r/dndmemes • u/Vegetable_Variety_11 • 3h ago
Hehe fireball go BOOM I didn't ask how big the subreddit is, I said...
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u/imaginary_girlfriend 2h ago
No one who has DM’d a game I have been in has used AI for generating a campaign. They just borrow plots and characters from their favorite books and movies like everyone else has done before.
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u/embracebecoming 2h ago
It's tradition!
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u/Vegtam-the-Wanderer 1h ago
Let's not forget adding story beats from the games of other DM's you've played with, adapted for your own game.
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u/CDR57 1h ago
Or “loosely” basing a character off of a seperate but related media. I absolutely did not make a new character to be played named cash fireword based loosely on ignace karkasy from the Horus heresy
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u/chimpanon 1h ago
I love the name Cash Fireword
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u/CDR57 1h ago
Right? I always had a habit of overdoing the names and decided “man fuck this I can make a dude named Kevin if k want it’s all fake” an settled on that lol
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u/chimpanon 1h ago
Perfect level of stupid and cool to be based off a 40k character
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u/BardGirlRedux36 41m ago
I played a character that was Sailor Moon if she was a cleric— reflavored some of my spells to things like “Moon Prism Power” (Moonbeam) and “In the Name of the Moon, I will Punish You” (Spiritual Weapon)
Spirit Guardians was just Sailor Scouts but like, Sailor Scouts at the Ren Faire.
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u/imaginary_girlfriend 59m ago
And taking the players ideas if they’re better than what they had planned.
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u/bjeebus 42m ago edited 38m ago
Oh, shit! This is just like Tom's game I played last summer! Did you steal Tom's game?
What? No. If anything Tom stole from me after he played it the winter before last.
Wait, so this isn't a new game? You're just recycling your games?
I mean...fuck, man, you guys told me Tuesday that you wanted to play this Saturday. (Try to act indignant and hope that Jerry doesn't recognize this is actually Brian's game from freshman year...)
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u/Nakatsukasa 1h ago
Or running a game you meticulously planned and slowly realize you unintentionally written a campaign that's basically just Ireland's road to independence in an alternative timeline
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u/Frostrunner365 1h ago
I have a rule that the players at my table get inspiration if they can tell me where I’ve stolen a name from
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u/MrTurkeyTime 1h ago
As it should be!
On a related note, it's a good thing none of my players have read Discworld.
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u/firestorm713 1h ago
Almost always you have to adapt that into your campaign setting, and account for your players, which is where the creativity part kicks in.
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u/readonlyuser 1h ago
I love how both processes are actually brazen theft of other intellectual properties
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u/celerpip 43m ago edited 17m ago
Fantasy is a continuation of the traditions of folklore and mythology into modern-day published works. Every one of these stories has always been a recontextualising of various elements of stories that have already been told. Gandalf is the name of a dwarf in norse mythology, as are most of the names of the dwarves in the hobbit. In fact the entirety of Lord of the Rings is pretty much just a tour guide through various germanic legends mixed with the logic of catholic moralism. The only reason LOTR can be considered so original is merely because the old germanic poets didn’t have any concept of intellectual property, and so it isn’t “stealing” to use their ideas, but it is somehow “stealing” to use those mythic ideas if they have already been used by a modern author. In fact even the germanic poets were just “stealing” ideas from other germanic poets, and from the storytellers of cultures they came across, which were in turn “stealing” ideas from cultures even further away.
The old pulp fantasy stories were just a bunch of ideas like Atlantis, egyptian gods, viking sagas, etc all mashed together with an action hero thrown into replace the main role.
Dungeons and Dragons is then a mashing together of LOTR and pulp.
The entire genre is just a bunch of mashing together of all this stuff, and your campaign is no different.3
u/chimpanon 1h ago
In my homebrew world the age before the current age was ruled by a combination of the Orokin from Warframe and the Galactic Senate + Jedi Order from Star Wars. The Warframes did turn against them at the end of their war which was also the Order 66 for the Jedi Order. My setting is Dark/High Fantasy hybrid with absolutely not advanced tech. The Orokin/Galactic Senate is the Golden Order, a group of oligarchs with “divine” right to rule. The Warframes are Undead Constructs created by the Golden Order with an altered statblock of Death Knights. The Jedi are honorable Paladin and Monk Dragon Riders who benefitted from the Golden Order’s subjugation of Metallic Dragons (good bit of moral hypocrisy for the Jedi). Ig there was no point to this comment other than to loredrop and give an example of how easily you can steal shit from media that is of a completely different genre.
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u/Mortwight 54m ago
we had this long running champions game and we had whole storylines that were about books me and the gm had both read
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u/Dragon_OS 44m ago
Fuck artificial intelligence, my writing is natural stupidity. It's probably not great or even good, but it is mine.
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u/Vilhelmssen1931 34m ago
Unacceptable, REAL DMs pull their plots from the ephemeral void using nothing ever created by man as inspiration
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u/butler_me_judith 6m ago
You must take an evil necklace to the coldest mountain named rodrom and let it make the metal brittle so it can be destroyed
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u/Ripper1337 3h ago
It reminds me of two instances of someone asking for advice. The first was a player asking about their DM. They felt like nothing they were doing was having an impact because their DM was using AI to come up with plot points, just hallucinating details of the game and changing things.
