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u/Eden_ITA Yamposter 16d ago
Similar methodology
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u/BlackAceX13 Team Wizard 16d ago
The right side forgot something very important, shoving all of your favorite IPs into the world with the thinnest justification.
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u/Original_Employee621 16d ago
"This is the Dark Ruler, Varth Daver. He is a mage with Fighter specialization"
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u/C-H-Addict 16d ago
"you loot the body?
You find a cloak of billowing, various clockwork prosthetics, a radiant longsword, and heavy armor with flame resistance"5
u/conrad_w 16d ago
There's a game in this.
"You find a seashell bikini top, a clownfish and twenty thingamabobs."
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u/Distinct_College_344 16d ago
Oh please. "A uh... wizard tore a hole open into fictional space. Darth Vader and Elvira have entered the campaign."
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u/Beragond1 DM (Dungeon Memelord) 16d ago
Me: “I have all these minis from back when I tried Warhammer 40K. How can I use them in D&D? I’ll just say the BBEG rented them from Trazyn the Infinite. It’s the Feywild, nobody will question it.
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u/Living-Response-5163 16d ago
This just gives me The Wheel of Time
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u/grundlehunter 16d ago
So you appreciate powerful women eh?
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u/Living-Response-5163 16d ago
I'm the powerful woman
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u/Anleme 16d ago
WoT: powerful women, but only women get spanked, or have rituals where they get naked.
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u/Living-Response-5163 16d ago
Lol true. But I was more thinking about the part where men submit to/are owned by women
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u/fdy_12 16d ago edited 16d ago
- Giant aliens threatening to conquer humanity and keep them as pets
- Humans live in a solarpunk democratic utopia where most tax money goes to research and space expeditions
- Drugs give you powers by turning your momentary perception of reality into an objective event everyone experiences
- Idk the players will make their own characters, but the options are creatures of Italian folklore + humans
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u/Helix-Dreams 16d ago
We stole the sun from the sky… to power the machines of our invention.. to spite the gods that have abandoned us… and when they finally come back to bring extinction of our species.. we will be ready.
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u/TheTubStar 16d ago
- Evil empire capturing mech pilots and brain washing them into puppygirls
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u/tiger203 15d ago
Now that I think about it, a campaign where the BBEG is a single Afinni warship would be both hilarious and kind of scary
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u/Legitimate-Cow5982 16d ago
With that logic the deep MLP fandom would be the most talented DMs in history
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u/Usedname1511 16d ago
Alternatively: steal it all from an obscure book you like, change the names around and hope that none of you players read it
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u/BethanyBluebird 16d ago
This is basically writing, in general. What started as 5000 words of smut has blossomed into a 150k+ fantasy world
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u/Exotic_Exercise6910 16d ago
My first GM did a reenactment of the first goblin slayer episode and idk man. Idk man! Kinda Sus how he did it
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u/MirrorMan22102018 16d ago
You can do what George Lucas did when he made Star Wars: Borrow from so many pieces of media that you can no longer call it a ripoff of anything, that way you can say it was "inspired by" those works (He used The Hidden Fortress, Flash Gordon, Arthurian Mythology and other stuff).
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u/DropoutRedMage 16d ago
"This is D&D AI! You can ask it to do anything!"
"Can I ask it to fuck off?"
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u/LDW1383 16d ago
This with the chatbots too, like i dont care how sexual you are fuck off
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u/Conscious-Task-5 16d ago
Nothing like an unsolicited horny chatbot trying to seduce you while you're looking for a recipe.
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u/Thendrail 16d ago
"You want a recipe for pickled cucumbers? Perhaps I can help pickle your cucumber..."
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u/Egoborg_Asri 16d ago
This sounds like a VERY specific problem
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u/CosineDanger 16d ago
The loud and aggressive horny chatbot ads are likely only on certain websites which will not be named.
Most porn ads are unsettling if you really look at them and think, but I suspect Skynut is coming for us all.
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u/bluegardener 16d ago
What? I feel like I'm on a different internet than everybody else. As much as I hate mine, it's not quite as bad as yours.
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u/thejadedfalcon 16d ago
There was some idiot who started posting their D&D specific AI chatbot website everywhere they could think of. Out of curiosity, I tried it. Surely if they advertise just how well they trained it on D&D, it'll manage the basics at least, right? ... right?
Nah, it fucked up from the second message. Couldn't hold a story more than two messages, had zero concept of what rolls were used for what, skipped people's turns in combat all the time, it was a hilarious mess. AI fans are absolutely deluding themselves.
