We’ve moved from the outright lying phase (“We would never do something like that!”) to the gaslighting phase (“All the cool kids are doing it!”). I’m looking forward to the Orwell phase (“D&D was never played with pens and paper! It was always on a VTT! How do you feel about rats?”) Anyway, who’s up for a game of EZD6?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Indeed it is! So many of the things I’m trying to do in my own system are done successfully in that system. I can’t say enough good things about Scotty.
"No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn't want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over. My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong KIND of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches." -- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
1984 wasn’t a warning it was a blue print, a textbook. I don’t think enough people are aware of how evil and horrific things have become. No one wants to believe the elites of the world are truly running a sci fi scheme. And people can say they’re just morons making mistakes. Sorry but one time is weird, two times is coincidence, three times forms a pattern, and more than that is a program
Consider the chances of great minds pondering future possibilities whilst sitting on the porch after dinner, smoking a pipe and watching the sun set. Imagine what revolutionary notions evolved from such a place? 🤯
The modern CEO’s job is to increase stock prices via increasing profit margins and the easiest way to do that is by cutting costs. And the biggest cost is always personnel.
"Bend the cost curve" is so Orwellian. More like 'Bend the content creators over'. When they talk about 'bend the cost curve', the corpos don't even realize they're talking about real people and their livelihoods!
Reality of the true cost of AI in a corporate world will soon be public knowledge. There is no cost savings with AI. AI is also a leveller of creativity. It averages things out to the centre of the bell curve. Creators live at the edge of the bell curve that AI (by design) ignores. AI is a computing tool and has its place. It's not 'creating' masterpieces. Its 'creating' average things fast. AI searching is horrifically expensive for the computing change and infrastructure needed, and also the environment as far as an energy hog. AI is much hype at the moment and it will settle to a powerful, useful tool. We just need to get past this hype stage to see what it actually brings to society and culture.
@@silo_fx3182 Bro, current creatives are for the most part pretty mid tier at best. They're not creating masterpieces. A handful live on the edge of the bell curve and most of those don't do it professionally. AI is still cheaper to create mid level content then hand it over to a handful of successful content creators to improve it.
In a few years... 1. log into D&D VTT "Tavern", select "open table" or "private booth" 2. click "seeking PCs levels 4-6" (all stored behind a paywall on D&D Beyond) 3. When your party is assembled, click "descend the well to Undermountain" (please wait while the dungeon is stocked) 4. begin tactical crawl through randomly generated, "level appropriate" challenges while virtual DM emits occasional quips, drops hints, and narrates from a set of scripts (updated monthly). Welcome to 2004.
Or a different version: Hey guys want to play d&d? We can't, we don't have a dungeon master. It's ok, there's this AI tool that helps DMs, I'll DM for you, its super easy you just have to join the subscription, we load a pre-written module, and the program will pay attention and give you suggestions on what to do next based on what your party members say. Oh and the AI will also offer help and suggestions for character creation so you know how to make your characters, it even generates random premade characters if you just want to try the game out. - Your priest is looking at the artifact in the corner? Perhaps ask her to roll a medium difficulty (10+) religion check; if she's successful you can let her know its an idol to her goddess' rival. - Your barbarian asked the AI tool how many rages he has left, based on his character sheet, he only has one use left. But he forgot to record the rage from the prior room, so he actually has none left - Perhaps you can compromise and offer him a potion in that chest to give him another rage use for the next room?
10 years later, you realize that all of those 'people' you played with, were bots all along. There's nobody in the system. Bots are playing it with themselves to create an illusion of success.
Data science is my field, i build models all day. Machine learning is a blanket term, ai is a marketing term, deep learning is a type of machine learning that uses neural networks, and all of these have been in use for a lot of benign and useful purposes for decades now. This is absolutely talking about making slop though. They arnt talking about training a model to predict sales or products you want.
"AI strategy" has become something investors looks at now, so most companies have to pretend to be doing something with it... no matter what is really is.
Gamers need to stop watching dystopian films about AI. AI isn’t good enough (yet) to take over the world. It’s not unlike the introduction of machines at the turn of the beginning of the 20th century, it may change the world but it won’t destroy it.
There is a clear reason, it is cheaper than hiring writers, designers, and artists. December layoffs are going to be a trip this year!! My guess is that all of the 2nd tier "game designers" will be let go. We might even see either Perkins or Crawford gone as well, they don't need both.
Weeeellllll.... you are presuming that creative use of gen-AI is just monkeys-with-typewriters stuff... or maybe Skynet? Who do you think is going to do the work of developing and using the AI tools? Writers, designers and artists that know how to use AI tools to produce high-quality content will be more expensive than writers, designers and artists that don't. If WOTC (or any content creator) is to do gen-AI well, they will need to rely on creative humans to do it.
In May of 2024 Chris Cocks made it crystal clear he had very faint idea what kind of game DnD is, much less how it's played. And now he plays "with probably 30 or 40 people regularly"?! Seems fishy, to say the least. Shocker. Perhaps it is time that Hasbro's top management was overtaken by artificial intelligence in lieu of the abundant natural stupidity.
The holodeck programs were still written by people, we see examples of this in ds9 with the games bashir plays, it' also in voyager where parish actively authors the programs and there is even an episode about can even a true artificial being claim ownership of a program it writes.
@@CandycornMilkteaSome of them. They are able to ask the Holodeck to create a new adventure in the style of Sherlock Holmes novels. Which looking at it now is eerily close to a ChatGPT or StableDiffusion prompt
Yeah... as a player and occasional DM, D&D is largely my escape form technology. Maps, minis, pen, paper, and dice are the escape. Pulling it all back on the computer feels too much like work lol. I love what tech does for me with prepping sessions, and making maps, and designing and 3D printing minis, etc. But at the table... outside of jumping to an appropriate song in a play list, I generally want Zero computer use at the table. I already get 12+ hours a day in front of a screen work work and play... I really don't need more.
True, but remember how the "D&D" audience is evolving away from complex world-campaigns to "short" dungeons for "short" attention spans. The standards for what newer players might consider "plot" will not be the same as how Grognards like me, who play home-brew FRPGs at table, with mature players, define the word. With each Hasbro move, D&D continues to be less and less the game I learned and loved in 1979.
@@DungeonsforDecades Evolving away? Maybe... evolving back to how the game was predominantly played in the '70s and '80s? I was there too, and often "campaigns" were strung-together adventure modules and a series of self-contained homebrewed two-or-three shots.
@@DungeonsforDecades younger player here (I've been around in the ttrpg space only since 2009 xD) Weren't the original campaigns often strings of semi-connected modules? In that regard, it wouldn't be that much of a change, no? Maybe more of a refinement of an older idea?
@@talscorner3696 Youngster, it appears that way at short reach. The original campaigns were structured around goals, and ways to reach them. Plural: because if you railroad a party, they WILL go off the rails just to thwart your designs.
Then TLG will likely lag behind eventually. Purist will hate it, but it will enrich the average gaming group that aren’t experts but want to have a fun game.
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If they use Google for their searches, sorry to say that's not an accurate number.
One little thing I've used ChatGPT for: I told it to create a new language from a mix of Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Icelandic. Now, I use that thread when I need a place name. I tell it to translate a plain English name into the "language" it "created," and it spits out words that have a vaguely familiar ring to them, sound old-timey, and add a bit to the ambience of the setting.
Similarly, I paid for a subscription to Vulgar, an online language generator. I'll also grab images for characters from Google searches. Some of the art pieces have been AI generated.
@@harmless6813 i just use a real world language. same result, and occasionally real learning. just like when D&D got me to use a dictionary and thesaurus as a kid.
I started using ChatGPT this winter while prepping for my new campaign. I wrote the entire concept, but I used it to generate sidequest ideas and other minor stuff. Before the campaign started, I stopped using GPT and cleaved everything AI generated from my campaign for 2 reasons. First, the quality just wasn't there. GPT can't know what kind of quests my players like to do. It can't add that little something that develops over years and years of gaming with the same group every week. I know what my players like, what's gonna make them laugh, etc. Everything AI generated just felt completely disconnected from anything I wrote myself. Second, I want to look back at my campaign and be proud of what I created. To me D&D isn't just about the sessions themselves, but the challenges I managed to overcome to write them in the first place. If ChatGPT writes parts of my game, it feels like I've been robbed of that feeling of pride of having created a whole world filled with characters and events.
Honestly, I like to use it for brainstorming. Just for hooks. I would never use it for anything more that that, because...well I love being a dm and creating all these stories and encounters.
I guess I'd need to test again but last time I tried using ChatGPT for development (doesn't really matter what kind of development) it wasn't able to remember enough context to be particularly useful. But it's fine to generate ideas and help to flesh out some of my own.
AI can also provide a useful scapegoat when campaign development falls flat on its face. It's just as important for a human DM to take the fall when the game shits the bed due to bad design or worse table skills. Not ashamed to admit I've had a few moments like that over 40 years, but I've never forgotten them and never repeated them. What a cheap dodge it would be to say, "Don't blame me, guys! The AI let me down!" Yeah, pal, and you utterly failed to see that the machine vomited up the contents of a septic tank, and left it for your players to smell the stench. Spare me.
@@xandroy1273 I've come to the conclusion that AI like ChatGPT is just a way to automate word vomit, so brainstorming is probably what it's most useful for. Just spitballing ideas en masse for DMs to use as a starting point.
The really important part is not only that, as the citation says, "AI is not a replacement for human creativity" - it is even worse as a replacement for human interaction, which as I see it has always been the real heart of tabletop RPG.
Couldn't happen to a better more out of touch Company. I believe we are still dealing with the aftermath of the 2020 pandemic. Lots of entertainment companies had a large influx of income when we were all stuck at home and they shifted their business noses towards chasing that income stream. It however is starting to dry up a bit and the decsions being made to try to keep a hold on that income are baffling to me.
Baffling to the average person but makes sense to your average C-suite executive where most of their pay comes from stock options and performance bonuses. Not to mention that the CEO’s job is to raise share prices and make it look good to investors by the quarter so they are incentivized to pursue short-term solutions that will sink the company in the long run.
Ok; Short answer: It's not baffling. I mean: Is it really surprising that a company that has people within it's ranks publicly insulting their customer base, screaming "if you don't like it, don't buy it" when talking to the traditional consumers of their IP, followed by being baffled that no one wants to buy their stuff? I mean: They are entirely blind to the cause of their problems - and it's necessary because if they admitted it, they would also be admitting they are the problem: Their politics are the problem. DEI was functionally funded through the 2008 to about 2016 massive injection of stimulus money - the initial funding had some sense: Stem the tide, give time for decision makers to figure out what was happening, and how to deal with the fall out - but then it just continued, and continued, and continued. What should have seen deflation, bad debt wiped out, poorly ran companies go bust saw bad companies given a life line, and a handful of companies super charged - and yet, some of those, are failing hard now because they were kept alive on cheap debt. The Pandemic and the stimulous the government did was simply a super charging of this practice - and it gave a false sense of acceptability, profitability, and - the people pushing back against it, were pushed out. Hiring practices filtered for people who followed the prescribed ideology and the polarization was taken to the extreme. The reason the money is drying up is a perfect storm: The DEI regime is creating content people don't want - so, people are less willing to buy; Financial constraints mean when people do buy things they want more value out of it - and that puts further downward pressure and creates a faster rejection of beloved IP's that have turned sour; Investors and Central bankers are nervous about the scale of debt, and are recognizing the reduced buying power of the populace - and that, is creating uncertainty and hesitancy to lend: Meaning, higher interest rates. This last decade or so, has been a prime example of how: Big Government "solutions" cause more harm, and more pain in the long term - then they solve. You can't tax a society into prosperity, you can't regulate it into prosperity, and you can't print money for vanity projects and expect anything but strife - and if you do: You are a delusional idiot. What could actually see a new golden era is... small, and medium business, made feasible through the internet. Crowd funding is one avenue, small low risk loans with low interest rates for start up of what one might term a micro business for tools/materials to generate income in craft markets and the like. The thing is - Big business, and Big government absolutely hate this reality. That reality means - less regulations are actually needed as people have more real job choice. It means that flooding the market with cheap labour through immigration is actually counter production, it means that unrestricted free-trade is actually bad for the economy not good (I actually think limited free trade between neer pier economies is good - but it needs to be handled in a way that brings quality of life, cost of living, and so on into similar enough conditions as to allow free movement of people to go alongside the free trade).
I wonder if they realize that if they move to AI writing and art, there's no reason why anyone would need to buy their products. We could just generate our own products using free AI tools.