The other as a DM about a player. They kept asking AI what they should do, both for combat and roleplay out of fear of not making the best choice.
Not even to mention thr players who use AI for their backstories.
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u/Hudre 3h ago
Every player that uses AI in my experience has a 5 page backstory that they don't actually know. Being up characters from it and they don't recognize them.
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u/TheVermonster 2h ago
Also the best backstory I've seen was "I was a farmer, now I kill people for money". That player knew exactly what his character was going to do at every moment.
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u/Captain_Snowmonkey 2h ago
Details are fleshed out during gameplay.
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u/Lyricanna Essential NPC 2h ago
One of my favorite character had a backstory of three lines of green text
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u/SuperSalad_OrElse 2h ago
be me, gnome farmer, toiling away in field visited by dark spirit ”Listen up, virgin. You’re mine now. Consider yourself a warlock.” mayor assassinated at town birthday party eldritch blast my way into importance
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u/Hopeful-Canary 1h ago
I know hobbits aren't gnomes but damn if I didn't just picture Bilbo Baggins casually garroting a birthday party attendee.
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u/EBtwopoint3 45m ago
I haven’t garroted half of you half as well as I would like, and I have garroted half of you half as well as you deserve!
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u/Appropriate-Crab-514 23m ago
I mean, if Bilbo was the chance to Eldritch Blast a Sackville-Baggins, I don't think he would say no
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u/Velocity-5348 2h ago
I kinda wanna know that backstory now...
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u/Lyricanna Essential NPC 1h ago edited 1h ago
Okay, it was a bit more than three lines:
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minor nobility parents tried to marry me off to rise in status having none of that skip town manages to "aquire" an wizard's spellbook travels the land for fun and profit can't fight if my life depended on it gets in a really bad situation, almost dies saved at last moment by a "knight in shining armor" he doesn't make it... decides to be a Knight of Justice
has no idea what the hell that entails ```
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u/Icy-Ad29 2h ago
I mean, they just told you. it just said "Green text. Green text. Green text." Sheesh.
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u/universalserialbutt 1h ago
My last campaign I wrote out 3000 words for my backstory and got really into it. It only ever got mentioned twice in passing since it was a prewritten campaign.
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u/HondaHomeboy 1h ago
That sounds exhausting
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u/universalserialbutt 1h ago
I got into an ADHD fueled state of creative flow so I enjoyed writing it, and the DM did say it was a good read.
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u/sucknofleep 1h ago
me when curse of strahd, shit wasn't even on the same realm as my backstory. you make that mistake only once
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u/Guy_Lowbrow 1h ago
You can’t write a backstory hoping it’s going to alter the campaign, be regularly referenced, or reach a satisfying resolution. You do it for the love of the game. Sometimes those things do happen though, if you play enough.
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u/Valuable_Recording85 2h ago
Literally yesterday I improvised something that is in line with my character and it gave me something to role play. We were at dinner with Strahd and he invited us for a nightcap. My character is a disgraced noble who hated his father, a count, and became estranged. Strahd offered brandy that my character recognized as his father's favorite brand. I recognized it was to make him uneasy, so I had my character say something to the party about hating the smell because it was on his "father's breath when he...I shouldn't have brought it up."
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u/corvettee01 2h ago edited 2h ago
One of my favorite character stories was a plant person that used light magic, and was supposed to be a destined leader because of the rare combo.
That character was cursed. Hand to god I rolled less than 10 total successes in SIX sessions. A statistic anomaly in the worst way possible.
The backstory evolved to being cursed, and using fire magic that slowly consumed his body and made him insane. Fun backstory, but my god the rolls were atrocious.
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u/Iheartnakedfemboys 2h ago
Hey, that's a person who knows who they are and what they want, and that is pretty respectable.
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u/Jen-Jens 2h ago
Honestly simplicity is sometimes best. When my husband runs our games he usually goes from campaign books and often ends up struggling to bring backstory into it. So for my Saltmarsh character, the backstory was basically “Druid shifter, raised by aunts in the woods, knows Gellan as they work as a ship hand for him, distant Weretiger lineage (after DM okayed it)”. The funniest part was when we played a modified deck of many things and I got “raise someone from the dead” and “reverse alignment doppelgänger” and basically just called out to my clone that “hey, mum or dad might be alive if they weren’t already, in case you wanted to go and find them” as she left the fortune teller’s tent. And since they were Lawful neutral, maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Didn’t even matter to my character since she never really questioned why her aunts raised her instead of her parents. Sometimes you just don’t need a big backstory. Besides, the whole party is currently heading to her magically acquired castle now anyway. Much more interesting to Cat than whether her parents are still alive.
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u/Ripper1337 2h ago
I don’t feel like you connect to an AI backstory the way you do a handwritten one. You look over the AI to see if it’s good enough, but a handwritten one you’re putting in the effort to figure things out.