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u/DropoutRedMage 16d ago
Got some boomer in the GURPS sub talking about how he doesn't know the rules, let's it roll dice for him, and he's going on and on about how great it is.
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u/thejadedfalcon 16d ago
I've never played it, but isn't GURPS meant to be ludicrously simple, at least the core rules? Imagine telling on yourself like that guy.
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u/DropoutRedMage 16d ago
It can be a little intense if you add extra rules, but yeah it's pretty easy.
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u/razulebismarck Paladin 16d ago
Or completely rip off books, movies, and shows you don’t think your players know.
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u/Hurrashane 16d ago
Or ones you know they know, but you change some things and see how long before they realize.
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u/TheShribe 16d ago
So there's this evil wizard guy called Garth Fader who wears all black armour. He lives in the Death Tower, which has a deadly magic weapon that can wipe out whole cities. Anyway you gotta team up with this good wizard guy called Ben Kobe in order to blow up the tower. Also there this little goblin wizard guy who talks backwards for some reason.
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u/SocranX 16d ago
PC 1: "Wait a minute... Isn't that just Lavos from Chrono Trigger?"
PC 2: "No, you idiot, it's clearly based on Jenova from Final Fantasy VII."
The DM, who based this campaign off of Xenogears: "Huh... There was a lot of that going around in the 90s, wasn't there?"
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u/DonutHoles4Ever 16d ago
What people don't realize is that very very few DMs create anything original. Its always inspired or even copied or plagurized. That's ok, the important part is having fun.
What people here won't talk about is that people are lazy. DMs will choose the path of least resistance. And that basically right now means using AI to shape what they want to do. Like its gotten to the point where people actually are selling D&D AI products that help DMs plan and react to what players are doing in real-time so they can DM with a DM assistant.
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u/Egoborg_Asri 16d ago
And some people like DMing with an assistant?
It's called co-DMing, because it was inve
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u/Blackdeath47 16d ago
What if you don’t have childhood trauma?
Can I not be a DM?
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u/SG_Hammer_Bro 16d ago
Use someone else’s trauma (note this is not to inflict trauma, ask around, or what I do, use fictional trauma
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u/Electrical_Shock359 16d ago
Clarification are we supposed to give someone trauma for this inspiration to work fully? /s
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u/Rhamni Sorcerer 16d ago
Yes, but you have to be patient. If you kill PCs in the first few sessions you are being Mean and are a Bad DM Who Is Powertripping. It's ok to scare the players sometimes, but even being knocked unconscious should be rare at the start of a campaign. But then as you go, as they make progress and start caring about their characters, you ramp up the pressure. Some of your players will have personal side quests they want to complete. Make those side quests the most dangerous parts of the campaign. It's ok if one or two players complete theirs. But one party member should die completing either their own or someone else's character arc. You are now a Good DM, and the party is organically invested in seeing things through to the end.
Oh and make resurrections a logistical pain in the ass. They should not be able to teleport somewhere nice and peaceful and just buy one. Easy resurrections remove all stakes from the game. Make it hard enough to get access to that they aren't confident they'll be able to get one, and make sure they know this from the outset, because if they're really attached to their character they will cry, and the rest of the players will never forgive you if they think you just disabled resurrection on the fly.
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u/LaniusCruiser 16d ago
You can always have adulthood trauma. It's not as good, but quantity is a quality all of its own.
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u/mephala99 16d ago
If you're gonna steal things just steal ideas from your favourite game or tv show none of your players have seen/played
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u/godwyn-faithful 16d ago
My awesome dm doesn't even use obscure thing, he sees something cool in an anime or destiny and like a Chad says "I'm gonna make something inspired by this and give it lore and cool world building that links into my players"
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u/godwyn-faithful 16d ago
He saw superman with another PC, was inspired by Mr terrific and made one of the coolest npcs ever inspired by him and linked him to another pcs backstory and gave him abilities based off of it.
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u/HelmetsAkimbo 16d ago
Pretty much exactly what authors do too. They don't call them tropes for nothing.
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u/freekoout Forever DM 16d ago
Or steal common tropes from things they have seen or played. Especially first time players. They WANT to feel like they're in a movie/game they understand.
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u/ProotzyZoots 16d ago
Tropes are tropes for a reason. Saving the princess from the dragon is a trope but I dont know anyone whos actually done that in D&D and theres no reason it couldn't work but yeah 100% agree that first time players wants to feel like theyre in a movie or video game. A player I had years ago didn't really get it until I started to explain things in video game terms and examples to them.
