Will Artificial Intelligence Kill the RPG

In this episode we discuss AI and its effect on role-playing games, looking at where it can be useful and where it becomes problematic. We talk about using AI as a factual assistant for rules and reference material, as well as for solo play, teaching new systems, and helping players get into the hobby.
We also raise concerns about AI in creating encounters and scenarios, and about its impact on creativity, skill, and human improvisation. We discuss environmental cost, inaccurate output, plagiarism, and the effects on artists, writers, and freelancers in tabletop gaming.
We finish by talking about fears that AI could replace human game masters and become part of subscription products, along with community backlash and inappropriate generated content. Overall, we say AI can be a tool, but human creativity and decision-making should stay central to role-playing games.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to RPG blokes. Today we are tackling a massive one. AI and its effect on role-playing games.

AI and RPGs Debate

SPEAKER_01 0:07

We're looking at the good, the bad, and the ugly, and we're talking about everything from using an algorithm to generate a random encounter right down to the terrifying nightmare of a big tech corporation trying to replace a human game master with a robot. I wonder who that could be. The AI junkie has taken to it like a duck to water. I I will knock you out, bruv.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

I will knock you the fuck out right now. I don't know if I've made it clear enough that is a bold-faced lie for comedic value. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Fucks my joker. Try and show some restraint. The punchline was must be the hallucinations.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Oh, yeah, okay. I like the hallucinations. I mean, I can relate to the hallucination part.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Okay, uh, John, uh, completely oblivious to the AI takeover of RPGs, because books and PDFs don't need artificial intelligence. Fuck yeah. John, John, I have never found you so attractive as right now. Keeping in your stride. He is, however, well happy with a new RPG player he met online recently. She is always there, ready to play, never complains or sleeps, apparently. And well, I won't tell him if you don't. Stephen has found a way to extend his seven-year DM instant to our local community, and you can now be DM'd by his avatar. However, it's not been plain sailing, as it turns out that AI Stephen doesn't like being turned off. So his players take turns taking him home and looking after him between sessions. They know how his wife feels right now. We could have met his cosplay or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

You've just described a Tamagotchi.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, that's where he's putting you in your pocket. You'll be sponsored by Hasbro, you'll be their new DM.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

To sort of switch me on and put me on the table.

Good Uses of AI

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Okay, so we are gonna talk about AI, and you can already sense that there is a little bit of disagreement to its usefulness or its uh its appropriateness or even the fact that it should exist at all. Uh we're gonna do this in three sections. We're gonna do the good. Most difficult for some. That'd be very quick. The bad. Maybe that's sort of the average, I should say, but I'm doing good, bad, ugly, so it only works this way. The bad, and then the ugly, which I think might be a little bit better for Barry. I I am capable of balance. Okay. It just didn't sound like it. You fucked up my joke, and uh now you're saying you're balanced. Okay, so the good, how AI helps the game. So I've got a few things, talking points here we can go through after a bit of research and not AI assistive research, I promise you. Yeah, you're right. No in Newmarket, it probably is. How much time do you think I've got for this shit? Right. Okay, the good, how it helps the game. It's hard to imagine, isn't it, that AI just didn't exist two years ago. I mean it just wasn't there. So we use it so much now, I do, as a part of my interaction with the game, as a DM particularly, that it's hard to believe it wasn't there. The instant prep assistant as a GM. I find that incredibly useful. Putting the adventures into AI, particularly Google Notes, because it doesn't tend to hallucinate as much as others, and then just pull it out information as you need it, verbatim, and it it works. It doesn't hallucinate enough to to make it make you look stupid.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

But how would you know whether it's hallucinated or not?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Because you you ask it to fact-check itself and it it gives you the point in the text in which it outputs the information. If you did the same shit in ChatGPT or Google Gemini, it would hallucinate and it would lose you and you'd be off on a tangent. Yeah, you'd be doing completely separate scenarios. You mean elucidate. No, how hallucinate.

unknown 3:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

That's what they call it when it starts making sort of stuff up.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yeah, based on what it's read. Yeah, yeah, especially. And it could be very bad in a in a DD scenario.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

There was a guy, there was a guy, genuinely, there was a guy who thought he had discovered a completely new branch of mathematics that was going to essentially um render modern day encryption completely useless. And he was asking, I don't know what AI it was, but he was saying, Are you sure about this? Have we really found something? And the I kept saying, Yes, this is gonna change the fucking world. And it was nothing, it was completely and utterly fundamentally flawed.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

