Thank you for the absolutely sane take on AI art. There’s a massive difference between indie artists using it as a tool in their process and corporations using it to replace their creative staff.
The generative fill feature of photoshop only uses adobe's own stock images for reference -so it's not scraping artworks from artists without permission. At least it isn't using stolen art.
That’s how it’s intended to work, but just last week someone spotted Riffin the Ash Knight straight from Hit Point Press Humblewood setting in Adobe’s stock images. It’s been taken down but that shows flaws in the system.
I'd also like to mention the "Sane Magical Prices", which you can find for free online. This was, as I understand it, made by the community. Even if you don't sell magic items, I find this really helpful for ordering items by power. I tend to use this over the dmg's rarity system.
I use this one all the time. There's a lot of hate for it on reddit for some reason but it's extremely useful, and since I always control what items are available in my game I've never had balance issues.
I recently had the super-lazy idea to invert the old-school model of awarding XP equal to the gold piece value looted: give out treasure equal to the XP value for any given monster. Deduct gp for magic items according to your preferred source for prices. I haven't had a chance to implement this idea yet, but will do so soon. Since I run milestone advancement, the XP entry in a stat block is usually ignored, but this would make it useful again.
As a comment or advice for the funnel question of "How do I make it make sense that more characters are showing up?": I run funnels by giving each player 4 characters to begin with. We then agree that the characters all move as a unit, so on the "map" they all function as one cohesive character, but have 4 actions, one for each of their characters. They arrange the sheets so that one character is clearly "in front" of the others. This is the one that will be hit when an enemy attacks, a trap triggers etc. unless otherwise specified. When a character dies, the next one steps up to be in front, but no matter who's in front they all have their action. This allows us to run hordes of PCs swarming into the dungeon or village or whatever the funnel theme may be, while only having 4 "swarms" to think about, and without needing to think about what to do as soon as the first one dies. usually we make it through the whole funnel without needing to replenish the horde. Sometimes, some unlucky players lose all their characters really quickly, but then they usually take over someone else's characters, etc. until I find a "realistic" replenishment point (e.g. prisoners in the dungeon). This also frees up the theme of the funnel, as there is no need for a constant flow of characters.
I like that the AI is being used as a tool and not the final product. The initial image is coming from the creator and the images are finished by the creator, which I am much more comfortable with.
I have found that being generous with magical items makes a huge impact on the Martial/Caster divide and a high magic campaign really favors the Martial characters, because they now have magic to lean on as well. It also seems to help the party carry on longer between long rests.
My favorite magic items are single use items (which I heard of from Mike, thank you) and items that gain power or effects as the players level up. The single use stuff I pass out like candy. The leveling items are usually unique to the PC/player's interest so its a one and done. It really has made treasure management easier. Add a bit of gold to restock health potions and gems for spell components and my players are happy.
Awarding treasure is a major problem in 5e. I’ve played a Rime of the Frost Maiden, and never got a magic weapon, and our group only received the novelty items detailed in the campaign book. The DM was oblivious that we had no magic items and that made the game less enjoyable.
Oops I just realize I misread the treasure tables and have been basing them off of player level instead of challenge rating. But the players also seem to have _plenty_ of treasure so I guess it's worked out.
Thank you for those links, the people that did the math on 5e's treasure expectations are godsent. Loot is a solved issue in previous editions and other games, so there's no excuse for 5e flubbing it the way it did. As for it being "too predictable", you don't have to adhere to it strictly-I certainly don't in PF2e, which has a very regimented treasure progression-but it's _essential_ to know what the system's assumptions are, so that you can diverge from them in an _informed_ way. 5e just says, "We have no assumptions, magic items don't exist. Also, here's a sword of +2d6 fire damage on every attack; we have no opinion on how this sword influences our encounter design," and it's just infuriating.
