portrait to commemorate the end of a campaign).
This take may be a little alarmist; according to current copyright precedent on the subject, AI art is functionally public domain. No one can own it, and thus it can't be walled off and controlled as strictly as that. That doesn't mean that they won't lobby for the change (and probably succeed given the state of things), but currently its not a thing.
You must have a very broad definition of theft that includes just "learning from stuff". Only problem with that is it makes all artists thieves as well.
As someone that has bought some a la carte content it is a great option. Feels way better to spend 2 bucks for a subclass than to buy a whole book for 2 pages of content.
If your a player who never DMs buying the whole book is a waste. Especially if your DM is already buying it. But if your in many groups? Yesh buying just the Subclass you want makes sense. Less options is never user friendly. Its Wiz being greedy. No argument around that.
You know, I have been using AI art for my home game, especially for NPC portraits, and James' energy argument is making me rethink it. I had been sort of assuming since I don't have the money to commission art, I wouldn't be taking art work away from other folks, and whether or not that's true, the energy question remains.
Technically the updates do increase the number of the build so each one is distinguished between themselves. But also if you play BG3 you are forced to play with the updates, so you don't need to convey to a player which edition you are playing. You can't just tell a player that you are running 5e or you are going to have a nightmare when it comes to spells and feats and such if they don't know which one you are using. Like the old druid is way more powerful than the new druid.
@@bradleyhurley6755 it's all D&D.. every table has house rules so telling them which edition youre playing doesn't even define which "game" you're playing
@@badmojo0777 Normally though you would know if you are playing x edition, you know whether or not the rogue can take a sneak attack every turn or only every round. Or you can have 1d6 added to one attack or every attack. Those two alone can radically change how a DM should prepare an encounter. Or if you start with a feat or not... cause by one rules feats are not part of the default game, where the new edition they are. Like if you aren't using feats, but the new player comes in with feats because their background gave them the feat.... that is a massive issue that you have to deal with.
@@bradleyhurley6755 they reverted the rogue sneak attack feature back to normal.very quickly I might add. But again, my point was that every table has house rules anyway and should be discussed in a session zero. Not a huge dufference
@@badmojo0777 I think there is a major difference namely even if you have this session zero, you still gotta be able to mention which edition you are using especially once the 2014 version is no longer in print.
It's not that they are removing micro-transactions, it's that they are removing the ability to purchase content just for the character builder. That is interesting. And a little bit dangerous on the WotC side - D&DB is pretty much only popular because of the character builder. If people stop using that...
Ala Carte was the best feature of Dndbeyond. Especially because it reduced the cost of the book when/if you eventually bought it. I think this is a direct result of people complaining about micro-transactions... Well I did until Dael made the third party remark.
I think the really simple answer for AI art on things like DTRPG and DM's Guild, especially for that questioner, is: if you're not making enough money to pay yourself back, then why do you think its remotely ethical to increase your private return at another struggling creator's expense?
I understand why some DMs or players feel like they want to use ai generation for personal use/home games, but I do implore people to like, explore other avenues. If its for a eprsonal game and not a big liveplay, you can just save as anything you find online, use art from your favourite magic yugioh or hearthstone cards or whatever, bookmark a bunch of cool fantasy artists so you can show your players the source of your art it'll be a fun thing to talk about, use things like picrew to make custom stuff for characters if you cant find or draw something that fits otherwise, unlike ai, those picrews were made with the express intent that strangers would see them and mess around to make art of their character to use. There is a million options available to you without resorting to ai, for those with the eyes to see (and willing to still wade through all the ai slop that clutters google images searches these days which is why I mention things like tcg artwork as sources you can look through)
At this point most AI stuff looks a little ugly to me. Like yeah it's superficially "pretty" as in, shiny, symmetrical, and mostly polished when it gets the hands right. But it's just got that AI sheen and it's annoying, like the pseudo-clash-of-clans art style that every mobile game has that you see everywhere in ads. Or the family guy esque "adult animation" style that every animated sitcom has. It just looks like a poor imitation and it just gives me cheap feels that for me personally make the thing uglier.
@@jasonr.6123The difference between "I bookmarked this cool thing so I can share it with my friends while encouraging them to check out the artists" and "I'm gonna throwthousands of artwork into the plagiarise-inator to sell it to thousands of people" should be self evident.
@@jasonr.6123 AI art takes an artist's stuff and turns it into a commercial product to sell. As an artist myself I think that's vastly different than someone yoinking an image from google to use entirely for their own personal games where they earn 0 profit. Yes sometimes there are questions of ethics depending on what the art is, such as maybe it's art of a very personal character or a self-portrait or a gift for a dead friend or whatever and so it feels weird to use it. But like, just don't tell the artist you're using it and it's fine. Don't sell it and it's fine. Don't try to do any nonsense besides harmless fun between you and your friends. AI companies go against that and just jack an artist's stuff to sell for themselves as if the company made it. Big difference.
I've listened to the show since episode 1, and I the perspectives that everyone presents week to week are always exceptional. The echo chamber you've formed around AI art is not. 55:09 We don't "need" roleplaying games in the first place. "Need" is not a concept universal to humanity; My needs are entirely different from yours, and yours from mine, just as they are for my players, many of whom (more than half) suffer from aphantasia. In their case, yes, they "need" visual representations of a game world to have any idea what's going on. Until recently I've had to draw things out for them- something which I don't enjoy and struggle to do even in the best of circumstances- and while the crude drawings I provide are appreciated, my "thankless heathens" are even more appreciative of artwork I generate because it makes the world we make together come alive so much more than some lines on a page. We had an entire conversation last week about how much dynamically generated artwork has improved their experience of the game, and given what I have for them next week, I expect to discuss it again! I'm also more than a little surprised that you're arguing from "need" at all, because this very podcast has discussed how aphantasia affects players, and did so with a sympathetic view to those affected. But because we're talking about this show's favorite crusade, any other possible point of view- any amount of empathy for people who "need" different things than the identikit of a D&D player- is forgotten and ignored for the sake of praxis. Were this any other topic, you would rightly be concerned with the ways the technology has helped people- you have a very good track record of doing just so- but because it's *this topic in particular*, it's like I'm listening to my neocon uncle talk about the satanic panic. A few other thoughts: 1:04:18 You can absolutely make corrections to generated art. This is now a common feature in both Photoshop and Midjourney, but was a common limitation early on. 1:04:07 Artists are not priests to hand down divinity to the masses; there is no "correct" art. Even if you (and I!) don't particularly like what people make with art generators, they have every right to make things that make them happy. When any artist sits down to create something, they aren't doing it because it's the "best art", they're doing it because it comes from their soul, and I don't think words (in the form of a written prompt) are any less capable of portraying the soul than a brushstroke or 52:58 Is it "laundered plagiarism" to directly include other media in your game? If you do as Matt Colville so often advises and "take the shit you like and put it in your game", is that "laundered plagiarism"? The haughty, professorial tone around all of this is so off-putting it took me five minutes to get through your argument, which was significant only for what it left unsaid: Google Images not only indexes images but *stores* them, and has done so for years, directly making money off of artists images via ads. I've yet to hear a single argument that contains a prohibition on using Google.