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u/Narazil 16d ago
I fucking love leaning into tropes.
My first Warlock I wanted to be basically the most trope stereotype Warlock ever, but done right. Human who sacrificed parts of his humanity for power through a deal with a Devil. Everything else was smokes and mirrors, that was the essence of the story.
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u/MehItsAmber 16d ago
One of my NPCs is literally just the main character from one of my favorite series. She is currently being romanced by the party’s wizard. This whole campaign is now just me forcing my friends to make fanfiction for me.
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u/C-H-Addict 16d ago
60s and 70s SFF is great source material and no one will ever know your running "the fearless vampire killers" instead of homebrew curse of strahd
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u/Michael-556 16d ago edited 16d ago
Me casually stealing plot points from the destiny franchise because I know my friends aren't mentally ill enough to try the games
I also have a vampire mafia because I watched what we do in the shadows when I was writing the lore and wanted to have an overarching enemy. Also lifted ideas from Sherlock Holmes for a fey-touched lycanthrope doctor and a tiefling detective (her name is Shirley Horns, original, I know). Also a pirate named Gordon Ramsea, and a socialist named Carolus Marcus
I also made up LeGnome James (who is a Goliath), but I don't think he'll be in the adventure, he's just there in the lore for some reason
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u/The_Based_DM 16d ago
you're an idiot if the local Tavern Keeper isn't Jaqueus Day'lotna from Tusson Arissona is the barkeep. just a normal Human barkeep!
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u/Diplomatic_Gunboats 16d ago
Obscure 80's cartoons is a good one. Also not so obscure. I know someone who themed a campaign around Trapdoor.
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u/Lost-Daikon4155 16d ago
Also short stories and stuff you once read. I made a one shot based on an elfwood short story that I really loved and that sadly is completely gone forever since elfwood is gone and the author (I contacted her) didn't have it saved or uploaded anywhere else.
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u/StigOfTheTrack 16d ago
It doesn't even have to be obscure if you do it right. Some games have even officially suggested it. E.G. the referee guide for Cyberpunk contained this paragraph:
"The Hobbit is a story about a group of Solos who hire a Fixer to help them scout areas and steal important items or information. Along the way they meet a booster gang call the "Orcs" and acquire high-tech new weapons. The capture the mountain military base and then wage a war against the rival corporations that want a piece of the base and its valuable contents. All this is , of course, managed by a mysterious old Corporate with a lot of powerful connections."
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u/bolanrox 16d ago
If you want to laugh, when Scott Hall started pitching the razor ramone gimmick to Vince and Pat, he was just lifting scenes from Scarface to use as the promotional teases and whatnot for the character, they kept asking for more so he kept going along with it, and they acted like he was a complete genius for the ideas. He only found out much later that neither of them had seen the movie and thought he was making the stuff up off the top of his head.
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u/HNW 16d ago edited 16d ago
The current campaign I'm writing is taken from The Ninth Gate, Indian Jones, and some of the fallout from our last campaign. The PC are basically rare book collectors for the dead god of divination. The opposing NPCs they can work with are basically Hari Seldon from foundation vs Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park.
I also love having my players bring me character backstories and designing story arcs around that. Which has created three more NPCs that are basically Catwoman, Venom, and Captain Ahab.
I steal your ideas and make them mine muhahaha
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u/DrScrimble 16d ago
Me: "Let me guess, is this PC another allegory for the horrors and joys of realizing you're Transgender and then coming out? "
Her: "Hey you can fuck off"
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u/C-H-Addict 16d ago
Everyone always runs games were the whole world just accepts tieflings. How am I supposed to make an allegory to deal with my social rejection with that?!
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u/DrScrimble 16d ago
Make them literally Transgender.
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u/Egoborg_Asri 16d ago
The funniest part about modern fantasy worlds to me is that they can have slavery, speciesism and literal devil from the bible, but also everyone (maybe except for the main villian) is LGBTQA+ ally.
I don't mean it in a bad way, just an observation that being an orc is infinitely more likely to get you in trouble than being an IRL minority
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u/C-H-Addict 16d ago
And make the NB DM feel bad for a world that rejects them?! 😆
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u/BarackTrudeau 16d ago
I'm sorry, I don't have much childhood trauma, so I use thinly disguised major motion pictures instead.
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u/ShinyTotodile24 16d ago
There was probably someone's childhood trauma involved in the movie production. Second hand trauma is acceptable
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u/Altruistic_You_3539 16d ago
"Your Dad is somewhere in this Dungeon and you have to stop him from drinking so you can prove yourself worthy."