I think that ai art is great for creating something quick that you are only going to use at your table. I'm also not super against using it to enhance your own work, so long as you state in no uncertain terms that you used it, and it's not the full product. In this case, I'm not against this person using ai to fill in details for art he made - basically doing the tedious work for him - because you aren't purchasing the PDF for the art, but for the mechanics. That being said, I'm hesitant to support products which use ai art. For one thing, it sets a bad precedent for the industry; I'd rather see more people make art for ttrpgs, not less. I also feel it somewhat diminishes the value of your product; like I said, people are buying the product for the mechanics, so it shouldn't matter what the art looks like. Then, as your products become more popular, you will be able to hire real artists to bring your products more and more to life. If you start with ai, when you are able to hire real artists, there will be a massive down-shift in the detail of the art, because, unless you are paying them to render as much as the ai, the artist won't be inclined to put in that detail. Sorry for being rambley, I just have lots of feelings about ai art
Appreciate the wonderful tables of treasures. :) Have you done a video about what to spend gold on? My players don't seem to care much about treasure, at this point they are just leaving troves behind! Which I guess does make sense as they're in the horrible icy wasters of Icewind Dale and struggling to stay alive, but still. How to make treasure more rewarding, engaging and feel good? "Rewarding Treasure in 5e" :)
You're probably not allowed to print pdfs but as long as you don't resell them in mass caould to take your pdf to a printer and have it printed and cut out shipping?
I'm puzzled by my players' apparent disinterest in loot. I've set all kinds of goodies for them to find, but in play they beeline to their goal and don't spend time exploring the dungeon. The only magic items they have are the ones I've given to them as mission rewards or sent them to recover, but when I asked them they felt that they had a suitable amount of them and were happy with what they got. They are far more interested in their personal goals and standing with factions than money and gear, and as a result I've stopped tracking their living expenses and other such running bills. If my players don't want to spend time bean counting and balancing their budjets, then I wont either 😄
Great vid! Love the idea of using fireball as a template for different damage types and effects. Necrotic damage with a bane effect? Cold damage with a slow effect? Sonic with a booming blade effect? Love the idea of stapling spells together to make something unique
Hot take on traps: there's always a PC with a passive perception of 19 in a party, with feats, and whatnot: I simply don't bother overthinking traps, but just put in there for the players to have fun with their high perception :)
I'm not too sure how Shadowdark does it but a funnel in DCC doesn't focus on a small number of characters at any given time, with others showing up when active ones die. They are typically all active at the same time. Normally 4 characters are active per player. If you have 5 players you have a mob of 20 characters roaming the dungeon at the same time. In a very memorable game I played in at Origins a few years back we had 15-ish characters all die at once because we didn't play through a trapped room wisely. It was hilarious and took a good while to get past the laughter before we were able to carry on. If you have Portal Under the Stars in your DCC rulebook you should be able to see how 15 characters can die all at once. Great fun!
About AI seeping into the TTRPG's products, I've noticed it's the same as the Internet, Wikipedia, Photoshop, etc., it's a new tool that's going to make its way into the scene and those who don't use it are going to fall behind. That's how revolutionary technologies work. The thing here is that the community, both creators and consumers, are going to make up their about where and how much should be used to consider a product suitable for distribution.
19:00 it's not a big problem for 5e, my main guideline is martials get a +1 weapon by L5, a few +1 armors and shlds here and there, maybe drop some OP items to help balance out a high level party as the optimization gap begins to widen. Was a huge PITA for 4e though
There are very few artists that could produce this artwork unaided. Without AI this product would not exist, certainly not in a form that the creator could expect to sell to the average punter. AI is going to reduce the skill people need to perform complex tasks in every industry, Henry Ford style.
Thank you for the absolutely sane take on AI art. There’s a massive difference between indie artists using it as a tool in their process and corporations using it to replace their creative staff.
The generative fill feature of photoshop only uses adobe's own stock images for reference -so it's not scraping artworks from artists without permission. At least it isn't using stolen art.
