AI and ChatGPT. Is this a Game Changer?

For those following the news around AI content generation, you are probably aware that software like ChatGTP has already been leveraged as a tool in TTRPG’s. There are a number of youtube videos that are worth exploring, and I encourage content creators to check out a few.

While there are some arguments that using AI tools is “cheating” and lacks human input and creativity, the truth is that most adventure hooks fall into about 10-12 literary devices. Of more interest to me is a common problem we discuss quite a bit here on the Rolemasterblog: ICE and SW needs content and there are few authors that can start and finish works that are ready for publication. These AI tools are in their infancy in many ways, and it’s possible to only create text content, but stat blocks, creatures and virtually any type of material to populate an gaming supplement. Using an AI tool like ChatGPT, the author is more akin to a composer or conductor than a 1-man band–they design a wire frame of input, has the AI generate bulk content and then it can be edited or directed as needed.

Could this speed up the process for getting ICE products to market? Is this a helpful tool for authors that may have the skills but perhaps not the time or experience?

I spent 1 minute using the AI as follows:

ME: write an adventure idea in the kulthea shadow world setting

ChatGPT: In the Kulthea Shadow World setting, the players are a group of adventurers who are hired by a mysterious figure known only as “The Watcher.” The Watcher claims to have information about a powerful artifact that has been lost for centuries, hidden somewhere in the treacherous swamps of the Shadow World. The artifact is said to possess the power to control the very fabric of reality itself, and is highly sought after by many powerful factions and individuals.

The players must navigate the treacherous swamps, fighting off dangerous creatures and avoiding deadly traps set by rival groups who are also searching for the artifact. They’ll also need to be on the lookout for signs of the ancient civilization that once inhabited the area, as the artifact is believed to be hidden within the ruins of one of their temples.

As the players get closer to their goal, they’ll discover that The Watcher is not what they appear to be, and that the true nature of the artifact is much more sinister than they could have ever imagined. The players must choose whether to continue their quest, risking everything to gain control of the artifact, or to destroy it before it falls into the wrong hands.

The adventure is filled with action, intrigue, and moral dilemmas, as the players navigate the dangers of the Shadow World and confront the true purpose of the artifact they seek.

While generic in some respects, I wonder that can be attributed to the lack of SW content online in general. I would imagine that a similar query using the Forgotten Realms could get quite specific!

Is that output anything novel or something I couldn’t have come up with? No, but it was a very general request. A quick scan actually provides a solid wire frame for a good adventure, one that fits into Shadow World. References to powerful artifacts, powerful factions and individuals, and the power to control the fabric of reality itself hits many of Terry’s SW meta themes.

I’m going to play around with this some more, but try to input specific SW content to see what happens!! Has anyone been using or experimenting with AI content?

Shadow World Evil Realms: Wrangôr

Despite it’s reputation as a “kitchen sink” setting, mostly due to the inconsistent tone set by third party authors, I’ve always thought Shadow World had a unique feel driven by Terry’s artistic sensibility. I’ve written about the Many Flavors of Shadow World before and I’ve always appreciated the blends of genres: fantasy, sci-fi, anime and even goth and horror. Despite my own lack of interest in standard fantasy tropes, I acknowledge that there is still huge interest in the “Dark Lord/Dark Master” trope in roleplaying and pop culture.

Luckily, Terry has included this trope in many parts of Shadow World! Putting aside Lorgalis and other “Dark Lord” NPC’s in his fleshed out works of Emer and Jaiman, the Master Atlas outlines some other parts of Kulthea that might be readily adaptable for a traditional “Against the Darkmaster” style campaign.

Where might one look? Wrangôr

Per the Master Atlas:

Wrangôr: This is a realm of Lugrôki (Orcs), and Lugrôk-hybrids,
the result of centuries of captured slaves being
interbred with the Lugrôk population. This has
created a race smaller than the true “High
Lugrôki” but able to function during the day as
well as at night. They are no less ugly, however.
This program has been under the Dark Master,
a shadowy dictator who, with his War Troll
guard, resides in a citadel outside the port city
of Vashtak. The “Dark Master” of this realm is a Dyar Elf, a
powerful Mystic who rules through terror and
brute force—concepts which the Lugrôki understand all too well.

This is the only substantive reference to Wrangôr in any of the books, typical of the short summaries found in the Master Atlas. Wrangor is located on the eastern part of Thuul, the continent west of Emer that is begging to be fleshed out! It’s proximity to Emer’s southern reaches makes it accessible to adventures based out of EMER book III.