@@justarandomname420 You can but AIs vastly reduce the amount of time it takes. If I was rich and could afford to hire human writers and artists to help me then I would. If I didn't have to work and could spend all day prepping my 2 hour game session then I would. As I am neither rich nor able to spend all my time on my hobby I make use of AI to fill the roles of human assistants and its already bloody good at it, more over it has vastly improved in just the last couple of years of using it for this. Where it'll be in another 2,5 or 10 years? I guess we'll see.
So why should humans bother in general to learn those skills? What do we do in this future? Are we bubble based infinite consoomers being fed a constant diet of ai created entertainment, or imaginationless drones all working desk jobs monitoring the ai? What is a world where humans aren’t responsible for their own creativity any more?
Because you can’t be bothered to learn or improve yourself, and feel entitled to the skills and output of others (‘I can’t afford to pay them, I don’t have time to do it myself’ - so make the time, save the money, or don’t do the thing) that means just automate it? Take control of the means of production and all that…?
Not the point of the video, but just as an extra bit of information: machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence (e.g. the little ghosts in Pac-Man used a primitive form of artificial intelligence, but there was no machine learning involved). And neural networks (which is the general architecture of stuff like ChatGPT&co) are a subset of machine learning. That said, the terms are used a lot as synonyms in the news
Jackie Treehorn: “New technology permits us to do very exciting things in interactive erotic software. Wave of the future, Dude. 100% electronic!” The Dude: “Hmm…well, I still jerk off manually.”
"The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill, while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth." Jeff Owski When an industry removes the Humans from the art and creative process, to save money in the creation of a product, that product is Dead. At least it is Dead to me.
Its a silly quote because literally anyone can access AI, it started as all open source projects. It's literally just a tech tool to disrupt monopoly power on people who are skilled or more aptly put, are wealthy enough to be skilled at art and literature. Not many coal miners have time to read every book or learn to shade, but they can all use AI to imagine a story if they want.
If a player asked for a half-Tabaxi, half-Dragonborn, dual class monk/paladin, a real artificial intelligence would say no and tell the person to go play a video game.
🤔 I'm pretty sure it's not just an AI that would say no. DM's would likely have a variety of nos and yesses depending on the flavour of the world they're running. If asked, my gut would say no. But I'd say yeah, go ahead... But be ye warned; life wont be that easy for such a character. The tabaxi culture is very pedigree and bloodline oriented, and see you as an abomination of impurity. The dragonborn too see you as an affront to their heritage, and likely the spawn of unnatural magic, and too need your presence erased from existence. There would be little succor from most common populations as your seen as a freak or a monster and always considered untrustworthy. Such a character would always be looking over their shoulder for assassins of their parentage, and would have an uphill battle winning the trust of any population outside of a handful of friends.
I could see Hasbro using three product lines:, 1) All human creative produced module story, artwork, laser burned velum maps, etc sold as a premium product line, wooden boxes, high quality print paper, gold leaf embellishments, trinkets like Monopoly pieces/figures/quest items, and so on, sold for $100-$150 each. Exclusive convention games run these like high stakes poker tables. Produce about half as many modules/year as they have before. 2) Human curated/directed but AI produced modules, story, maps, AI artwork, etc produced on high volume printing systems with thin cardboard printed maps/black and white cover artwork, thin paper inside and sold for "$10" each. Think of these like the olden days Sunday newspaper magazine inserts like "Parade". Perhaps nearly a "print on demand" with "direct consumer sales" system so no inventory. Produce a hundred new modules a quarter retiring/archiving the previous content "to the vault!". Some modules link a whole campaign like G-D-Q did in the olden days. Occasionally resurrect popular or cult-followed adventures with full color artwork etc upgrades for "$30" but again only a limited time. Convention sessions play many tables of these titles from the next quarter or two releases. Massive content like the Pulp Fiction writers of the 1920s-1960s. 3) Online On-demand AI: press a button and get a randomly generated .... something.
In discussions like this I think people overestimate the importance of quality, since a lot of purchases are emotional purchases. Yeah, the top quality of shadowdark creates backorder lines sometimes, but that is not the money WotC is after. The want something like: - Mediocre quality + A lot of marketing + knowledge biases (like fear of missing out and other predatory cash grabs) + loot boxes with minis available for a limited time If quality was mandatory, WotC would have to sell DnD after Tiranny of Dragons and SCAG. The probably wouldn't want to wait the time needed for high quality art, so it is not even on the creative team - and that is important. AI is really good - if not the pinnacle - of delivering mediocrity. It fits all too well in their scheme. Tl,dr: Yeah, AI quality is inferior, but WotC stopped caring about quality at some point in 3.5e... If you want quality, support indie publishers who take their time to do things.
I'm thinking it's only a matter of time before some twisted 3-headed Elminster figure with 4 fingers and a weird flute in his hair blowing bubbles into an inverted fish bowl--is on the cover of a Witch got her Groove Back Adventure Pack Prime Battle Pass ++.
I think Daniel Fox is thinking of what WotC has historically been, not what it wants to be. They are making a move to digitize the majority of D&D, it's why Chris talks about AI, his online games and all of that. They don't want to be a book publisher, they want a solid steady stream of income and this new digitization is going to allow them to charge little monies for lots of things rather than the big book sales. Speed is what they are after and if AI can help them make things faster, they'll do that. They will still hire creatives, but give them so many "D&D official tools" that it'll be a very safe set of products in the near future to shore up their digital experience. I would go so far as to say that it's possible in 5-10 years we no longer call D&D a 'tabletop' rpg. They definitely want it to be something else now and get those monies.
THAT SPONSORED INTRO ... AMAZING!!! This is one of the best advertising I have ever seen. I enjoyed it. If all your ads are like that, I will never skip them.l If I had the money I would have considered this kickstarter.
Within some very certain circumstances, such as topographical map generation or spelling and grammar check, I see no need to use AI tool. If I need art, there's a billion images human have already made. If I need dialogue, I'm quite capable. If I need monsters, I have plenty of books and databases. Honestly? TTRPGs doesn't feel like a thing AI would be reasonably useful for anyway. Not in this day and age.
What if you need a very specific picture? "The party encounters a tribe of Kobolds wielding spears and riding giant platypi. They've just returned from hunting and they are dragging the corpse of a large stag behind them on ropes"
@@manchasdos I don't think it's outside the range of my player's imaginations to visualize that. But in the specific cases when, say, they come across a horse statue wearing a WW1 helmet riding a man while chewing bubblegum, I happen to be a professional illustrator and can draw that. Also, if you need such a thing, drop me a line. I'm cheap.
@@mikerojas6513 Lol. That's cool! I think this is very much a "there's no wrong way" kind of thing. You don't need art to have an enjoyable game session. If you want art, AI art is now another option and it has the plusses that it's cheap and easy and can do anything. The negatives are it lacks style variety and creativity. Existing art is also an option that could be cheap, but is somewhat limited even with billions of images. Pro illustrators are probably the best of all for any pro or semi-pro venture. But even cheap is not free and if I'm just putting together a thursday night session with friends some easy AI art may be the way to go.
@@dungeoneerofphilosophyphd172 Nothing wrong with that, but if people want art, AI art is now another option. It might work for some people and not for others.
The story of the half Tabaxi, half Dragonborn's parents would be an epic D&D love story. Also, Pirate Borg is excellent. It's like they took all lessons learned from Mork Borg and incorporated those improvements. Good stuff.
Never used Bing. Never used Chrome on a new PC. But, to be fair I ditched Windows for Linux a quarter of a century ago. Even back in the day, I ditched IE after version 5. I've been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix (before Firebird).
I use AI for character portraits. Writing the adventure itself takes a lot of my time already and I couldn't manage also drawing the characters. The use of AI has helped me flesh out some characters more, by randomly adding some details that I hadn't thought of, but the best thing about it is the reaction on the player's faces. Sometimes, when you describe a character, the player will pick up pretty easily if it's a villain, if he's lying to them or just honest, but showing them a character with a face they can immediately hate or love is incredibly funny and mixes up their expected behaviour during interactions.
I've used AI a couple times to make art for NPCs. But I've turned away from that in favor of the old way of using Google Images or most recently using Hero Forge.
I also use Hero Forge for creating screenshots of characters and NPCs. I also love that you can purchase the STL file for about $8 if you want to print the minis yourself. It's really nice that two of our players have 3D printers. 🙂
Used it for character creations for a few one shot characters and small campaigned ones. I still feel as concept creation its a fine tool to start with but never end on.
I'm an exclusively virtual DM, and I use midjourney all the time for set dressing and NPC images. We stream our sessions, too (so we can go back and refer to them), so any copyrighted images are a no-go. It's been handy, but I dare say it's been a crutch for me, b/c I usually skip out on narrating physical descriptions. It also prevents players from forming their own image of an NPC in their mind based on how I describe it, which is something I'm beginning to dislike.
I’m in my thirties… but I still don’t care to use AI for another 10-20yrs in any capacity, until we as a society can better figure out what it is, it’s risks and costs, and actual benefits.
I use it for art at the table and idea generation. Like say I want to make a wandering monster table. I can have it spit out in 5 seconds and use that as a starting point to refine myself.
I play with "30 or 40 people" has strong "my girlfriend lives in Canada" energy. 40 people? What, are we supposed to believe Chris Cocks is some kind of super-DM that can juggle a group of 40 players? In Kara-Tur, a setting that hasn't even had a book since 1990?
To be fair, autocorrect is AI/ML. AI/ML is a very blanket term. It is easy to say everyone uses some form of AI unless they're purely pen and paper. What tool they're using needs to be clarified.
The idea that he had a binary choice, fire hundreds of people, or cut company dividends, is absurd. He could have taken a pay cut and cut the pay of all of the top management by something like %15 and that could cover more than the salaries of all of the people he fired.
Good point. Most of top management gets paid in stock options as opposed to cash. When salaries are reported, those numbers are included--but they are phantom, money until this options are exercised.
Google Gemini is pretty close to accomplishing your described character building function. I have a Google doc of my own little system and can ask Gemini, "Create a character in this system based on the archetype of a barbarian in d&d." I have to correct it afterwards, but it comes back with something in at least the right format.
But that's true for sooo many things. People constantly pay other people for stuff they _could_ do themselves - but don't have the time for or just don't _want_ to do.
@harmless6813 true but that's because they have the option to pay using their job which many won't have soon but will have plenty of free time since they cant find a job.
@@Telhias I think it stores the shavings in a cloud but I'm not sure which one so I couldn't recover them. Sidebar: The pencil sharpener isn't working that well anymore and is starting to heat up when I try to use it.
What I have used is chatgpt to produce: (although I'd use copilot or gemini today) - A set 9 of magic itemS around a similar theme. - Descriptions of areas - Monster stats with a given theme and albities. Example: "I need a shadow assassin monster for 5e. It should be CR3 be able to teleport between shadows and choke the PCs with a strangling cord." (both copilot and gemini give a decent result) - Clean up a pitch for a convention game
I keep getting Facebook ads asking me if I would like an AI DM to run my games, as someone who has always been a worldbuilder and loves the DM experience since I got Heroquest at the age of 12, I want AI to create the perfect players for the games I want to run so I can be a DM without the scheduling conflicts and Rules lawyering.
As a disabled person who can't guarantee a set schedule and a compulsive altaholic, my answer would be "yes, but only if you can make a better game than I could write as a novel myself"
Heroquest was awesome. During the Stanic Panic I had to hide that I was playing D&D from my parents. They did not care at all about Heroquest because it was not called D&D, yet it had the same kind of stuff in the game. I still have my original Heroquest and I bought the new edition and expansion modules that I missed back in the day. On another note, I ran a mini adventure using ChatGPT. I gave it a grade of "D" for the adventure it made. It would fail to adhere to the rules and would eventually just give you everything you wanted. It would also get stuck in a loop and keep throwing the same scenario at me until I called it out and said it was just doing the same thing over and over. It then moved the story forward. I don't see AI DMs being able to do the job anytime soon. I would never use an AI GM in any game I ran and would only use it for testing. It actually does an OK job when I want to run some combat scenarios between different characters to see how they fare.
Honestly, I have to respectfully say that I think the comment at 6:20 is misinterpreting what AI can and will be used for. As an amateur DM, tools to *aid* creativity are immensely helpful and time-saving. If a tool can generate an image or add flair to a description, or alternatively provide a nuanced description of a throw-away NPC or location, I’m all for it. Let me focus on the big picture and telling and directing the story, and give me the tools to enhance my creativity (AI is *not* going to replace my creativity). Anyways, just my two cents.