That’s how it’s intended to work, but just last week someone spotted Riffin the Ash Knight straight from Hit Point Press Humblewood setting in Adobe’s stock images. It’s been taken down but that shows flaws in the system.
I'd also like to mention the "Sane Magical Prices", which you can find for free online. This was, as I understand it, made by the community. Even if you don't sell magic items, I find this really helpful for ordering items by power. I tend to use this over the dmg's rarity system.
I use this one all the time. There's a lot of hate for it on reddit for some reason but it's extremely useful, and since I always control what items are available in my game I've never had balance issues.
I recently had the super-lazy idea to invert the old-school model of awarding XP equal to the gold piece value looted: give out treasure equal to the XP value for any given monster. Deduct gp for magic items according to your preferred source for prices. I haven't had a chance to implement this idea yet, but will do so soon. Since I run milestone advancement, the XP entry in a stat block is usually ignored, but this would make it useful again.
Amazing idea!
As a comment or advice for the funnel question of "How do I make it make sense that more characters are showing up?":
I run funnels by giving each player 4 characters to begin with. We then agree that the characters all move as a unit, so on the "map" they all function as one cohesive character, but have 4 actions, one for each of their characters. They arrange the sheets so that one character is clearly "in front" of the others. This is the one that will be hit when an enemy attacks, a trap triggers etc. unless otherwise specified. When a character dies, the next one steps up to be in front, but no matter who's in front they all have their action.
This allows us to run hordes of PCs swarming into the dungeon or village or whatever the funnel theme may be, while only having 4 "swarms" to think about, and without needing to think about what to do as soon as the first one dies. usually we make it through the whole funnel without needing to replenish the horde. Sometimes, some unlucky players lose all their characters really quickly, but then they usually take over someone else's characters, etc. until I find a "realistic" replenishment point (e.g. prisoners in the dungeon). This also frees up the theme of the funnel, as there is no need for a constant flow of characters.
I like that the AI is being used as a tool and not the final product. The initial image is coming from the creator and the images are finished by the creator, which I am much more comfortable with.
The Sly Flourish perchance random generator is invaluable for me.
You had me at Gamma World
I have found that being generous with magical items makes a huge impact on the Martial/Caster divide and a high magic campaign really favors the Martial characters, because they now have magic to lean on as well.
It also seems to help the party carry on longer between long rests.
My favorite magic items are single use items (which I heard of from Mike, thank you) and items that gain power or effects as the players level up. The single use stuff I pass out like candy. The leveling items are usually unique to the PC/player's interest so its a one and done. It really has made treasure management easier. Add a bit of gold to restock health potions and gems for spell components and my players are happy.
Been wondering what your thoughts were on treasure, thanks Mike!
Awarding treasure is a major problem in 5e. I’ve played a Rime of the Frost Maiden, and never got a magic weapon, and our group only received the novelty items detailed in the campaign book. The DM was oblivious that we had no magic items and that made the game less enjoyable.
I have all the original books, both from when they were first out and the Humble Bundle pdfs.
1981 Flying Buffalo- for Tunnels and Trolls
Oops I just realize I misread the treasure tables and have been basing them off of player level instead of challenge rating. But the players also seem to have _plenty_ of treasure so I guess it's worked out.
Thank you for those links, the people that did the math on 5e's treasure expectations are godsent. Loot is a solved issue in previous editions and other games, so there's no excuse for 5e flubbing it the way it did. As for it being "too predictable", you don't have to adhere to it strictly-I certainly don't in PF2e, which has a very regimented treasure progression-but it's _essential_ to know what the system's assumptions are, so that you can diverge from them in an _informed_ way. 5e just says, "We have no assumptions, magic items don't exist. Also, here's a sword of +2d6 fire damage on every attack; we have no opinion on how this sword influences our encounter design," and it's just infuriating.
Thanks
I find that zany traps are only fun when the players have agency in it otherwise it just feels like a “gotcha”.