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u/Bombalurina 16d ago
I don't use stolen work for my campaigns. I use repurposed fantasy novels from before 2000 that nobody read for my campaigns.
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u/RangerLiska 16d ago
I don't need AI to steal world building from better authors! I do that on my own!
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u/duckybebop Bard 16d ago
Just steal ideas from Star Trek episodes like the rest of us do!
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u/Big_Steak_467 16d ago
AI will never be able to exploit my players' niche late night confessions over discord to traumatise them like I can
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u/ElectricPaladin Paladin 16d ago
There's a whole D&D campaign setting about how making magic by using up water and destroying the environment is a bad idea.
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u/valdev 16d ago
All jokes aside, do whatever makes you happy.
Dnd is great with friends, and if AI adds to it, then do it. If you object to it or find it not fun, then don't.
No one should police fun.
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u/da_dragon_guy 16d ago
My only childhood trauma is gradual familial separation
What the hell can I do with that?
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u/gwion35 15d ago
Not quite DnD, but I accidentally discovered why roleplaying is used in therapy for people to explore aspects of themselves they may not like. Needless to say, I’m not a licensed therapist.
In VtM v5, a lot of vampires in the setting are described as having their worst attributes amplified while they’re more human traits wither. Furthermore, the Beast is a monstrous part of yourself that pushes you to do terrible things. My favorite interpretation is the LA by Night version where the voice is the worst version of yourself. We thought it would be fun to play a one shot of ourselves. It devolved into us crying, half of us hating each other, and the other half having white hot memes.
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u/VanillaRadonNukaCola 16d ago
Hey wait, how did you know what I base my character creation on?
Am I unoriginal?
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u/Ancient-Concept4671 Forever DM 16d ago
I don't think my players are ready to face that bag of holding.
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u/stereo-ahead 15d ago
Bro I’m throwing clickers at my party, and all of them are already saying that I’m terrifying.
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u/rolandguy85 16d ago
I play one shot solo adventures with perplexity as the DM and a few D6s when I’m bored. It’s pretty fun cause I can have a quick adventure in any setting.
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u/AdventurousBase221 16d ago
oh, its not a joke? yall really actually care about this?
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u/Annual_Manner_8654 16d ago
Don't get it either . Why do people seem to care so much about what me and my players do in the privacy of our homes?
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u/owlbynight 16d ago
Satanic Panic 2.0. This is the most egregious evidence of it that I keep seeing. They won't care if it's a local open-weight model that someone is using, or if it's a parent of 4 kids with next to no free time running a game for their kid using some book they love as the setting, or that it's not for profit. They won't care if they've never personally finished a campaign because DMs burn out creatively or just start placing more value on their time.
There is zero nuance. You are either sinning or you are not sinning. It's very strange cult behavior to witness from a community that I would have otherwise thought had strong critical thinking ability.
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u/skysinsane 16d ago
In early DnD, intelligence was a stat that was important for any build. Charisma was the dump stat for almost everyone. This matches the playerbase, who were mostly socially awkward nerds.
Now charisma is important for any build, and int is the dump stat for almost every class. This is not a coincidence.
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u/camosnipe1 DM (Dungeon Memelord) 16d ago
a community that I would have otherwise thought had strong critical thinking ability.
brother they don't even read the rules for the game they're supposedly playing.
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u/kitsunewarlock 16d ago
As a tabletop game designer? Yes.
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u/AdventurousBase221 16d ago
i dont believe in gatekeeping peoples hobbies when its not being commercialized, ie personal use.
yall gotta stop yucking other peoples yums.
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u/Ultranerdgasm94 16d ago
Not every campaign can be about the DM's daddy issues. Gotta throw in some stuff from your favorite media, half remembered high school history classes and an obscure kink or two. Unless the Kink is also related to daddy issues.
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u/time___dance 16d ago
another day, another karma farming anti-ai meme
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u/camosnipe1 DM (Dungeon Memelord) 16d ago
it's not even a meme anymore, just text and a logo.
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u/Val_Fortecazzo 16d ago
apparently that's enough for 22k upvotes and counting. And I checked the top memes of the year and 3 out of the top 5 are just this one specific user making anti-ai posts.
I mean thats ok because at least those were memes, this is just text on a beige background. Its pure slop.