I've used AI to help write scripted dialogue, like describing rooms that players enter into. I've also used it to help with inspiration for filling the voids in map-making. Like, I've made a Warhammer 40k campaign, and there was an Ork Weapon Horde I wanted to write up about in the bowels of a derelict ship. But aside from the weapon horde, entrance, and mek's lab, I couldn't think of what else could be there in case the players didn't want to take a direct smash 'n grab route. AI gave me ideas for a food galley turned into a shooting range, and a squig infested shower and locker room area.
Have you looked at dScryb for help with scripted dialogue? It's written by humans and the descriptions are really good imo. There's a good selection of free scenes
there's a difference between machine learning and genrative AI. GenAI is ChatGPT. they're using machine learning which is more about recognizing and predicting patterns
And another thing... making characters, designing encounters and scenarios, and campaign arcs for my players IS THE FUN PART!!! Why the f*** would I want to let an AI do that!?!? To quote anonymous: "The underlying purpose of AI is for wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth". No, I won't be using AI in my games, and that'll be easy because most reputable game companies have already denounced it.
I find that AI is great for getting my creative juices going and getting me out of a rut, especially when my players go off into left field unexpectedly. During a game a quick prompt can give me an idea to use to finish out the session on a high note. Between sessions it's great for creating descriptive text that i can have at hand to use. I've been playing since March '77 (issue 5 of Dragon is when it all started), and have always looked for ideas to use and modify to fit my game. Magazines and books came first, later chat rooms and token rings, then TH-cam videos, and now AI. They are all tools, and I embrace them all. They make my game better, and in the end that is all I really care about.
Knowledge Worker Aid is absolutely nothing to discredit them for. It’s creeping into every company, and it’s not content creation. It’s “where’s the link for PTO submissions”. For content creation, I’ll openly say I want to use it for campaign building. Put in 4 or 5 naming conventions of a Dwarf and ask ChatGPT to generate 12 characters, including a Dwarven lord and his three children. Boom. NPCs with names and connections in an instant. And there’s nothing to discredit doing that. *It does not affect the fun you can have at the table.*
It must be sad to not want to take the time to be creative. 😢
หลายเดือนก่อน +1
"I want a medium difficulty encounter of goblins and stuff that fits with goblins for my party of xyz." - Ai generates an actually medium difficulty encounter knowing party composition, seems like a normal and good use of AI for dungeon mastering. I really have no idea why people are so upset with it. Gives me luddite vibes, but idk.
Hi Prof. DM. AT around 2:30 you talked about ChatGPT AI and in-house AI and asked, "Whatever that means." The difference is that ChatGPT pulls from anywhere on the web, including proprietary info, so you can be sued for using it. If you do your own AI, you own everything. I've seen articles from several large companies stating they are doing their own AI for that reason. Just some FYI, if anyone cares. 😜
Use of AI for responsible reasons in the open could be a positive thing like using a proprietary ChatGDT to help DMs fill out descriptions of scenes rolled from a random encounter table.
Most of the companies “building” their own are doing no such thing (it costs 10s of million of dollars to train these models). They are running private instances (own AWS instances) of Chat/LLama/LLava Also you can’t be sued for using ChatGPT - you just can’t copyright what is produced
I asked ChatGPT to make that character: Certainly! Below is a custom 5th-level stat block for a half-Tabaxi, half-Dragonborn Monk/Paladin multiclass. I’m assuming the character has 3 levels in Monk and 2 levels in Paladin, but this can be adjusted. --- ### **Half-Tabaxi, Half-Dragonborn Monk/Paladin (Level 5)** **Medium Humanoid (Tabaxi, Dragonborn), Lawful Good** --- **Armor Class:** 18 (unarmored defense or chain mail + shield) **Hit Points:** 42 (3d8+2d10+10, considering Constitution modifier) **Speed:** 40 ft. (due to Tabaxi and Monk Unarmored Movement) --- ### **STR** | **DEX** | **CON** | **INT** | **WIS** | **CHA** 15 (+2) | 16 (+3) | 14 (+2) | 10 (+0) | 14 (+2) | 13 (+1) --- **Saving Throws:** Strength +4, Dexterity +5, Wisdom +4, Charisma +3 **Skills:** Acrobatics +5, Athletics +4, Insight +4, Perception +4, Stealth +5 **Senses:** Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 14 **Languages:** Common, Draconic, Elvish --- ### **Proficiencies** - **Weapons:** Simple weapons, shortswords, martial weapons - **Armor:** All armor, shields - **Tools:** Thieves' tools, artisan's tools (your choice) --- ### **Racial Traits** - **Draconic Ancestry (Fire):** Gain a breath weapon and resistance to fire damage. - **Breath Weapon (Recharge 5-6):** 15 ft. cone, DC 12 Dexterity save. 2d6 fire damage on a failed save, half on success. - **Feline Agility:** When you move on your turn in combat, you can double your speed until the end of the turn. You can’t use this again until you move 0 feet on one of your turns. --- ### **Class Features:** **Paladin (Level 2):** - **Divine Sense (2/day):** As an action, detect the location of any celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet. - **Lay on Hands (10 points):** Heal yourself or others by spending points from this pool. - **Fighting Style (Defense):** +1 bonus to AC while wearing armor. - **Spellcasting:** - Spell Save DC 11, Spell Attack +3 - **1st Level (2 slots):** *Divine Favor, Shield of Faith, Cure Wounds* **Monk (Level 3):** - **Unarmored Defense:** AC = 10 + Dexterity modifier + Wisdom modifier (AC 15 without armor, 18 with a shield). - **Martial Arts (1d4):** Use Dexterity for unarmed strikes and monk weapons. When you take the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon, make an additional unarmed strike as a bonus action. - **Ki (3 points):** - **Flurry of Blows:** After an Attack action, spend 1 ki to make two unarmed strikes as a bonus action. - **Patient Defense:** Spend 1 ki to take the Dodge action as a bonus action. - **Step of the Wind:** Spend 1 ki to take the Disengage or Dash action as a bonus action, and your jump distance is doubled for the turn. - **Unarmored Movement:** +10 ft. movement while not wearing armor or wielding a shield. - **Deflect Missiles:** Reduce damage from ranged weapon attacks by 1d10 + Dexterity modifier + Monk level. If reduced to 0, you can catch and throw the projectile. --- ### **Actions:** - **Multiattack:** - Make two attacks with a monk weapon or unarmed strike. - **Unarmed Strike (Martial Arts):** - Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. - Hit: 1d4 + 3 bludgeoning damage. - **Breath Weapon (Recharge 5-6):** - Exhale fire in a 15-foot cone. - Each creature in the area must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw, taking 2d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one. - **Divine Smite (2/day):** When you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, expend a spell slot to deal an extra 2d8 radiant damage (3d8 against undead or fiends). - **Lay on Hands:** Heal up to 10 hit points in total (expend as needed). --- ### **Bonus Actions:** - **Martial Arts Unarmed Strike:** After attacking with a monk weapon or unarmed strike, make an additional unarmed strike. - **Flurry of Blows (1 ki):** After an attack, make two unarmed strikes. --- ### **Reactions:** - **Deflect Missiles:** Use your reaction to reduce damage from a ranged attack. --- ### **Equipment:** - Quarterstaff (monk weapon) - Shortsword - Chain mail (AC 18 with shield) - Shield - Holy Symbol (focus for Paladin spells)
--- ### **Backstory:** Born of a wandering Tabaxi merchant and a noble Dragonborn warrior, this character embodies the grace and agility of their feline lineage with the burning conviction of a Paladin. Trained in monastic discipline from a young age, they combine the spiritual path of a Monk with the divine mandate of a Paladin, fighting to protect the innocent with speed, strength, and righteous fury. I don't know why it added the hastags and asterixs when I copy/pasted, but there you go.
AI is a tool to be harnessed by all of us, but it doesn’t replace - just assists. AI is quite good at understanding DnD from what I have experienced, but like with any other topic AI makes errors. Knowing the right way to prompt and also being able to spot errors is key.
For the algorithm. When DMing I use bing art to generate npcs and monsters for tokens. I use chatgpt to generate stat blocks for unique characters. As a player I sometimes use bing art to recreate a awesome moment in the game, usually with a laughably bad outcome.
I've said this in other YT comments recently, but I played a game of Paranoia over Labor Day Weekend. We had the brilliant idea of having ChatGPT being the GM, aka Friend Computer in Paranoia-speak. I started a prompt with ChatGPT to test this out and it's SCARY how good it was. I want to develop the idea into something with voice input & prompts and see where it leads. Replacing a Paranoia GM with an machine tool is _exactly_ what the Paranoia team should embrace. But that's a small company compared to the juggernaut that is Hasbro.
The problem is that as I understand it, Paranoia is sold as as box set, and those are usually bought by people intending to GM. Replae the GM with an AI and the players would need to buy it. (Or just ask ChatGPT to synthesize the rules for them.)
@@TorIverWilhelmsen "Or just ask ChatGPT to synthesize the rules for them." "Such information is beyond your clearance, friend Troubleshooter. Please report to the nearest disintegration booth. Now with more minty freshness!"
@@TorIverWilhelmsen This should surprise no one at this point, b7t ChatGPT already knows the "rules" to Paranoia. Somehow ChatGPT found those and probably didn't pay for them. I'm also doing this with a group that owns at least two copies of the game. One boxed set, one set of hardcover books.
Also, as a player. I use mid journey to make images of events while taking session notes for the other players and DM. It makes them feel more like something produced than pulling extant art off of google. My own skill level otherwise is only enough to generate in character sketches… as a Minotaur barbarian with 7 INT. It has brought some real delight to the table I think. Would think an NPC generator could be an amazing tool since it might actually solve the player to DM problem of asking too much about every NPC you don’t write in advance.
I don't use AI. Not to make characters, not to plot for me. The closest I get is my screen reader. If i did though I don't think i'd be satisfied with what i got without going in and making heavy revisions, or redrawing to make it more cohesive etc. I just know I can do much better.
I am part of a gaming group and out DM will allow players to sometimes RP character interests as part of character development. During this, it often results in the characters going off to do things on their own. To involve the other players while the RP focuses on someone else, our DM will name an NPC, tell the other players a few key traits/behaviors of the NPC, and have us other players play out the NPC's. This is usually great fun, but one of my fellow players is a student at a mage college and when she wanted to sit in on a lecture about Abnormal Metaphysics then DM turned to me, told me a paragraph of backstory on Professor Glimmerwick Shortfuse, and joyfully said - You get to give the lecture.... You can be DAMN sure I gave about 3 minutes of introduction to the class while I loaded up Chat GPT and asked it to give me some lecture topics, directions, and summaries. Doing an eccentric gnome? sure... fine. I can do that. A fantasy based lecture on the magical implications of Abnormal Metaphysics and how it relates to the parable of the sentient toaster .. well, that is something I needed a bit of help with. And I think that was a reasonable use of Chat GPT.
I use ChatGPT as my writing assistant. A typical prompt is "My main character is trying to sneak into a castle. Give me twenty ways he might do that." This is the sort of thing I used to just use plain old Google before and hope it gave me something vaguely about a castle. But now, when I ask this question, ChatGPT has the context of my story, and the suggestions it makes can take advantage of what it knows about that castle, or the surrounding lands, or the type of magic used, etc etc. AI as a writing assistant is next level. If you're railing against it, you just aren't using it correctly, or just basing your kneejerk responses on other kneejerk responses. All my writing is my own, just like it was all my writing when I was utilizing responses from plain old Google searches. AI just cuts through the chaff infinitely faster.
@@oskar6661 lol. Well, you clearly can't read, so I'm not surprised you fail to understand how writing works. But you ARE great at regurgitating ignorant talking points.
This stuff that Hasbro keeps pulling is why I find it harder and harder to want to get into DnD specifically as a TTRPG - if I wanted a game incredibly complex rules with massive tech integration that does all the advanced calculations for me, I'd play a video game I want to roleplay with friends, not buy a product
DnD has always been in the hands of people who are either sub-optimal at game design, business acumen, or both, and their customer relations have never been top-notch. The current set might commoditize and paywall the brand, but the hobby will carry on.
Machine learning vs ai just means they are doing statistical stuff rather than using an llm or image diffusion model. Like technically a linear regression is a machine learning model and I’m sure they are already using that to analyze player feedback from huge survey numbers. They may also be using knns to find players similar to you to better know what you like so they can upsell you books or minis or whatever.
