dwgill

Oh damn, the UI really hides that button; that should be way more prominent in my opinion. I had no idea Lemmy supported that functionality!

I didn't even realize Avatar Legends had a box set 🤔

That's honestly the biggest potential upside with Meta's Threads in my opinion: better chance to grab more of the big online personalities (e.g. it's on the record that they've been reaching out to major celebrities) and (at least for the foreseeable future) Meta seems invested in full-featured Fediverse interoperability including account migration, etc.

I think this is an entirely valid perspective. Some people are just overflowing with ideas and the use of ChatGPT (or any kind of aid in inspiration, such as random tables) seems redundant. Just for a point of comparison, my own experience is a combination of (a) I simply enjoy creating some kinds of content more than others, and (b) I don't have enough spare time to personally author all of the content I want for my campaign. With my limited time, I want to focus on authoring the stuff that I enjoy creating and/or the stuff that's going to have the biggest impact. As an example, I'm happy to delegate descriptions of rooms to books of tables or ChatGPT if it means I can focus instead on the lore of the dungeon as a whole or the background & motivations for its overarching villain.

I highly respect this bit of advice. It's a classic. But I have also found it can assume a certain kind of player, and that there do exist players which seemingly desire a storyline they can just follow. They still want to have agency and make interesting and consequential decisions, but I still find them a bit aimless and lost when I drop them in a sandbox.

In fairness to this received wisdom, I think the phrase interesting situation is doing more work than I have historically given it credit for. It's not just about it being interesting in the abstract, but (at least with some players and parties) presenting a status quo and then introducing (or threatening) the prospect of changing that status quo. I suppose my tl;dr is that with interesting situations inaction should feel like a meaningful choice. The orphanage will burn down, the criminal will escape, the freedom fighter will be caught. (Ideally, you leave the determination of whether they're a criminal or a freedom fighter up to the players.)

I feel (rightly & legitimately) called out 😭 I literally got two months into my renaissance political intrigue campaign before I discovered Court of Blades. It's a perfect fit for my interests, but now my campaign is lousy with so many d&d tropes (Tieflings! Dhampirs! Changelings! Dragons!) that I more than likely couldn't switch systems without home brewing everything out the wazoo 😓

I'm fascinated to hear you actually use it during a session! Can you give an example of what that looks like? I can't imagine it without majorly interrupting play personally, so I'd love to hear more about how you make that work

That area of "material that's nontrivial to produce but not certain to be read/consumed by the players" might be the most useful place for chatgpt, in retrospect. I don't want to draft an entire story that could well just be ignored, but I can edit or touch up something that an AI gives me.

It does seem to do pretty well in that regard. Can I ask if your game is a conventional d&d campaign or something else?

That's awesome. ChatGPT seems to do pretty well when your campaign aligns with traditional D&D tropes, but I had no idea it would even generate hex maps! That's wild

I have found it useful for handouts as well. I usually need to do a few rounds of editing and back and forth to get details and tone/voice just right, but it's often still easier than writing it from scratch myself. It's also nice for writing something yourself and then having it rewrite it in another voice e.g. "rephrase this letter like a victorian dandee wrote it"

I can understand the skepticism, but if helps things up at all, I would clarify that I think exceedingly few people who use random tables (even all the way back to the 70s) really use them as a final say in what's happening next. Most who use it probably appreciate it more as a way of dislodging tired tropes and tricks they find themselves always falling back on.

I think of it as one more source of inspiration to keep in your toolbox, alongside the evergreen "steal from media you like." That said, ymmv as with all things in life, and the best prep is the one that works for you!