By Giuliano Gianfriglia, La Tavola Rotonda APS
La Tavola Rotonda
OSE
Level 1
A SIMPLE CONTRACT. A SILENT WRECK. A SECRET THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN AWAKENED. In the sprawling Citadel of Aurion, an offer too good to refuse puts you on the trail of the Stella Cadente (the Falling Star), a transport ship that vanished under mysterious circumstances. What begins as a simple recovery mission for an ambitious merchant soon turns into a desperate fight for survival on an isolated asteroid. Something lurks within the twisted wreckage, and it has no intention of giving up its new “treasure”.
This 52 page sci-fi waste of space adventure has a giant bird in it. And, like, I don’t know, maybe six locations, if I’m being VERY generous and count the hook/tavern and the Jungle Cruise boat ride.
I am a hypocrite. I know I’m a hypocrite. This means I am not an asshole. Since the only way to survive in the world is to be a hypocrite, everyone is a hypocrite and that means that if you think you are not a hypocrite then you are an asshole. I do not go up to homeless people and go on and on about how much money I have, disposable that I’m going to waste, and and how I am not going to give it to them. That would make me an asshole. [Exceptions to the above being made for BradleyDragon, of course.] I cannot imagine staring someone in the face and just flaunting things right in front of them. Fucking avert your eyes in an embarrassed manner and move on like everyone else, or maybe drop a few bucks because it’s the holidays. But, again, don’t just stand there looking at them and telling them, for a long amount of time, how rich you are and how you are not going to give them any money.
Naivete? The old Paranoia chutzpah? Why would you even put this in? “I like to masturbate to pictures of anal warts.” Uh, sure thing. We all do. But the rest of us have the decency to make some thoughts inside our heads only. Seriously, why would you thumb your noses at people? We keep our conversations related to the weather and the state of the roads. We do NOT talk about religion, politics, or the use of AI in products. I’m just absolutely gob smacked.
Ah, I see the problem. We’re sharing stories and we’re connecting with each other.
The setting here is pseud-scifi. Let’s call it Gamma World like, but not quite so primitive. I thin we’re going for a Planescape like vibe, except techno. In this “story” a dude hires you to to a ship and recover a thing. You get hired in a bar. You ride a ship to the wrecked ship, and probably do nothing on the way. At the ship you explore, maybe, three rooms and probably make a skill check. Then you fight a giant bird. Then the adventure is over. And it takes 52 fucking pages to do that. And why is that?
Because there’s tons and tons of generic advice for the DM. Is any of this supported, for the experienced DM? No. Did a new DM just wander in here to run this? No. Doesn’t matter through, it’s all still present.
It takes nineteen pages just to get through the hook. By page twelve, above, we do get a description of the bar where the hook takes place. Yeah!
Long italics read-aloud. “Your adventure begins here.” *sigh*
Hey hey! A meaningless location description in town that has no bearing on the adventure! Yeah!
Congrats. You rode a boat to the wrecked ship. This is kind of a weird way to present the entrances, grouping them by challenge phases instead of by location. No consequence to going in via the hash in the hull. Guess you pick that one. No clue why you would though. Life is random. That’s page 24.
Well, we’re doing a Fail Forward anyway. We don’t place critical information in a binary way in front of a die roll. If you want to create atmosphere, then you create atmosphere regardless of the die roll, which is what is going on here. I’m not a fan of the overly mechanistic stuff here. I think it robs the setting of sense of the evocative.
We’re in to the appendix. This is the dude that hires you, although you never meet him, only an agent. “This could elevate his status.” That’s boring. I want some scheming. Tell me his dirty little insipid scheme. Just add some color to the adventure.
And that’s the adventure. It generalizes. It wants to create this very evocative picture but it does by saying “Paint an evocative picture” instead of priming the DM to create that evocative nature. That’s the designers role. TO provide those cues to the DM. To provide things for them to riff on. Not to tell them to riff on things but to provide the specificity that will then allow that riffing.
I get that that the folks behind this were excited. But, also, there seems to be no clue as to what makes a decent adventure. It’s hard to fathom a hook, a boat ride, and four rooms taking up 52 pages.
This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/541172/nexum-the-aurion-contract?1892600
I love that folks think that the random adventure they make will somehow be the first adventure a new DM runs. Better add 10 pages of advice just in case.
Also better add a section on CPR just in case someone at the table has a heart attack.
Me too. Honestly the fluff in adventures is awful. It’s like they wrote one adventure for their home game and they suddenly see themselves as an expert and parrot back the RPG game rules sample dungeon material.
“Naivete? The old Paranoia chutzpah? Why would you even put this in? “I like to masturbate to pictures of anal warts.” Uh, sure thing. We all do. But the rest of us have the decency to make some thoughts inside our heads only. Seriously, why would you thumb your noses at people? We keep our conversations related to the weather and the state of the roads. We do NOT talk about religion, politics, or the use of AI in products. I’m just absolutely gob smacked.”
I’m actually ‘gob smacked’ why you have a problem with an AI image disclaimer? Everyone gets in a tiff about publishers using AI and so someone is transparent about it and that’s a problem too? I’m not really seeing this as a ‘thumb your noses at people’ situation.
“Everyone gets in a tiff about publishers using AI and so someone is transparent about it and that’s a problem too?”
Yes. The problem isn’t that people aren’t transparent that they’re using “AI”. We can see they’re using machine-generated images, we’re not stupid. Acknowledging that you’re doing something is not an excuse, it just makes you look like an asshole.
I’m with Malrex on this one. Not everyone has access to editors who are familiar with RPGs, or to artists. I think there is a big difference between someone who says, “Here is how I made my module,” and people who have AI do the whole damned thing and run a mill publishing slop in the hope that they can make a buck off a few suckers. These are not morally equivalent.
They aren’t morally equivalent, but that doesn’t mean the use of machine-generated images is moral.
Hence the disclaimer. It’s a courtesy for the customers to whom AI art would be a dealbreaker. We should applaud AI art disclaimers, not shun them. It’s not “moral” to test cosmetics on animals either, but it’s a bigger immorality to hide it (or to outright lie and say “not tested on animals”).
To be clear, I have no stake in this particular product. I’m reacting to the incentive this creates. When people attack ‘AI slop’ AND attack transparency about limited, disclosed AI use, the outcome is predictable: publishers stop being honest about their process on DriveThruRPG and stop checking the “made with AI” box.
That’s bad for buyers who don’t want AI-assisted material. Even when people think they can tell, clear signals still matter, just like the same way reviewers and customers value previews before recommending or buying a product.
Indeed, the thumbing of noses. You can marry for money, but you can’t SAY you’re marrying for money.
“I do not go up to homeless people and go on and on about how much money I have, disposable that I’m going to waste, and and how I am not going to give it to them. That would make me an asshole. [Exceptions to the above being made for BradleyDragon, of course.] ”
I had no idea Bradley’s influence had reached so far. I might have read some of your acerbic wit in another forum and never recognized it!
Thanks for the deep reference, Bryce!
Oh boy: “the market is not a square, but an intricate network.” This is the “not X but Y” shibboleth of ChatGPT writing. The non-specificity that you call out is another hallmark of ChatGPT; implying or suggesting rather than actually giving details. The poor structuring of the information (as with the entrances) is another sign. Heavy use of AI-prompting was clearly used to generate this slopventure.
Reading the excerpts here, I agree that this seems LLM-massaged if not LLM-written wholesale. The formatting is too precise, too. This degree of formatting precision is rare in human-created elf game adventures.