When asked for comment, Hasbro Executives report that while they do gamble, what they're doing is a normal part of their job.
"Listen, everyone in our industry and economy deals with growth, and the risks of growth. We need to make investments to attempt to grow or our stock prices will fall as investors chasing profits will put their money elsewhere. So when we spend billions of dollars in 2020 and 2021 to attempt to grow our brand, we do so with the sobering knowledge that this isn't a sure thing, but calculated risks need to be made."
"But we manage those risks sufficiently, because we have other peoples' jobs as collateral. I mean, just imagine how we could possibly make these financial risks if we had to shoulder the responsibility for underperformance ourselves!"
Unprompted by questions, the executives continued. "And don't you dare try to put this in a negative light. This is just how our civilization conducts its artistic output. What, do you want people to make fun things just for the joy of it? You sound like a stuttering gap-toothed simpleton. You need to grow up kid!" The Executives took this moment to pull out two Cigarettes, lighting them simultaneously before taking a series of quick drags. "WAKE UP!" They added before going eerily quiet to stare into the middle distance.
At time of printing, Hasbro Executives have entered into negotiations with eldritch powers to obliterate all cultural knowledge of Dave Arneson to improve their next Financial Quarter's figures by half of a percentage. They are additionally hoping to leverage other cultural history of the hobby for tax breaks, stating "You know, like how streaming services destroy art. Can we do that?"
Sure, but even then it doesn't make a lot of sense that all the different ways that Warlock patrons can present themselves, that they all are great about giving people raw damage potential as a cornerstone of their pact, regardless of how you flavor it.
cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/464263
> There are devils who scheme and wheedle souls. There are beings of ancient wills and unknowable intent. One may even have entreated elemental forces from the primal dawn of the world, or Genies who have within them a stunning variety of desires, wants, and whims. Alongside Archfey who encompass a dizzying variety of the beliefs and motivations. What unites them all? > > They all think Eldritch Blast is a pretty cool spell.
"Child pure of heart and innocent of mind. You have caught my attentions, a Unicorn who wants nothing but to live and peace, and to see the joy and love of the innocent as yourself. For your purity of spirit, I shall grant a boon of this magic gun."
There are devils who scheme and wheedle souls. There are beings of ancient wills and unknowable intent. One may even have entreated elemental forces from the primal dawn of the world, or Genies who have within them a stunning variety of desires, wants, and whims. Alongside Archfey who encompass a dizzying variety of the beliefs and motivations. What unites them all?
They all think Eldritch Blast is a pretty cool spell.
The secret is to not work from what you'd like to do, but to work backwards from what your players want to do.
Seriously, throw out all the prep you have that isn't landing, and just ask your players what kinds of things they want to do. Then, make stories inspired by the actions or accomplishments they want to undertake.
... This does require that your players have some idea of what they want to do, though. If you have checked out or uninvested players, there's essentially nothing you can do I'm afraid.
So now I will soapbox to the players reading this: Your job is to be invested in the game. If you don't put energy into being invested, you're not fulfilling your side of the arrangement at the table.
You are sublimating the value of a person's lived experiences into an algorithm. The act of someone learning a joy of art, and then applying that themselves with the sum total of their experiences and influences is an inner truth to that person's agency and sapience.
I'm not exactly disagreeing that there isn't a parallel here, but I want you to acknowledge that you are saying that someone's love of art is as valuable as an algorithm that has no understanding of what it is doing. That's a terrible dystopia that you're petitioning for.
I don't think those advancements were categorically good, or were the morally correct things to occur. I won't go through them all, but just because something has happened, doesn't mean it was inevitable, or that it was a good thing to have happened and the world is better for it.
But putting that aside, the clearest difference that I see between those advancements and Machine Learning (A subset of Artificial Intelligence research), is that Machine Learning always takes datasets to train the system. As a result, the Machine Learning Generation truly isn't coming up with something new, it is just repackaging the work of other people. This is further morally fraught, as you have made a system with the aim to make the work of people irrelevant, while using their own work to do so without their consent.