See, I saw the story that announced what it found, but not the the story that you're telling me.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Oh yeah, no, it turned out it was complete nonsense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It turned out it's just I know we're already off topic, aren't we? Because that's not necessarily DD related. But I I don't want it near creative stuff.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Like it's not that I'm Oh, this is the good part of it.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Oh, well. And you said you had a balanced opinion, you know. So yeah, but no okay. But I I use AI in games now, so when I'm DMing, I've got AI That's interesting. Yeah, because if somebody I ask what each player is doing, okay, and then once they've given me what they're doing, I go into Notes LM and I put their action in, and it takes a quite a while because it's slower than normal AI. And when it's their action, I come back and just double check and read out a little bit, and I know that that is giving it's like an index in a book. It's indexing a book. It is not creating any content. So you're bait you're you're taking notes.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Like you know you've got a fucking pen in your hand right now.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

I don't understand this distinction. Yeah, it's so it's so I can give more detail to to their actions. I can say, well, they want to go this place in the city, let me know how how they might get there, who they might encounter there, when they're there, describe the scene and who is in that scene for me. And I don't have to pick up a book. All my PDFs are loaded into factual stuff you're you're looking at there, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Totally factual, yeah. Rather than saying that.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

So you're you essentially sorry, using it for collation. Yes, that's all I'm using for. Artificial assistance. That's what I'm using it for, artificial assistance. So I've got maybe 20 PDFs loaded in.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Are we gonna discuss the elephant around that? Which is how many trees and how many litres of water is it costing us for you to take your notes?

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Well, the world is two-thirds water.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know it's yeah, no, no, no, no. When there is not a shortage of water in the world. The world is not the world is not two-thirds drinking water. Yeah, but you don't need drinking water to run AI. It it it it it it uses an absolutely massive amount of energy and wastes an absolutely and and I'm not saying that we shouldn't ever use it because of stuff like that, but we should be using it for things that are kind of more the more the issue is the the the cost of RAM nowadays, you can't even pick up a computer anymore. It's not like a do you do you have like a subscription to an AI or are you just using free AIs?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

No, I've got Gemini at the minute. I've had Chat GPT in the past.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Okay. And how much is that how much does something like that set you back?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Well, Gemini, I got it at the beginning of the year, and it was I think it was about £100 and no, it was £90 for a year's worth for family. Okay, so it was a really pretty good offer.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Let's go back to what you're saying about the action stuff, but you were using it for location details rather than if someone says I said this thing to an MPC, you're not writing it for responses.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

God, no, no, okay, even a short delay on stuff like that will be awful. It would be, yeah. And I don't want it to take over those thought processes in my brain. No. I just think I've gonna have to have four books in front of me or four PDFs and John. Four's amateur, isn't it, for John? It just speeds things up for everybody involved because I'm not my memory's not great. So I do rely on reading books while I DM, and this just makes the process quicker.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Yeah, I don't, I must admit, I don't do that either, John. I do the old school, I read them, I must admit. Yeah. I do read them. I do feel a bit of a mug round about now doing so, but it's kind of like I read the adventures before I DM them.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, yeah. That's yeah, you've got to do that. I I do my prep, but during the session, I just use it as an aid and it works for me. It is yeah, I can't imagine DM.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

It's useful if you're like cities, sort of like sandbox, and there's loads and loads of different locations. I've been in a situation where you DM and you you know you don't know, they go to some random place in the city, you gotta have to leap through and find it. Yeah. If it can reliably tell you that location, that's that's great, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

It does.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Positive side.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

And it I don't get it to create encounters for me or tell me what should happen at the in at the place because that would be rubbish. I mean, when you do ask for it, if you I don't ever use it, but I have to done so in prep, it comes up with really rubbish things. I mean you could your memory your own your own imagination is far better because you understand what the players are, how they'd interact with whatever you present to them. The AI cannot understand all those complexities. So it would just never use it for that. But yeah, just as an indexing feature, it is good. And notes LN LN is the best one because it it just references and it doesn't try to create anything. Yeah. And you can upload 20 PDFs to it, and you can just ask it any question. You could ask it a rule. Interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:41

We're not sponsored, but yeah, it's got a wire going from the phone socket into the back of his skull for some reason. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

They are listening, I like the way that John was looking at me, these kids. Maybe you know what?