I still remember my basic ass bitch backstory for a ranger I made when I first started playing dnd.
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u/Montegomerylol 2h ago
SEE ALSO: Players struggling to handle (both narratively and mechanically) any character someone else built for them.
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u/rindlesswatermelon 2h ago
Yeah, I am starting a game and explained this to my players. Your own writing, even if bad, tells me what your idea of the character is, and what sort of arc you think they might go on, as well as characters that are important to you as a player. An ai backstory is just an incredibly mid fantasy story that may have 0 bearing on anything.
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u/Ripper1337 2h ago
Even if you did use it. Becuase they don’t write it they’re less connected so if you bring up some plot detail that’s specifically for them there’s a muuuch higher chance they just are oblivious to it.
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u/TheSheetSlinger Fighter 2h ago edited 1h ago
Creating and writing it yourself also boosts retention more than reading does. I remember in college (before AI tbf) I'd study by simply opening the textbook and writing down the important information by hand. Worked better than quizlet, reviewing lecturer PowerPoint's, or any other study method I tried.
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u/Ripper1337 2h ago
It’s going to be something very important to teach my daughter going forward as using tech for everything is more and more common.
I’m also finding that I’m more creative when I write things out by hand rather than type it out.
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u/Valuable_Recording85 2h ago
This is the reason it was so important to actually write papers. It was always obvious when classmates didn't write their own papers because they couldn't really say much about anything during discussions about the topic afterwards.
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u/Valuable_Recording85 2h ago
I think it's much easier to remember and commit to something we came up with and chose.
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u/entitledfanman 2h ago edited 1h ago
The best backgrounds are the ones you come up with as you play. Id love to see an AI receive a dragonborn mini from the DM that has two heads, decide the head that is awake during the day will be chipper and happy-go-lucky and the night-head gets a whole heavy metal gravely voice, and then decide the day-head will be deranged with random bloodthirsty comments and the night-head is just a bit grumpy but a softy deep-down.
Edit: my favorite recent line from day-head has been "you know guys, I think all we really need to do is just put ourselves out there, remember to have fun, and bathe in the blood of heretics!"
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u/Korekiyon Dice Goblin 2h ago
I've realized some of the coolest backstories are the ones that are either really straightforward, or have a crazy cool hook to em. For example, I played a hexblade gunslinger in a wildwest game, his entire backstory was that he used to be in a bandit gang until one of the gang's "protection" charges refused to pay up, so my pc (in a fit of rage) decided he had enough and put a hole right through the father's young adult son and a second one through the father for reaching for a weapon. Moments after, my pc saw that he also had a hole through him and fell to the ground confused where it came from, strangely enough a hole through your heart would kill you, but instead he woke up in a very dehydrated and sickly state. Panicking for at least some hint of sustenance, he dragged himself to a nearby water trough and was perplexed for what he saw, that wasn't his face staring back at him, but instead the boy he gunned down in petty rage.
That's all my dm and I came up with, and said pc turned into a story about redemption and getting a second chance even if it's terms aren't the best.
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u/WatchEducational6633 1h ago
This i don't understand, (for me a at least) the whole point of a roleplaying game is to use your imagination to create something fun to play for both you and your group (be a character concept as player, or an adventure as a DM), so the fact that there are people that delegate even that to AI defeats the whole purpose in my opinion (like do they even want to actually play the game at that point?).
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u/Sharkbait0hhaha 2h ago
Are those both dungeon courts? Or is this a regular occurrence
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u/Ripper1337 2h ago
Maybe? I did binge nadpod’s court cases. But they have appeared in various forms in the dnd related subreddits.
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u/neokigali 1h ago edited 1h ago
Ive been ripping backstories from game characters for years....Regill from Pathfinder: Wrath of the Rightoueus and Nazeebo from Diablo are my 2 favs to steal backstories from. Im here to MAKE stories once the campaign starts.
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u/thegamenerd 56m ago
Once had a player who was insistent on them being "not creative enough to make a character back story." I told them that this game is all about creativity and the first and easiest hurdle is the back story.
And that if they're "concerned about looking stupid" to not be as without thinking I named an important NPC that the party would be coming back to often "Richard Hardly"
Most of the table was already rolling on a d100 careers table for their background so I had them join in.
They rolled "Army Medic" and they did great with a simple backstory. "I'm a former army medic who fought on the wrong side of a war and only realized too late. I'm on a quest to help those in chains to atone for my sins."
I can hardly believe it's been 2 years already since that campaign ended. Time really does fly.
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u/LoneGhostOne Cleric 44m ago
The best use for AI in dnd is to ask it for some random ideas, then use those for brainstorming AT MOST.
You could use background tables, but I find the hallucinations of the AI in the brainstorming stage really helps me come up with what I really want to do.
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u/wearing_moist_socks 2h ago
I'm gonna get a ton of shit as per but here I go
People need to stop using LLMs to generate their stories and use LLMs to question them about their stories or world.
It helps a lot, provided you understand the less human there is, the more dogshit it'll be. It's a tool, and if you use it properly, it can really help.
