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.
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.
AI discourse has way too much “Throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” especially from a lot of people who have no idea what they’re talking about. AI, as a thing, is not a perfect system. It’s not a magic panacea that will cure all. There are legitimate concerns about how much it infringes on creative spaces and how it may put people out of work. There are also legitimate concerns about the AI training data scraping web-hosted content indiscriminately without permission. However, these are not the same as AI just being “bad”.
Do I think a D&D campaign led by a ChatGPT-like DM would be “good”? Probably not as it stands. I’ve played a lot with ChatGPT and its limitations are pretty obvious. Could it get better in the future? Probably. Is it an interesting possible way to get to play D&D if you can’t get a group together? I mean, it’s gotta be better than nothing, right? But the real interesting prospect to me is machine-learning powered tools for the DM. A System that’s trained on WotC-owned resources that lets you just choose a paintbrush that’s labeled “cave” and draw out a series of tunnels and have it automatically populate with crystals and mushrooms and visual points of interest, which lets you sketch out a good-looking map in minutes. Then, as your party is in the cave, the system knows what type of “biome” you used so it has a button to let you generate a random encounter, which it takes from your character levels and where your players are. There’s a lot of ways that “smart” tools could take a lot of work off the DM’s shoulders that would be great. I don’t know if they’re in the pipeline, but the point is that AI isn’t a boogeyman that’s just out to steal jobs and IP.
I really like that you mentioned machine learning. ML is a great practical application of a subset of AI. You don’t necessarily need an advanced AI DM. Sometimes you just need a tool to simplify DMing. I remember writing cellular automata that would build maps and dungeons. That’s not using ML or neural networks or anything like that, but it was code that simplified my task. People tend to think about the hype behind buzzwords and not how they are practically applied.
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.
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, subscription.
It’s not as simple as “oh cool, more people could play”. It’s just their next attempt at eliminating the third party market.
It’s just their next attempt at eliminating the third party market.
Since third parties can make AIs too I don't see how this would do that. It's just an innovative new product they might be first to market with, others can also join the market with their own versions of it.
I suppose it could go wrong if WOTC keeps throwing money down an AI money pit for a system that never works quite right, and then they end up losing market share to a system created by a scrappy startup that does but it’s built on a different fantasy TTRPG system.
I’m sure he is quite right that the CEO has never played D&D though. Or any other game. He was produced in a lab and spends every waking moment (which are all of them since they engineer CEOs not to need sleep) devising ways to be an even more terrible facsimile of a human.
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.
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