SPEAKER_02 8:52

I'm not gonna come down as hard on you as I thought it is, because that's I I say to people, I don't mind people using AI for grunt work. Like, I think we need to, you know, discuss the impact it has on the environment and and and and where the money that's being made from it is going, and there's some morality issues as well if you really want into it, but that's grunt work, like to some extent. I I I it's it's when it's near like creativity for me, is when I start to struggle back.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

Dumb down the skill level, because the more it does, yeah, the the less people are going to be inclined to read a fucking book themselves, they'll just take the information that's there. That's already happened, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 9:28

It just plays into modern people that they're just their attention spans a lot shorter, they need their things to be given to them quite easily to digest.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

Well, when I'm doing just uh a search on s for something, I didn't install this, but no matter what search engine you use, there's a little AI thing that comes up as the first option.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Absolutely, and it's getting harder and harder to get to the actual articles because they're behind firewalls and only the AIs can read them. Do you know what I mean? You're like, hold on a second.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

People are finding that increasingly useful, aren't they? You you talk to most young people now when they when they go online to search something, they're just reading the AI answer and they're taking that as fact and truth. They're not doing anything else.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Despite the fact that it has a caveat at the bottom that says AI can make mistakes, it also changes each time you've put in a search, you get a different answer. Well, but this is an interesting thing because I feel if you're researching something and you're reading articles on the subject written by people, like those people have prejudice and influence and belief, and part of what they're writing is putting their point across. When you're getting that from AI, I just does it like does it amalgamate all of those different nuances? Because two people can write an article on the same subject.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

But in a in a role-playing game sense, yeah, you don't really care, do you? You just go with one or the other because they're both imaginary, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

So you it's not going to affect too much apart from well, as long as it's consistent, I suppose, with what it tells you. Players can have a long memory. Sometimes if you go to one place and looks like that the first time, it might not look like the second time.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

So don't use ChatGPT for it. Use something that just digs out knowledge and presents it to us, every time you can ask it, so what would happen if this faction mixed with this faction or whatever? You can you can get political feedback on things, but it's it's still intelligent. But it's easy to spark an idea then, potentially. Yeah, it's good. I find it good for just helping during the game.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

So

Solo Play Possibilities

SPEAKER_03 11:15

on the the good subject, I would say there's a thing about AI doing scenarios, like writing them, running them. If someone's not got access to a group or people, you get someone who's living in the middle of nowhere, but they've somehow got internet access. Anything is better than nothing. And if that's some sort of lifeline to whatever hobby they're into.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

But you think AI itself as in something to interact with the AI to provide you with with a game. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

I mean apparently these things are yeah, solo role playing, basically. Yes. And uh like that. Have you not tried it? No, and I won't.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

I don't want the competition anyway, but purely from an entertainment point of view, I have just realised that I want to see an AI DMing other AIs and I want to see how that would go. Like like just academic stroke entertainment. It could be it could go on for centuries, and it could be complete lunacy.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Yeah, the solo role-playing boost is quite a good thing. People can upload the rules to a new system and say, Can you just give me a basic little adventure based upon these rules and teach me the rules as you go along? And AI can do that shit as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:42

If you do not have access to people, then I get it.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

And maybe if there's a disability that's presented preventing you from doing what I'm about to suggest, that is going to be a caveat. There are solo adventures out there that are written by people on fucking paper. You can get them in PDF.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

You don't need you could always buy those, feed those to the AI and say, This is the system, this is the adventure.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

No, well, yeah, I was just saying it's similar to playing a play your own adventure, I suppose, isn't it? But I guess you're just not reading it if someone else is doing it for you. But yeah, you could input that into it. Uh is that possible to input a solo adventure in it and have that run it to you?

SPEAKER_01 13:15

I suppose you could put it play your own adventure and make it.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Morally, so if we all know how AI writes an adventure, it does it by referencing loads of other people's adventures, right? Is there not an element of plagiarism to that?

SPEAKER_03 13:30

Yeah, there is. In fairness, that is a major element of DME. You can't watch a film with the game, yink, you can't read a book with I love that scene.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Is there a thing of plagiarism in in scenarios? Because there's a lot that have taken influence from all sorts of things like horror, horror movies and stuff. I'm not even quite sure you get away with that, would you?

SPEAKER_01 13:48

In the context of our hobby, I don't think the plagiarism is a big, big issue, like you say, because I think everybody's at it and it's meant to be like that, isn't it? A bit sharing again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

I mean, they're all kind of like EV Indiana Jones inspired or it's kind of tombraid or anything kind of.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

I don't think anyone in their own mind is gonna use use AI to create their adventures and present them to anybody. I don't really think that's where it is. I think people are gonna use it just to to familiarise yourself themselves with the system and then go out and buy the best scenarios that have been written for the system. You know, that they're never gonna be as good.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

What worries me is you could get an AI literally having its own company, knocking out these what would be cookie-cut scenarios. They might be good.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Listen, listen, AI AI literature exists. There are books out there entirely written by AI. But there's there's um um does anyone know the music streaming platform Deezer? So Deezer are the first platform to say we are going to label AI content when we discover it.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

They they should they should tell us in the show. You gotta know.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Then you've got to be a good idea. I don't think this podcast can talk about AI generated music.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Well, I think other than the tongue food, only one of us was involved in that decision-making process, and that is, you know, I I I I think I might have mentioned that initially.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

