CS3 Mysterious Island Contest

Creating game materials? Monsters, spells, classes, adventures? This is the place!
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Rutibex
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by Rutibex »

Hi everyone I just wanted to share what I have been working on! I hope AI writing help doesn't disqualify me, but I don't think anyone is trying to sue ChatGPT for copyright infringement (and microsoft is putting it into Office, so I think its here to stay). Anyway I have been building my adventure with the help of some ChatGPT prompts that I created. These prompts will produce content formatted into the proper way for a Basic Fantasy module. You simply generate the key outline first then feed the room descriptions into the room constructor to get the full description. I like to generate at least three versions of everything and edit the best parts together. Using this method you can generate a whole adventure in an afternoon, and the bulk of your effort will be creating good ideas and editing!

I've also included a draft of my contest entry, the Isle of Beauty. Its an island filled with all sorts of beautiful creatures run amok, created by a long dead sorcerer for some unknown purpose. I still need to do a bunch of editing and add a few things, but the bulk of the content is there for you to see what my GPT prompts are capable of generating.

The Isle of Beauty Draft 0.01
https://www.mediafire.com/file/rjwp5wr2 ... y.odt/file

Basic Fantasy formatted ChatGPT Prompts
https://www.mediafire.com/file/8186m88u ... s.zip/file
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chiisu81
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by chiisu81 »

I'll let Solo make the ruling, but IMO I'm not keen on something that's not completely written by an author themselves. Finding ideas, writing prompts, etc. is one thing, but getting assistance doing the writing itself, I don't like. Again, just my opinion.
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Rutibex
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by Rutibex »

chiisu81 wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 8:23 am I'll let Solo make the ruling, but IMO I'm not keen on something that's not completely written by an author themselves. Finding ideas, writing prompts, etc. is one thing, but getting assistance doing the writing itself, I don't like. Again, just my opinion.
I can understand the feeling, but I feel like this tool is so good at writing fanatsy content the people who are doing it "solo" just won't be disclosing what their actual process is. There is no way to tell if you don't admit it.

And I think there is gonna be an explosion of D&D type content coming out and I personally want it to be all under creative commons!
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Solomoriah
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by Solomoriah »

Ack. I am an idiot, because I should have seen this coming but did not.

There was no rule against AI writing adventure materials up to this point, and I'm not one to change the rules on a competitor in mid stream. So AI writing is allowed for this contest.

From now on, however, no AI written adventures will be accepted ever again. It is just as unfair to writers as to artists, and I've already said we won't accept AI art.
My personal site: www.gonnerman.org
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coureur_d_bois
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by coureur_d_bois »

No offense, but that's a bit lame. If I wanted an AI generated adventure I'd just use Chat GPT myself. I am not interested in a module written by a machine.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by Solomoriah »

Also, it's not that good. By the very nature of the AI, it speaks in tropes.

Stereotypes are good for filling in the background and fleshing out the world. If you write an adventure where everything is weird and new, it all becomes monotonous and weird. Instead, a good writer creates an adventure where most of it is familiar, if not necessarily predictable; then when you throw in the weird or unexpected bit, the surprise makes it interesting.

I don't believe an AI can do that, at least, not yet, because unlike a human, a stable diffusion AI creates without intent. You need intent to create something really interesting.

But more importantly, even if AI can write good adventures (indeed, even if it can write superior adventures, which I don't believe), we are humans. We should stick together.
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Rutibex
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by Rutibex »

Solomoriah wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:27 am Also, it's not that good. By the very nature of the AI, it speaks in tropes.

Stereotypes are good for filling in the background and fleshing out the world. If you write an adventure where everything is weird and new, it all becomes monotonous and weird. Instead, a good writer creates an adventure where most of it is familiar, if not necessarily predictable; then when you throw in the weird or unexpected bit, the surprise makes it interesting.

I don't believe an AI can do that, at least, not yet, because unlike a human, a stable diffusion AI creates without intent. You need intent to create something really interesting.