In short, if you enjoy the straightfoward nature of an evil Kingdom and a mysterious Dark Master, Shadow World has that too!

Has anyone run adventures in Thuul?

The City of Spiders Now a Copper Seller!

Copper Sales Medal

The City of Spiders, one of the first supplements published in the 50 in 50 series (there are still some more left to publish; I’m working on finishing off one that Brian sent me but damaging my back, my arm, my shoulder, my finger and Christmas have all got in the way!) has just reached the Copper best seller rank on RPGNow.

This is the first supplement to achieve a best-selling metal rank, although when RPGNow sales are merged with DriveThruRPGs in a month or so, many more are going to achieve this.

So, thank you anyone who bought this supplement. If you haven’t, well here’s The City of Spiders on RPGNow. Showing off its shiny new medal!

Gauntlet on the Ice – Now With a Hex Map

The 50 in 50 (yes, they aren’t quite all done yet) adventure hook Gauntlet on the Ice has just been updated with a new hex grid version of the battlemap in a second PDF.

It’s taken some time to get to this point, but if you have the adventure hook already, and are subscribed, you will have got a message about the update.

Figuring out how to get the hex grid to actually work has been a bit of a problem, but I found something that looks like it does the trick. It is, of all things, a font.

So, feedback on this is appreciated. If it looks good to everyone the rest of the adventures with battlemaps will be updated too.


Tie a yellow ribbon around the Angry Druid!

This post was meant to be published yesterday but I was up before dawn on my way to my first ever elite fencing competition. The difference between sport and combat is that I would have died about 17 seconds in if this was a combat but as it was I vanquished two foes but was defeated five times myself. Not the best hit rate by anyone’s reckoning. If there is every a quest to save the world, I am probably not the hero you are looking for.

The weird title to this post is a bastardisation of the latest two 50 in 50 adventures. I wrote ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon‘ and Brian produced ‘The Angry Druid‘.

I always try and have fun with my adventure titles and in this case Tie A Yellow Ribbon is obviously a reference to a dreadful 1970s song but is a deadly serious adventure which could cost either the players or hundreds of innocents their lives.

On the other hand The Angry Druid sounds like a dangerous foe, which he is, but is actually a bit of a tongue in cheek adventure.

We have passed a bit of a milestone and you can now by a bundle of the first 10 adventures, at a discount if you have bought any of the individual issues. The 1-10 bundle is obviously going to be the first of at least 5 bundles.

Going forward there is going to be a post each Saturday with a round up of what we have published this week. I think I will recap any new uploads in the same post.

I feel that this is going to grow in importance in 2018. Looking at the Directors Briefing for January, if you are not using Shadow World then excepting RMU there are no planned releases for RMC/RMSS or Spacemaster for 2018 at all.

While we await the Singularity we will try and keep RM alive and kicking!

Relative Adventuring

This is not my idea but one I have borrowed from the Conan game by Modiphius.

Imagine you are reading an adventure module for Rolemaster. The adventure describes an ambush by goblins at a river ford. In the details it says ‘There will be two goblins for every character’. In the next encounter, in an outer chamber of the goblin lair the numbers are ‘There will be three more goblins than characters.’

Every encounter describes the strength of the encounter relative to the strength of the adventuring party.

We all know in RM superior numbers can be the critical factor in a battle. Even a first level character can open ended and kill anything in the first round if they are lucky enough.

My party of 5th level characters got into serious trouble against a raiding party of kobolds. The same raid against D&D characters would have been a non-event.

So the idea is that the level that the adventure is pitched at is highly flexible. If you write an adventure and the main bad guy is a 70th level drake then that is not a starting adventure but more middle of the road stuff just flexes to meet the strength of the party, not by level but by threat.

This has never really been an issue before now, but as the number of monsters available grows and now eDGCLTD is sowing the seeds of self publishing, BriH is asking about short form monster stat blocks all the pieces are coming together for unofficial RM modules.

So what are your thoughts?

…and another Happy Halloween!

Brian got in there first with his Happy Halloween From BriH post. He signs off by saying that “I know  all of us at Rolemasterblog have a lot of work in store for the coming year.” This was timely as on Saturday we released our first mini supplement. I say mini as it is a single page adventure hook. This one was written by BriH and edited by Edgcltd, published by Azukail Games and sold on RPGnow. Now it only costs 50¢ but that is not the point.