It is an AI song, our theme theme tune. It was made on Suno or whatever it was, and they'll play well. I really like it. Yeah, it's fun, it's catchy. I I like AI. We should do a proper version of it. I think you should know. You should.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Yeah, but especially considering that at least two of the people at this table are fucking musicians.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

We hadn't we hadn't done music for ages, so we just went the easy route. Yeah. For jingles and stuff in it. Yeah. It was uh it was fun and it was quick.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

But it does, as Barry said earlier, taking people's jobs. So people learn a skill. They've put time, effort, money, you know, student loans out the arse 10,000 hours with a click of a switch. Some or someone who votes themselves a pay rise says, no, fuck a lot of you. We're we're doing this little program.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

That's happened to me at this table. That has affected me the most. Just yeah, disproportionately more than everybody else. There's no way we can stay on a good side of something without you know, if I wasn't 54 years old, I'd be fucked. If I was 20 years younger and I still had 20 years ahead of me to bring up my family.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Your trade was graphic design, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Graphic design and online programming, yeah, media. I can still do a little bit of it, but it's it's increasingly being taken over by AI. And what's happening as well is people are using AI to free up more time to do the shit that I was doing in-house, you know, so I as a freelancer, less work escapes the environment of the company itself. So that's move on through this concept art. This is the first really made an impact, wasn't it, on our community?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

AI art, yeah. Has done, isn't it? Certainly in the community, people have moved to AI art, haven't they, to for the characters' generations and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

But as you say they moved, did they ever really draw their art in the process? They never did, probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

It allows people to come up with an image, I suppose, it in a good positive way. Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

I mean people object to it because they think it's putting artists out of work, but all these people that are creating art, they're being more creative with art than they ever were before.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

True, yeah. I can't deny that.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Yeah, I'm not particularly inspired by the AI art myself, but we've got a case there, you uh the artist that does the fantastic stuff for our podcast. Yeah. You said has been absolutely kicked in the box because of AI.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah, she has, yeah. What the hell? None of our art is AI, just to make that clear. Dawn Dawn Lado is our artist, and I've worked with her for many years and she does some brilliant stuff.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

It depends what you want to use it for, isn't it? I guess for character portraits, you can come up with something decent, but if you want something sort of like that's quite just steal a photo like everyone. Yeah, you could do I yeah, I when I look for a character picture, I'd usually look on the internet and rather than I don't I don't I never use it to come up with the owner.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

I think everyone knows automatically what my position is going to be on this. I've already said I don't want it near anything creative, and art is inherently creative, but I'm not digging out the people to do it if like art isn't accessible for you and it it it scratches that itch for you. Personally, I don't I I don't think I could take any pleasure out of writing prompts and getting art. I'd rather do shit art because at least it's still art.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

But you wouldn't, would you? And these people probably wouldn't either.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

So and again, I'm not digging out other people's choices. This is how I feel about it personally. If you're one of the people that see him on Discord, and of course I never negatively comment on it, but every week you see people put in some and if that's you, fill your boots. I'm not I'm genuinely not digging you out, but I'd rather there wasn't any I'd rather I'd almost rather there wasn't character art than AI art. AI has weirdly inadvertently made me believe in the concept of a human soul by showing me what art looks like without one. And I'm not talking about character art.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

No, then I'm going to what is art, aren't you? I mean a character portrait is drawn, but is it art? I don't know if it really is. It's just an image of what you look like. It's an image.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Art is the work of artists.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Exactly. So if you want something invocative, yeah, I don't think you should go to AR.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

So I do feel sorry for artists, and we have every community has some amongst them, you know, somebody that might even be kind enough to draw your character for you. And these people have got have lost the most.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

The last game that I was in, Love on the Water, and the current game that I'm in, Vampire the Masquerade, everyone has done their character art on an app, it's a bit like making guess who character, you get to choose the ears, you get to choose from a load of selections, there's no AI involved in it, and you still end up with something relatively unique that represents your character. It's a bit kind of cartoony, but I'd again I'd rather do that than than write prompts.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

If you're not going to go roll with AI under those circumstances on a personal level, at which point you detach from tick technology itself, eventually you'll have to sort of put a break on your use of technology, like John did 20 years ago. Put a brake on the use of technology.

unknown 19:27

Come on.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Like I hear what you're saying. There is a sense of inevitability about it, but it's failing in so many ways, it's so costly. I think there are enough people like me who are at least attempting to resist, not resist as in like it's this big fucking militant act, but just I don't really want to play with it. Hopefully, it won't get the hold it it could have, if that makes sense for me.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