Hey, I'm a musician and a creative. My hot take. I don't hate Ai. I'm old enough to remember people complaining that electric typewriters were evil and then later word processing was surely going to turn us into illiterate vegetables. None of that was true. As with electric guitars, effects, DAWs, syth, Tech makes good artists life easier and their art better. As always, humans and Tech need to work together. I use Ai in my art but I'd never use Ai to write my music. Because I dont have to. The results are more enjoyable for me if done myself. But I don't hate AI music. By itself, it will never replace a creative that can use Ai to enhance their own work. None of us are going to stop the Ai movement. We need to work with it
I think the most worrying aspect is still the ethical part that AIs are trained on data that belongs to other people that don’t consent or even pull up privacy concerns. Hasbro could use all created dndbeyond characters to train a „character generator“ so that more backstory can be generated. If they usectheir statblocks to generate new ones I don’t really care.
AI: Publishers of things like D&D :: Guide Tracks : Film Scores. If you look at film, editors/directors use other movie’s music (seemingly always the pirates of the Caribbean…) to edit to for pacing, so when the composer gets the film, they are pigeon holed by the timing and expectations of the director post-guide track, potentially watering down their creative output. But directors seem to love guide track because they can work more quickly and autonomously.
Fellas. This isn't going to replace in-person tabletop experience. And this isn't a move to entice us old heads. This is a move that will appeal to the kids raised by phones and tablets at the same time.
The most I've ever used AI for is character and monster ideas, and whenever I actually use what it gives me, I rework and change it so much that it barely resembles what the AI came up with.
Wow, ain't so much fun when a machine takes your job, is it? 1980s factory workers who were sneered at and told "you should go to college" have a message for you. "Learn to code."
Speaking here as someone who was working for a large publisher last year and this year has gone to a bunch of tech shows: even though most people now consider “AI” to refer specifically to machine-learning or generative AI, a LOT of people in tech have a habit of using a broader definition of AI in order to sell the idea of it being already largely adopted. I can’t help but suspect that when Cox says “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use AI”, he might be operating with that same sort of double-speak in an effort to move the needle for both investors (“Everyone here is on board with the newest technology”) and consumers (“why be up in arms about AI when everyone already uses it?”)
"Worker Aid(e)" just means "Artist Replacement" and little else. I doubt they spent money to make an independent AI just to recall nerd facts they already have on-hand... That's silly, Prof.
Simple tasks such as creating characters don't require AI. There are spreadsheets available on the web for creating characters where you select you class and race and enter your stats and the spreadsheet calculates the mods, move rate, and so on. Or it's easy to write a program to do that. AI is useful mainly for more complex tasks requiring decision making.
That's what the rich want it to be, but they haven't thought it through. Corporations are salivating about being able to save money by firing all their employees. But if a single person can do the work of many, why do we need large, investment-backed corporations for creative work? To put it another way, Chris Cocks makes the argument that individual GMs are already using AI to create content for their games. If WotC's plan is to lay off staff and use AI to generate content, why would GMs buy that content from WotC when they are already using AI to make content themselves?
The only thing I’ve tried to use A.I. for in my games is for art work, namely for generating pictures of NPC, scene locations, or magical items and weapons. Basically so I can describe a character, a situation, or an item found by the players, but then I have a supporting picture that can be handed to the players for future reference. This allows the players to stash away a weapon card with stats and a picture so they can have it with there stuff, to say, “this is the cool double bow hand-crossbow I found. Or, “hey, can I see that picture of the inside of the hag’s cottage, can I check out that small chest with the weird symbol I remember seeing in the sewers the day before.” And various other applications. The problem is A.I. is terrible at creating picture that include specific details that you want added in a specific way that may harken back to previous clues or adventures the party has experienced. If you tell the A.I. to create cool picture with no real constraints, context, or specificity it can come up with very interesting stuff. Sometimes too interesting, like why do all the elves suddenly have 3 arms. But if you want to Guide the A.I. in any real thematic way, good luck. You spend more time correcting the mistakes and oddities that the A.I. starts adding than actually coming close to a usable picture. As a result I’ve stopped even trying due to frustration over something I thought would be a time saver for me.
I’m part of a Star Wars RPG group that has 2 simultaneous campaigns run every other week. As the GM of my campaign I’ve used AI for strategic planning or anticipating how certain characters would react to a situation. For example I asked ChatGPT how Thrawn would approach my PC’s antics, and it really helped. The other GM uses AI tools much more extensively, from help with story points to creating audio cutscenes with various narrators. We both also use it for balancing home-brewed rules, since our source book is over 30 years old. All in all it’s a pretty robust tool, but really it’s just a setup tool; I don’t see how it could ever effectively take over as a inventive GM.
AI, VTT’s, and digital gaming has its place. But, I do feel that there still is, and always will be, those of us that play old school. We want our games to feel organic, and that includes any published adventures. I truly believe AI created content will feel artificial.
This is the future of D& D like it or not. I wish them and the fans of this version of D&D luck and happiness with it. I'm glad there's other TTRPGs (every day more) even better than D&D I can play at a table.
As a sketch artist.. what is the big deal, art is a passion.. matters not how perfect their visual aspects are. As a roleplayer, it's not going to stop me from sketching out the parties characters or scenes. At 43 with 26 years of experience under my belt.. roleplaying is changing. People are playing online and using all this digital $#!+.. it's just not the same.. that doesn't mean you have to change the way you play. I still prefer meeting with a group of people I really know and playing in person with our graph paper, photocopy sheets, 20 books, bags of dice, and 24 pack of mountain dew
I have to admit, I use it everyday for game prep. Mostly to create token/portrait assets and occasionally a setting image. There’s nothing better for iterating a very specific character design when session is just in a few hours. I’d love to hire a real artist for things like this, but the usual turnaround time is just not possible. Even if I did prep a month in advance to adequately give a hired artist the time they need - there’s always the matter of last-minute revisions and additions. Otherwise, I never use AI for any written or narrative content.
I use AI extensively for my campaign. I am no artist, so it is really handy for generating NPC portraits, tokens, and other artwork. I have a paid ChatGPT account and have built a custom GPT that knows the rules of my game (Shadowdark), my house rules, the details of my setting, monster stats, etc. I can feed it my session notes and it will spit out a nicely written narrative about the session to add to the campaign chronicle. It's great at whipping up songs, poems, riddles, etc. If I need a quick NPC it can generate one instantly and display it using my preferred stat block format. AI is certainly not going anywhere, so I figure it's better to learn how to use it effectively than just say "no."
But you understand this is just messing around, right? You enjoy making AI pictures for your game, just like many old modules had lots of pictures to show players; but they're almost more of a distraction. Likewise poems and riddles. And your session notes are the real chronicle -- all AI does is bloat them out, make them take longer to read, and probably introduce errors. It's like "I use my cat in my D&D sessions and the players really enjoy it" doesn't mean the DMG should have a section on cat use or that Hasbro should sell D&D kitties.
I work in web admin and web development. It seems like right now EVERY online service I've ever used is either dying or using AI. There might be times it's not unethical, but the fact is, it's almost impossible to work without dealing with services that don't use AI. Until the Butlerian J-word, I doubt we're getting away from it sadly.
In all the groups I roll with, we only use BING for AI generated images; focused on (N)PC likenesses. Not one DM uses AI for any drivers of the story, or aids. All original IPs.
I plead guilty. For my home game, I have on occasion asked Dall-E for an image representing a monster statblock I reskinned, or asked ChatGPT to turn my lore into a poem for exposition purposes. It’s really practical in that sense, but I’m the one doing the content, and the AI is just helping me present it better. Anything more than presentation is not an area that AI should participate, in my opinion
I used AI once to test while building a small adventure. I used it for names, some art (putting ruins or towns on specific landscape photos), and I used it to make my own, poorly drawn, continent and I made a few different variations on it. I think the way I used it was great, they were things I could have done myself if I took time to learn new computer applications or improved my drawing ability. I could learn to use photoshop to make the map how I wanted it to look but I saved tons of time by manipulating AI to make the maps in just one afternoon versus the weeks it would have taken me to learn a program I might use once or twice a year. I’ve been using name generators for a decade and that’s barely AI. AI has a place, it’s a tool not a creative.
I use it to explore subleties of the world. What might be some lesser known considerations of a half-elf raised among half-orcs? How many people in waterdeep would be strong enough magic users to regrow limbs? What kinds of things might a fairy trying to disguise themselves as a halfling accidentally give away as clues that they're not a halfling? Sort of a brainstorming tool for lore.
![“อ.เบียร์ คนตื่นธรรม” มาตามคำเรียกร้อง แหกศาสตร์ฮวงจุ้ย เตือนสติอย่างมงาย | แฉ 7 พ.ย. 67 [1/3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5fc4S3xBNfc/mqdefault.jpg)
We’ve moved from the outright lying phase (“We would never do something like that!”) to the gaslighting phase (“All the cool kids are doing it!”). I’m looking forward to the Orwell phase (“D&D was never played with pens and paper! It was always on a VTT! How do you feel about rats?”)
Anyway, who’s up for a game of EZD6?
Made me laugh out loud. And EZD6 is a GREAT game.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Indeed it is! So many of the things I’m trying to do in my own system are done successfully in that system. I can’t say enough good things about Scotty.
"How do you feel about rats?" Lmao
Nailed it.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Why laugh? it's not so far fetched.
"I work for a corporation in 2024, so I have to say "AI" at least once an hour." - Chris Cocks
Brought to you by Carls Junior
😂
Chris is quite a cock.
"No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn't want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over. My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong KIND of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches."
-- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
1984 wasn’t a warning it was a blue print, a textbook. I don’t think enough people are aware of how evil and horrific things have become.
No one wants to believe the elites of the world are truly running a sci fi scheme.
And people can say they’re just morons making mistakes.
Sorry but one time is weird, two times is coincidence, three times forms a pattern, and more than that is a program
I have taught that book. Great times.
Consider the chances of great minds pondering future possibilities whilst sitting on the porch after dinner, smoking a pipe and watching the sun set. Imagine what revolutionary notions evolved from such a place? 🤯
@@dustymiller65 Mathematics, Architecture, Music, Philosophy, Logic, Astronomy, Physics, Literature. In short, Humanity at it's best.
"Bend the cost curve" AKA clandestine corporate cost cutting, but couched in terms of content creation.
Probably.,
The modern CEO’s job is to increase stock prices via increasing profit margins and the easiest way to do that is by cutting costs.
And the biggest cost is always personnel.
"Bend the cost curve" is so Orwellian. More like 'Bend the content creators over'. When they talk about 'bend the cost curve', the corpos don't even realize they're talking about real people and their livelihoods!
Reality of the true cost of AI in a corporate world will soon be public knowledge. There is no cost savings with AI.
AI is also a leveller of creativity. It averages things out to the centre of the bell curve. Creators live at the edge of the bell curve that AI (by design) ignores.
AI is a computing tool and has its place. It's not 'creating' masterpieces. Its 'creating' average things fast.
AI searching is horrifically expensive for the computing change and infrastructure needed, and also the environment as far as an energy hog.
AI is much hype at the moment and it will settle to a powerful, useful tool. We just need to get past this hype stage to see what it actually brings to society and culture.
@@silo_fx3182 Bro, current creatives are for the most part pretty mid tier at best. They're not creating masterpieces. A handful live on the edge of the bell curve and most of those don't do it professionally. AI is still cheaper to create mid level content then hand it over to a handful of successful content creators to improve it.
In a few years...
1. log into D&D VTT "Tavern", select "open table" or "private booth"
2. click "seeking PCs levels 4-6" (all stored behind a paywall on D&D Beyond)
3. When your party is assembled, click "descend the well to Undermountain" (please wait while the dungeon is stocked)
4. begin tactical crawl through randomly generated, "level appropriate" challenges while virtual DM emits occasional quips, drops hints, and narrates from a set of scripts (updated monthly).
Welcome to 2004.
Lol. Possible.y
Or a different version: Hey guys want to play d&d? We can't, we don't have a dungeon master. It's ok, there's this AI tool that helps DMs, I'll DM for you, its super easy you just have to join the subscription, we load a pre-written module, and the program will pay attention and give you suggestions on what to do next based on what your party members say. Oh and the AI will also offer help and suggestions for character creation so you know how to make your characters, it even generates random premade characters if you just want to try the game out.
- Your priest is looking at the artifact in the corner? Perhaps ask her to roll a medium difficulty (10+) religion check; if she's successful you can let her know its an idol to her goddess' rival.
- Your barbarian asked the AI tool how many rages he has left, based on his character sheet, he only has one use left. But he forgot to record the rage from the prior room, so he actually has none left - Perhaps you can compromise and offer him a potion in that chest to give him another rage use for the next room?
10 years later, you realize that all of those 'people' you played with, were bots all along. There's nobody in the system. Bots are playing it with themselves to create an illusion of success.