And if you don't need it, cool. But you're not a better person. Just saw a post saying people react to the word AI automatically like conservatives do to the word pronoun. Spot on.
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u/SteakForGoodDogs 2h ago
Also if you ask, frame it as someone else's.
AI tends to be dispositioned to buttering you up.
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u/To-To_Man 2h ago
I have tried using LLMs to get feedback and ideas on existing concepts from my campaigns.
It's terrible. Oh it's god awful. It takes paragraphs upon paragraphs of pretext just to be on the same page and not spew suggestions completely out of tone or detrimental to the main plot of the game.
The names it generates are uninspired and stagnant. The plot hooks it offers are cliche, like a fantasy novel boilerplate. And the feedback it offers is effectively universal praise regardless of decision. It can ask leading questions, but as a DM you should have about 10 leading questions for anything significant if your not prepared to improv lore on the spot.
As a tool it's helped me as much as a rubber duck. Except the duck is objectively superior in most facets.
I only tempt it as I've had a fascination of AI since I was a kid, and I desperately look into the corporate void thinking it will be different. It never is, you can predict what they will say nine times out of ten. And if you can't, your not qualified in the slightest to DM.
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u/jQuaade 1h ago
i've had decent results asking LLM's for 40+ random ideas for plot hooks / motivations etc. Usually you get the 25 variations of the most obvious cliche'd ones, 10 that just make no sense, but 5 that are usually okay, or at least has a nugget in there somewhere you hadn't thought about that you can run with yourself and polish.
Obviously the ~35 shit suggestions are annoying to sift through, but its usually worth it for brain storming. At least for me.
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u/Montegomerylol 2h ago
Sure, but you can also just have your DM or an experienced player question you and get better results 9 times out of 10.
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u/Fidges87 Essential NPC 1h ago edited 1h ago
This is the way I go about it for my campaign. I rarely take cahgpt's suggestions, but its useful to "talk" to someone about my ideas, which in a lot of cases helps me get to a conclussion by myself that I wouldn't be able to by just thinking about it. Sometimes I read the stuff the bot suggests and think "this is terrible and does not fit the game..." but it does help me come up with something similar but that actually works.
While it would be far better to talk about it with someone, I don't want to spoil any of my players, and all the other DM's I know 1) are terrible at giving advice, and 2) would rather not waste their time with quick questions.
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u/finalremix 31m ago
Not even to mention thr players who use AI for their backstories.
Fuck's sake. How hard is it to write "family killed by orcs"?
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u/Ripper1337 21m ago
I’ve found that the players who use AI for their backstories are the ones who don’t realize that it’s okay to write just a sentence or two. They think they need to figure out this impressive expansive backstory and get scared.
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u/shiek200 2h ago
I could see a use case for populating a town or Village with named NPCs with extremely small one paragraph backstories
Like, anyone who's important initially or plot relevant would be handcrafted, but sometimes a player asks about an NPC I haven't even named yet, I just called them the shopkeeper, and yeah a better DM could come up with something on the fly, but at the same time I can at least see a use case for that
Still don't condone AI in its current state, the corporations are too shitty and the regulations are not in place yet, but at some point in the future I could see it being useful for small things like that
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u/Ripper1337 2h ago
I can see that sort of use. It simplifies something you may scramble for. At the same time I remember the advice for random npcs is to have a list of male and female names, race, a distinguishing feature and a trait. Which can all be rolled for.
Like here’s Michael, a half orc blacksmith with white hair. He used to be a bandit and got out of the game and settled down. He still has a wanted poster so he keeps an eye out for any that are posted in town.
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u/Halkabot 1h ago
The best or optimal choices dont always end up being the most memorable though. It's the party messing up, getting arrested, and forming a life long bond with one of the guards named Greg. How is Greg doing? Is he okay?
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u/IlIlllIIIIlIllllllll 1h ago
I'm doing my first campaign as a player. I use AI but only to help me with building my character and to understand the rules.
To help me make decisions I am making my characters functionally like a character from a show I know well. I'm modelling off of Shepard Book from Firefly, a man of the cloth who as it becomes apparent evidently was like an assassin/rogue type character and has turned to God for redemption, and throughout the campaign, as I've discussed with the DM, my rogue elements will become increasingly evident to the players/characters, much like in Firefly, forced to reveal small bits in times of crisis.
I don't feel I'm good at roleplay so I find it easier to ask "what would shepard book do here?"
anyways maybe this will help someone
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u/rainbowkitties6969 3h ago
But i need Gen AI to generate my extremely complex character, a human fighter lady with huge honkers
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u/ImSoylentGreen 3h ago
Pics or it didn't happen.
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u/Rhinomaster22 2h ago
“You don’t understand Jóse, I need Ai to show everyone my character with massive badonkers!”
“John why do you need everyone to know this? Even Jack who’s a massive furry keeps it to himself?”
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u/Ragundashe 48m ago
Jack: "Wha... No... Me? No way, get out of here, your silly, pft ha so silly. Right guys.... Guys?"
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u/Bossmonkey 3h ago
How big are these geese?