To be fair, microtransactions weren't really considered a negative thing until publishers started pushing predatory business models on the community. The basic idea of being able to purchase additional optional content for the games you particularly like has actually been pretty popular with gamers. Publishers creating artificial scarcity to justify exorbitant prices for what is essentially just the customer gaining access to a single art asset and filling their games with loads of gaudy, and ugly junk that actively detracts from the experience of playing the game is more along the lines of what gives microtransactions a bad name. The way DNDBeyond did microtransactions was actually extremely positive. I always loved having the ability to make purchases a la carte even if it wasn't what I preferred, and their policy of applying whatever money you spent on an item's parts towards the purchase of the whole if you later decided to purchase it, made it even better. To be honest I feel like it was a great way to give people a chance to try out bits of the content and later upgrade to the full book if they wanted to. Sort of the reverse of DLC in video games. I'm sad to see it go and I feel like it just puts even more of the purchasing burden on the DM.
In all honesty, I would rather purchase a product with no art (or the default art allowed to DM's Guild and Pathfinder creators) than a product with AI art. Ultimately, the artwork is intended to enhance the reading experience, and if the artwork include is generated by an algorithm, then it just gets in the way of the actual HUMAN content: the writing.
36:47 in The last of Us you're just playing character where the player wrote a 20 page back story and you have already figured out what the character will do in all situations.
I like the ala cart thing because if you join a campaign or one shot where the DM doesn’t have assets they are sharing that means you literally can’t play characters you wanted to play unless you spent hundreds of dollars. You want a furbolg with fey touched feat with a fighter subclass that isn’t champion? Open your wallet buddy! A $6 purchase is now at least like $40 or more…
I also don't think anyone would get angry with the microtranactions if WotC was just announcing them. For the similar reason that most people don't want to buy an entire adventure to access the player options. If you remove player options from monster/Adventure books, then it is a different story. And i think if you just toss things on there that aren't available in print books that would be an issue. Its not an issue because players don't want or need the adventure. And the player may not want access to the adventure, because if searching for something, something in the adventure might get spoiled. I imagine the reason WotC stopped this is because people weren't buying the entire book and the whole point of adding the player options is to get more people to purchase the book. From a digital perspective. WotC makes $60 when you purchase only the book, but makes only $5 when you buy a la carte.
My buddy came up with what I believe is the single really good use case for AI generated images in a TTRPG product. He was working with an artist who was unable to complete the work, only half of the images was done. He trained his own model solely on her art (to teach it her style) and some public domain art (to teach it human anatomy) to create the remainig images. That was done with the artist's explicit approval. The artist had a final say if the images were used, retains full ownership of them, and was PAID for all the images - the ones she drew and the ones generated with AI. The model was used only for this one purpose and then was deleted, it was never connected to anything online and the generated images were not shared online outside of the context of the book they were made for. This doesn't solve the "I have no money to illustrate my book" problem, because he still paid for the images. But like Dael said - this is a non-issue, given how much royalty free art is available.
AI just looks ugly to me so i would never use it. The one time i used it was when i was playing starfinder and I was playing a Joro and couldn't come up with any good puns. So i kept generating jokes on chatgpt and riffed off it. It sort of worked and it gave me decent ish starting points. Can't do that anymore tho cuz now you gotta pay for it i think. Good riddance.
If WOTC is looking for an overture of peace to soothe the internet rage about the removal of ala carte purchases, might I humbly suggest they allow us to download (watermarked obv) PDFs of the books they buy on DDB? I think that would be a suitable gesture. (Secretly I don't care about ala carte, I just want PDFs of Mah Books)
I can neither confirm or deny the existence of a website called pdf coffee. I can neither confirm or deny that most of 5e books are available there as well.
@stewi009 I wouldn't hold my breath. If they won't include a qr code in the books then I very much doubt they will publish pdfs. If we want pdfs then we must aquire them the less than honorable way.
To speak to James' statement. (1) I don't run premade adventures and therefore I do not need them. So paying 5% of a book's price for something is still better than paying $60 for something I'm never going to look at or read. (2) If I already own the physical book, then I also don't need that additional material. The only way this makes sense is if WotC is going to start making player supplements and not adding one or two options in an adventure book. I don't have any desire to by the adventure books on D&D Beyond, so the more time goes on, the less useful D&D Beyond is to me. I'm already on the fence about whether or not to continue my subscription after the new edition comes out because I don't really want to rebuy the players handbook and without the other player content, it kinda makes D&D Beyond useless.
I can only imagine it just doesn't make enough money to be worth the effort. I doubt anyone there is saying it isn't a good feature, but if it just isn't making money they won't keep it up.
@@jameswright21 I'm going to agree that it probably doesn't make much money, however, it would make some money and cost $0 to have it available, given it was already part of the system. I imagine WotC thinks that they can get people to pay more for the full books and make an extra $55 off those people they were only making $5 off. However, if you are someone like me who will never run those adventures you simply don't need them, so WotC will be getting $0 of my money. The question becomes at what point is D&D Beyond simply not worth the subscription for me. The answer is the point I have to go grab a book from my shelf to make a character. At that moment, I will no longer be a subscriber to D&D Beyond and my players will likely have resorted to not using D&D Beyond (Very very actually use it anyway and those that do, do so only because I have most of the content) But as more adventures come out hiding character content within them, the more I and by extension my players move away from D&D Beyond completely.
I'm so tired of dnd. Why do my pathfinder players get a free app with every single piece of content free yet if my DND players want to make a pc with a subclass from the new book one of us has to pay $40 and if i buy it i must pay a monthly fee for the privilege of share it with them. Sigh
Personally I'm totally fine with people using AI art for private, personal use at the table, just like I'd be fine with a player using a piece of publicly available image to represent their character. That's pretty much my line. If it's a situation where you could show someone else's art and I wouldn't question if you got their permission, it's probably a situation I'd be fine with AI art being used.