@@TimoRutanen may the true treasure was the friends who were all bots we made along the way😆
How can you tell bots and real players you met randomly on the internet apart?
Bots actually pay attention.
Data science is my field, i build models all day.
Machine learning is a blanket term, ai is a marketing term, deep learning is a type of machine learning that uses neural networks, and all of these have been in use for a lot of benign and useful purposes for decades now.
This is absolutely talking about making slop though. They arnt talking about training a model to predict sales or products you want.
"AI strategy" has become something investors looks at now, so most companies have to pretend to be doing something with it... no matter what is really is.
yep. it's the latest corporate buzzword. A 'bubble', even
also
> data science
> furry pfp
checks out ;)
@@YeahYeahBeebisI fair enough lol.
Gamers need to stop watching dystopian films about AI. AI isn’t good enough (yet) to take over the world. It’s not unlike the introduction of machines at the turn of the beginning of the 20th century, it may change the world but it won’t destroy it.
@@edwardmorrison669 you say this, on a platform nearly entirely operated by it.
There is a clear reason, it is cheaper than hiring writers, designers, and artists. December layoffs are going to be a trip this year!! My guess is that all of the 2nd tier "game designers" will be let go. We might even see either Perkins or Crawford gone as well, they don't need both.
Don't threaten ME with a good time!
*Cheaper for now.
AI is only becoming more expensive by the day. Within 5 years it'll be more expensive, mark my words.
We'll see.
Weeeellllll.... you are presuming that creative use of gen-AI is just monkeys-with-typewriters stuff... or maybe Skynet? Who do you think is going to do the work of developing and using the AI tools? Writers, designers and artists that know how to use AI tools to produce high-quality content will be more expensive than writers, designers and artists that don't. If WOTC (or any content creator) is to do gen-AI well, they will need to rely on creative humans to do it.
@@kaijuultimax9407 Really? How will that play out.
In May of 2024 Chris Cocks made it crystal clear he had very faint idea what kind of game DnD is, much less how it's played. And now he plays "with probably 30 or 40 people regularly"?! Seems fishy, to say the least. Shocker. Perhaps it is time that Hasbro's top management was overtaken by artificial intelligence in lieu of the abundant natural stupidity.
He runs a very elaborate Westmarches campaign? Or a few? Or you know, he's lying.
He probably had to learn the game so made his employees bring him into their games. 30-40 people = Wizards employees.
He has “a concept of a campaign”
@@gregwoitte1299 that would make a good SNL skit
@@vinnyboomba9948undercover boss style😂
When they invent a holodeck they can call me...until then I'll keep it old school
Three lights...
The holodeck programs were still written by people, we see examples of this in ds9 with the games bashir plays, it' also in voyager where parish actively authors the programs and there is even an episode about can even a true artificial being claim ownership of a program it writes.
@@CandycornMilkteaSome of them. They are able to ask the Holodeck to create a new adventure in the style of Sherlock Holmes novels. Which looking at it now is eerily close to a ChatGPT or StableDiffusion prompt
Yeah... as a player and occasional DM, D&D is largely my escape form technology. Maps, minis, pen, paper, and dice are the escape. Pulling it all back on the computer feels too much like work lol. I love what tech does for me with prepping sessions, and making maps, and designing and 3D printing minis, etc. But at the table... outside of jumping to an appropriate song in a play list, I generally want Zero computer use at the table. I already get 12+ hours a day in front of a screen work work and play... I really don't need more.
@@CaedenV I still instinctively call the games pen and paper rpgs.
Just remember that when Cocks is talking to Sachs, somone is about to get screwed.
Either he can pull it off or about to gain a powerful enemy in the business world
Just wait until Mike Hunt comes in.
My guess is all the products on Dungeon Master Guild has been used to train that bot.
"My self-selected friend groups think that AI is great!" OK. That's not exactly selling me or filling me with confidence.
Lol. Brutal. And HILARIOUS.
AI is good for "filler", but... I think everyone here knows, rolling with your players to develop a plot is a very nuanced talent.
True, but remember how the "D&D" audience is evolving away from complex world-campaigns to "short" dungeons for "short" attention spans. The standards for what newer players might consider "plot" will not be the same as how Grognards like me, who play home-brew FRPGs at table, with mature players, define the word. With each Hasbro move, D&D continues to be less and less the game I learned and loved in 1979.
@@DungeonsforDecades Evolving away? Maybe... evolving back to how the game was predominantly played in the '70s and '80s? I was there too, and often "campaigns" were strung-together adventure modules and a series of self-contained homebrewed two-or-three shots.
@@DungeonsforDecades younger player here (I've been around in the ttrpg space only since 2009 xD)
Weren't the original campaigns often strings of semi-connected modules? In that regard, it wouldn't be that much of a change, no? Maybe more of a refinement of an older idea?
It is literally the heart of the TTRPG medium. Without a nuanced human helming your just playing BG3.
@@talscorner3696 Youngster, it appears that way at short reach. The original campaigns were structured around goals, and ways to reach them. Plural: because if you railroad a party, they WILL go off the rails just to thwart your designs.
Troll Lord Games currently uses 0% A.I. 😀
Great company.
@@TheCastleKeeper C&C is a good system.
Awesome company. Just purchased the collected writings of Gary Gygax for C&C and the Crusader (aka pre-WOTC/Paizo Dungeon) magazine.
Then TLG will likely lag behind eventually. Purist will hate it, but it will enrich the average gaming group that aren’t experts but want to have a fun game.
If they use Google for their searches, sorry to say that's not an accurate number.
One little thing I've used ChatGPT for: I told it to create a new language from a mix of Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Icelandic. Now, I use that thread when I need a place name. I tell it to translate a plain English name into the "language" it "created," and it spits out words that have a vaguely familiar ring to them, sound old-timey, and add a bit to the ambience of the setting.
Similarly, I paid for a subscription to Vulgar, an online language generator.
I'll also grab images for characters from Google searches. Some of the art pieces have been AI generated.
Sounds like a great idea!
See, that’s sounds like a sensible use of the tech- that kind of pseudo Etymology can save us from really bad naming.
Thanks for the idea!
@@harmless6813 i just use a real world language. same result, and occasionally real learning. just like when D&D got me to use a dictionary and thesaurus as a kid.
I started using ChatGPT this winter while prepping for my new campaign. I wrote the entire concept, but I used it to generate sidequest ideas and other minor stuff. Before the campaign started, I stopped using GPT and cleaved everything AI generated from my campaign for 2 reasons.
First, the quality just wasn't there. GPT can't know what kind of quests my players like to do. It can't add that little something that develops over years and years of gaming with the same group every week. I know what my players like, what's gonna make them laugh, etc. Everything AI generated just felt completely disconnected from anything I wrote myself.
Second, I want to look back at my campaign and be proud of what I created. To me D&D isn't just about the sessions themselves, but the challenges I managed to overcome to write them in the first place. If ChatGPT writes parts of my game, it feels like I've been robbed of that feeling of pride of having created a whole world filled with characters and events.
Well said! I feel the same.
Honestly, I like to use it for brainstorming. Just for hooks. I would never use it for anything more that that, because...well I love being a dm and creating all these stories and encounters.
I guess I'd need to test again but last time I tried using ChatGPT for development (doesn't really matter what kind of development) it wasn't able to remember enough context to be particularly useful.
But it's fine to generate ideas and help to flesh out some of my own.
AI can also provide a useful scapegoat when campaign development falls flat on its face. It's just as important for a human DM to take the fall when the game shits the bed due to bad design or worse table skills. Not ashamed to admit I've had a few moments like that over 40 years, but I've never forgotten them and never repeated them.
What a cheap dodge it would be to say, "Don't blame me, guys! The AI let me down!" Yeah, pal, and you utterly failed to see that the machine vomited up the contents of a septic tank, and left it for your players to smell the stench. Spare me.
@@xandroy1273 I've come to the conclusion that AI like ChatGPT is just a way to automate word vomit, so brainstorming is probably what it's most useful for. Just spitballing ideas en masse for DMs to use as a starting point.
The really important part is not only that, as the citation says, "AI is not a replacement for human creativity" - it is even worse as a replacement for human interaction, which as I see it has always been the real heart of tabletop RPG.
Couldn't happen to a better more out of touch Company. I believe we are still dealing with the aftermath of the 2020 pandemic. Lots of entertainment companies had a large influx of income when we were all stuck at home and they shifted their business noses towards chasing that income stream. It however is starting to dry up a bit and the decsions being made to try to keep a hold on that income are baffling to me.
Me too.
Baffling to the average person but makes sense to your average C-suite executive where most of their pay comes from stock options and performance bonuses.
Not to mention that the CEO’s job is to raise share prices and make it look good to investors by the quarter so they are incentivized to pursue short-term solutions that will sink the company in the long run.
Ok; Short answer: It's not baffling. I mean: Is it really surprising that a company that has people within it's ranks publicly insulting their customer base, screaming "if you don't like it, don't buy it" when talking to the traditional consumers of their IP, followed by being baffled that no one wants to buy their stuff? I mean: They are entirely blind to the cause of their problems - and it's necessary because if they admitted it, they would also be admitting they are the problem: Their politics are the problem.
DEI was functionally funded through the 2008 to about 2016 massive injection of stimulus money - the initial funding had some sense: Stem the tide, give time for decision makers to figure out what was happening, and how to deal with the fall out - but then it just continued, and continued, and continued. What should have seen deflation, bad debt wiped out, poorly ran companies go bust saw bad companies given a life line, and a handful of companies super charged - and yet, some of those, are failing hard now because they were kept alive on cheap debt. The Pandemic and the stimulous the government did was simply a super charging of this practice - and it gave a false sense of acceptability, profitability, and - the people pushing back against it, were pushed out. Hiring practices filtered for people who followed the prescribed ideology and the polarization was taken to the extreme.
The reason the money is drying up is a perfect storm: The DEI regime is creating content people don't want - so, people are less willing to buy; Financial constraints mean when people do buy things they want more value out of it - and that puts further downward pressure and creates a faster rejection of beloved IP's that have turned sour; Investors and Central bankers are nervous about the scale of debt, and are recognizing the reduced buying power of the populace - and that, is creating uncertainty and hesitancy to lend: Meaning, higher interest rates.
This last decade or so, has been a prime example of how: Big Government "solutions" cause more harm, and more pain in the long term - then they solve. You can't tax a society into prosperity, you can't regulate it into prosperity, and you can't print money for vanity projects and expect anything but strife - and if you do: You are a delusional idiot.
What could actually see a new golden era is... small, and medium business, made feasible through the internet. Crowd funding is one avenue, small low risk loans with low interest rates for start up of what one might term a micro business for tools/materials to generate income in craft markets and the like. The thing is - Big business, and Big government absolutely hate this reality. That reality means - less regulations are actually needed as people have more real job choice. It means that flooding the market with cheap labour through immigration is actually counter production, it means that unrestricted free-trade is actually bad for the economy not good (I actually think limited free trade between neer pier economies is good - but it needs to be handled in a way that brings quality of life, cost of living, and so on into similar enough conditions as to allow free movement of people to go alongside the free trade).
I wonder if they realize that if they move to AI writing and art, there's no reason why anyone would need to buy their products. We could just generate our own products using free AI tools.
Your new to this? Ive been homebrewing using AI for free for quite awhile. Making monsters, npcs, and a campaign in about 2 min.
You can do all of that without AI.
It's almost as if RPGs are a game based in the people's imagination.
@@justarandomname420 You can but AIs vastly reduce the amount of time it takes. If I was rich and could afford to hire human writers and artists to help me then I would. If I didn't have to work and could spend all day prepping my 2 hour game session then I would. As I am neither rich nor able to spend all my time on my hobby I make use of AI to fill the roles of human assistants and its already bloody good at it, more over it has vastly improved in just the last couple of years of using it for this. Where it'll be in another 2,5 or 10 years? I guess we'll see.
So why should humans bother in general to learn those skills?
What do we do in this future? Are we bubble based infinite consoomers being fed a constant diet of ai created entertainment, or imaginationless drones all working desk jobs monitoring the ai? What is a world where humans aren’t responsible for their own creativity any more?
Because you can’t be bothered to learn or improve yourself, and feel entitled to the skills and output of others (‘I can’t afford to pay them, I don’t have time to do it myself’ - so make the time, save the money, or don’t do the thing) that means just automate it? Take control of the means of production and all that…?
Not the point of the video, but just as an extra bit of information: machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence (e.g. the little ghosts in Pac-Man used a primitive form of artificial intelligence, but there was no machine learning involved). And neural networks (which is the general architecture of stuff like ChatGPT&co) are a subset of machine learning. That said, the terms are used a lot as synonyms in the news
Thank you. Very interesting.