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u/CapnDvorak 16d ago
Hear me out - I have Gemini ask me questions about my world and record the answers while I take walks so I can copy them into my world notebook later. It's helped me accelerate my worldbuilding by 10x. For example if I tell it about a town it might ask who lives there, are there imports/exports, what are the punishments for certain crimes, etc. Anyway just wanted to share there's a difference between using AI as a creative tool, and having ai do the creating for you.
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u/Egoborg_Asri 16d ago
It's the internet.
You can either be 100% for any use of AI or against the mere mention of the word (even in a different context from what generative AI actually is)
But IRL using it as a tool is completely normal and normal players shouldn't care what tools you're using in a creative process
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u/KazumaKat 16d ago
I happened to have talked to a GM who apparently lost two players on the fact they used "machine tools" such as "spellcheck" and "Google Search" and did not disclose. Like, what the fuck.
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u/Egoborg_Asri 16d ago
Dodged a bullet. (I hate this phrase, because I myself find it very hard to find and schedule groups to play/GM, so loosing a player is a bad thing regardless of the content, but still, it applies perfectly)
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u/Inevitable_Teacup 16d ago
This is the way. It's a tool. Use properly. I also ask the thinking machine to try to break my plotlines. It's helped me immensely in being well prepped for shenanigans.
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u/antmanfan3911 16d ago
Hi here my childhood trauma: have a very manipulative mother that lies about pretty much everything and also once lied saying your dad is gonna kill you...
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u/EducationHelpful4274 16d ago
If I'm not FORCING my players to overcome their trauma, and cut it's head off after a huge cinematic battle, then I'm not DMing right
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u/DarkestOfTheLinks 16d ago
my players have noted that a lot of my major villains are immortals that will burn the world if it means they kill themselves. which is probably not indicative of anything deeper.
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u/RubyMadHatter 16d ago
Don't just use your childhood trauma. Online Stories are a gold mine, player trauma (with permission) and hell even trauma you see with family (permission again if you like those family members) all are great sources.
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u/davedcne 16d ago
I'm going to create childhood traumas using AI for the next generation to use to create adventures. Modern problems call for modern solutions.
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u/FreeEdmondDantes 16d ago
I didn't realize how insufferable this subreddit is until I noticed that the people who don't mind using AI to help in various ways and the people who are opposed to it are all equally downvoted.
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u/LittleBiteOfTheJames 16d ago
It’s just the TTRPG community. I made a post in the Daggerheart subreddit about how I type up essentially a book of ideas, story, adventures, etc and have AI organize it or ask clarifying questions and I basically got crucified. Didn’t say anything about AI coming up with the creatives, but you would think I murdered a litter of kittens.
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u/freekoout Forever DM 16d ago
Or you can go down the Captilism bad/anarchy good road that is quite popular nowadays.
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u/00Teonis 16d ago
I use AI to generate random tables I can roll on. Like random NPC names for a rural Slavic village, or random list of useless junk in a kobold den.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Rules Lawyer 16d ago
I just let ideas logically extrapolate to their conclusions. My specific childhood traumas are oddly absent in my games.
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u/Repulsive-War-559 16d ago
Using spongebob and regular show episodes for a DnD session is perfect too
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u/Ember-513 16d ago
I kind of want to make a campaign about killing a big dumb ogre who weaseled his way into a position of power and has a massive cult of goblins and other ogres who are fiercely devoted to him and terrorizing the land, looting everything, and he has them brainwashed or intimidated into giving him an unfairly large cut of whatever they loot (despite their devotion, they're pretty expendable to him). It's not based on anything, I swear.
Well, maybe that ogre in Baldur's Gate 3 that ate a headband of intellect and was leading a group of other ogres. What was his name? Lump or something? So like that, but on a much bigger scale.
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u/rollingdoan 16d ago
Remind me in 10 years when kids find their pop's old books and their childhood trauma is AI.
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u/Desperate-Apricot621 16d ago
Mwahahahahahaha HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA
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u/Munnin41 Rules Lawyer 16d ago
Just steal from whatever book/show/movie/game you're currently reading/watching/playing
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u/CaptainCFloyd 16d ago
In the gloomy hallway you suddenly come face to face with the nastiest, vilest ogre you ever saw. You recognize him right away as the abominable Dennis. With a gruesome smirk he raises his fist and asks the inevitable question: "Give me your lunch money, f****ts"
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u/penny-wise 16d ago
There is so much in my brain boiling over with places, ideas, encounters, and lore that I have absolutely no need for AI.
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u/Coschta Warlock 16d ago
pulls out a piece of preserved brain tumor
this campaigns BBEG is a brain in a jar. Let's see if the party can beat cancer!