I think the main thing is how insidious it is, un unless it's marked, like they say about the the music saying it's AI. Sometimes you you'll see it, you can just all work. But if you don't know and you're not told, and stuff is just posted, or it could be an algorithm, it could be someone who's just got a particular turn of phrase, but you don't know what you're interacting with, especially online. The deep fake stuff is insane.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Yeah. Like they can just make it appear that anyone is saying anything.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

We had a letter from the school this week that said we are monitoring the use of AI for nude pictures of students.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

You should not be able to fucking upload an image of someone and then watch that person committing sexual acts. That's just that is fucking abhorrent in it.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Well, most people wouldn't do it, would they? But I don't know about the fucking morals of people these days. But most people, you can do that. Well, actually, I'm not gonna do that. It's something I won't do. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, yeah. But I think you know you can't rely on people's morals these days, that people just do it because they get a laugh out of it. But anyway, we moved on to the bad. We're well ahead on the bad. We didn't even announce a match. Sorry, remind me.

SPEAKER_03 20:58

We're not an ugly yet, but remind me what the good was again. So the good stuff, no

AI in the Bad

SPEAKER_03 21:03

no other resort. Yeah. I I could see the the use for it, but you know you should know what you're getting. But uh degrading the skill set of people when you can just point click, put in a couple of words about something, and then you're the glove puppet that the AI is operating. I think that's where we we need to stop that shit.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Well, I think most people can feel that way about their phone use in the first place. AI has just supercharged it. Sometimes I look at my kids, I think, What a fucking curse that I am is on you. You cannot put it down, you're just constantly looking at it, and ten years ago they didn't even exist. I feel sorry for them. I think that they've been cursed by an object that I used to think was just fucking fantastic. If you don't control it, it controls you. And AI is another way that it's controlling us, it becomes more useful. So we've immediately gotten away from the good side. We are drifting well into the bad yeah, good sizes of distant memory now, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So we've talked about the loss of human spark. Barry, this is something you're particularly passionate about.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Like, you know, I don't care. Uh you want to use it to alphabetise a load of shit or to you know, uh I've got friends who are computer programmers, they use it all day, every day. You know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

But people can still be creative for sure, but you mean getting paid for it is going to be the issue, isn't it? People coming into it as a living. I mean, people can always be creative at home, whether it exists or not, for your own Personal use, but people yeah, no longer be able to earn money out of it is the major issue, isn't it? So it's going to stop people either developing or going to do study these sort of careers.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

This is similar arguments to when Caxton bought out the printing press. Well, and people well, no, the soul of the letters, it's all about the illumination, and someone can just crank a lever and replicate something that took like 10 years to manually.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Well, the invention of the car in the same respect.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

One of the things, and listen, I I know, and I'm looking at Mark now as well, because I know that every time I mention how much I hate capitalism, I see his eyes roll back in his head. It's just but but whenever we did, do you remember like you used to see those films from like the 40s and the 50s when they talked about the city of the future and everyone had all the time in the world because we had all of these machines that were doing all the work for us, and you're like, no, no, no, all of those machines will get put to work by capitalism, and we'll be exactly as fucked as we always just do a lot of pay for it.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Well, you know, people have got saying to do. I'm not a capitalist, by the way. No, no, no. In order to be a capitalist, one must first have capital. Uh right, so yeah, so the loss of human spark, the quirky creativity that makes tabletop stories special. Is it being lost? Perhaps in the future, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Yeah, not in the moment.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

I don't think it is now. I think we've gotten like I know when we talked about you using it and how you're using it, and I don't I don't know if it's worth the cost to the planet, but I can see why you're doing it, and it's not it's not affecting the story, it's not delivering the story, it's almost not part of the story, you're just using it as a an intelligent note taker.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

My experiences round the table are it's not actually making that much of a difference to the gabe.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

No, that's good then. But a threat to indie creators, we've we've covered this a little bit. Yeah, it is that right.

SPEAKER_03 24:07

As always, I'm speaking to someone who's got no artistic skills, but things like artwork, especially. So the the the World of Darkness splats and Shadowrun, two of my favourites. You look at the uh the early artwork that was in there, it's this solid black and white, heavy ink stuff, it's got a real good feel to it, and then you look at the whoever's running the fifth edition at the moment, they bought out the the splats for that, and it's this horrible smooth sort of look. It's like AI overlay, and it looks like people wearing really crap fursuits, and it's just been covered over by this AI generated mission. And it's horrible. Yeah. There's no replacement for so honest.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

I was gonna say that does this not help potentially help indie developers, could it not? Because they've got no cash. I mean, AI might be a cheap way of getting their stuff on onto market, it's a positive side of it. But if it can yeah, if it might be shit, but it's if they've got no alternative, it's shit or nothing.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Well, in the past they would do it for nothing, they would just do it as a passion project or they'd get cash because it was a decent idea.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

But can AI now sort of playtest your system and stuff? Could you use AI to do things that big companies like Hasbro would do five years worth of playtesting? Can you do it in like two weeks on AI?