I admit the portraits of the BBEG from an AI look pretty good- and I have seen some in books and I didn't complain. The Maps I have seen from AI have all been HORRIBLE. Weird artifacts, Out-of-place items. I saw a red double decker bus from London in the middle of a D&D battle map once and it made no contextual sense! Establishing shot? Sure! Those usually look good. But I have not been happy with a battle map from an AI Source yet and gave up trying.
I agree, the maps aren't there yet. But it didn't take long for AI portraits to go from weird eyes looking in different directions and hands with eight fingers to some very slick and professional looking outputs. I suspect if we revisit this topic in a couple of years the AI maps of the future will look a lot more complete and logical.
So in other words, WotC is going to continue using AI art and will decline to comment on any accusations. Then they'll investigate themselves and find they did nothing wrong.
Re AI art. Pencil & paper have a go. With practise, you can draw at game speed. A skill that doesn't leave you. I find AI art disturbing like the emotion of looking at it. The simulation of it doesn't work. Once you see it- it no longer works.
so the same people complaining about the WOTC going digital, video game micro transactions are now pissed that micro trnasacitons are being removed.... you cant write this crap. Welcome to old school, BUY the BOOK or dont buy the book.. :D
A la carte was great when you already bought real books for 500$s+,, real monthly DnDB sub, roll20 sub, and didnt care about owning more *imaginary content* on DNDB. Now players will just skip Beyond and use roll20 character sheets and not pay the A la carte no more. Lose/Lose
Getting rid of ala carte is a terrible idea, from a business standpoint and shows again the disconnect between those making decisions for WOTC/Hasbro and gamers. The typical player will just balk at having to buy a whole book, and won't do so. Its the DM's that buy the books and those DM's using D&D Beyond were already doing so. My prediction is that we will see the return of the ala cart style of purchases in the future after how they see this doesn't work. They keep treating things like the video game industry and that surprises me. I mean sure, make that kind of mistake once, fine, but this is repeated.
There are many uses of AI for GMs, not just for art. As a non native English speaker, I have always struggled with descriptions. So now I use AI to generate descriptions while running games. It allows me to feel more comfortable DMing with little to no prep, and I can do it while the players are interacting with one another (after they have expressed their intentions for their next destination) so there is no waiting time for them.
I would take a slightly awkward description with imperfect grammar over AI word soup any time. Also, this is a great way to make sure that your English never significantly improves. I'm not a native speaker either and I've seen this at work more and more - colleagues who continue to struggle with English, despite working directly with English speakers, and reading and writing documents in English daily. They use chatGPT, Grammarly and Google Translate to write their emails and reports, they don't learn anything new.
Check out dScryb, it has descriptions of places, monsters, spells, different planes, etc., it's been very useful to me as a non-native English speaker who GMs.
@@dziooooo its not about the grammar, it's about describing things. Some people have a talent for it, I dont. And I dont just read out loud whatever the AI spits, I scan it and curate the content really quickly. I understand u might prefer inaccurate descriptions, but sometimes its really important for the players to NOT misunderstand things cos it cam be very frustrating. I've been in games where the descriptions were so bad no one knew how to proceed or how to tell the DM again to rephrase it. This is also a problem with the read-aloud boxes in the D&D books. Convoluted descriptions that make it more confusing for my non-native players. An AI can help make those blocks of text easier to digest and understand
AI won't help with descriptions being clear or useful for the players though. The AI doesn't "understand" the scene it's describing. It can give you a decent static image of a situation, but it's going to start piling on inconsistencies almost immediately. There will suddenly be a window in a wall which cannot possibly have windows, features will appear and disappear, and there's no way to subtly throw in the clues for players to interpret. I think you may be too hung up on the idea of one specific way of describing things. The choice is not between "I can do it just like one of my favorite writers or GMs" and "machine will do it better". There are many different styles you can use, and I'm sure some will be perfect for your communication style and language skills. Like, what problem is the AI solving for you exactly? What is it adding that you can't do now? And what's stopping you from practicing to improve? You say you have "no talent for description". No one has "talent" for that, it's 90% practice, like with every other form of art.
@@dziooooo I'm gonna give you 2 examples from my own games. I run Mothership, a space-horror-survival RPG with 1-page modules. These modules are great, but with just 1-page there is no space for descriptions of rooms. During prep, I used the AI to create short descriptions of all the rooms in a small space station. The way it works is, I tell the AI what the game is, what vibe I'm going for and the influences I want in the responses (for example, Lovecraft, Alien (movie), etc). I also tell the AI to give me answers in very simple language and to keep it short. Then I go room by room, feeding the AI with the information I have about that room (it's a flooded cafeteria, or a cryochamber gallery). Then, I look through the reply and I take 2 or 3 sentences for my description. Sometimes I dont use anything because it sparks other ideas. That's it. Could I come up with these short descriptions myself? Sure I could, but it would take me much much longer. But to be honest I wouldn't, because writing is not really what I enjoy from DMing, so it gets boring real fast, making me lose interest (ADHD or whatever). The second example is using the AI in real time. The characters in mothership got a super computer installed in their spaceship, and proceed to test it by asking for basic information on a planet they saw in the distance the day before, things like population, religion, when was it founded, etc. I could come up with that info myself on the spot, but it would sound nothing like a super computer and it would be obvious that I didn't have anything prepared for that planet... however, in just a few seconds I can scan through the content given by the AI, pick a few interesting facts that fit the situation, change some other facts to fit a hook im trying to present for the next mission, and ignore the rest. Now I have a new planet they might be interested in, and it all happened organically in the moment.
@57:40 😂 dead on. Whatever makes your life easier as a DM i am all here for it. Sorry i dont have money to pay an artist to make my maps. And the players wont care anyways lol
The bard in my campaign has used generative AI text systems to make "song" and while that is great and all and I personally won't use the songs or such systems.
There are discoveries that can wipe out human life on the planet. Keeping them under control & stopping their development is key to our survival. Apply the same spirit to art & people's livelihood 👍
is it not AI created images , is art created by an artist? ... I also don't like how the word "map" is used when it isn't referring to a map - a representation of reality ... laziness in language causing false comparisons in reality ....
You guys not realizing that buying a subclass for 2$ instead of the whole book full of garbage for 30$ is a better deal for the customer makes you look so out of touch with reality.