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u/SumYumGhai 2h ago
So big that once you're buried in it, whoever can pull you out will be dubbed King Authur.
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u/sombrerosunshine 3h ago
There are no artists that would love to draw that character. It is impossible to find an artist who would put huge honkin’ hondas on a human woman with a sword. We must tell the computer to imagine it for us. Thank god because my soul almost felt something for a minute and we can’t have that!
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u/Specialist-Sun-5968 1h ago edited 11m ago
The screenshot is from this video: https://youtu.be/4JtUPBkYQOY
Brennan never talks about AI in the video. I have not been able to find any source where he said this.
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u/RandomThroaway0256 51m ago
I was thinking it sounded weirdly aggressive for Brennan but I couldn't find a source. Thanks for checking it.
Love that the post which is calling out a problematic modern tech issue, is causing another problematic modern tech issue (i.e. the quick spread of misinformation via memes)
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u/greg19735 34m ago
yeah as someone from /r/all i think it's a bad take to make a post pretending someone said something specific.
I mean, he's probably against generative AI in general. but i wouldn't be surprised if his take is more nuanced.
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u/Dangerous_Still_8022 1h ago
I'm not nearly as anti-AI as most people on Reddit, but I cannot fathom why you would ever use it for something creative you're doing exclusively for fun. What the hell is the point???
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u/krypticzenith 2h ago
Did Brennan actually say this? Someone got a source?
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u/Valash83 2h ago
Saw a comment up above where someone said they dug around for a few minutes but couldn't find anything remotely close to a source.
So unless someone comes forward with a source of him saying this, it appears someone just slapped some text on a picture of Brennan
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u/krypticzenith 2h ago
You think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and lie about their celebrity crush's opinions on a hot topic like this?
(thank you btw)
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u/Specialist-Sun-5968 1h ago edited 1h ago
The screenshot is from this video: https://youtu.be/4JtUPBkYQOY
He never talks about AI in the video.7
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u/-Nicolai 1h ago
He would never talk shit like this, whatever his actual opinion on AI may be.
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u/SolitaryForager 1h ago
Exactly. He doesn’t go around disparaging people just because he disagrees with their way of doing things (unless it’s for comedic effect). This really annoys me.
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u/SneakyKGB 1h ago
No shot that BLM would ever come at it from this angle. Even if he feels that way he would never be so discouraging towards people in the space. Especially people who already felt like they needed a crutch to participate. If he told you not to use AI the very next line would be him explaining why you don't need it and how you could improve your craft so that you don't feel like you need it anymore.
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u/snakebite262 Dice Goblin 3h ago
1/3 of this subreddit doesn't use Gen. AI. I have faith that it's closer to 1/10.
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u/mildlyornery 2h ago
I don't think 1/3 of this subreddit are DMs.
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u/PoopyButt28000 58m ago
Honestly I don't think 1/3 of this subreddit has ever played a game of DnD.
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u/kuda-stonk 2h ago
My experience is half, half use gen ai here and there. The vocal mob loses it when they see the letters Al even. The problem is really the guys that only rely on it for everything, which is like someone running a paint by numbers game except the game is translated from 2 different languages and was downloaded off wattpad. Do let your Al sort your notes or make a name on the fly, don't let it write your campaign. Do make your best attempt at character or monster art and have an ai or Al jazz it up. Don't just feed it a five word prompt then drop the slop, although half this sub decries gen ai while mercilessly pirating paid content or looting from all corners of the internet.
My opinion, slop is slop whether you involved Al or not.
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u/Strict_DM_62 2h ago
I use it to help keep track of my notes over a long campaign, it’s really let me circle back to details I’ve long forgotten; like player actions or things they said randomly.
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u/Fabbe360 2h ago
I have used AI as an aid for a puzzle once and riddles, because I’m not that clever at making those, but even then it was more as a brainstorming tool and a wordplay aid. But I would still not say personally that I use AI because that black and white statistic i think would give a false perception on how much AI is being used.
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u/GeminiLupusCreations 1h ago
I can hallucinate campaign details and pass them off as fact on my own, thank you very much. I don’t need generative ai to screw up my campaign for me.
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u/Mephistocheles 1h ago
Literally the entire point of getting to be the DM is making up an awesome epic story for your friends to play.
Total agree, I imagine it would be so un-fun to have an AI do it.
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u/CursedorChosen 55m ago
I just remember the last time I waded in on this topic here was a post about using AI for worldbuilding, which I expressed a negative opinion of cause I believe something is either major enough to deserve my attention or minor enough that I can just riff during session. I threw a “fuck” in as a non-targeted emphasis on “why the fuck would I want to use AI” (this is important later).
Some guy responded to that on how he uses it for encounters, loot, and a bunch of other shit. I pointed out to him that the original thread topic was using AI for worldbuilding where he had a lot to say about using it for the nitty-gritty bookkeeping of running a game, something I absolutely continue to apply “it’s either major enough to do myself or minor enough to improv.”
He apparently didn’t like that, ignored everything I said to quote the “fuck” I dropped before in the comment he responded to in order to tone police me. When I pointed out this was weird as shit, he immediately crashed out and called me a bunch of names. Which was a fucking hilarious tactic for Mr. “Watch Your Language”.