If Jim Cramer is recommending Hasbro as a buy ... Look out! Stock is about to tumble.
"AI is the new Random Monster Encounter Generator".
Lol. He did not. But he did recommend NVDIA years ago and I am grateful I bought some.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1i foolishly spent my money on the graphics card instead of the stock.
😂😂😂
Even the broken clock is right twice a day
I love ALL non-ai content from Dungeoncraft
Ironically, I can never pass the "I'm not a robot" tests.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1apparently you're clicking to quickly and efficiently.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 I waste 10+min a week getting through captchas because of work...
@@BrentRogers5on the plus side, at least you're getting paid to do captchas
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1those are actually training sets for AI image detection
Keep TTRPG's analog as much as possible.
Most TTRPGs have been, and always will be, analog. People just need to realize there's more than just DnD out there.
Jackie Treehorn: “New technology permits us to do very exciting things in interactive erotic software. Wave of the future, Dude. 100% electronic!”
The Dude: “Hmm…well, I still jerk off manually.”
@@asdfjoe123 Digital is because its easier to get a campaign going via digital online.
I believe that they devised a solution to this in the Dune universe. A Butlerian solution.
Hopefully we won't have to wait 10k years for it
"The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill, while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth." Jeff Owski
When an industry removes the Humans from the art and creative process, to save money in the creation of a product, that product is Dead. At least it is Dead to me.
Nobody cares what you think
You cared enough to reply and that is important. Thank you.
GREAT QUOTE
Who is that guy and how old is he?
Its a silly quote because literally anyone can access AI, it started as all open source projects. It's literally just a tech tool to disrupt monopoly power on people who are skilled or more aptly put, are wealthy enough to be skilled at art and literature. Not many coal miners have time to read every book or learn to shade, but they can all use AI to imagine a story if they want.
If a player asked for a half-Tabaxi, half-Dragonborn, dual class monk/paladin, a real artificial intelligence would say no and tell the person to go play a video game.
100%. You’re not playing at my table, because that’s not the game I want to run.
Guava juice green goose chocolate mousse ahh character
🤔 I'm pretty sure it's not just an AI that would say no.
DM's would likely have a variety of nos and yesses depending on the flavour of the world they're running.
If asked, my gut would say no. But I'd say yeah, go ahead... But be ye warned; life wont be that easy for such a character. The tabaxi culture is very pedigree and bloodline oriented, and see you as an abomination of impurity.
The dragonborn too see you as an affront to their heritage, and likely the spawn of unnatural magic, and too need your presence erased from existence.
There would be little succor from most common populations as your seen as a freak or a monster and always considered untrustworthy.
Such a character would always be looking over their shoulder for assassins of their parentage, and would have an uphill battle winning the trust of any population outside of a handful of friends.
I could see Hasbro using three product lines:,
1) All human creative produced module story, artwork, laser burned velum maps, etc sold as a premium product line, wooden boxes, high quality print paper, gold leaf embellishments, trinkets like Monopoly pieces/figures/quest items, and so on, sold for $100-$150 each. Exclusive convention games run these like high stakes poker tables. Produce about half as many modules/year as they have before.
2) Human curated/directed but AI produced modules, story, maps, AI artwork, etc produced on high volume printing systems with thin cardboard printed maps/black and white cover artwork, thin paper inside and sold for "$10" each. Think of these like the olden days Sunday newspaper magazine inserts like "Parade". Perhaps nearly a "print on demand" with "direct consumer sales" system so no inventory. Produce a hundred new modules a quarter retiring/archiving the previous content "to the vault!". Some modules link a whole campaign like G-D-Q did in the olden days. Occasionally resurrect popular or cult-followed adventures with full color artwork etc upgrades for "$30" but again only a limited time. Convention sessions play many tables of these titles from the next quarter or two releases. Massive content like the Pulp Fiction writers of the 1920s-1960s.
3) Online On-demand AI: press a button and get a randomly generated .... something.
In discussions like this I think people overestimate the importance of quality, since a lot of purchases are emotional purchases. Yeah, the top quality of shadowdark creates backorder lines sometimes, but that is not the money WotC is after. The want something like:
- Mediocre quality + A lot of marketing + knowledge biases (like fear of missing out and other predatory cash grabs) + loot boxes with minis available for a limited time
If quality was mandatory, WotC would have to sell DnD after Tiranny of Dragons and SCAG. The probably wouldn't want to wait the time needed for high quality art, so it is not even on the creative team - and that is important.
AI is really good - if not the pinnacle - of delivering mediocrity. It fits all too well in their scheme.
Tl,dr: Yeah, AI quality is inferior, but WotC stopped caring about quality at some point in 3.5e... If you want quality, support indie publishers who take their time to do things.
I'm thinking it's only a matter of time before some twisted 3-headed Elminster figure with 4 fingers and a weird flute in his hair blowing bubbles into an inverted fish bowl--is on the cover of a Witch got her Groove Back Adventure Pack Prime Battle Pass ++.
I can't wait until Hasbro hires an AI to replace Chris Cocks.
That's the ending of a Twilight Zone episode.
I think Daniel Fox is thinking of what WotC has historically been, not what it wants to be. They are making a move to digitize the majority of D&D, it's why Chris talks about AI, his online games and all of that. They don't want to be a book publisher, they want a solid steady stream of income and this new digitization is going to allow them to charge little monies for lots of things rather than the big book sales. Speed is what they are after and if AI can help them make things faster, they'll do that. They will still hire creatives, but give them so many "D&D official tools" that it'll be a very safe set of products in the near future to shore up their digital experience.
I would go so far as to say that it's possible in 5-10 years we no longer call D&D a 'tabletop' rpg. They definitely want it to be something else now and get those monies.
We'll see. Thanks for sharing.
THAT SPONSORED INTRO ... AMAZING!!!
This is one of the best advertising I have ever seen. I enjoyed it. If all your ads are like that, I will never skip them.l
If I had the money I would have considered this kickstarter.
I know! It's too cool!
Within some very certain circumstances, such as topographical map generation or spelling and grammar check, I see no need to use AI tool. If I need art, there's a billion images human have already made. If I need dialogue, I'm quite capable. If I need monsters, I have plenty of books and databases. Honestly? TTRPGs doesn't feel like a thing AI would be reasonably useful for anyway. Not in this day and age.
What if you need a very specific picture? "The party encounters a tribe of Kobolds wielding spears and riding giant platypi. They've just returned from hunting and they are dragging the corpse of a large stag behind them on ropes"
@@manchasdos I don't think it's outside the range of my player's imaginations to visualize that. But in the specific cases when, say, they come across a horse statue wearing a WW1 helmet riding a man while chewing bubblegum, I happen to be a professional illustrator and can draw that. Also, if you need such a thing, drop me a line. I'm cheap.
@@manchasdos The hobby has existed since before the internet. People will be fine to think of things in their imagination every once in a while.
@@mikerojas6513 Lol. That's cool! I think this is very much a "there's no wrong way" kind of thing. You don't need art to have an enjoyable game session. If you want art, AI art is now another option and it has the plusses that it's cheap and easy and can do anything. The negatives are it lacks style variety and creativity. Existing art is also an option that could be cheap, but is somewhat limited even with billions of images. Pro illustrators are probably the best of all for any pro or semi-pro venture. But even cheap is not free and if I'm just putting together a thursday night session with friends some easy AI art may be the way to go.
@@dungeoneerofphilosophyphd172 Nothing wrong with that, but if people want art, AI art is now another option. It might work for some people and not for others.
The story of the half Tabaxi, half Dragonborn's parents would be an epic D&D love story. Also, Pirate Borg is excellent. It's like they took all lessons learned from Mork Borg and incorporated those improvements. Good stuff.
Hey Deathbringer, Bing is the NUMBER 1 TOOL for downloading Chrome on a new PC.
Really?
Never used Bing.
Never used Chrome on a new PC.
But, to be fair I ditched Windows for Linux a quarter of a century ago. Even back in the day, I ditched IE after version 5. I've been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix (before Firebird).
I use AI for character portraits. Writing the adventure itself takes a lot of my time already and I couldn't manage also drawing the characters.
The use of AI has helped me flesh out some characters more, by randomly adding some details that I hadn't thought of, but the best thing about it is the reaction on the player's faces.
Sometimes, when you describe a character, the player will pick up pretty easily if it's a villain, if he's lying to them or just honest, but showing them a character with a face they can immediately hate or love is incredibly funny and mixes up their expected behaviour during interactions.
I've used AI a couple times to make art for NPCs. But I've turned away from that in favor of the old way of using Google Images or most recently using Hero Forge.
What it hate is that even if you use Google Images you're flooded with ai crap
I also use Hero Forge for creating screenshots of characters and NPCs. I also love that you can purchase the STL file for about $8 if you want to print the minis yourself. It's really nice that two of our players have 3D printers. 🙂
Used it for character creations for a few one shot characters and small campaigned ones. I still feel as concept creation its a fine tool to start with but never end on.
I'm an exclusively virtual DM, and I use midjourney all the time for set dressing and NPC images. We stream our sessions, too (so we can go back and refer to them), so any copyrighted images are a no-go. It's been handy, but I dare say it's been a crutch for me, b/c I usually skip out on narrating physical descriptions. It also prevents players from forming their own image of an NPC in their mind based on how I describe it, which is something I'm beginning to dislike.
@@jonathanthekangaroojoestar4393you can use keywords to eliminate a lot of ai results
I’m in my thirties… but I still don’t care to use AI for another 10-20yrs in any capacity, until we as a society can better figure out what it is, it’s risks and costs, and actual benefits.
I get my best ideas in the shower or on a walk outside in nature. Not sure where ai can do that.
We just need to install the AI in your shower.
I use it for art at the table and idea generation. Like say I want to make a wandering monster table. I can have it spit out in 5 seconds and use that as a starting point to refine myself.
He can eat a bag of... nevermind
You can ask AI to complete this sentence!
Dicks?
I play with "30 or 40 people" has strong "my girlfriend lives in Canada" energy. 40 people? What, are we supposed to believe Chris Cocks is some kind of super-DM that can juggle a group of 40 players? In Kara-Tur, a setting that hasn't even had a book since 1990?
The only thing I want at the gaming table is beer, pizza, candy and my beloved gaming buddies. Nothing else is needed thank you very much!
No dice, no pens, no paper? :O
Dice goblins don't like this hooman who ignores the clickty clack of shiny math rocks
Yeah I got to have lots of dice!
I can be a beloved buddy but first we need to negotiate on the pizza type
Amen to pizza and gaming buddies, friend!
To be fair, autocorrect is AI/ML. AI/ML is a very blanket term. It is easy to say everyone uses some form of AI unless they're purely pen and paper. What tool they're using needs to be clarified.
no notification. really? I love DungeonCraft videos. Especially Deathbringer.
oh,now I'm done watching and it tells me. 🤣
TH-cam is tricksy.
The idea that he had a binary choice, fire hundreds of people, or cut company dividends, is absurd. He could have taken a pay cut and cut the pay of all of the top management by something like %15 and that could cover more than the salaries of all of the people he fired.
Good point. Most of top management gets paid in stock options as opposed to cash. When salaries are reported, those numbers are included--but they are phantom, money until this options are exercised.
So the math on "30 to 40 people regularly.../...3 to 4 times a month"
Yeah....it's interesting.
I think maybe he's forgetting that WoW and FFIV aren't D&D... how in the WORLD do you play D&D with a 30 person party?
@@genlando327plays2 DM: "The room is pitch bla..."
20 players shouting: "I HAVE DARKVISION!"
Google Gemini is pretty close to accomplishing your described character building function.
I have a Google doc of my own little system and can ask Gemini, "Create a character in this system based on the archetype of a barbarian in d&d."
I have to correct it afterwards, but it comes back with something in at least the right format.
Wonder how long it take business to realize anything they can do with AI everyone else can do for free using their own ai?
That must be why they’re pushing D&D as a “lifestyle brand”. Without an identity attachment from the players, it could go exactly as you envision.
But that's true for sooo many things.
People constantly pay other people for stuff they _could_ do themselves - but don't have the time for or just don't _want_ to do.
@harmless6813 true but that's because they have the option to pay using their job which many won't have soon but will have plenty of free time since they cant find a job.
@@l33tninja1 Have been hearing that for decades. It all started with the weaving loom. In 1785.
That is why they want to create a closed eco system. That way they only offer you the product on their platform.
I about spit out my drink at Deathbringer's closing comment about Bing!
Nice!
HMM AI??? I just started using an electric pencil sharpener.
But is it a cloud enabled, AI powered electric pencil sharpener?
