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Hasbro stop pissing everyone off challenge level impossible

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks Talks AI Usage in D&D [UPDATED!]

"Inside of development, we've already been using AI. It's mostly machine-learning-based AI or proprietary AI as opposed to a ChatGPT approach. We will deploy it significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid. I'm probably more excited though about the playful elements of AI. If you look at a typical D&D player....I play with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. There's not a single person who doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That's a clear signal that we need to be embracing it. We need to do it carefully, we need to do it responsibly, we need to make sure we pay creators for their work, and we need to make sure we're clear when something is AI-generated. But the themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling, I think you're going to see that not just our hardcore brands like D&D but also multiple of our brands."
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Stop trying to make fetch happen, ffs. I for one do not want AI tools if it means boiling a fucking lake to make a prompt for my game. I don't want AI period, but these silicon valley dipshits are too busy huffing eachothers farts at the idea of paying their workers even less than they already do.
 
Eh, neat as the image of a giant evil computer boiling a lake dry is, it's also somewhat overblown - modern cattle farming requires even more unreasonable amounts of water, for shorter-lived products. Though I'm down for regulating both.
(If it wasn't clear, the supercomputers are only used for the training runs. Trained LLMs can run on a laptop.)
The main problem with LLMs, though, is that they're industrial processes too new for proper regulation, and they've exploited this to take dodgy steps like scraping non-public-domain material. If training an LLM was something a hobbyist with a couple of gaming computers could do in six months, I think I'd feel differently about Scraped The Entire Accessible Internet.

As for use in D&D? Well, Big Stupid Tables and similar random content generators have been here from the early days. I tend to like a decent table's output better than a typical GPT output, but it does require more prep.
 
While 3.X doesn't really do it, I quite enjoy the tenet of Owlbear Fantasy that magic is a vocational skill which anyone can do, restricted not by innate talent or a special bloodline but by the fact that it is incredibly inconvenient to use.
 
It depends on the type of magic. Wizards learn magic through study, while sorcerers are born with it, and clerics and druids are granted it by deities and nature spirits.
 
Parzival said:
Owlbear Fantasy?
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The type of fantasy that D&D - particularly oldschool D&D - is. Lots of overlap with sword and sorcery, its direct predecessor. Named for that characteristically bizarre monster, the owlbear.
The Narrator said:
It depends on the type of magic. Wizards learn magic through study, while sorcerers are born with it, and clerics and druids are granted it by deities and nature spirits.
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Pretty sure sorcs are 3.x and later? Psions might have that role in earlier editions, though.
 
It's not what 5.5 did, but what WOTC did. They hired pinkertons to harass a guy that accidentally got some magic cards early, and also tried to sink the OGL.
 
Aviatrix said:
What did 5.5 do? I'm a 3.5 holdout, so I haven't really been keeping up to date.
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Hasbro has lost a lot of public favor due to the Pinkertons, OGL debacle, Chris Cocks saying internal testing is done with AI. (Also, they offered a special pricier alternate cover for the new PHB, but apparently only printed 10% of the orders they received)

In addition, whilst the general changes for the 5.5 are good, there's still a lot of rules weirdness, and it didn't really actually solve the problems with 5e as a system.
 
Leila Hann said:
I will be terribly disappointed in ttrp gamers as a whole if 5.5 isn't a commercial disaster.
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I mean, I'm certainly 110% done with D&D or any WOTC product unless things change quite a bit (they've got nothing that I want to buy anyway, unless they decide to reprint Star Wars Saga Edition, and I'm pretty sure they legally can't). Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of people out there who have never even heard of any other TTRPG and will just keep buying D&D out of sheer brand familiarity.



In other news, going back to something that we discussed a couple months ago:
HoratioVonBecker said:
Yeah, I saw a PF1 character sheet for a level one Wizard from someone's SI fic, and it looked more complicated than most entire rulebooks. There's a reason I think PF2 is probably worth learning - I just wish there was an obvious 'start reading here' link on the website, and that following that chain would reliably get me decent mastery of the system.
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Since then I've come across a YouTube channel that specializes in short videos (all under 7 minutes) explaining PF2E stuff.

Here's the playlist for introducing new people to the game.

Hopefully you might find it helpful?
 
The Pinkertons...The OGL Scandal...the constant usage of AI art and telling people to basically get used to it...This right here is why I mainly play Pathfinder.
 
Not just AI art, according to a job listing that they posted a while back, they're planning to start having AI write the books, too.
 
Leila Hann said:
I will be terribly disappointed in ttrp gamers as a whole if 5.5 isn't a commercial disaster.
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Given that I suspect 90% of the D&D audience doesn't even know any of these scandals people are mentioning exist, I don't expect them to really move the needle much.

If the thing is a disaster it will probably be simply because people are happy with their current game and/or because of the general drop in quality of recent books making people leery to buy more.
 
For anyone who wants to take a look at PF2E, or at least it's combat:
Play Quest for the Golden Candelabra (free)/Dawnsbury Days ($5, 8x the encounters, lets you make your own characters).
The former being the free demo of the latter, featuring the first four encounters at level 1, without the ability to make your own characters. The latter expanding the campaign to 4x the length, and adding the same amount of free encounters (plus workshop content), as well as the ability to make your own characters.

It's graphics are nothing to write home about - it's portraits moving across a map. But it's visually clear, and if you're used to VTTs this is fine too - just don't expect a Baldurs Gate 3, duh.
Mechnically, it's a mostly faithful adaptation of PF2E - for combat it's only lacking a few things such as reach weapons. But it certainly lets you experience what the 3-action system is like in practice, how to best coordinate as a team, how system peculiarities such as Shields and Shield Block work, as well as numerous Feats and such.
For non-combat, it doesn't have social encounters, crafting, skill challenges etc. though those are promised to come with the addon. Also, y'know, those are probably more familiar to you from other systems already.

Plus, it's pretty fun IME. And the demo is literary free.
 
FaeGlade Plural said:
For anyone who wants to take a look at PF2E, or at least it's combat:
Play Quest for the Golden Candelabra (free)/Dawnsbury Days ($5, 8x the encounters, lets you make your own characters).
The former being the free demo of the latter, featuring the first four encounters at level 1, without the ability to make your own characters. The latter expanding the campaign to 4x the length, and adding the same amount of free encounters (plus workshop content), as well as the ability to make your own characters.

It's graphics are nothing to write home about - it's portraits moving across a map. But it's visually clear, and if you're used to VTTs this is fine too - just don't expect a Baldurs Gate 3, duh.
Mechnically, it's a mostly faithful adaptation of PF2E - for combat it's only lacking a few things such as reach weapons. But it certainly lets you experience what the 3-action system is like in practice, how to best coordinate as a team, how system peculiarities such as Shields and Shield Block work, as well as numerous Feats and such.
For non-combat, it doesn't have social encounters, crafting, skill challenges etc. though those are promised to come with the addon. Also, y'know, those are probably more familiar to you from other systems already.

Plus, it's pretty fun IME. And the demo is literary free.
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Dawnsbury Days is fun, has a robust set of mods that I think put every class in 2e in as options and has an upcoming DLC that takes it from level 4 to level 8 with 20+ new encounters and a bunch of expansion on the game mechanics and options.
 
What, they made the default milieu magical girls? :V

(I've heard that 4.x really wants a strong distinction between In Combat and Not In Combat, and iterations vary in terms of how much sense they make of that.)
 
Not the default one, no, but with the release of the Tian Xia character guide you can play a game where everybody is a magical girl.
 
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