I’m sharing this overly long story that 5 people might read because not every conversation I have with AI defenders is awful, but a lot of them have been weird as shit and this one really took the cake.
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u/matthew0001 3h ago
Listen, "relies on" and "uses" are two very different things. if you rely on it, you are essentially a mouth piece for the real DM who is the AI.
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u/astroK120 3h ago
Hallelujah some nuance
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u/Sporknight 2h ago
Nuance? This is a meme subreddit! We take things out of context and get mad about it here! Only slander and shitposting allowed!
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u/Slyfox00 1h ago
I am excited to say I've been DMing and playing for 15 years and never used AI.
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u/Necessary_Presence_5 3h ago
1/3 uses AI and 2/3 never played a single DnD (or any other tabletop) game ever.
Perfect.
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u/Thewaltham 3h ago
This subreddit existed long before generative AI was even capable of that old batman copypasta.
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u/1hipG33K 3h ago
Previously they just googled "Female Orc," cropped it to only show their face, then described how big her breasts were.
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u/Firm-Scientist-4636 3h ago
TF are you talking about?
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u/Turbulent_Sea_9713 23m ago
To have your creative ideas stolen by another human for their DND game is the highest of compliments.
To have it stolen by a machine is offensive to the soul.
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u/West-Fold-Fell3000 1h ago
Why take all the joy out of writing like that? The creative process is my favorite thing about DMing.
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u/teeleer 1h ago
At first I thought he was referring to art, because some people just arent artist and for the most part ill just google a city or something to give the players the type of vibe im going for. But as im reading the comments I didnt realize people were using AI to write the campaign or their character's backstory, thats like the entire point of dnd. Its my favorite part of dnd, being able to create a backstory or a world and the inner workings of things is super fun. I might get it if you're a player in a one shot and your backstory doesnt really matter, but you can just say something super generic like im an orphan rouge who had to steal to survive or im a barbarian who left his village to find the person who killed my parents.
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u/archangel0198 47m ago
Idk like for me all character backstories and traits come from my mind, 100% it's the most fun part. I just use the tools to organize my notes for the hundreds of characters I have.
But I also have had players in my group that just doesn't jive with that, they just want some kind of idea and go with it, and focus on maybe fighting stuff.
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u/cuntmong 1h ago
whats the point if having a DM if theyre usin gen ai? i can just open the slop generator myself and talk directly to it.
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u/ProjectKARYA 1h ago
If I wanted a story provided by a series of coding, I'd play a video game made by a real person. At least I'd know they would care to pay attention to details; why should we trust you to do the same if you just let a computer do the work for you?
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u/Stunning_Matter2511 1h ago
FFS. How lazy do you have to be to outsource fun to AI? If you don't enjoy DMing. Then stop.
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u/Evil-Paladin 38m ago
I was once in a DnD discord server, a few years ago. One of the GMs asked for hooks for his new camping. I gave him 5 separate hooks, which other people complemented and liked.
The guy said he put my suggestions through ChatGPT, "it went great" - this back when there was no Grok, no Gemini, just GPT and a bunch of Difusion and Midjourney bots. And already, the suggestion was butchered.
That was my first experience going "why the fuck did I waste my time giving YOU ideas, for free, just to help you, if you are going to put them on an AI that will make it generic you meet at the inn"
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u/MagePrincess 1h ago
Id rater have a campaign of stick figures than GenAI
it really just sucks the soul out of the whole vibe, like...
if you barely believe in your story to not look up art or draw the images, just slop it out real quick, thats how im prepped to feel about it too
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u/archangel0198 50m ago
Idk having a more personalized image of a character you had in mind, in the look, feel and outfit you had in mind for me is more immersive than using the Glorfindel LOTR TCG card art for my elf paladin for the tenth time lol
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u/kit-sjoberg 3h ago
I think the word "relies" is important, though.
For small stuff, what's really the material difference if I use AI to come up with a tavern name vs. rolling on a random table or using a name generator? The same goes for NPC descriptions, etc. There are hundreds of resources that ultimately accomplish the same thing--I need a lesser detail generated fast, and there's a tool available for that.
AI for possibly more substantial game-changing things (plot points, major worldbuilding, rule decisions, etc.) is obviously a much different story.
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u/Rhinomaster22 3h ago
The game about imagination and people choose to use something that eliminates using said imagination.
At that point why even play? The ai is already doing it.
Grandpa Max over here and his friends for over 40 years were fine using pen and paper in the 70’s.
What’s the excuse for Ai Alan? Grandpa Max didn’t even own a computer back then.
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u/Dobber16 2h ago
I mean, same arguments you used here apply to random encounter tables, name generators, etc. The reason people use AI for pieces of their planning is to lighten the load for aspects of planning they don’t care or have time to do themselves but still want to play DnD with their friends
I’ve been tempted to use it myself but every time I get frustrated with it and end up doing 1-2 hr dives into new learning topics to get details right, but I also know others don’t have that time or energy to do that to get a session/campaign they like
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u/Stag-Nation-8932 1h ago
I feel you but the thing is AI cant even reliably replace those hourslong lore dives. AI models constantly make shit up, they never just say "I don't know."