And as to your proposition that artists shouldn't have to make money to live, I agree wholeheartedly. But this technology isn't going to lead to that future. It is currently being used by people with means to make more money by cutting out the people who would have to be paid to make creative works. Machine Learning already did this with language translators.
When Google Translate was getting somewhat good in the early 2000's, many companies fired their foreign language translators. What they discovered quickly is that the technology wasn't quite there yet, so they had to hire them back. But by and large, they didn't hire them back as translators, but as editors, who would clean up the bad translations from Machine Learning language translation software. We're currently on the same trajectory with this technology for a wide swath of creatives.
This is bad for right now, the foreseeable future. I do not foresee a future where we are freed from needing to exchange a majority our waking-lives for money, and this technology will only perpetuate that reality.
That all sounds really dramatic and escalating
And yes I do believe you're being rather dramatic by implying that I'm a luddite who doesn't want technology to work at all. I want technology to work for people, not the other way around. I want the Jetsons future, where people work a minority of their lives, not the majority, where we can focus on quality of life over vainglorious pursuits that ultimately benefit the idle rich. The trajectory of this technology will ultimately only benefit those who don't need to work to live.
It's all machine learning, which means any tools you use are trained against datasets. These datasets include art that were not authorized by the artist, but were used by unintended applications of 'fair use' IP laws. Machine learning ALWAYS makes use of datasets. That's unavoidable. This is where the big problem comes in, and how it's vastly different to photoshop.
Photoshop was a software developer's attempt to create digital tools for artists to use digital capabilities. They didn't develop Photoshop with artist's work, and certainly without the artist's permission as part of the computer code.
Artists should be able to make a living with their art.
The fact that anyone in the world is able to do that is great, and we should be allowing for inroad for more people to enter into creative careers, not endorsing technology that aims to make them obsolete while profiting from their efforts.
I had taken the artist's statement that the art is being reworked as evidence of the art being pulled, and at least future published books not containing them.
https://twitter.com/i_shkipin/status/1687829743268442112
I should have waited until the actual statement (linked below), as it's clear that the artist was making something of a lie of omission above, as I believe he purposefully wanted readers to believe that the art was changing in the books, not that he would redo the art to... essentially no promised effect. Maybe he was lying to himself with the hope that he could get another go at?
https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/1687969469170094083
I've updated the title of this post to reflect the info from the official WotC statement on the issue. I'm glad they won't be allowing AI "augmented" submissions from their artists going forward, but I would only be truly happy with a statement that they will be taking the massive inconvenience of making sure that the art is revised for future publications at a minimum (I think a recall would be asking a lot tbh).
An artist for Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants! has admitted to using AI to generate "certain details" of new art for the sourcebook.
> A source at Wizards of the Coast has said that Shkipin’s use of AI art was not something that the team was aware of. Further, they state that no text in the book was AI generated. Wizards has said that they will update their guidelines to more explicitly prevent these sorts of incidents from happening in the future.
> io9 has reached out to Ilya Shkipin for clarification and comment. Shkipin has further stated on social media today in light of his confirmation and the deletion of his prior posts that “the future of today[s] illustrations is being discussed.”
I'm less interested in the contents of the linked free adventure, and the below design notes on the adventure.
> # Design Note > If you have Glory of the Giants, you can follow along with the process we used to create this adventure. The basic adventure seed—“a fire giant captures a renowned Humanoid smith”—comes from the Fire Giant Skill table (chapter 2), with additional inspiration from the “Magnum Opus” adventure idea connected to the Star Forge (chapter 4). The name of the giant villain comes from the Giant Names table (chapter 2), and the encounters within the Star Forge are inspired by the Fire Giant Encounters table (chapter 3) and the Elemental Fire Encounters table (chapter 3). The map of the Star Forge is in chapter 4. The giant wrestlers of Fireside Monastery are firbolgs (chapter 6), and several other monsters in the adventure come from the bestiary in chapter 6 (cinder hulk; fire giant forgecaller; fire giant of Evil Fire). Information about fire giant bags (chapter 5) fills out the treasure characters might acquire along the way.
WotC is demonstrating how to use this book to make your own adventures.
