OSR Baptism of Fire RPG

Gus L said:

On the larger topic I am sure "AI" art (and I note that in this product the art is largely well known public domain art - the stuff that doesn't look like AI schlock was painted/drawn/engraved by folks like Ivan Bilibin)...

Click to expand...

Oh, here's the credits:

Interior Art:
Aleksandra Alekseeva, Ivan Bilibin, Albert Devriendt, Gallen Kallela, Ilya Kovshik,
Frank Cheyne Papé, Nicholas Roerich, Philippe Semeria, Viktor Vasnetsov, John
William Waterhouse, NC Wyeth

Layout, Design and additional AI Art:
Chris Miller

Click to expand...

So Interior Art listed here is the pubic domain artists, got it. Thought I recognized some of the art from Hackmaster...

So out of the pictures I posted, any idea which ones were are AI?

Gus L said:

When I see a product using algorithmically generated IP theft for art I know I will never purchase it or read it. Might as well have a big label on the front that say "Made with Contempt for the Reader by Grifters!"

Click to expand...

Here's the notice on Drive-Thru:
"Only the public domain works of deceased classical artists were curated to derive the AI art in this book."

Not sure if that changes your opinion?

Gus L said:

I get it that people don't think they can draw, don't know how, don't want to etc. I don't like my drawing very much, and it's a lot of work ... but I use it anyway. So the way I see it you have a few choices to illustrate your work that are all respectable. A) Hire/befriend artists. B) Use public domain art. C) Use whatever you can draw/collage/paint. I will note that the original hobby relied heavily on that last one. Look at the art in 1974 OD&D - you can do it.

Click to expand...

Curious, same question I asked Nakana: Feel the same way about animation? Spiderman Across the Spider Verse for example?

Not trying to use that as a "gotch ya'", but been debating how I feel about AI in art myself. Seeing a company rocket to the top of "100 greatest films" and being praised for having some of the best animation of all time has really made me consider AI having its uses...

@Jahydin

I had to do some research to find out how AI was used for the Spider-Man movie. For the most part they still used human artists, with AI rendering some filler frames. I’d say this really pushes the line for me, but doesn’t cross it. Certainly not a hill I’d die on, but yea it cheapens the movie for me. Whatever interest I might have for a movie would be lessened knowing AI was involved.

Edit: the real saving grace in this example is knowing the art used to teach the AI was from their artists. No artist was “infringed upon” as it were. But still, I don’t support where it’s all headed.

@Nakana
Thanks for taking the time to read into it and jotting down your thoughts.

I've always been in favor of inventing clever ways of "getting the job done", but understand the worry many have. For instance, there are a handful of movies that I love that couldn't have been made without CGI, but as a whole, I still think it harmed film more than it helped.

@Jahydin
You're certainly welcome, and thank you for the healthy discourse.

As AI becomes more and more prominent, it's good to ask ourselves "where exactly do we draw the line?". I'm all in favor of developing tools that assist or enhance the artist, but to replace the artist? or worse... plagiarize an artist? Not so much. I have no problem with CGI as I see that as another art form still driven by human artists.

For me, when it comes to appreciating art (even if it's not that great), I can still admire the inspiration and the artist's attempt to communicate that. When looking at an AI piece, I immediately go to: this was created by 1s and 0s. A software program was given a prompt, analyzed hundreds of thousands of examples, and mimicked the most prevalent pattern according to the given parameters. There is no soul, no humanity, but yea... I guess it looks good.

Jahydin said:

So out of the pictures I posted, any idea which ones were are AI? [...]

Click to expand...

Not entirely sure, not spending long enough looking or running anything through Tine Eye etc. I don't recognize the paintings offered, but given they have a "digital fantasy art" thing and a smudged quality that is more concept art then Franz Hals, I don't really think any of them are 19th/early 20th century painters, especially not early Eastern European painters. They could be contemporary digital art, but given the source I suspect not. MidJourney etc. has gotten good at copying stuff ... but even feeding it old paintings, I suspect the basic corpus tends towards a digital painting style.