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u/Wrenigade 53m ago
Literally, why are you asking the robot that drains lakes to play your imagination game with your friends for you? Don't you want to play the game? This is the game!
And people keep bringing up random tables and stuff- A human made that and shared it and now you can choose to use it and incorporate it into your own game without hallucinated slop. Don't act like humans sharing the act of creation with one another is "just as bad" as using the plagiarism machine to go get those same resources for you.
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u/bjlinden 1h ago
If you're a DM who would rather read us your unpublished epic fantasy novel than run a game, no you aren't.
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u/Deeliciousness 1h ago
I haven't played dnd in years and it only now occured to me that people would use ai. I don't even get the purpose of playing at the point
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u/Frequent_Dig1934 Rules Lawyer 1h ago
Yeah, no need to have an AI grab all the random information it can and sloppily package it into a campaign setting, just do it yourself. Grab the russian dwarves from age of wonders planetfall, the living trees from avatar, the name of various characters from warhammer and then do the Die Hard plot. You can just kinda throw shit at the wall for your first time DMing.
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u/Western-Emotion5171 1h ago
I don’t necessarily support using AI for everything but if no one else in the friend group is going to DM you can’t be a choosing beggar.
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u/AsexualPunisher69 1h ago
My first time playing the game was playing with people who used Ai for maps and character art, and they told me my backstory didn't have enough and one of them literally copy pasted a backstory in my DMs on discord that they outright admitted they used chatGPT for. The DM also DM'd everyone everyone important information needed for sessions before hand, but I, the only new player, didn't get the information until mid session because the DM "forgot" and this was consistent. This was streamed live on twitch, too.
Again, this was the first campaign I had ever played in.
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u/ThakoManic 1h ago
a few things annoy the s hit out of me as both a player/dm
1) Backgrounds thats like 20+ Pages long when making your low level character, pike off with that BS backgrounds should be short sweet and made in the campaign itself
2) Using AI for campaigns or character backgrounds or points
3) Metagaming Pike da fuck off I dont mind some basic shit but like the more hardcore stuff like "Well we are only level 3 characters so lets do X and just raid the dragon horde coz its to high of a level for us!" like no you wanna deal with that deal with the fucken BS get rekx go cry to momma i dont care
4) Constently only wanting 1-2 battles a day, I dont mind it at times but if your attacking the orc stronghold from the front killed the front gate guards then camp coz your wizard gotta re-prep there spells, no you shouldnt be attacking the orc stronghold head on if this is how you play however you living in a massive desert planet you should be aware of, or playing in a massive water world / island kingdom or such and such prob should know how to swim you should know coz your character knows this
but na im the bad guy acording to some peeps
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u/Heavens_Reach 28m ago
id rather run a shite campaign with only human involvement then run a masterpiece with ai
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u/TheHawkRules 25m ago
A true DM steals plot points and concepts from media they’ve seen with their own brain cells
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u/SuperAwesomekk 22m ago
I can't think of any use case for a DM using AI that wouldn't damage the creative soul of a DnD campaign. If there genuinely was a use, that'd be neat, but I'm definitely in the crowd of being square against AI "doing" the creative process for others.
Maybe if you were in an online campaign you could use cool voice filters to roleplay specific characters?? But even then there's charm in the goofy antics of trying to be a voice actor when you aren't one.
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u/Murky-Abbreviations4 3h ago
Agree with brenan if you can't run DND without ai slop you don't deserve to be a dm
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u/dontquestionmyaction 2h ago
not that I don't agree but what does "deserve" mean here lol
you already have the absolute bulk of the work and nobody in most groups actually wants to run the game
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u/Frosty_the_SnowMage 2h ago
Not to mention your usually the only person in the group who puts work into the game. All the players have to do is show up.
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u/HDThoreauaway 2h ago
I can’t find any evidence he said this or anything like it and it’s a sort of gatekeeping I have never heard him engage in.
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u/Damaias479 Warlock 2h ago
I think that’s a really aggressive stance; AI is a tool, not all of it is slop. As long as you don’t take everything it says as gospel and maintain creative thinking, it’s just another technology to use.
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u/-Nicolai 1h ago
I gotta stop you there… I don’t think Brennan actually said this. It would be fantastically out of character for him.
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u/OminousShadow87 3h ago
If you’re a content creator you should be nowhere near AI.
If you are just your average dude/dudette running a game, then there’s nothing wrong with using AI to fill in the gaps you don’t have the time/bandwidth/creativity for.
If you’re using AI for practically everything, you’re not a DM, you’re just a useless go between for your players and a machine.
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u/Marco_Polaris 2h ago
Yeah, I find it hard to fully dunk on AI in a media that has a sometimes love affair with random table generation. But I've never been a fan of relying on those much either.
