General Discussion

[The1True]

comfort-seeking in the familiar

There's no doubt my group wouldn't have touched something like Roll20 if I hadn't moved a million miles away. And yeah, that's as far as we're going to go. There's all kinds of tasty new VTT options out there, but nah. Sweet sweet incumbency. There's a certain conservatism (not necessarily political) to the older heavy metal/D&D crowd. Definitely a comfort of youth.

There's a bunch of old rockers we used to play with who swing back in from outer space from time to time and want to join the game. The 3.5 monstrosity we're powergaming is so far from the 2e hackfest they remember from the 90's. They just sit there bemused for a few sessions while people tell them to roll their Skill Check and then drift away on a sad steel guitar riff. They needed a hit of the oldschool, and I recognize that.

 

[Beoric]

Has anybody ever run The Assassin's Knot? I'm in the process of evaluating it, and it clearly has flaws, but I'm trying to figure out if I can tweak it, or if I need to tear it down to the foundation and rebuild it to get something useful out of it.

Clearly the CrAzZy motivation of the dude who originally calls the hit has to go, and I'm trying to figure out whether to change the motivation or if he can be cut out entirely.

Anyway, stories and thoughts would be welcome.

 

[The Heretic]

Has anybody ever run The Assassin's Knot? I'm in the process of evaluating it, and it clearly has flaws, but I'm trying to figure out if I can tweak it, or if I need to tear it down to the foundation and rebuild it to get something useful out of it.

Clearly the CrAzZy motivation of the dude who originally calls the hit has to go, and I'm trying to figure out whether to change the motivation or if he can be cut out entirely.

Anyway, stories and thoughts would be welcome.

I ran it once, in high school. I can't remember the details (and I'm not sure how well I ran it), but one of my friends told me "I liked that, you should do more adventures like that."

You could probably remove the craze abbot from Restenford from the equation. It makes just as much sense, or even more so, for the Lord Mayor (? was that her title?) to instigate the events in the module because she covets Restenford.

I've wanted to run this one again but I've never been able to fit it in. It would take a lot of work to get it into a usable form. They didn't really know how to create this sort of module back then. Lenard added some innovations but it's still a huge mess. At least it wasn't as bad as L3-L5.


The Heretic

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I haven't run Assassin's Knot, but I do own the module, and in reading it... I'm also curious if anybody has successfully run it. It looks like a clusterfuck - the information is not organized at all, and there are so many red herrings with so little actual evidence, I'm not entirely sure how a party is supposed to get the right guy.

 

[Beoric]

I think I'm going to keep the crazy priest but make him not crazy and give him another motive. I also think I'm going to have him giving the planted evidence to the assassin, so the assassin doesn't know that all the evidence points to his home town - and is pissed off when he finds out. I'm also going to think hard about what other clues might be added to make it more likely that the players figure it out; I'm about halfway through the module, and I'm not seeing it right now.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

In all honesty, it's probably going to be easier to just invent a murder mystery from scratch at that point. I don't think there's anything so unique to Assassin's Knot that the players will feel cheated out of some amazing experience. The bonus being that you can slot everything into your existing world with no alterations or greater-picture implications.

From what I recall, AK is not some great mystery. Some red herring clues at the start, some follow-up "corrective" clues when those herrings are chased, and a final confrontation. Kind of a typical script for D&D "mysteries". Easily re-made on your own terms, I'd wager.

 

[The Heretic]

I haven't run Assassin's Knot, but I do own the module, and in reading it... I'm also curious if anybody has successfully run it. It looks like a clusterfuck - the information is not organized at all, and there are so many red herrings with so little actual evidence, I'm not entirely sure how a party is supposed to get the right guy.

My group only got on the right track because of the orcs. "Oh, they hire orcs here. The Lord Mayor MUST be evil!" It doesn't sound like that would happen in Beoric's Eberron campaign, if orcs aren't always evil.


The Heretic

 

[Beoric]

In all honesty, it's probably going to be easier to just invent a murder mystery from scratch at that point.

This kind of writing can be iterative. I can spot flaws and fix them, whereas if it was entirely original it would just have problems that I would be blind to. People who turn their nose up at reboots always seem to forget that few if any of Shakespeare's plays were original stories.

Plus I don't have to make up a town - two towns actually - or rosters of NPCs.

My group only got on the right track because of the orcs. "Oh, they hire orcs here. The Lord Mayor MUST be evil!" It doesn't sound like that would happen in Beoric's Eberron campaign, if orcs aren't always evil.

I haven't got that far, but I imagine particularly unsavoury brigands should do the trick.

 

[The Heretic]

I'm noticing a shift in myself as I age - I too am unfortunately becoming averse to new technology, something I'd consider unthinkable in my youth. I always saw it in elders, and never thought it would happen to me, but here we are... my wife would call me down-right luddite by her standards, even though I work in tech and was very much an early adopter in my younger days.