People need to stop climbing the ethical hill to say don't use AI. That cat is out of the bag, its never going back, and it never will. Complaining about what it does to artists is not going to get people to stop using it. If you want to really help the artists, what I recommend is not telling them why you shouldn't use AI, but the benefits of using real artists. What can a real artist do that AI can't. As far as the guy using AI to sell his books on Drivethru, why not? This guy was never going to pay an artist anyway. I like Dale's suggestion of older art, but that still takes way more time and if this guy is just publishing because its his hobby, then why no. Just recommend that if he finds himself actually turning a profit that he should start considering hiring real artists. People will see what he produces with AI art for the AI art it is and judge him accordingly, and a lot of that judgement will be "Meh". As for using AI for you home games People have been taking stuff off the internet and using it without permission of the owners since the dawn of VTT's and this is the same type of thing. The majority of the people who play just do not care about this issue, which is a shame, but its the truth. Giving a lecture on why they shouldn't do it will not change anything unfortunately, and it will only encourage others. So I think all of these types of conversations need to be flipped from why you shouldn't do it, to the benefits of what you get from using real artists.
Wow, the shiĺling is strong with this group. How many times did the say "that is a wise business move", with a big smile on their face. You would almost think they had a vested interest in doing business on dndbeyond. Cant buy physical books from wotc anymore? Limit the supported languages? Force customers to buy the buffet instead of alacarte? While all may make some business sense, in aggregate reflect how WOTC is not your friend, never have been your friend in a very long time. Pray the deal changes no further.
Fallout and Fallout 2 were originally designed around GURPS, but they couldn't get rights to use it so they had to come up with their own SPECIAL stat system instead. And we're all OK with that decision 👌🤌
Really liked this episode. Great discussion all around!
Oh this is great! You’re getting my BWB in my ELC. So cool to see the support across the community. Good luck with Delve KS.
I used a la carte pretty often, purchasing items, spells, or subclasses that I wanted access to. And in many cases, it actually led me to eventually purchase some of the books as a whole later on. For example, I didn't buy Tasha's as a whole right away (digitally that is), just subclasses so I could use them in D&D Beyond. But then when a sale came along later, and since my purchase of the subclasses would be automatically applied against the balance, it felt like a good deal to pick up the rest of the book. The smaller purchase was actually a gateway to buying the whole thing over time. That won't be an option anymore. That is too bad.
The Dael, "unappreciative heathens" broke me! haha 🤣
It's sooooooo trueeeeeee 😂😭
put that in a T-shirt and take my money!
I feel like *most* of the problems with AI essentially distill down to "it's not a problem with the underlying tech, it's a problem with capitalism".
As someone who buys physical books, being able to by all the subclasses/spells etc instead of a whole digital copy of the book was nice.
A player with a single character in a multi-year campaign will spend shockingly little per year with a la carte purchases if they're only interested in purchasing things that go on their character sheet.
When the book only has 3 subclass options and only 1 is good- there is no reason for a player to spend $60 for book that’s 99%useless.
They could solve this by making GOOD CONTENT and minimum 1 subclass per a class for every book but they’d have to stop firing all their writers and producers
I agree with Dael and that I do not want to buy an entire book for a lot of their books because its just not worth the cost, while there are bits and pieces of a book I may like. I generally use DBD beyond as a player and do not own a bunch of adventures so I like the items or subclasses and such that might be in an adventure book without buying the entire book. So that said I think it was a mistake to get rid of the ala carte portion of the marketplace and will affect my further purchasing on the site as a whole going forward.
Yeah, for me and the fact they've gotten rid of the bundles that definitely affects my purchases. I was thinking of getting the new vecna book but now I know I shouldn't.
I agree. I only use D&D Beyond as a player, so I only need the options for making characters that I and my players need. I will never look at or use the adventure books. When it comes to monsters I rewrite all their stat blocks into word so I can have them in a more logical fashion. (Currently page one has all the info I need when a monster attacks, and page 2 has the info I need for when the monster is attacked with space to keep track of damage for the monsters) With my poor eyesight, a tablet is just too small, and I don't have enough room for a laptop. And I prefer my notes being printed out so I can write on them at least at this point in time.
A note about using public domain art: start with the art! You might not find exactly what you need, especially when it comes to NPCs, but you can find a great piece of art and base your NPC on that. I'm a librarian and I work with digitalised documents and some of those illustrations would make an absolutely amazing TTRPG art. Before you dream up what your NPC looks like and you get frustrated that there's no art for them, dream up their story and base their looks on the art you have available.
Pre-internet we had to use this method all the time for reference art and character ideas. Post-internet this is an excellent way to discover even more about a character and surprise yourself.
That's fine if you want to do that, but if you already have something in mind, unless you are an artist yourself, AI is the most efficient way to realize your vision.
Some companies, like Monte Cook Games, have royalty-free art packages for anyone releasing content for their systems.
I'm 100% in agreement with James on that last question. Excellent breakdown of the issues! And Shawn makes a good point about the slippery slope issue too.
Lol Shawn saying "so can a million other things in our lives..." like the D&D Dad spirit animal that he embodies. Love it.
Go check out the FREE Fallout game that Jacob from XP To Level 3 did! He just did a presentation video for it. 👍
The campaign where they build that game (on their Arcane Arcade channel) as they played is excellent fun too.😃
The intrepid heroes have angered the mighty GaladriDael!
I understand the desire to use images to convey ideas of things - I have players with Aphantasia and visual representations really help them. But rather than making an AI generated version of character art, I’ve found I can accomplish 90-95% of what I’m looking for by making a Heroforge mini and screenshotting that. I make minis for most of my NPCs in my game, and I’ve even recreated some moments from our campaign using a Heroforge mini screenshot, a map I’ve found or built in TaleSpire, and Gimp/photoshop.
How do you deal with landscapes? I've been largely unimpressed with the range of options Heroforge provides, and the environmental stuff even less so.
@@deProfundisAdAstra It depends on what you’re asking.
If you mean backgrounds for the mini portraits that you can download in HF, I usually just pick one of the backgrounds that looks relatively similar to the character’s vibe - if I pick an environment at all and don’t just pick a color gradient. The point is to use the mini to illustrate the character’s appearance, so the background in that case is not very important.
If you’re referring to maps, I use TaleSpire for my VTT, and you can find tons of pre-made maps on TalesTavern and TalesBazaar, and then I can tweak those to better fit what I need. And if I want to recreate a moment from the campaign in photoshop, I can save the transparent background character portrait, take a screenshot of the TaleSpire environment, and combine the two in photoshop.
HF also added (in pro at least) the ability to add multiple minis to one base, so it’s possible to make some very dynamic fight poses between two characters!
Energy UP!
Another great show folks, thank you.
Years back I did use the DDB "Microtransactions" option. As a DM I had no interest in Storm Kings Thunder, but I wanted to monsters and magic items. It was a great budget freindly option.