SPEAKER_01 25:25

I I guess they will. You look at the Warhammer system we've often criticized because that was a crunchy system. Math most systems are mathematically based. AI is brilliant. They're going into that number crunching and saying, Well, this causes this, this causes a loop that you don't want. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

My point is, could AI potentially give you better role-playing games on the indie side to create not so good, because so could talking to people that go, yeah. I don't know. It's just a point.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah, you're drifting backwards in the AI. No, no, it's good. I like this because this is the in-between area, you know, where you could go either way with what's what we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

It's nothing we can do about AI, it is here, so we might as well try and use it as best you can. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yeah. I mean we when we get to the ugly, I don't think anyone will think let's go back and talk about this positively. We're gonna get there. I'm very depressed in that, aren't we? So yeah, we've we've all already covered copyright and plagiarism battles as well. There's a legal mess of AI models failing to they're being trained on the hard work of traditional writers and artists. Yeah, how they're getting away with it, I have no fucking idea, but it's just truth in it, because they scrape everything, it's the ultimate scraper. AI knows everything and just regurgitates it. It doesn't necessarily innovate or invent.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Well the first rules computer programming is garbage in, garbage out. So if and if it just doesn't uh discriminate on what it's filter feeding, then yeah, you're gonna get high.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

You can hope the result art by amalgamation. Like, who wants that? It is its own form of art, AI art.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

If it gives equal credence to uh statistical abnormality to uh tried and tested true fact, because it's all out there and it can't differentiate between the two. It's gonna be problematic.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Yeah, that's what's happening right now. So if you ask it to write a scenario for you, it won't inspire you, it's not gonna be brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

And it's a bit dumb, isn't it, at times? It's like hi, don't use it, but I talk to people, I was chatting to my son. My son is a he works in a school, and one of his jobs is to order all of the materials for the um food tech classes, so he's got X amount of teachers all giving their individual class lists, and he's got to compile it all. So he put it all into I presume Chat GPT, and it was like, compile this into one list. And he was like, and it missed loads of stuff. And when I said to it, like, you've missed this, it just went, oh yeah. I was like, I have made a material.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

It's imperfect, but then it might be perfect for our game because we don't care about being 100% authentic, do we, most of the time? It's a time saver.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Depends if you enjoy that sort of like legwork of reading and stuff, doesn't it? Whether you want to use it or not, you can still read it and enjoy it doing it. Like John obviously does I do as well. I enjoy reading it and knowing it.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Uh would you say that that makes that an elite sense of what makes a DM? No, it's nothing's what they enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Yeah, so not what you enjoy. Same with art. If you enjoy doing art still, you still do it, don't you? You don't go to AI, but again, if you enjoy reading this scenario, that's fine, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Okay, so you've got three types of DME. You've got somebody that enjoys reading and is really into their game, and they make brilliant DMs, right? Because they can come to the table, they know everything, they present it well. I think they're the best. Then you've got the others that just come to the table and wing it and they don't know what the fuck they're doing, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I don't enjoy those.

SPEAKER_03 28:41

But yeah, we can show if it works.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Now you've got the in-between, which is a bloke that's just come along and prepped on AI and has got AI in front of him and everything's AI, and he's gonna approach the table. That's got to be the worst DM of the three. Is it for me?

SPEAKER_00 28:53

It would be what the AI approach. AI approach, yeah. If it works and people enjoy it, that's probably the what really matters in the long run, I would say, not the the method it got there.

SPEAKER_03 29:03

So if you're just gonna read it out, you've got no adaptability. You're not learning that as a skill. So it the AI is dumbing you down. Yeah. Who wants a smooth brain DM? You've got to be able to put a quirk on it. You don't have to be massively familiar with the rule set as long as you can go with the flow.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Yeah, we're we're not totally against it by the sounds of it, although you probably wouldn't.

SPEAKER_03 29:27

The preferred one is a waste of time unless they develop from that.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Yeah. If it's a starting block, I prefer to not be aware that somebody's doing it. If they're doing if they're using AI to create the adventure or they're you know they're relying upon it in so many ways, I think I'd rather not know. Because as soon as I did, I wouldn't be able to look at it in the same way. I wouldn't necessarily I'd be sitting there thinking, oh what, I haven't fucking come to play role-playing games around the table to be DN2 by a computer. No, exactly. It depends how they present it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 29:53

If they're just every time you say something, they're looking at a list of things and just reciting. Yeah, that that's not gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Yeah, I I guess if it's obvious, then it would be annoying, but if it's not, then I think the distinction between what you said earlier, an artificial assistant.