I've noticed this in myself, particularly with music. When you're young and learning how things work, This Is The Way It Is Done. When a big change comes along, you're able to adjust and say This Is Now The Way It Is Done. Eventually though you go through so many of these big changes you lose interest in them. "Hey, this was working just fine the way it was, why are you changing this? Why should I learn this? You're just going to change it again in a couple of years!"

It's exactly like this with all the paradigm shifts in culture. After a while you realize we're not going to be talking about this crap in a few years so why even bother to learn anything about these performers. Who cares?


The Heretic

 

[Beoric]

I've noticed this in myself, particularly with music. When you're young and learning how things work, This Is The Way It Is Done. When a big change comes along, you're able to adjust and say This Is Now The Way It Is Done. Eventually though you go through so many of these big changes you lose interest in them. "Hey, this was working just fine the way it was, why are you changing this? Why should I learn this? You're just going to change it again in a couple of years!"

It's exactly like this with all the paradigm shifts in culture. After a while you realize we're not going to be talking about this crap in a few years so why even bother to learn anything about these performers. Who cares?


The Heretic

It really only bothers me when there are changes to the UI in software that I rely on to do things quickly, but before I can do that, I need to wrestle with a new UI to even discover whether it still does what I need it to do. And then they hide the function I need, and I can't use it until I drill down through 16 menus (that only loosely correspond to whatever website is instructing me) to turn the function on. And it seems like they are trying to deliberately kill the function, because the function gave them a wedgie in junior high or something, because in the next iteration they inevitably kill it, because "nobody was using" the function they have been trying to prevent somebody from using.

And then you have to figure out a new way to do what you want to do, assuming that is even possible, or cast about for some other application that might still do it. Which new application (if it actually does what you think it might, based on vague assurances on their website), requires you to learn a whole new UI.

Sorry, I'm having a morning.

It absolutely does not bother me when a new version of technology actually improves on the old, even with a slightly different UI.

 

[Beoric]

TLDR: It's unfair to say that...most publishers may not realize this box is new from DrivethruRPG and an option. MM products are all handcrafted EXCEPT for Slyth Hive to my knowledge and possibly NAP (AI Art). I'm also taking Squeen and DP off ignore.

WOW Beoric!!!...thanks for pointing this out.
I had trouble following what you were talking about, so I went into the Publisher Tools for Coming of Winter.
DrivethruRPG recently changed a bunch of stuff on their website. I don't recall them mentioning this new box to click, but I could of missed an email.

Publishers get a series of boxes to check when putting up their product for sale. There are a lot of options--from rulesets (OSR, Savage Frontiers, Traveller--there is like 16 options that are then broken down even more...Osric, OSE, Labyrinth Lord, etc.). Lot's of choices!
Then there is Product Type, Genre, Format, Languages....all broken down quite a bit more. And I think you get a limited amount of choices to choose from (10 maybe?) but seems like hundreds of options...

This is the age-old argument where customers get pissed when some publishers click everything--- OSRIC, OSE, Shadowdark, etc. to try and sell their product and get more eyes on things...(I don't do that or try not too).

ANYWAYS---yes, it looks like they added a box under Format that has Creation Method, which has 2 choices: Handcrafted and AI-Generated content. I actually just noticed that this is plastered on the publisher tools:

"AI-Generated Content
We have recently deployed two browsing options on our new DriveThruRPG marketplace and DriveThruComics PHNX Preview. Customers can now choose to filter out AI-Generated content in their Account Settings, and titles are now clearly labeled as Handcrafted or AI-Generated if the publisher has selected one of those options."


Looks like I will need to update all of the Merciless Merchants products (oh joy). All of the Merciless Merchant products use either stock art (which to my knowledge is not AI as I actually have stopped most purchases of stock art back in 2020 before AI became a big deal) or commissioned art from human artists EXCEPT for Slyth Hive by Prince and maybe NAP stuff which I don't have as much control of as its various authors (and free). The Coming of Winter is definitely hand crafted--this is the main reason we even do Kickstarters for our adventures--to commission kickass art done by humans to cover the costs.

The only time I personally have used AI for D&D is to generate NPC's real quick before I'm DMing that night because I ran out of time (and its still rough and I have to change things), never for something published.

So, circling back to this discussion, I see that the latest module reviewed by Bryce is tagged in DriveThru as "Contains AI-Generated Content." Which may just be the art, but I noticed Bryce said "It feels disconnected from itself, as if the designer didn’t know what the adventure was,or didn’t know how to include parts other than the main hack." Which is a complaint he has made a lot lately. Just sayin'.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Personally, I've got nothing against AI art - we don't all have the skill or money for good art, and you'll get crucified if you don't include anything. However, I only really say this because art is supplemental to adventures, not the adventure itself (MotBM notwithstanding).