14:09 I love a la carte purchases. Use them all the time and am not happy.
Very thoughtful, interesting discussion. Thanks!
16:17 This is an interesting situation that occurs all the time in the world. People get mad about perception, but don't realize they should be happy about the unintended consequences. Conversely, people are happy about perceptions and don't realize there are actually negative consequences.
Great comment from J Pizzabeats! I really want a virtual tabletop (I play remote) that emulates the super rough dry erase battlemaps of old. The more "realistic" the map, the harder it is actually to get players to engage their imagination. Ask them about it afterwards and they remember the map & tokens. Ask them about a battle with a very basic map, or no map at all, and they remember the fight as it took place in their imagination
I was on the fence, this video convinced me against AI
I used the alacarte option s for tales from the yawning portal so I could just get 5e versions of the adventures I wanted
Sadly the Business/Legal English word “Contributory” just doesn’t have the same ring as the Aussie Victorian word. 😞Thank you for expanding our horizons, Ben! We all learned something today.
Great podcast. Really loved the level of enthusiasm this week.
Would love an Eldritch Lorecast Morning Radio show. What would you call it? “[Adjective] Ben and the [animal/regional nicknames]’s Morning [weird noun]”?
Would the regular listeners be called the Lorecastrians? Poor Dante would need to shoehorn overly loud transition sounds between each segment. On second thought maybe not.
For the discussion about AI for personal use at the end:
It's fine if the podcast hosts don't need or want to use it, and all the other industry and environmental concerns still apply of course, but preaching about how others don't NEED it and that others shouldn't use it over scribbles because it's generic and bad are just the arguments of someone who doesn't want to see another point of view on the topic. Extremely strong bias and stuck in their ways.
I use AI mainly for NPC portraits and for my PCs. It helps me feel more connected to the character than I would be if I took an artist's free drawing of the internet and gives me much more joy than staring at my ugly scribbles for the entire game. No amount of character in the scribbles is going to make up for that. I enjoy using it, that's all that matters. Nobody can tell me that I don't need it and or that using it is inherently soulless and bad.
Yep, I tend to disagree with the extreme hardline opposition to AI technology they espouse
Exactly. Of course we don't need to use it. But we can, and I don't see any good arguments as to why I shouldn't, except the old debunked AI learning is theft angle.
I find it so ironic that a hobby practically based on ip theft is trying to take a hardline stance against AI calling it theft. The Mad Max one-shot that I will be running for my players this weekend steals so much more than an AI art algorithm does, but few in the community would call that unethical.
I really wanted to get the College of the Road subclass from Humblewood but not much else from the book. It sucks that a la carte purchasing has been disabled.
I am really appreciating the discussion of AI here, I think one last reason not to use AI is because of the concept of "Enclosing the Commons." This was brought up on a podcast I was watching a few weeks ago and I think it's a *very* important aspect of this: it's not JUST that the entire training of these AI models has been documented to rely on theft, it's that there will come a point when the people who own these tools will turn around and perform "Enclosure." All of the prompts and training that you were doing for them for free will then be utilized in a walled off For-Pay service. They stole the assets, and they will steal the work that you do in helping to train and refine their tool once they drive competition out (as Shawn hinted at), and they will seize that work that you did for themselves and make all the money and leave you with nothing. Don't let them do it! There are so many talented artists out there you can contract with and we are better off for having them able to make a living on their art.
(Also, those cabinets are cute! I have backed, and I have also commissioned a -NON AI- group portrait to commemorate the end of a campaign).
This take may be a little alarmist; according to current copyright precedent on the subject, AI art is functionally public domain. No one can own it, and thus it can't be walled off and controlled as strictly as that.
That doesn't mean that they won't lobby for the change (and probably succeed given the state of things), but currently its not a thing.
You must have a very broad definition of theft that includes just "learning from stuff". Only problem with that is it makes all artists thieves as well.
As someone that has bought some a la carte content it is a great option. Feels way better to spend 2 bucks for a subclass than to buy a whole book for 2 pages of content.
Energy up! Episode great! Discussion good!
Dael the half-elf princess 👸 has spoken. And she speaks with intelligence and wisdom we love. ❤️
If your a player who never DMs buying the whole book is a waste. Especially if your DM is already buying it. But if your in many groups? Yesh buying just the Subclass you want makes sense. Less options is never user friendly. Its Wiz being greedy. No argument around that.
You know, I have been using AI art for my home game, especially for NPC portraits, and James' energy argument is making me rethink it. I had been sort of assuming since I don't have the money to commission art, I wouldn't be taking art work away from other folks, and whether or not that's true, the energy question remains.
Well, you should probably stop using TH-cam as well (it costs a ton of energy).
Baldurs Gaste 3 has had multiple updates, and i dont hear anyone demanding we call it BG3.5 or BG4....
Technically the updates do increase the number of the build so each one is distinguished between themselves. But also if you play BG3 you are forced to play with the updates, so you don't need to convey to a player which edition you are playing. You can't just tell a player that you are running 5e or you are going to have a nightmare when it comes to spells and feats and such if they don't know which one you are using. Like the old druid is way more powerful than the new druid.
@@bradleyhurley6755 it's all D&D.. every table has house rules so telling them which edition youre playing doesn't even define which "game" you're playing
@@badmojo0777 Normally though you would know if you are playing x edition, you know whether or not the rogue can take a sneak attack every turn or only every round. Or you can have 1d6 added to one attack or every attack.
Those two alone can radically change how a DM should prepare an encounter.
Or if you start with a feat or not... cause by one rules feats are not part of the default game, where the new edition they are. Like if you aren't using feats, but the new player comes in with feats because their background gave them the feat.... that is a massive issue that you have to deal with.
@@bradleyhurley6755 they reverted the rogue sneak attack feature back to normal.very quickly I might add. But again, my point was that every table has house rules anyway and should be discussed in a session zero. Not a huge dufference
@@badmojo0777 I think there is a major difference namely even if you have this session zero, you still gotta be able to mention which edition you are using especially once the 2014 version is no longer in print.
It's not that they are removing micro-transactions, it's that they are removing the ability to purchase content just for the character builder. That is interesting. And a little bit dangerous on the WotC side - D&DB is pretty much only popular because of the character builder. If people stop using that...
Big fan of the show, friends, but had to comment to say that New Vegas is vastly superior to Fallout 4 - gotta maintain my hipster cred.
I want my a la carte back!
Ala Carte was the best feature of Dndbeyond. Especially because it reduced the cost of the book when/if you eventually bought it. I think this is a direct result of people complaining about micro-transactions... Well I did until Dael made the third party remark.