SPEAKER_03 30:11

Yeah. I can see that being useful as long as you just keep AI in its place, is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Okay, so because I think the human beings have written the best adventures ever already. You're not gonna beat 'em yourself, you might as well DM 'em. Has anyone else got anything to say on the the bad before we get into the ugly? Let's do it, let's do the ugly. It's more right. I'm interested to know what the ugly can possibly do. So the one thing that is on people's minds at the moment is the AI DM nightmare, where tech companies

The Ugly AI Future

SPEAKER_01 30:39

will replace human GMs completely in the context of having to play the game because they want to monetize the game in d in a different way. So they will present the adventures to you with an AI DM.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

On an iPad, you mean. On an iPad or on a computer screen.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

I think it's in the process of happening.

SPEAKER_03 31:00

Already happens. There's a couple of channels on YouTube where they've had an AI running a scenario and people have played in it to f for the experience and to show people what it's like. But I hate to say it's probably only going to get better. And again, if you don't have a ref, then maybe but that should never ever be your first choice. No, definitely not your first choice.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Yeah. It'd be interesting to see it though. I'd like to play it. Yeah. Just to see what it's like. Yeah, you can't knock it.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Well, the worry is Hasbro are doing this. Because they want to monetize everybody that plays it. And at the moment the DM is the focus of all of the expenses of of playing a game round a table. The DM fronts most of that cost. So how much yeah, come on. So they eliminate the DM. So how much would they charge for that service then? Well it'd be part of your subscription.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Or so like a DD Beyond subscription. Yeah. And then that would be in there as you play a bit extra and have a sort of like a DM mark or something like that. You just click on Mark John or Steve and it's it just goes.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Yeah, it just goes. You can choose your voice and then you can choose your adventure. So they won't sell adventures in books, they'll sell them as oh my god, these packages.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

I've just realised that a DM is in under that context is fucking basically a sat nav. Yeah, DMB. It would be, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

But we could have nothing to lose because you're never gonna DM, so you can't really say, oh well, DM now.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

No, no, no, no, no, no, hold on. Um that means I've that means I've got everything to lose. Because I'm the one whose game's gonna be spoiled by it.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Yeah, you like playing, you like having human DMs.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

I don't want to, yeah, of course I like having human DMs, and I've got you know, and and again, it's well you know, we consistently describe this hobby as you know fucking creative, collaborative storytelling, and I don't want AI near anything creative. I think what we do, I'm not suggesting we're creative in the same way that like artists and authors and musicians are, but it's like that it's the creativity of fun and entertainment for your own gratification, not and I don't I don't want a machine anywhere anywhere fucking near that, yeah, unless it's serving me espresso martinez.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

So you yeah, you you feel as if that's that is gonna be lost, that human contact with with somebody who's making decisions on what you're doing rather than having a computer do it. But if you can imagine, you don't I don't think it's gonna be lost.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

I think there will always be people like me who are like, no, fuck you, um we're gonna run a proper There are still people that play A D D and there are people who won't even move on to a new rule set, let alone an a like I don't think we're at the kind of risk that people think they are. I think this community will go uh enough of this community will go no, I'm alright, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

But finding a DM can be quite difficult, and being a DM is disproportionately more time takes up more time to do that.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

And have nothing but respects, admiration, and love for those that do it.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Yeah, so you've got a group of six people and you know somebody's got a DM and maybe there isn't one amongst you. The option is to have an AI DM and all of you play, and who knows how the experience still might be your own. It might be. Don't I?

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Do they come out with impromptu jokes and innuendos like John might guys look and I know that I don't DM, but if I was in a situation where there was like five of us that wanted to play and no one was going to DM, at that point I would be saying we should be taking it in turns. Yeah. So you run a short campaign, I'll run a short campaign, you run a short campaign, we'll find out which one of us has got the best aptitude and wants to crack on with it more and and and let's give that a go before.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

Oh, have you seen this um DM that we can buy from Hasbro? It costs 30 quid to buy the adventure and the DM and we can play the game with them and then we can all play. You can we can all play characters, depend on how good it is, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 34:31

And totally if it's just rubbish and it's sort of pulling you up on language and stuff, it could do, couldn't it? They could just super woke on it and just say, no, you can't say that. Oh sorry, you cannot make that action.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

And I just want to be clear in my experience, in my in my experience and and from what I've read, most AIs lean towards the right rather than the fucking left.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Definitely not from my experience.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Well no, but Stani Deaths, yeah, go, sorry, you cannot do that action.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

On with the ugly. Uh the other thing is community backlash. It's not great, is it? Because as a community, we're pretty chilled. I mean, and most most things we don't tend to worry about because we don't we don't talk about real life

Community Backlash

SPEAKER_01 35:05

shit very often. But AI definitely looks like it's causing division in in the community. Well, we've had it on our forum a couple of times where people have been quite upset and almost at loggerheads over their attitude toward AI. It's like those that are pro AI, it's like it seems to be personal to them if somebody criticises the use of it, even generally speaking. Yeah, it's strange to see these kind of extreme points of view. And they are they are part of the hobby now, I think. And I don't think anything like that is good as like you know, it's it's nice to be able to just chill in it and all display again.