But more importantly, even if AI can write good adventures (indeed, even if it can write superior adventures, which I don't believe), we are humans. We should stick together.
That is a fair attitude, but honestly I was kind of excited to see what kind of adventures people could come up with using my process. It would be a new tier of adventure, and a lot more accessible to everyone not just people who have a lot of writing experience. I personally like writing adventure content so that I have something cool to play at the table, the actual process is just a necessity. But I understand thats not the case for everyone!

Its not as simple as writing into chatGPT "Give me an adventure module" and it spits it out ready go, you have to come up with the overarching concept yourself and iterate with the AI to improve it. You are absolutely right it creates cliches, but only if you don't ask it to make anything better! Its a whole new creative process to make a full coherent adventure using this tool, not nearly as simple as text-to-image generators. But it is much much faster, and in the interests of fairness I will withdraw my entry from the contest. Its not fair to make other people compete with GPT if thats not their jam. I can just retool it as my own solo module and release it elseware. I honestly think that turning our backs on AI is a big mistake. WotC is embracing it, if we don't get ahead of the game they will generate a billion trillion adventures and copyright them all to themselves :lol:
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Solomoriah
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by Solomoriah »

Honestly? AI is a way to avoid learning how to do the thing, whatever the thing happens to be.

You talk about people who don't have a lot of experience writing adventures; but we provide a place here where people can learn that skill by doing it, and by watching others do it. You can get more out of this community than you put in. AI does the brute work for you, but if you use AI for that you never master the art yourself.

I want AI to do the boring things that I don't want to do. Sorting bad fruit from good fruit, for example. I don't want it doing the creative things, because being creative is what makes life worth living to me.
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Rutibex
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by Rutibex »

Solomoriah wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 10:04 am Honestly? AI is a way to avoid learning how to do the thing, whatever the thing happens to be.

You talk about people who don't have a lot of experience writing adventures; but we provide a place here where people can learn that skill by doing it, and by watching others do it. You can get more out of this community than you put in. AI does the brute work for you, but if you use AI for that you never master the art yourself.

I want AI to do the boring things that I don't want to do. Sorting bad fruit from good fruit, for example. I don't want it doing the creative things, because being creative is what makes life worth living to me.
I don't see it as being uncreative, I see it as taking care of the boring part. Like a movie director. Is Steven Spielberg uncreative because he hires people to act in his movies, people to do the CGI, to compose music for him so that his creative vision can come to pass? No, he is just taking on a higher tier of the creative process.

Thats the way I see using AIs for creative projects, they are like collaborators or employees. Not the author.
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Bumblepig
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Re: Mysterious Island Contest

Post by Bumblepig »

Rutibex wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 10:13 am
Solomoriah wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 10:04 am Honestly? AI is a way to avoid learning how to do the thing, whatever the thing happens to be.

You talk about people who don't have a lot of experience writing adventures; but we provide a place here where people can learn that skill by doing it, and by watching others do it. You can get more out of this community than you put in. AI does the brute work for you, but if you use AI for that you never master the art yourself.

I want AI to do the boring things that I don't want to do. Sorting bad fruit from good fruit, for example. I don't want it doing the creative things, because being creative is what makes life worth living to me.
I don't see it as being uncreative, I see it as taking care of the boring part. Like a movie director. Is Steven Spielberg uncreative because he hires people to act in his movies, people to do the CGI, to compose music for him so that his creative vision can come to pass? No, he is just taking on a higher tier of the creative process.

Thats the way I see using AIs for creative projects, they are like collaborators or employees. Not the author.
The analogy to Spielberg and movie making isn't really valid. Directors enlist other individuals to help them because they aren't capable of filling all those roles. Spielberg is a great director, but I expect him on the viewer side of the camera, not starring as the police chief in Jaws.
In adventure writing, you really are capable of doing the writing yourself. Even if you feel you're not a strong writer, we have some good editors. But I think your comments on this thread show you're easily a good enough writer to do your own stuff.
More importantly, the process of writing...going from an initial idea to a cohesive narrative...is where some of the best ideas come IMO. Also, it is fun. I think using an AI tool is depriving yourself of that fun.
But it is true that using a tool would make the process quicker.
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