Fallout New Vegas is the best and I'm willing to write an essay about it.
Jacob from xptolevel3 made his own fallout ttrpg and released it for free
I think the really simple answer for AI art on things like DTRPG and DM's Guild, especially for that questioner, is: if you're not making enough money to pay yourself back, then why do you think its remotely ethical to increase your private return at another struggling creator's expense?
I understand why some DMs or players feel like they want to use ai generation for personal use/home games, but I do implore people to like, explore other avenues. If its for a eprsonal game and not a big liveplay, you can just save as anything you find online, use art from your favourite magic yugioh or hearthstone cards or whatever, bookmark a bunch of cool fantasy artists so you can show your players the source of your art it'll be a fun thing to talk about, use things like picrew to make custom stuff for characters if you cant find or draw something that fits otherwise, unlike ai, those picrews were made with the express intent that strangers would see them and mess around to make art of their character to use. There is a million options available to you without resorting to ai, for those with the eyes to see (and willing to still wade through all the ai slop that clutters google images searches these days which is why I mention things like tcg artwork as sources you can look through)
At this point most AI stuff looks a little ugly to me. Like yeah it's superficially "pretty" as in, shiny, symmetrical, and mostly polished when it gets the hands right. But it's just got that AI sheen and it's annoying, like the pseudo-clash-of-clans art style that every mobile game has that you see everywhere in ads. Or the family guy esque "adult animation" style that every animated sitcom has. It just looks like a poor imitation and it just gives me cheap feels that for me personally make the thing uglier.
You mean download and use an artist's art without their consent? Isn't that what everyone is complaining that AI is doing?
@@jasonr.6123The difference between "I bookmarked this cool thing so I can share it with my friends while encouraging them to check out the artists" and "I'm gonna throwthousands of artwork into the plagiarise-inator to sell it to thousands of people" should be self evident.
What you are encouraging is far more overt theft than AI, which is the whole reason I find AI criticisms farcical.
@@jasonr.6123 AI art takes an artist's stuff and turns it into a commercial product to sell. As an artist myself I think that's vastly different than someone yoinking an image from google to use entirely for their own personal games where they earn 0 profit. Yes sometimes there are questions of ethics depending on what the art is, such as maybe it's art of a very personal character or a self-portrait or a gift for a dead friend or whatever and so it feels weird to use it. But like, just don't tell the artist you're using it and it's fine. Don't sell it and it's fine. Don't try to do any nonsense besides harmless fun between you and your friends. AI companies go against that and just jack an artist's stuff to sell for themselves as if the company made it. Big difference.
I've listened to the show since episode 1, and I the perspectives that everyone presents week to week are always exceptional.
The echo chamber you've formed around AI art is not.
55:09 We don't "need" roleplaying games in the first place. "Need" is not a concept universal to humanity; My needs are entirely different from yours, and yours from mine, just as they are for my players, many of whom (more than half) suffer from aphantasia. In their case, yes, they "need" visual representations of a game world to have any idea what's going on. Until recently I've had to draw things out for them- something which I don't enjoy and struggle to do even in the best of circumstances- and while the crude drawings I provide are appreciated, my "thankless heathens" are even more appreciative of artwork I generate because it makes the world we make together come alive so much more than some lines on a page. We had an entire conversation last week about how much dynamically generated artwork has improved their experience of the game, and given what I have for them next week, I expect to discuss it again!
I'm also more than a little surprised that you're arguing from "need" at all, because this very podcast has discussed how aphantasia affects players, and did so with a sympathetic view to those affected. But because we're talking about this show's favorite crusade, any other possible point of view- any amount of empathy for people who "need" different things than the identikit of a D&D player- is forgotten and ignored for the sake of praxis. Were this any other topic, you would rightly be concerned with the ways the technology has helped people- you have a very good track record of doing just so- but because it's *this topic in particular*, it's like I'm listening to my neocon uncle talk about the satanic panic.
A few other thoughts:
1:04:18 You can absolutely make corrections to generated art. This is now a common feature in both Photoshop and Midjourney, but was a common limitation early on.
1:04:07 Artists are not priests to hand down divinity to the masses; there is no "correct" art. Even if you (and I!) don't particularly like what people make with art generators, they have every right to make things that make them happy. When any artist sits down to create something, they aren't doing it because it's the "best art", they're doing it because it comes from their soul, and I don't think words (in the form of a written prompt) are any less capable of portraying the soul than a brushstroke or
52:58 Is it "laundered plagiarism" to directly include other media in your game? If you do as Matt Colville so often advises and "take the shit you like and put it in your game", is that "laundered plagiarism"? The haughty, professorial tone around all of this is so off-putting it took me five minutes to get through your argument, which was significant only for what it left unsaid: Google Images not only indexes images but *stores* them, and has done so for years, directly making money off of artists images via ads. I've yet to hear a single argument that contains a prohibition on using Google.
To be fair, microtransactions weren't really considered a negative thing until publishers started pushing predatory business models on the community. The basic idea of being able to purchase additional optional content for the games you particularly like has actually been pretty popular with gamers. Publishers creating artificial scarcity to justify exorbitant prices for what is essentially just the customer gaining access to a single art asset and filling their games with loads of gaudy, and ugly junk that actively detracts from the experience of playing the game is more along the lines of what gives microtransactions a bad name.
The way DNDBeyond did microtransactions was actually extremely positive. I always loved having the ability to make purchases a la carte even if it wasn't what I preferred, and their policy of applying whatever money you spent on an item's parts towards the purchase of the whole if you later decided to purchase it, made it even better. To be honest I feel like it was a great way to give people a chance to try out bits of the content and later upgrade to the full book if they wanted to. Sort of the reverse of DLC in video games.
I'm sad to see it go and I feel like it just puts even more of the purchasing burden on the DM.
In all honesty, I would rather purchase a product with no art (or the default art allowed to DM's Guild and Pathfinder creators) than a product with AI art. Ultimately, the artwork is intended to enhance the reading experience, and if the artwork include is generated by an algorithm, then it just gets in the way of the actual HUMAN content: the writing.
36:47 in The last of Us you're just playing character where the player wrote a 20 page back story and you have already figured out what the character will do in all situations.