They should have done the same for Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, then maybe people would have understood that it was tip-to-stern the best DM toolkit they released yet.
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As always, I have posted this link to /r/dndnext, please feel free to upvote it there to raise visibility.
There is an undue expectation of high performance that many GMs feel, and admittedly my post here isn't helping that! So I absolutely endorse your response to making sure that GMs don't feel the need to do that much work.
In that case it would be helpful to give the players options of backgrounds to select that would be appropriate for the adventure at hand.
Cheers!
And this is absolutely enough for most groups tbh!
The method I described is a lot of extra work than the normal expectation, but it is work that does not go to waste due to it being built around you players and their characters. It should be used as a tool to make sure that extra efforts are less likely to be discarded.
But of course, following with slyflourish's advice, be prepared to abandon anything the players do not engage with.
It is railroading in the fashion that you are setting out a constructed plot ahead of time.
It is not railroading on the fact that you are not taking actions that nullify your players' choices, which is the bad part of railroading.
And yes, this is explicitly involving the players in the writing process in a way that makes a bespoke plot they will enjoy while ensuring little of your effort goes to waste.
I have been DMing for a while, but I have recently come across a method of worldbuilding that has transformed how I create campaigns. This method also allows me to make shorter campaigns that have a end-point trajectory, rather than one that is open ended, and helps me to create satisfying stories. Additionally, this helps to reduce the amount of effort that needs to be performed from session-to-session, by frontloading the most important parts of the campaign preparation before the start of the game.
In short, the process has 3 phases
Phase 1
You get the idea for the kind of world the adventure will take place in. The general story themes and concepts you would like to play around with as well. Write a 1 page treatment for what the world is like and what the broad locations in the world appear to be, and send it to your players. 1 page is important, because it forces you to distill down what is unique and interesting about this world.
For example, in my most recent campaign prep I made a treatment of what the factions in the world are, the virtues of the different areas of the world, and a statement of what is common historical knowledge versus what are secrets that are not commonly known. I ended with a statement of what the themes are going to be for this world as well. NOTE: You should not know what the plot of the actual game is at this stage.
Phase 2
After the players have read your brief 1 page treatment of the world, ask them what kinds of characters they want to play. Work with them on their backstories to make sure they bookend with eachother for a matter of convenience, and ask them to provide information about their families and what aspirations and goals their characters have, or what kinds of stories they want for their characters.
This allows players to either lean into, or purposefully away from the elements of your world. As long as they do one or the other, this process has worked, as they can be part of the established culture of the world, or part of the counter-culture. Either way, you have material and character motivation to work with. The only way this does not work, is if they clearly did not actually engage with the world in some fashion during their character creation. If you notice that, try to gently encourage it with additional requests for information from them.
Phase 3
Use all the information your players gave you to worldbuild and plot out your campaign. Did you have a player who wrote a lot? GREAT! The NPCs will become major plot NPCs, the events depicted will become common knowledge, with some hidden truths that player didn’t know. But before you know what your players want to do, you can't know what kind of plot will engage them. This is where the actual plot for your campaign is written.
This makes your players into collaborators for your story, which will make them invested in the goings on. Additionally, if you know exactly who their characters are and what they want, then you simply need to place obstacles within the plot between them and their desires. Or better yet, present them with interesting decisions or bespoke antagonists that challenge their sense of self. This allows you to be INCREDIBLY detailed and plan out plot beats ahead of time because you are essentially building a railroad to exactly where the players want to go.
Railroading is bad because it usually doesn’t honor the choices of the players. This is railroading, but it honors the players’ decisions.
Finally, I should credit where this idea came from, as this is the method that Brennan Lee Mulligan of Dimension 20 fame has described in multiple instances. My latest games have actually been the easiest to prep from session to session, because I have done a lot of the hardest work prior to the start of the campaign.
And as for the game-to-game prep, I have to credit Slyfourish. His 'Lazy DM Guide' series also keeps my 'procrastinating' work down to a minimum as I focus on what is the most important for the game sessions.
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As with many of my other posts, I have crossposted this to the /r/dndnext subreddit. Feel free to upvote it there for higher visibility.