I think that ai art is great for creating something quick that you are only going to use at your table. I'm also not super against using it to enhance your own work, so long as you state in no uncertain terms that you used it, and it's not the full product. In this case, I'm not against this person using ai to fill in details for art he made - basically doing the tedious work for him - because you aren't purchasing the PDF for the art, but for the mechanics.
That being said, I'm hesitant to support products which use ai art. For one thing, it sets a bad precedent for the industry; I'd rather see more people make art for ttrpgs, not less. I also feel it somewhat diminishes the value of your product; like I said, people are buying the product for the mechanics, so it shouldn't matter what the art looks like. Then, as your products become more popular, you will be able to hire real artists to bring your products more and more to life. If you start with ai, when you are able to hire real artists, there will be a massive down-shift in the detail of the art, because, unless you are paying them to render as much as the ai, the artist won't be inclined to put in that detail.
Sorry for being rambley, I just have lots of feelings about ai art
Appreciate the wonderful tables of treasures. :) Have you done a video about what to spend gold on? My players don't seem to care much about treasure, at this point they are just leaving troves behind! Which I guess does make sense as they're in the horrible icy wasters of Icewind Dale and struggling to stay alive, but still. How to make treasure more rewarding, engaging and feel good? "Rewarding Treasure in 5e" :)
You're probably not allowed to print pdfs but as long as you don't resell them in mass caould to take your pdf to a printer and have it printed and cut out shipping?
I'm puzzled by my players' apparent disinterest in loot. I've set all kinds of goodies for them to find, but in play they beeline to their goal and don't spend time exploring the dungeon. The only magic items they have are the ones I've given to them as mission rewards or sent them to recover, but when I asked them they felt that they had a suitable amount of them and were happy with what they got.
They are far more interested in their personal goals and standing with factions than money and gear, and as a result I've stopped tracking their living expenses and other such running bills. If my players don't want to spend time bean counting and balancing their budjets, then I wont either 😄
Great vid! Love the idea of using fireball as a template for different damage types and effects. Necrotic damage with a bane effect? Cold damage with a slow effect? Sonic with a booming blade effect? Love the idea of stapling spells together to make something unique
Hot take on traps: there's always a PC with a passive perception of 19 in a party, with feats, and whatnot: I simply don't bother overthinking traps, but just put in there for the players to have fun with their high perception :)
I'm not too sure how Shadowdark does it but a funnel in DCC doesn't focus on a small number of characters at any given time, with others showing up when active ones die. They are typically all active at the same time. Normally 4 characters are active per player. If you have 5 players you have a mob of 20 characters roaming the dungeon at the same time.
In a very memorable game I played in at Origins a few years back we had 15-ish characters all die at once because we didn't play through a trapped room wisely. It was hilarious and took a good while to get past the laughter before we were able to carry on. If you have Portal Under the Stars in your DCC rulebook you should be able to see how 15 characters can die all at once. Great fun!
How would you beat an adult dragon at level 11?
Obviously, ignore it and let the people of Laketown figure it out
Can you put a link to your Treasure Generator please, I can't seem to find it :(
It’s a feature for Sly Flourish Patreons: www.patreon.com/slyflourish
About AI seeping into the TTRPG's products, I've noticed it's the same as the Internet, Wikipedia, Photoshop, etc., it's a new tool that's going to make its way into the scene and those who don't use it are going to fall behind. That's how revolutionary technologies work. The thing here is that the community, both creators and consumers, are going to make up their about where and how much should be used to consider a product suitable for distribution.
19:00 it's not a big problem for 5e, my main guideline is martials get a +1 weapon by L5, a few +1 armors and shlds here and there, maybe drop some OP items to help balance out a high level party as the optimization gap begins to widen.
Was a huge PITA for 4e though
There are very few artists that could produce this artwork unaided. Without AI this product would not exist, certainly not in a form that the creator could expect to sell to the average punter. AI is going to reduce the skill people need to perform complex tasks in every industry, Henry Ford style.