I like the ala cart thing because if you join a campaign or one shot where the DM doesn’t have assets they are sharing that means you literally can’t play characters you wanted to play unless you spent hundreds of dollars. You want a furbolg with fey touched feat with a fighter subclass that isn’t champion? Open your wallet buddy! A $6 purchase is now at least like $40 or more…
I also don't think anyone would get angry with the microtranactions if WotC was just announcing them. For the similar reason that most people don't want to buy an entire adventure to access the player options. If you remove player options from monster/Adventure books, then it is a different story. And i think if you just toss things on there that aren't available in print books that would be an issue. Its not an issue because players don't want or need the adventure. And the player may not want access to the adventure, because if searching for something, something in the adventure might get spoiled.
I imagine the reason WotC stopped this is because people weren't buying the entire book and the whole point of adding the player options is to get more people to purchase the book. From a digital perspective. WotC makes $60 when you purchase only the book, but makes only $5 when you buy a la carte.
My buddy came up with what I believe is the single really good use case for AI generated images in a TTRPG product. He was working with an artist who was unable to complete the work, only half of the images was done. He trained his own model solely on her art (to teach it her style) and some public domain art (to teach it human anatomy) to create the remainig images. That was done with the artist's explicit approval. The artist had a final say if the images were used, retains full ownership of them, and was PAID for all the images - the ones she drew and the ones generated with AI. The model was used only for this one purpose and then was deleted, it was never connected to anything online and the generated images were not shared online outside of the context of the book they were made for.
This doesn't solve the "I have no money to illustrate my book" problem, because he still paid for the images. But like Dael said - this is a non-issue, given how much royalty free art is available.
AI just looks ugly to me so i would never use it. The one time i used it was when i was playing starfinder and I was playing a Joro and couldn't come up with any good puns. So i kept generating jokes on chatgpt and riffed off it. It sort of worked and it gave me decent ish starting points. Can't do that anymore tho cuz now you gotta pay for it i think. Good riddance.
James just convinced me to stop using AI in my home game. Well argued, James.
If WOTC is looking for an overture of peace to soothe the internet rage about the removal of ala carte purchases, might I humbly suggest they allow us to download (watermarked obv) PDFs of the books they buy on DDB? I think that would be a suitable gesture. (Secretly I don't care about ala carte, I just want PDFs of Mah Books)
I can neither confirm or deny the existence of a website called pdf coffee. I can neither confirm or deny that most of 5e books are available there as well.
@@laughingpanda4395 I'm not ignorant of the internet's depths, I was speaking of something WOTC could do, above board.
@stewi009 I wouldn't hold my breath. If they won't include a qr code in the books then I very much doubt they will publish pdfs. If we want pdfs then we must aquire them the less than honorable way.
To speak to James' statement. (1) I don't run premade adventures and therefore I do not need them. So paying 5% of a book's price for something is still better than paying $60 for something I'm never going to look at or read. (2) If I already own the physical book, then I also don't need that additional material.
The only way this makes sense is if WotC is going to start making player supplements and not adding one or two options in an adventure book. I don't have any desire to by the adventure books on D&D Beyond, so the more time goes on, the less useful D&D Beyond is to me. I'm already on the fence about whether or not to continue my subscription after the new edition comes out because I don't really want to rebuy the players handbook and without the other player content, it kinda makes D&D Beyond useless.
I can only imagine it just doesn't make enough money to be worth the effort. I doubt anyone there is saying it isn't a good feature, but if it just isn't making money they won't keep it up.
@@jameswright21 I'm going to agree that it probably doesn't make much money, however, it would make some money and cost $0 to have it available, given it was already part of the system.
I imagine WotC thinks that they can get people to pay more for the full books and make an extra $55 off those people they were only making $5 off.
However, if you are someone like me who will never run those adventures you simply don't need them, so WotC will be getting $0 of my money.
The question becomes at what point is D&D Beyond simply not worth the subscription for me. The answer is the point I have to go grab a book from my shelf to make a character. At that moment, I will no longer be a subscriber to D&D Beyond and my players will likely have resorted to not using D&D Beyond (Very very actually use it anyway and those that do, do so only because I have most of the content) But as more adventures come out hiding character content within them, the more I and by extension my players move away from D&D Beyond completely.
I'm so tired of dnd. Why do my pathfinder players get a free app with every single piece of content free yet if my DND players want to make a pc with a subclass from the new book one of us has to pay $40 and if i buy it i must pay a monthly fee for the privilege of share it with them. Sigh
Personally I'm totally fine with people using AI art for private, personal use at the table, just like I'd be fine with a player using a piece of publicly available image to represent their character.
That's pretty much my line. If it's a situation where you could show someone else's art and I wouldn't question if you got their permission, it's probably a situation I'd be fine with AI art being used.
Fallout New Vegas is going to be a huge part of season 2.
And it really IS better.
I admit the portraits of the BBEG from an AI look pretty good- and I have seen some in books and I didn't complain. The Maps I have seen from AI have all been HORRIBLE. Weird artifacts, Out-of-place items. I saw a red double decker bus from London in the middle of a D&D battle map once and it made no contextual sense!
Establishing shot? Sure! Those usually look good. But I have not been happy with a battle map from an AI Source yet and gave up trying.
I agree, the maps aren't there yet. But it didn't take long for AI portraits to go from weird eyes looking in different directions and hands with eight fingers to some very slick and professional looking outputs. I suspect if we revisit this topic in a couple of years the AI maps of the future will look a lot more complete and logical.
4 the Machine God
So in other words, WotC is going to continue using AI art and will decline to comment on any accusations. Then they'll investigate themselves and find they did nothing wrong.
Re AI art. Pencil & paper have a go.
With practise, you can draw at game speed. A skill that doesn't leave you.
I find AI art disturbing like the emotion of looking at it. The simulation of it doesn't work. Once you see it- it no longer works.
so the same people complaining about the WOTC going digital, video game micro transactions are now pissed that micro trnasacitons are being removed.... you cant write this crap. Welcome to old school, BUY the BOOK or dont buy the book.. :D
If you like the game just buy the books.
A la carte was great when you already bought real books for 500$s+,, real monthly DnDB sub, roll20 sub, and didnt care about owning more *imaginary content* on DNDB. Now players will just skip Beyond and use roll20 character sheets and not pay the A la carte no more. Lose/Lose
Getting rid of ala carte is a terrible idea, from a business standpoint and shows again the disconnect between those making decisions for WOTC/Hasbro and gamers. The typical player will just balk at having to buy a whole book, and won't do so. Its the DM's that buy the books and those DM's using D&D Beyond were already doing so. My prediction is that we will see the return of the ala cart style of purchases in the future after how they see this doesn't work. They keep treating things like the video game industry and that surprises me. I mean sure, make that kind of mistake once, fine, but this is repeated.