Well, that's much less useful than AI.
@@harmless6813 Yup
@@Telhias I think it stores the shavings in a cloud but I'm not sure which one so I couldn't recover them.
Sidebar: The pencil sharpener isn't working that well anymore and is starting to heat up when I try to use it.
What I have used is chatgpt to produce: (although I'd use copilot or gemini today)
- A set 9 of magic itemS around a similar theme.
- Descriptions of areas
- Monster stats with a given theme and albities. Example: "I need a shadow assassin monster for 5e. It should be CR3 be able to teleport between shadows and choke the PCs with a strangling cord." (both copilot and gemini give a decent result)
- Clean up a pitch for a convention game
I keep getting Facebook ads asking me if I would like an AI DM to run my games, as someone who has always been a worldbuilder and loves the DM experience since I got Heroquest at the age of 12, I want AI to create the perfect players for the games I want to run so I can be a DM without the scheduling conflicts and Rules lawyering.
As a disabled person who can't guarantee a set schedule and a compulsive altaholic, my answer would be "yes, but only if you can make a better game than I could write as a novel myself"
Heroquest was awesome. During the Stanic Panic I had to hide that I was playing D&D from my parents. They did not care at all about Heroquest because it was not called D&D, yet it had the same kind of stuff in the game. I still have my original Heroquest and I bought the new edition and expansion modules that I missed back in the day.
On another note, I ran a mini adventure using ChatGPT. I gave it a grade of "D" for the adventure it made. It would fail to adhere to the rules and would eventually just give you everything you wanted. It would also get stuck in a loop and keep throwing the same scenario at me until I called it out and said it was just doing the same thing over and over. It then moved the story forward. I don't see AI DMs being able to do the job anytime soon. I would never use an AI GM in any game I ran and would only use it for testing. It actually does an OK job when I want to run some combat scenarios between different characters to see how they fare.
Honestly, I have to respectfully say that I think the comment at 6:20 is misinterpreting what AI can and will be used for. As an amateur DM, tools to *aid* creativity are immensely helpful and time-saving. If a tool can generate an image or add flair to a description, or alternatively provide a nuanced description of a throw-away NPC or location, I’m all for it. Let me focus on the big picture and telling and directing the story, and give me the tools to enhance my creativity (AI is *not* going to replace my creativity). Anyways, just my two cents.
I've used AI to help write scripted dialogue, like describing rooms that players enter into. I've also used it to help with inspiration for filling the voids in map-making. Like, I've made a Warhammer 40k campaign, and there was an Ork Weapon Horde I wanted to write up about in the bowels of a derelict ship. But aside from the weapon horde, entrance, and mek's lab, I couldn't think of what else could be there in case the players didn't want to take a direct smash 'n grab route. AI gave me ideas for a food galley turned into a shooting range, and a squig infested shower and locker room area.
Yeah I don't think it's primarily good for giving you ideas. I have found anything that writes I have to rewrite though.
Have you looked at dScryb for help with scripted dialogue? It's written by humans and the descriptions are really good imo. There's a good selection of free scenes
there's a difference between machine learning and genrative AI. GenAI is ChatGPT. they're using machine learning which is more about recognizing and predicting patterns
And another thing... making characters, designing encounters and scenarios, and campaign arcs for my players IS THE FUN PART!!! Why the f*** would I want to let an AI do that!?!?
To quote anonymous: "The underlying purpose of AI is for wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth".
No, I won't be using AI in my games, and that'll be easy because most reputable game companies have already denounced it.
I find that AI is great for getting my creative juices going and getting me out of a rut, especially when my players go off into left field unexpectedly. During a game a quick prompt can give me an idea to use to finish out the session on a high note. Between sessions it's great for creating descriptive text that i can have at hand to use.
I've been playing since March '77 (issue 5 of Dragon is when it all started), and have always looked for ideas to use and modify to fit my game. Magazines and books came first, later chat rooms and token rings, then TH-cam videos, and now AI. They are all tools, and I embrace them all. They make my game better, and in the end that is all I really care about.
Knowledge Worker Aid is absolutely nothing to discredit them for. It’s creeping into every company, and it’s not content creation. It’s “where’s the link for PTO submissions”.
For content creation, I’ll openly say I want to use it for campaign building. Put in 4 or 5 naming conventions of a Dwarf and ask ChatGPT to generate 12 characters, including a Dwarven lord and his three children.
Boom. NPCs with names and connections in an instant. And there’s nothing to discredit doing that. *It does not affect the fun you can have at the table.*
It must be sad to not want to take the time to be creative. 😢
"I want a medium difficulty encounter of goblins and stuff that fits with goblins for my party of xyz." - Ai generates an actually medium difficulty encounter knowing party composition, seems like a normal and good use of AI for dungeon mastering. I really have no idea why people are so upset with it. Gives me luddite vibes, but idk.
Hi Prof. DM. AT around 2:30 you talked about ChatGPT AI and in-house AI and asked, "Whatever that means." The difference is that ChatGPT pulls from anywhere on the web, including proprietary info, so you can be sued for using it. If you do your own AI, you own everything. I've seen articles from several large companies stating they are doing their own AI for that reason. Just some FYI, if anyone cares. 😜
Absolutely. And some great independent content creators are already developing these kinds of tools for TTRPGs.
Use of AI for responsible reasons in the open could be a positive thing like using a proprietary ChatGDT to help DMs fill out descriptions of scenes rolled from a random encounter table.
Most of the companies “building” their own are doing no such thing (it costs 10s of million of dollars to train these models). They are running private instances (own AWS instances) of Chat/LLama/LLava
Also you can’t be sued for using ChatGPT - you just can’t copyright what is produced
I asked ChatGPT to make that character:
Certainly! Below is a custom 5th-level stat block for a half-Tabaxi, half-Dragonborn Monk/Paladin multiclass. I’m assuming the character has 3 levels in Monk and 2 levels in Paladin, but this can be adjusted.
---
### **Half-Tabaxi, Half-Dragonborn Monk/Paladin (Level 5)**
**Medium Humanoid (Tabaxi, Dragonborn), Lawful Good**
---
**Armor Class:** 18 (unarmored defense or chain mail + shield)
**Hit Points:** 42 (3d8+2d10+10, considering Constitution modifier)
**Speed:** 40 ft. (due to Tabaxi and Monk Unarmored Movement)
---
### **STR** | **DEX** | **CON** | **INT** | **WIS** | **CHA**
15 (+2) | 16 (+3) | 14 (+2) | 10 (+0) | 14 (+2) | 13 (+1)
---
**Saving Throws:** Strength +4, Dexterity +5, Wisdom +4, Charisma +3
**Skills:** Acrobatics +5, Athletics +4, Insight +4, Perception +4, Stealth +5
**Senses:** Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 14
**Languages:** Common, Draconic, Elvish
---
### **Proficiencies**
- **Weapons:** Simple weapons, shortswords, martial weapons
- **Armor:** All armor, shields
- **Tools:** Thieves' tools, artisan's tools (your choice)
---
### **Racial Traits**
- **Draconic Ancestry (Fire):** Gain a breath weapon and resistance to fire damage.
- **Breath Weapon (Recharge 5-6):** 15 ft. cone, DC 12 Dexterity save. 2d6 fire damage on a failed save, half on success.
- **Feline Agility:** When you move on your turn in combat, you can double your speed until the end of the turn. You can’t use this again until you move 0 feet on one of your turns.
---
### **Class Features:**
**Paladin (Level 2):**
- **Divine Sense (2/day):** As an action, detect the location of any celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet.
- **Lay on Hands (10 points):** Heal yourself or others by spending points from this pool.
- **Fighting Style (Defense):** +1 bonus to AC while wearing armor.
- **Spellcasting:**
- Spell Save DC 11, Spell Attack +3
- **1st Level (2 slots):** *Divine Favor, Shield of Faith, Cure Wounds*
**Monk (Level 3):**
- **Unarmored Defense:** AC = 10 + Dexterity modifier + Wisdom modifier (AC 15 without armor, 18 with a shield).
- **Martial Arts (1d4):** Use Dexterity for unarmed strikes and monk weapons. When you take the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon, make an additional unarmed strike as a bonus action.
- **Ki (3 points):**
- **Flurry of Blows:** After an Attack action, spend 1 ki to make two unarmed strikes as a bonus action.
- **Patient Defense:** Spend 1 ki to take the Dodge action as a bonus action.
- **Step of the Wind:** Spend 1 ki to take the Disengage or Dash action as a bonus action, and your jump distance is doubled for the turn.
- **Unarmored Movement:** +10 ft. movement while not wearing armor or wielding a shield.
- **Deflect Missiles:** Reduce damage from ranged weapon attacks by 1d10 + Dexterity modifier + Monk level. If reduced to 0, you can catch and throw the projectile.
---
### **Actions:**
- **Multiattack:**
- Make two attacks with a monk weapon or unarmed strike.
- **Unarmed Strike (Martial Arts):**
- Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target.
- Hit: 1d4 + 3 bludgeoning damage.
- **Breath Weapon (Recharge 5-6):**
- Exhale fire in a 15-foot cone.
- Each creature in the area must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw, taking 2d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one.
- **Divine Smite (2/day):** When you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, expend a spell slot to deal an extra 2d8 radiant damage (3d8 against undead or fiends).
- **Lay on Hands:** Heal up to 10 hit points in total (expend as needed).
---
### **Bonus Actions:**
- **Martial Arts Unarmed Strike:** After attacking with a monk weapon or unarmed strike, make an additional unarmed strike.
- **Flurry of Blows (1 ki):** After an attack, make two unarmed strikes.
---
### **Reactions:**
- **Deflect Missiles:** Use your reaction to reduce damage from a ranged attack.
---
### **Equipment:**
- Quarterstaff (monk weapon)
- Shortsword
- Chain mail (AC 18 with shield)
- Shield
- Holy Symbol (focus for Paladin spells)
---
### **Backstory:**
Born of a wandering Tabaxi merchant and a noble Dragonborn warrior, this character embodies the grace and agility of their feline lineage with the burning conviction of a Paladin. Trained in monastic discipline from a young age, they combine the spiritual path of a Monk with the divine mandate of a Paladin, fighting to protect the innocent with speed, strength, and righteous fury.
I don't know why it added the hastags and asterixs when I copy/pasted, but there you go.
AI is a tool to be harnessed by all of us, but it doesn’t replace - just assists. AI is quite good at understanding DnD from what I have experienced, but like with any other topic AI makes errors. Knowing the right way to prompt and also being able to spot errors is key.
Me too!
For the algorithm. When DMing I use bing art to generate npcs and monsters for tokens. I use chatgpt to generate stat blocks for unique characters.
As a player I sometimes use bing art to recreate a awesome moment in the game, usually with a laughably bad outcome.
I've said this in other YT comments recently, but I played a game of Paranoia over Labor Day Weekend. We had the brilliant idea of having ChatGPT being the GM, aka Friend Computer in Paranoia-speak. I started a prompt with ChatGPT to test this out and it's SCARY how good it was. I want to develop the idea into something with voice input & prompts and see where it leads. Replacing a Paranoia GM with an machine tool is _exactly_ what the Paranoia team should embrace. But that's a small company compared to the juggernaut that is Hasbro.
The problem is that as I understand it, Paranoia is sold as as box set, and those are usually bought by people intending to GM. Replae the GM with an AI and the players would need to buy it. (Or just ask ChatGPT to synthesize the rules for them.)
@@TorIverWilhelmsen "Or just ask ChatGPT to synthesize the rules for them."
"Such information is beyond your clearance, friend Troubleshooter. Please report to the nearest disintegration booth. Now with more minty freshness!"
@@TorIverWilhelmsen This should surprise no one at this point, b7t ChatGPT already knows the "rules" to Paranoia. Somehow ChatGPT found those and probably didn't pay for them.
I'm also doing this with a group that owns at least two copies of the game. One boxed set, one set of hardcover books.
Also, as a player. I use mid journey to make images of events while taking session notes for the other players and DM. It makes them feel more like something produced than pulling extant art off of google. My own skill level otherwise is only enough to generate in character sketches… as a Minotaur barbarian with 7 INT. It has brought some real delight to the table I think. Would think an NPC generator could be an amazing tool since it might actually solve the player to DM problem of asking too much about every NPC you don’t write in advance.
I don't use AI. Not to make characters, not to plot for me. The closest I get is my screen reader. If i did though I don't think i'd be satisfied with what i got without going in and making heavy revisions, or redrawing to make it more cohesive etc.
I just know I can do much better.