SPEAKER_03 35:43

But yeah, it can be a little bit quicker. If you already know what you're looking for, whatever, you don't want to go flicking through on the fly in the middle of the session. If you're depending on doing that as your only way of finding information, you're missing out on the looking through the books and other stuff catching your eye and filling in gaps that maybe you didn't know you had. If you're just going directly to the source, you're missing out on all the erroneous information that you collate subconsciously or otherwise, and it gives you inspiration, is what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Again, those are exactly the skills that are gonna get eroded by this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Yeah, they are. That's why we've got to use it for a uh like a tool rather than uh you know, we've got to find a way to make it work for the DM and in the hobby and not overtake things.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Is a tool, but it's increasingly becoming something that controls us. Well, that's an AI, isn't it? And AI is is supercharged though.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

That's the thing, isn't it? It could uh yeah, it could go too far and become the thing that everyone relies on rather than doing it your own using your own brain with it.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Yeah, so where does it lead us? Where does it Where is the hobby at the end of this whole process?

SPEAKER_00 36:54

It's certainly if there's no controls, yeah, there will be AI DMs and probably AI players as well.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

No, no, no, but but you look, we're all gonna be in like some fucking underground fight club scenario where AI free DM fucking We'll be batteries, won't we?

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Plugged into some wall somewhere. Has that been done though? Yeah, it probably is.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Yeah, well, where does it lead? It's not it's not great, is it? Do you you wish you could pause it here? Like the use of mobile phones. I think after three years it was great, and then suddenly social media and all of these other pressures to pick up your phone and use it, and it's become something that isn't so great in my mind. But now AI is at that stage, isn't it, where you can you can still use it and you can get a lot from it, but it hasn't taken over. Companies are still employing humans, turning everyone into consumers rather than creators.

SPEAKER_03 37:42

I think I wish I'd said that.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

That is the dark side, the side that is the threat, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 37:50

We're just sitting back and passively taking the lot. And come on. And eventually sometimes you want to push.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Yeah, so once they eliminate all human creativity, they'll start charging us for that creative being provided to us.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

Yeah, and that AI will charge the same for regurgitating you and your peers' work.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Yeah. Alright, so that's the end of our AI discussion. Hopefully, we've we've frightened enough people off it so we can maintain our hobby for the next 10 years, at least, as it is, because we love it. Read things, write things, yeah,

Creativity Over Convenience

SPEAKER_01 38:21

be great, guys.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

Listen, it make trash art. It doesn't matter if what you produce ain't the fucking best. It's it's not about how you do it, it's about why you do it.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

And that reminds me of a message that I think particularly you were putting out there early on in our podcast about how you should approach the game in the first place. You know, this is about doing the best you can, it's not about being perfect, having the perfect accent. Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

Just yeah, throw yourself, it is putting part of yourself into this stuff that you do, and that's what for me is missing from you know it's only a mistake if you refuse to learn from it. I I am remarkably resilient to learning. That has become your catchphrase. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 39:03

We've already got you to confess that you would, given the extreme service.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

So we have found we have found one circumstance where I would agree to do it.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

I yeah, I'd just say I think what makes a game good when I'm playing it for a DM, it's the DM's personality they put into it, and that would obviously be lost with any AI.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Oh, that's such a good point. I can't believe that I can't believe it's taken us this long to get to that as well. It's such a good point because you do you some DMs blow your mind, don't they? Every now and then you sit down with something and you're like, fucking hell. They're incredible, and I don't know if you'd experience that.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

And and yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's it, that's what it's all about. That's hopefully it's never lost. Not in our lifetimes, anyway. Amen.

SPEAKER_03 39:40

Storytellers have been around as long as people have had a fire to sit around and long enough to not be fighting off the sabre-tooth boss names that are trying to kill her. Probably the third oldest profession.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Stephen, I'm enjoying the Cthulhu that you're running at the moment so much. Yeah, it's a really, really, really good farm. That uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Yeah, yeah, head on the road plus service to listen to the Cthulhu Lai play. It should be it's like an excellent. Banging, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so let's all slice and dice.