There are many uses of AI for GMs, not just for art. As a non native English speaker, I have always struggled with descriptions. So now I use AI to generate descriptions while running games. It allows me to feel more comfortable DMing with little to no prep, and I can do it while the players are interacting with one another (after they have expressed their intentions for their next destination) so there is no waiting time for them.
I would take a slightly awkward description with imperfect grammar over AI word soup any time.
Also, this is a great way to make sure that your English never significantly improves. I'm not a native speaker either and I've seen this at work more and more - colleagues who continue to struggle with English, despite working directly with English speakers, and reading and writing documents in English daily. They use chatGPT, Grammarly and Google Translate to write their emails and reports, they don't learn anything new.
Check out dScryb, it has descriptions of places, monsters, spells, different planes, etc., it's been very useful to me as a non-native English speaker who GMs.
@@dziooooo its not about the grammar, it's about describing things. Some people have a talent for it, I dont. And I dont just read out loud whatever the AI spits, I scan it and curate the content really quickly.
I understand u might prefer inaccurate descriptions, but sometimes its really important for the players to NOT misunderstand things cos it cam be very frustrating. I've been in games where the descriptions were so bad no one knew how to proceed or how to tell the DM again to rephrase it.
This is also a problem with the read-aloud boxes in the D&D books. Convoluted descriptions that make it more confusing for my non-native players. An AI can help make those blocks of text easier to digest and understand
AI won't help with descriptions being clear or useful for the players though. The AI doesn't "understand" the scene it's describing. It can give you a decent static image of a situation, but it's going to start piling on inconsistencies almost immediately. There will suddenly be a window in a wall which cannot possibly have windows, features will appear and disappear, and there's no way to subtly throw in the clues for players to interpret.
I think you may be too hung up on the idea of one specific way of describing things. The choice is not between "I can do it just like one of my favorite writers or GMs" and "machine will do it better". There are many different styles you can use, and I'm sure some will be perfect for your communication style and language skills.
Like, what problem is the AI solving for you exactly? What is it adding that you can't do now? And what's stopping you from practicing to improve? You say you have "no talent for description". No one has "talent" for that, it's 90% practice, like with every other form of art.
@@dziooooo I'm gonna give you 2 examples from my own games.
I run Mothership, a space-horror-survival RPG with 1-page modules. These modules are great, but with just 1-page there is no space for descriptions of rooms. During prep, I used the AI to create short descriptions of all the rooms in a small space station. The way it works is, I tell the AI what the game is, what vibe I'm going for and the influences I want in the responses (for example, Lovecraft, Alien (movie), etc). I also tell the AI to give me answers in very simple language and to keep it short. Then I go room by room, feeding the AI with the information I have about that room (it's a flooded cafeteria, or a cryochamber gallery). Then, I look through the reply and I take 2 or 3 sentences for my description. Sometimes I dont use anything because it sparks other ideas. That's it. Could I come up with these short descriptions myself? Sure I could, but it would take me much much longer. But to be honest I wouldn't, because writing is not really what I enjoy from DMing, so it gets boring real fast, making me lose interest (ADHD or whatever).
The second example is using the AI in real time. The characters in mothership got a super computer installed in their spaceship, and proceed to test it by asking for basic information on a planet they saw in the distance the day before, things like population, religion, when was it founded, etc. I could come up with that info myself on the spot, but it would sound nothing like a super computer and it would be obvious that I didn't have anything prepared for that planet... however, in just a few seconds I can scan through the content given by the AI, pick a few interesting facts that fit the situation, change some other facts to fit a hook im trying to present for the next mission, and ignore the rest. Now I have a new planet they might be interested in, and it all happened organically in the moment.
@57:40
😂 dead on. Whatever makes your life easier as a DM i am all here for it. Sorry i dont have money to pay an artist to make my maps. And the players wont care anyways lol
It's 5e2e
The bard in my campaign has used generative AI text systems to make "song" and while that is great and all and I personally won't use the songs or such systems.
Nothing wrong with Ai, just like there is nothing wrong with driving a car. Get on board with technology or get out of the way.
There are discoveries that can wipe out human life on the planet.
Keeping them under control & stopping their development is key to our survival.
Apply the same spirit to art & people's livelihood 👍
No one is owed a livelihood making doodles, especially if AI can do it better, which 99% of the time these days it does.
is it not AI created images , is art created by an artist? ... I also don't like how the word "map" is used when it isn't referring to a map - a representation of reality ... laziness in language causing false comparisons in reality ....
Wow this Ai conversation took a awkward turn.
You guys not realizing that buying a subclass for 2$ instead of the whole book full of garbage for 30$ is a better deal for the customer makes you look so out of touch with reality.
People need to stop climbing the ethical hill to say don't use AI. That cat is out of the bag, its never going back, and it never will. Complaining about what it does to artists is not going to get people to stop using it. If you want to really help the artists, what I recommend is not telling them why you shouldn't use AI, but the benefits of using real artists. What can a real artist do that AI can't. As far as the guy using AI to sell his books on Drivethru, why not? This guy was never going to pay an artist anyway. I like Dale's suggestion of older art, but that still takes way more time and if this guy is just publishing because its his hobby, then why no. Just recommend that if he finds himself actually turning a profit that he should start considering hiring real artists. People will see what he produces with AI art for the AI art it is and judge him accordingly, and a lot of that judgement will be "Meh". As for using AI for you home games People have been taking stuff off the internet and using it without permission of the owners since the dawn of VTT's and this is the same type of thing. The majority of the people who play just do not care about this issue, which is a shame, but its the truth. Giving a lecture on why they shouldn't do it will not change anything unfortunately, and it will only encourage others. So I think all of these types of conversations need to be flipped from why you shouldn't do it, to the benefits of what you get from using real artists.
Wow, the shiĺling is strong with this group. How many times did the say "that is a wise business move", with a big smile on their face. You would almost think they had a vested interest in doing business on dndbeyond.
Cant buy physical books from wotc anymore?
Limit the supported languages?
Force customers to buy the buffet instead of alacarte?
While all may make some business sense, in aggregate reflect how WOTC is not your friend, never have been your friend in a very long time.
Pray the deal changes no further.
sigh. such bad AI takes.
In the podcast. What are you talking about?
@@cbeaird52 yeah, in the podcast. They come across as luddites.
@@jasonr.6123 I don't agree with that at all.
Their takes are kinder then most, and maybe even mine.
Fallout and Fallout 2 were originally designed around GURPS, but they couldn't get rights to use it so they had to come up with their own SPECIAL stat system instead.
And we're all OK with that decision 👌🤌