Honestly i’m fine with AI in a virtual tabletop environment, and am curious to see where it ends up.
I’m fine with it just in general. If they can make an AI that does a good job dungeon mastering it’s going to open up the hobby tremendously. New players can jump right in even if they don’t know an existing experienced player to hold their hands, the “forever DMs” can be free to play too, groups that just don’t have any DM can play.
If it’s bad at DMing then nobody will use it. Oh well. If human DMs want to DM, they can do that too. It’s just the same as with the art AIs, the existence of these things doesn’t stop people from still doing things “by hand” if they want to.
You realize that no one complained that ai art would discourage people from drawing, right? It’s because the ai scans other artists works and designs an imitation based on its prompt. It’s stops artists from being able to profit from their work because it introduces a free alternative that stole their designs to learn.
I think the bigger concern than whether or not it’s good will be what it learned from.
Don’t be so sure about that “no one”, I’ve seen plenty of hyperbolic arguments along those lines.
Stopping artists from being able to profit is a separate issue, and not particularly relevant to DMing since most DMs don’t charge for it.
I’m pretty sure about it. No one who suggested that deserves to be taken seriously. But intellectual property theft is a legitimate concern and comparing them as equal concerns is disingenuous.
Lots of people produce content and make a living off of 5e, and not just 3rd party producers, plenty of people use patreon as a means to distributetheir work. Will the ai be trained exclusively on WOTC playtesting or will it be able to scour the internet for plot hooks and npcs and loot and whatever else it needs? It’s inevitable, and well known that some of that content has been reposted and copied in various places across the internet. The damages they suffer from user piracy wouldn’t be comparable to an ai running multiple games on an online platform owned by the ‘world’s most popular rpg’ not to mention that they would be charging for at least a onednd or dnd beyond or whatever they’re calling it this week.
It’s not as simple as “oh cool, more people could play”. It’s just their next attempt at eliminating the third party market.
That’s my thought basically - theres really no way this can go really wrong.
owner of Hasbro afaik doesn’t even like D&D and has never played it
Yeah, Monopoly is more his kind of game…
Fun fact: Monopoly was originally called The Landlord’s Game and was made by a Georgist to illustrate the inherent unfairness and ruthlessness of capitalism and especially the exploitative nature of land ownership.
Then ruthless capitalists made a couple tweaks and made vast riches selling a derived but legally destinct version celebrating the very things the original vilified before being bought out by Hasbro who now control D&D.
It’s a publicly traded company. It’s owned by shareholders. You may be thinking of the CEO.
My only fear would be that this turns dnd more into a walled garden.
Looks like there are no plans for AI in their VTT:
Update 2/08: Hasbro’s representation has sent us a statement about the usage of AI in future games: “We’re very excited about the partnership with Xplored, but want to clarify that this partnership is centered around future applications within board games and not the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying game or its upcoming virtual tabletop.”
Their VTT seems primed for microtranactional garbage though, and Foundry is amazing, so I don’t think I’ll touch it.
As with everything produced and brought to market by a (huge) company: the will ruin their product in the end (and might have done so already).
But that’s not so terrible. 5e is pretty much an open game with a free license and there is a bunch of Indie RPGs out there and people are still playing (clones of) older editions of DND (I woupd advise anyone who hasn’t heard about that to find out about it).
My only concern really is their IP. I love the Realms, Eberron, etc. They’ve been ruining pretty much everything lately I mean Just look at spelljammer.
Oh yeah, I understand, that could be problem.
But they didn’t produce a lot of content for Eberron and Spelljammer for quiet some time, did they? One could say, that that part of their IP has been shitty for some time already.
I just hope the hobby as whole grows and at the same time more people learn about other ttrpg stuff out there. That new Eberrons and new Spelljammers come to be.
I have no issue with AI in tabletop roleplaying. Being able to create an NPC and just define its position and what it’s motivations are could lead to some really organic interesting gameplay.
I totally disagree with how that articles author lumps in AI with NFTs too. AI is supplemental. It’s just a tool to further expand on existing technology like search engine optimization. NFTs don’t provide anything like that. They are just gimmicks.