Personally I especially don't like the cover, the one of Gandalf shooting his wand or the one of the magic in a hall of vague lamps. That's not really to say they are "AI", just not great.

Jahydin said:

Here's the notice on Drive-Thru:
"Only the public domain works of deceased classical artists were curated to derive the AI art in this book." Not sure if that changes your opinion?

Click to expand...

Nope. While I appreciate the use of tight curation of the machine learning corpus from a legal perspective I 1)doubt it (even if the end user had tried to limit the corpus) 2) Don't really think it's appropriate for this sort of hobby project.

Jahydin said:

Curious, same question I asked Nakana: Feel the same way about animation? Spiderman Across the Spider Verse for example?

Click to expand...

"AI" is a fraught word and because it's currently the darling of WEB 3.0 nonsense, it like "crypto" before it, is being used to cover a huge range of things. My understanding is that the degree to which machine learning/algorithmic tools were used in Spiderverse is fairly minimal - they were used to fill in frames and deal with specific convolutions and changes on artist created models. This doesn't strike me as remotely the same thing as typing "Slavic witch makes sacrifice in ring of rune carved stones, dark colors, highly detailed, matte painting by Ivan Biliban" or whatever and then running with whatever the result is to illustrate your elfgames project while basking in the smug feeling of having screwed some artist out of $100 or having "illustrated" you retroclone in a scant 20 minutes.

So it changes my opinion not one bit.

Plus as stated above - the author is a twit and I have zero liking for his products, presence in the community, reactionary values, or self-aggrandizing behavior. It's a personal opinion and a personal decision, but I want nothing to do with him, his product or his fans.

I can't get too excited about an historical setting that layers on a quasi-magical setting. Does "OSR" mean that it uses pre-D&D 3 rules? Why does RPGPundit not use a real name?

Jahydin said:

I've always been in favor of inventing clever ways of "getting the job done", but understand the worry many have. For instance, there are a handful of movies that I love that couldn't have been made without CGI, but as a whole, I still think it harmed film more than it helped.

Click to expand...

Basing a movie on Spiderman was what ruined it for me.

"Getting the job done" is right. The blurb about AI in the book hits some important points: real art is expensive and takes a lot of time. If you're Hasbro or a million-dollar-Kickstarter creator, you have both of these. If you're not, well, using real art throughout the book prevents the job from getting done. I don't know how big Mad Scribe Games is, but if it's a one-man show, without an art department, using AI and public domain art is a smart move that gets the job done.

Personally, I'd use AI art as a placeholder for real art, like while a Kickstarter slowly (cough MCDM) fulfills its goal. If you're going to charge top-dollar for your product (eventually?), you should probably sell a top-shelf product, which means real art from real artists.

Gus L said:

Plus as stated above - the author is a twit and I have zero liking for his products, presence in the community, reactionary values, or self-aggrandizing behavior. It's a personal opinion and a personal decision, but I want nothing to do with him, his product or his fans.

Click to expand...

This is fair (except for the "twit" part). If you don't like someone, don't buy his stuff. That being said, I know about zero of the authors of the books on my shelf, but I know that I like the products. I also know that D&D is now a corporation-owned, publicly traded bugbear, so I won't be buying its stuff (even if it does have an anti-AI policy). There's too much good/better work from smaller companies to be buying D&D.

GMMichael said:

I can't get too excited about an historical setting that layers on a quasi-magical setting. Does "OSR" mean that it uses pre-D&D 3 rules?

Click to expand...

OSR usually means it's compatible with early D&D, but some might use it more liberally to describe games with the same philosophy and/or tone as early D&D. For instance, I have no issue calling Castles & Crusades and Shadowdark OSR games despite some major differences.

GMMichael said:

Why does RPGPundit not use a real name?

Click to expand...

No idea. Honestly, I don't know much about him.

If anyone could write up a short blurb on how he became part of the OSR and why he started his forum that would be cool.