Hasbro's headquaters is in Pawtucket Rhode Island, Quahog being of course the fictional town from Family Guy
Going to run ICRPG one shot for my group and it will be the first time i GM anything 😅
I DM'ed one time with ICRPG and we were hooked with the scenario they give us!
@@chwig7354 I am running Last flight of the red sword
Good luck and remember to have fun! GMs are players too!
I am part of a gaming group and out DM will allow players to sometimes RP character interests as part of character development. During this, it often results in the characters going off to do things on their own. To involve the other players while the RP focuses on someone else, our DM will name an NPC, tell the other players a few key traits/behaviors of the NPC, and have us other players play out the NPC's.
This is usually great fun, but one of my fellow players is a student at a mage college and when she wanted to sit in on a lecture about Abnormal Metaphysics then DM turned to me, told me a paragraph of backstory on Professor Glimmerwick Shortfuse, and joyfully said - You get to give the lecture.... You can be DAMN sure I gave about 3 minutes of introduction to the class while I loaded up Chat GPT and asked it to give me some lecture topics, directions, and summaries. Doing an eccentric gnome? sure... fine. I can do that. A fantasy based lecture on the magical implications of Abnormal Metaphysics and how it relates to the parable of the sentient toaster .. well, that is something I needed a bit of help with. And I think that was a reasonable use of Chat GPT.
I use ChatGPT as my writing assistant. A typical prompt is "My main character is trying to sneak into a castle. Give me twenty ways he might do that." This is the sort of thing I used to just use plain old Google before and hope it gave me something vaguely about a castle. But now, when I ask this question, ChatGPT has the context of my story, and the suggestions it makes can take advantage of what it knows about that castle, or the surrounding lands, or the type of magic used, etc etc. AI as a writing assistant is next level. If you're railing against it, you just aren't using it correctly, or just basing your kneejerk responses on other kneejerk responses. All my writing is my own, just like it was all my writing when I was utilizing responses from plain old Google searches. AI just cuts through the chaff infinitely faster.
So you're not actually writing anything, you're just regurgitating something a computer made up? Cool.
@@oskar6661 lol. Well, you clearly can't read, so I'm not surprised you fail to understand how writing works. But you ARE great at regurgitating ignorant talking points.
This stuff that Hasbro keeps pulling is why I find it harder and harder to want to get into DnD specifically as a TTRPG - if I wanted a game incredibly complex rules with massive tech integration that does all the advanced calculations for me, I'd play a video game
I want to roleplay with friends, not buy a product
Go buy a second hand edition of whatever rule set you prefer - they dont’t get a penny of that income
WOtC is the end of D&D.
nah Dnd will live on after wotc
DnD has always been in the hands of people who are either sub-optimal at game design, business acumen, or both, and their customer relations have never been top-notch. The current set might commoditize and paywall the brand, but the hobby will carry on.
The OSR is the legacy of DnD not wotc dnd
You realize WOTC has been the longest owner of D and D right?
@@davidmuzia814 yet some people have been playing first edition AD&D since long before WotC existed as a company.
Machine learning vs ai just means they are doing statistical stuff rather than using an llm or image diffusion model. Like technically a linear regression is a machine learning model and I’m sure they are already using that to analyze player feedback from huge survey numbers. They may also be using knns to find players similar to you to better know what you like so they can upsell you books or minis or whatever.
Thank you for sharing.
Hey, I'm a musician and a creative. My hot take. I don't hate Ai. I'm old enough to remember people complaining that electric typewriters were evil and then later word processing was surely going to turn us into illiterate vegetables. None of that was true. As with electric guitars, effects, DAWs, syth, Tech makes good artists life easier and their art better. As always, humans and Tech need to work together. I use Ai in my art but I'd never use Ai to write my music. Because I dont have to. The results are more enjoyable for me if done myself. But I don't hate AI music. By itself, it will never replace a creative that can use Ai to enhance their own work. None of us are going to stop the Ai movement. We need to work with it
I play synths. I agree. Actually, I think I'm going to play my synth this evening. It's been awhile.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 the Professor is in 😎
This is a great response. I remember that as well. I also remember controversy swirling around digital art being not considered art.
I think the most worrying aspect is still the ethical part that AIs are trained on data that belongs to other people that don’t consent or even pull up privacy concerns. Hasbro could use all created dndbeyond characters to train a „character generator“ so that more backstory can be generated. If they usectheir statblocks to generate new ones I don’t really care.
AI: Publishers of things like D&D :: Guide Tracks : Film Scores. If you look at film, editors/directors use other movie’s music (seemingly always the pirates of the Caribbean…) to edit to for pacing, so when the composer gets the film, they are pigeon holed by the timing and expectations of the director post-guide track, potentially watering down their creative output. But directors seem to love guide track because they can work more quickly and autonomously.
Fellas. This isn't going to replace in-person tabletop experience. And this isn't a move to entice us old heads. This is a move that will appeal to the kids raised by phones and tablets at the same time.
I think you give your generation too much credit. I know way too many 40+ people addicted to their phones. And many of then think AI is pretty neat.
The most I've ever used AI for is character and monster ideas, and whenever I actually use what it gives me, I rework and change it so much that it barely resembles what the AI came up with.
I am firmly in the “Never AI” camp.
Wow, ain't so much fun when a machine takes your job, is it? 1980s factory workers who were sneered at and told "you should go to college" have a message for you. "Learn to code."
Ignore AI all you wish. It is no more or less of a tool than your PC.
If you only use a Remington typewriter for D&D, then yeah, AI should pound sand!
Typewriter?!?!? I thought it was just supposed to be pencils and graph paper........
Speaking here as someone who was working for a large publisher last year and this year has gone to a bunch of tech shows: even though most people now consider “AI” to refer specifically to machine-learning or generative AI, a LOT of people in tech have a habit of using a broader definition of AI in order to sell the idea of it being already largely adopted. I can’t help but suspect that when Cox says “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use AI”, he might be operating with that same sort of double-speak in an effort to move the needle for both investors (“Everyone here is on board with the newest technology”) and consumers (“why be up in arms about AI when everyone already uses it?”)
Yup. That's what I was thinking.
"Worker Aid(e)" just means "Artist Replacement" and little else. I doubt they spent money to make an independent AI just to recall nerd facts they already have on-hand... That's silly, Prof.
And I'm here for it. Learn to code.
Simple tasks such as creating characters don't require AI. There are spreadsheets available on the web for creating characters where you select you class and race and enter your stats and the spreadsheet calculates the mods, move rate, and so on. Or it's easy to write a program to do that. AI is useful mainly for more complex tasks requiring decision making.
I read this the other day:
The intent of AI in art is to give the wealthy access to skill, but to give the skilled no access to wealth.
That's what the rich want it to be, but they haven't thought it through. Corporations are salivating about being able to save money by firing all their employees. But if a single person can do the work of many, why do we need large, investment-backed corporations for creative work?
To put it another way, Chris Cocks makes the argument that individual GMs are already using AI to create content for their games. If WotC's plan is to lay off staff and use AI to generate content, why would GMs buy that content from WotC when they are already using AI to make content themselves?
The only thing I’ve tried to use A.I. for in my games is for art work, namely for generating pictures of NPC, scene locations, or magical items and weapons. Basically so I can describe a character, a situation, or an item found by the players, but then I have a supporting picture that can be handed to the players for future reference. This allows the players to stash away a weapon card with stats and a picture so they can have it with there stuff, to say, “this is the cool double bow hand-crossbow I found. Or, “hey, can I see that picture of the inside of the hag’s cottage, can I check out that small chest with the weird symbol I remember seeing in the sewers the day before.” And various other applications. The problem is A.I. is terrible at creating picture that include specific details that you want added in a specific way that may harken back to previous clues or adventures the party has experienced. If you tell the A.I. to create cool picture with no real constraints, context, or specificity it can come up with very interesting stuff. Sometimes too interesting, like why do all the elves suddenly have 3 arms. But if you want to Guide the A.I. in any real thematic way, good luck. You spend more time correcting the mistakes and oddities that the A.I. starts adding than actually coming close to a usable picture. As a result I’ve stopped even trying due to frustration over something I thought would be a time saver for me.
Not using AI and not purchasing anything WOTC.
I remember I used to know people that were proud of never having used the internet.
I’m part of a Star Wars RPG group that has 2 simultaneous campaigns run every other week. As the GM of my campaign I’ve used AI for strategic planning or anticipating how certain characters would react to a situation. For example I asked ChatGPT how Thrawn would approach my PC’s antics, and it really helped. The other GM uses AI tools much more extensively, from help with story points to creating audio cutscenes with various narrators. We both also use it for balancing home-brewed rules, since our source book is over 30 years old. All in all it’s a pretty robust tool, but really it’s just a setup tool; I don’t see how it could ever effectively take over as a inventive GM.
Ai is garbage
I agree.
AI, VTT’s, and digital gaming has its place. But, I do feel that there still is, and always will be, those of us that play old school. We want our games to feel organic, and that includes any published adventures. I truly believe AI created content will feel artificial.
This is the future of D& D like it or not. I wish them and the fans of this version of D&D luck and happiness with it. I'm glad there's other TTRPGs (every day more) even better than D&D I can play at a table.
As a sketch artist.. what is the big deal, art is a passion.. matters not how perfect their visual aspects are. As a roleplayer, it's not going to stop me from sketching out the parties characters or scenes. At 43 with 26 years of experience under my belt.. roleplaying is changing. People are playing online and using all this digital $#!+.. it's just not the same.. that doesn't mean you have to change the way you play. I still prefer meeting with a group of people I really know and playing in person with our graph paper, photocopy sheets, 20 books, bags of dice, and 24 pack of mountain dew
I have to admit, I use it everyday for game prep. Mostly to create token/portrait assets and occasionally a setting image. There’s nothing better for iterating a very specific character design when session is just in a few hours. I’d love to hire a real artist for things like this, but the usual turnaround time is just not possible. Even if I did prep a month in advance to adequately give a hired artist the time they need - there’s always the matter of last-minute revisions and additions.
Otherwise, I never use AI for any written or narrative content.
I use AI extensively for my campaign. I am no artist, so it is really handy for generating NPC portraits, tokens, and other artwork. I have a paid ChatGPT account and have built a custom GPT that knows the rules of my game (Shadowdark), my house rules, the details of my setting, monster stats, etc. I can feed it my session notes and it will spit out a nicely written narrative about the session to add to the campaign chronicle. It's great at whipping up songs, poems, riddles, etc. If I need a quick NPC it can generate one instantly and display it using my preferred stat block format. AI is certainly not going anywhere, so I figure it's better to learn how to use it effectively than just say "no."
But you understand this is just messing around, right? You enjoy making AI pictures for your game, just like many old modules had lots of pictures to show players; but they're almost more of a distraction. Likewise poems and riddles. And your session notes are the real chronicle -- all AI does is bloat them out, make them take longer to read, and probably introduce errors.
It's like "I use my cat in my D&D sessions and the players really enjoy it" doesn't mean the DMG should have a section on cat use or that Hasbro should sell D&D kitties.
I work in web admin and web development. It seems like right now EVERY online service I've ever used is either dying or using AI. There might be times it's not unethical, but the fact is, it's almost impossible to work without dealing with services that don't use AI.
Until the Butlerian J-word, I doubt we're getting away from it sadly.
In all the groups I roll with, we only use BING for AI generated images; focused on (N)PC likenesses. Not one DM uses AI for any drivers of the story, or aids. All original IPs.
I plead guilty. For my home game, I have on occasion asked Dall-E for an image representing a monster statblock I reskinned, or asked ChatGPT to turn my lore into a poem for exposition purposes. It’s really practical in that sense, but I’m the one doing the content, and the AI is just helping me present it better. Anything more than presentation is not an area that AI should participate, in my opinion
I used AI once to test while building a small adventure. I used it for names, some art (putting ruins or towns on specific landscape photos), and I used it to make my own, poorly drawn, continent and I made a few different variations on it.
I think the way I used it was great, they were things I could have done myself if I took time to learn new computer applications or improved my drawing ability.
I could learn to use photoshop to make the map how I wanted it to look but I saved tons of time by manipulating AI to make the maps in just one afternoon versus the weeks it would have taken me to learn a program I might use once or twice a year.
I’ve been using name generators for a decade and that’s barely AI.
AI has a place, it’s a tool not a creative.
I use it to explore subleties of the world. What might be some lesser known considerations of a half-elf raised among half-orcs? How many people in waterdeep would be strong enough magic users to regrow limbs? What kinds of things might a fairy trying to disguise themselves as a halfling accidentally give away as clues that they're not a halfling? Sort of a brainstorming tool for lore.
Chris Cocks sounds like the CEO from Dilbert comics.