AI for writing though? That's a low point. I could maybe forgive if they used it to punch up some weak writing, or if used to generate a framework that gets largely left behind... but this ain't that. They just pressed the "generate" button and then the "publish" button. The most egregious misuse is for adventure design though, the one part of a module that absolutely needs a human mind. Art can be generated without human creativity (assuming you consider AI art "art"), but module premise and execution should not and cannot - at least, not in a good way.

 

[Beoric]

IMO, "AI art" isn't art, and it's middling illustration at best. Not to mention the fact that it undervalues the work of artists, it is created by stealing said artists' IP, it uses obnoxious amounts of electricity, and it uses obnoxious amounts of water to cool the computers that do the processing.

But then I prefer to hope for a Star Trek future, where technology frees us from the drudgery of menial work, so we can turn our minds to the creation and appreciation of art and literature; to a Fritz Lang's Metropolis future, where we are slaves to the machine, so a wealthy few can enjoy a shallow and soulless life of leisure. Having computers do the fun bits (poorly) is ass-backwards.

I don't get to be too sanctimonious, because I did play with ChatGPT when it first came out, as well as Dall-E. And my business's logo was created with AI assistance, and I quite like it. And non-generative AI definitely has a place in my industry, for processing large amounts of certain types of data, in a way that frees up humans to do more interesting work, as opposed to eliminating their positions. But now that I know more about it, I try not to use LLMs or AI art at all.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I wrote off a Star Trek utopian future the day George Bush was elected over Al Gore. That's when I knew the world doesn't work on "supposed to" logic. T'was naught but a silly childhood fantasy, dashed by anyone with even a modicum of insight into human behaviour.

As to AI "art", I'll say this - I've seen some really cool shit made by AI, stuff I'd never even be able to conceive in my mind's eye. It definitely made me feel stuff, which I'd argue puts us at least half way there. Sucks that it comes at the expense of existing artists trying to eke out a living, but that's technological advancement for you - it tends to do that.

 

[Beoric]

There is a fair amount of AI art that has made me feel.... nausea.

You think I'm just making a joke, but honestly I'm not. A lot of it is super creepy. Especially anything involving people and strings - bowstrings, harps, fishing lines. And the hands and feet freak me out. I see a lot of it when I'm googling images to make VTT tokens, and it's exceedingly rare that I use AI art for those. I don't even use AI art when it's free.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I mean, you could say the same thing for regular painted art. Or film, or music, etc.

Personally, Basquiat makes me want to gouge out my eyes.

 

[Beoric]

Every once in a while I look at the many, many 4e modules from Dungeon Magazine, and think to myself, surely I can do something with this stuff. Most of them are pretty short, 1-3 encounters, but they would be useful for randoms encounters or something, right?

And every time, I realize how wrong I am. Nearly all of them have nothing useful that I can salvage. The hooks are inane, the scenarios are painfully overwrought, the choice of monsters (a menagerie clearly thrown together with no other consideration than their combat role) makes no sense in the game world, there are no area maps, and the battle maps are garbage.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Dungeon Magazine

I ran the whole Age of Worms adventure path from Dungeon in 3e - it took some HEAVY modifications, and honestly, most of the fun came from the extra stuff I was adding in between adventures. There was just a lack of clarity throughout, and extraneous information in all the wrong places. Tough to run , like it was fighting me every step of the way.

 

[Beoric]

I ran the whole Age of Worms adventure path from Dungeon in 3e - it took some HEAVY modifications, and honestly, most of the fun came from the extra stuff I was adding in between adventures. There was just a lack of clarity throughout, and extraneous information in all the wrong places. Tough to run , like it was fighting me every step of the way.

I tried several times to figure out a way to make that AP work, and also Shackled City. Just these massive walls of text. Finally I decided I needed to read Shackled City to determine the connections between the modules, and the elements that had to be kept to make the series work. And there was just... nothing. You could lose any part of it, and it would make no difference to the subsequent modules. There was some background continuity for the DM, most of which would never reach the players, but it was all optional. And the flip side of that is, nothing the players did in any module, other than the last, had any impact on the outcome. Nothing the players did mattered, they were more or less spectators, just along for the ride.

And yet they were still better than most of the 4e stuff.

 

[Beoric]

Hey, @DangerousPuhson, have you ever run 3e/3.5e/PF1? Also, @The1True, have you ever run any 5e? I'm looking for a comparison as to how each edition uses CR.

In particular, I am curious if an encounter using X creatures of CR Y, for a party of level N in 3e, would be around the same difficulty as an encounter using X creatures of CR Y, for a party of level N in 5e. I see some of the same language used ("CR X is an appropriate challenge for a party of level X"), but the actual encounter-building math seems to work out differently.