GMMichael said:

This is fair (except for the "twit" part). If you don't like someone, don't buy his stuff. That being said, I know about zero of the authors of the books on my shelf, but I know that I like the products. I also know that D&D is now a corporation-owned, publicly traded bugbear, so I won't be buying its stuff (even if it does have an anti-AI policy). There's too much good/better work from smaller companies to be buying D&D.

Click to expand...

I've intentionally used "twit" as it's the vague language of insult and invective that avoids the issue of vexatious ligation or threats of it. I am sure you can find details on why exactly one might think Pundit is a twit. Or you could read the more bizarre things he's said on his forum. There is a set of creators, some I consider talented, and some not, that I do not purchase, promote, or read because I am of the opinion that these creators' public statements or alleged actions express hatred for, or a desire to eliminate the civil rights/do harm to various friends, co-workers, and family members based their inherent immutable traits.

I don't want the works of reactionaries at my game table or in my corner of the hobby, and will push back against people promoting them, not only because of general disapproval, but because their presence is a signal to many in the hobby or coming to it that they are unwelcome. Now obviously "death of the author" and separate people from their work etc ... but when a living creator in the same niche hobby as me is doing this stuff I think it's important to push back at least a bit.

With WotC (and the last time I bought a physical product from them they were still called TSR) you are basically right, they don't make much I want, but ... I think the situation is a rather different. As annoying as their ham-fisted efforts to wring money out of the hobby are, I can't get too worked up about it, they don't threaten anyone I care about, and I live in a capitalist society - my phone company, grocery chain and government are all likely doing worse. Mainly though if I give WotC cash they aren't going to use it to promote causes I disagree with, and the minute amount of credit or promotion my purchase might give them would offer WotC an incrementally bigger platform to heckle or call for harm to my friends and family.

Jahydin said:

OSR usually means it's compatible with early D&D, but some might use it more liberally to describe games with the same philosophy and/or tone as early D&D. For instance, I have no issue calling Castles & Crusades and Shadowdark OSR games despite some major differences.

Click to expand...

It's funny how this first definition has grown since the collapse of the OSR as a specific scene - roughly post 2020 and the end of G+.

Having been associated with what would eventually be called the OSR since about 2011, I see it as a revisionist definition of "OSR" that derives from a fairly niche part of the former scene or perhaps is itself nostalgia for an imagined early OSR. Yes, early OSR beginning on forums in the mid aughts tended to use early editions of D&D as the basis of retro-clones, but this was not universal even within that community - one finds Traveler, Steve Jackson, and Palladium games mentioned in the same places, and a significant influence to early OSR works comes from 2E and 3E products -- and how couldn't it, the forum players were often playing these games and broke away from WotC's D&D largely in response to a perception of changed play style in 3.5E/4E.

Defining "OSR" is basically a way to start fights though, as it's a constantly changing definition. The "OSR" and "NSR" split though that would place things like Into the Odd (etc), GLOG, or Shadowdark (a pretty straightforward B/X clone) is very new and to my eyes feels like the efforts of some within the Post-OSR space to claim the mantel of the larger, now passed scene while pushing aside those whose work, including key Mid-OSR and Late-OSR figures like Arnold K. (GLOG), Skerpels (GLOG), Chris McDowall(ITO etc), Sean McCoy (Mothership), Luka Rejec (UVG) and many other aside in favor of themselves or the early OSR figures they prefer. Often there's a component of "saving the hobby" (from who? see my above post for my opinion) in this which I find annoying as well. Personally, I call both OSRIC and Black Hack OSR, both having come from the scene itself. Not that my opinion matters any more then anyone else's.

@Gus L
Thanks for sharing. I collected OSR material as I saw it in bookstores, but was never part of the community during those early days. I don't think it was until C&C and Lamentations that I started to follow the creators themselves and join in discussions with other fans.

Specifically concerning Pundit, was he active in those circles too? Was he always that "reactionary" or was it something he slowly grew into? Just curious.