A tale that is perpetually dark in tone becomes tiresome very quickly. It needs to feature the occasional ray of light for contrast and to create a sense of hope. Monsters and other terrors must be offset with creatures that are kind and lovable, giving the characters even more reasons to stand against the darkness. Here are a couple of ways to add glimmers of light to a tragic tale:
- In a land as dreary as Barovia, take the time to describe the occasional scene of beauty, such as a pretty flower growing atop a grave.
- Make sure that the heroes have contact with NPCs who are honest, friendly, and helpful, such as the Martikovs in Vallaki or the Krezkovs in Krezk.
-Curse of Strahd, Introduction. Marks of Horror. 2016.
Structuring an adventure with skipping Tier 3 entirely sounds interesting, NGL. It's not something we have seen before.
Youtube playlist of an Archeologist's exploration of ancient Archeological sites in Turkey
An adventure setting spanning the infinite realities of the world’s greatest roleplaying game
It looks like this will also follow the template of the Spelljammer books, with some player options, setting information, and DM facing content (adventure & creature statblocks).
A happy tradition of taking inspiration from all of larger pop-culture.
A breakdown and debunking of an ancient aliens Netflix 'archeology' series
But there are people who identify as left-wing who will support China and Russia while downplaying their authoritarianism.
That's not something being invented as a boogeyman. Anyone can go to lemmygrad.ml right now to see it in action.
Most of that is being fixed by dilating the amount of damage output that players can output in 5e in a variety of changes in OneD&D.
My playtests have had really gripping & close fights, even with people optimizing their hearts out.
I've seen Sealioning used quite a bit in a particular Lemmy instance that would self describe themselves as Pro-Russia & Pro-China, as a way of shutting down discourse between people who disagree with them. There are people who disagree with a particular narrative, and they're discounted immediately for wanting to know how someone would arrive at a pro-Russian & pro-China position.
Also they'll just "whatabout!" and change the subject whenever unassailable critiques of these regimes come up. As if its is only possible to hold outrage in a single direction at a time.
I'll have you know I'm capable of disliking EVERYONE mentioned in a given conversation.
Yeah and as smart as anyone is, they aren't right all the time. As much as you can agree with his messaging, it's important to critically assess everything said, regardless of who is saying it.
This is a tiny YouTube channel of an old hand in this hobby who typically has an even kneeled and optimistic outlook on the new releases. His enthusiasm for this subject matter always feels sincere, I hope you guys enjoy!
Thanks! They look quite slick and have a lot going on. Particularly the void dragons you sent my way.
Each would be more or less perfect for a single-monster encounter, as they are dense with fairly novel mechanics.
Many people think that the WotC statblocks are a bit too boring, but I consider them a good entry point for new GMs. This is clearly a nice way to up your game.
Cheers!
Can someone give a good example if what makes these books good? I'd love to see a single great example of the level of quality that these books bring.
This is an old topic, but I'm curious what a more recent assessment for the ultimate support build would be in D&D5e.
Previously, Treantmonk has pushed the idea of the 'God Wizard' who is built around spells that shut down enemies and empowers allies. Area control, vision control, area denial, and the odd buff to assist allies.
However since his build was popularlized, there have been a number of fascinating subclasses that are built around support, specifically between bards and druids. With that in mind, what are the best support builds? These are builds that help win the fight without dealing any damage, preferably
A brief history of the creation of D&D, and the origin of Grognard.
Reddit's Enshittification and How it Affects D&D DMs and GMs.
This is a video that goes into brief detail on 'Chokepoint Economics' as written by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, with specific context of how it applies to the D&D community.
If you are reading this post as someone who just made their account and cannot log in, I am making this post for you.
I had created my account, but I could not log in. Progress would continue without error message or timeout, which appears to be the case for anyone who has created an account but not verified their email yet.
However, I had not received the email to verify my signup mailbox. It appears that this can take a long time to be received, over 2 hours in my case.
So if you are attempting to sign up and log in, you may need to wait a while for an email to come in from admin@ttrpg.network
I hope this helps, cheers!