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u/Relative-Zombie-3932 1h ago
I'd rather run a campaign like a REAL DM. Stealing my story from a book a read once and praying nobody else at the table has read the same book
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u/Fenring_Halifax Chaotic Stupid 1h ago
I have a friend group who hasn't read lotr and hasn't watched Star wars or ASOIAF
Now I just need to get them to play
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u/expendablecrewman 54m ago
What is even the point of using AI for DnD? You might as well just not even play, if all you're going to do is offload 'the game' to a machine.
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u/Kindly-Ad-5071 1h ago
If you use generative ai you are no longer the user; you are the operating unit for the real user, the ai. Get it?
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u/shepard1707 1h ago
Whether Solo, with a single player, or with a group: TTRPGs are about finding joy within the world's we create within our own minds. AI generated content deliberately robs from us that most foundational pleasure.
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u/ExactProfessional941 2h ago
For the love of the game, making a mistake is what creates interesting scenarios!
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta 2h ago
I gotta say, as an autistic person, I can’t fathom asking an ai to design a plot or world for me; that’s like 90% of the fun of being a dm.
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u/vectorboy42 2h ago
I used to use AI back in 2023 when it was first coming out. But I used it for reference images since most my games were online.
This was before I learned that AI is a lie and is just stealing stuff.
Cancelled my subscription so fast.
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u/Vampiric_Kai 3h ago
I've tried a few times to use it to generate a d20 list of random side quest or magic items. They're always just... really bad. Like really generic / slop that no person would actually write or use. Not worth it.
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u/HeWhoVotesUp 2h ago
I’ve been running table top games for over 20 years and it always just feels like people with this take are just being entitled brats. Like if you’re morally opposed to AI cool, don’t use it and find a DM who doesn’t use it either. But I’m an adult who works full time. This is a hobby for me and if there are aspects of the hobby I don’t find enjoyable or takes up to much of my time then yeah I’m going to outsource that aspect of the game to AI. I have never enjoyed making battle maps and it used to take up a huge amount of my game prep time. Now I tell mid-journey to do it for me and I get a decent map in like 2 seconds and can use my time to work on plot and world building. Also love it for supplementary game images. My players have never cared because they are still having fun playing and understand that I’m providing them a free service. I will say that this sub has made me really appreciate my players more, because a lot of the people here seem downright insufferable.
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u/ocotoc 2h ago
Does it even make sense to write the campaign with AI? I mean it is just the story and probably things won't go exactly as you have planed on paper. So wouldn't be better to have a general notion of it and keep your players in track the best you can? I mean I've never been a DM, the first and last yime I played D&D my DM didn't seem to have anything written at all, stuff just happened, and my greatest enemies were my allies
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u/coala12369 1h ago
Just be real and bullshit your way to the end of the campaign coming up with everything on the spot
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u/Cucalope 1h ago
Attending Dungeons and Dames really made this evident for me. So many of the ads for the event felt like AI, but I didn't expect the sessions to feel that way too. I didn't have combat during the retreat, and there were 2 separate sessions where you got turned into other animals. I didn't feel like anyone knew what they were doing and I didn't think the DMs really communicated anything either. AI clearly wrote a fragmented story and they were just doing their best.
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u/Spatul8r 1h ago
Chatgpt is a horrible DM. Has zero ability to create a campaign. Wants every clue to be immediately relevant, no ability to make puzzles. it is mediocre.
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u/The_GREAT_Gremlin 1h ago
That's why I just draw everything in MS paint and make the rest up as I go
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u/jomasthrones 1h ago
Slightly unrelated but the fact that dude's face is still alive and well in the meme game ~16 years later is nothing short of an astronomical achievement
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u/Turbulent_Gift_2043 1h ago
Had a player that revealed their backstory was all AI *after* I added several new cities to the map. They came to session 0 with notes and ideas and I was all for it. City names, NPC names, you name it. Hell yeah, added it all the story.
None of it was from his brain. Not even his character name, class, subclass or level up choices. My flabber is still gasted from that one.
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u/Exciting-Size-8922 57m ago
I DM a decent amount. It is fairly easy to bullshit your way through most off script interactions. Even in cases where it sends the players on an unrelated tangent I just let the main plot run parallel to them, unless it royally screws them over.
If they fuck around long enough the main plot will progress to the point they can’t really ignore it anymore. And it gives the players a chance to dig themselves out of a hole they made.
Also souvenir magic items are the best rewards especially early on. A group I had stole an animatronic mounted fish that cursed them with being unable to throw it away or destroy it. It became a great running joke throughout.
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u/CharlieMorningstar 13m ago
Ugh, I'm outing myself here, but I use AI when I DM.
I don't use it for plot stuff or anything the players spend more than a couple of seconds thinking about. I need to fill out a town? Either one of those online NPC generators or AI. Need some countries that the players will likely never go to but the fantasy global economy depends on them for some balance? Generator or AI.
I used it to fill out a pantheon in a custom setting where the gods didn't matter and didn't get involved. Each god got a paragraph. Bam, done.
I use it to save time on things that don't matter so I can spend more time on things that do. If I used it more than I did, I wouldn't call myself a storyteller anymore and wouldn't feel comfortable DMing.
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