Spires Reach is the first of 50. All 50 are already written and cued up. If we were allowed to give you NPCs in all their detail, Monster stats for the encounters and so on then these would not be just a couple of pages of adventure hooks, or locations or outlines of adventures. These would be much more substantial adventures.

You may ask who is going to pay even 50¢ for an adventure hook like Spires Reach? I don’t know the answer to that but they are selling as I can see the royalty reports.

I spent yesterday evening writing the next edition of the fanzine which looks like it is going to be the biggest issue yet. I am full steam ahead on converting monsters. These free to use monsters will mean that anyone can start to create adventure modules for any version of RM.

I am convinced that if there were a 3rd party industry for producing adventures and supplements for Rolemaster then the system would be more attractive to the gaming community. Right now RM is just a game people used to play in 80s. If anything Rolemaster is a bit like Latin, yes, sure a small number of people can still speak it but to most they think of it as a dead language. Rolemaster is not dead but it is going take a small band of plucky adventurers to take on the quest to save Rolemaster, especially if RMU is not going to be on the shelves until the 2020s!

If the RPG year starts now then the next year is going to be really exciting.

Where to Start in Shadow World. How about Gryphon College in Jaiman?

Shadow World is well stocked with interesting groups and organizations: Navigators, Loremasters, the Iron Wind, Cult of Stars, the list goes on and on. But what organization might be accessible to, and make for a good starting foundation for starting players?

Tucked into the module Jaiman, the Land of Twilight is a good candidate: Gryphon College. Gryphon College is a small monastic school that hides a secret: the institution is a façade for an intel gathering and strike team force working against the Unlife. The college hosts around 100 students, but a smaller elite group of 14 make up the Gryphons. It’s assumed that the college draws from the student body to staff this force.

This is a great premise for a starting group. The college becomes the reason for the players to meet and group up (and learn starting skills), and the hidden machinations of the school give the PCs opportunities to go on missions. Perhaps this starts as seemingly innocent errands, but eventually gives the players an opportunity to join the ranks of the Gryphons!

So, what are the Gryphons? They are goddamn Batmans! Each Gryphon is equipped with mechanical wings—jagged bat like apparatus that allow them to fly and they have small wrist mounted dart guns. Give them functional black leather armor and utility belts and you have a squad of Dark Knights. I can imagine a number of other gadgets, magical devices and alchemical tricks that could add to the overall cool factor.

So let’s review, starting the players at Gryphon College:

  1. Bases them in Jaiman which is supported by numerous supplements and key events in the Kulthean timeline.
  2. At a college, allowing players access to learn and train in skills both magical and mundane.
  3. The college fights the Unlife, so allows a great premise to send the group on missions.
  4. The college it tied up into major events in Jaiman, which provides a great gateway into larger campaigns.
  5. The college has the Gryphons, which would be a cool organization for the players to be members.
  6. Gryphons = Batmen

If you are curious about playing in Shadow World, and want to know where to start, pick up a copy of Jaiman. Used copies are always on eBay and Amazon.

50th level adventures in Rolemaster. Does it work?

50th lvl…the mythical pinnacle of roleplaying achievement. I vaguely recall 1sted. D&D and I don’t recall 50th lvl (maybe it was 20th in that game system?). I do remember looking through Rolemaster for the very first time and thought the 50th lvl spells were so crazy—and cool! It opened up a world of possibilities. After that, MERP modules continued to introduce VHL (very high level) NPCs that continued pushing this perception of Rolemaster: deadly, complex and high level. After that…Shadow World. Again, the inference was that this was a high fantasy world, only populated by incredibly powerful NPCs and organizations.

So, Peter and I are working on a 50th level adventure series. Mine are based in Shadow World, but I’m going to convert these adventures to a generic format. So guess what? Creating adventures can be hard, but creating an adventure for a group of 50th lvl +- adventurers is even tougher!

Some people would argue that RM system rules break down around 15th lvl. Others would argue that the gradual power progression of RM spells, while potent, is not the same progression as the power progression of spells in AD&D—spells like “Wish” make high level Magic Users or Cleric almost god-like. Many 50th lvl spells in Spell Law are just “Laws”: the ability to cast lower level spells 1/rnd. That’s an efficient resource spell, but perhaps doesn’t lend itself to a transcendent narrative.

My first question when starting this adventure design was: “Under what circumstances would a 50th lvl PC even get involved? Not all world threats should, or can be, handled by a “well balanced group” of 5-15th lvl characters. An adventure should be: challenging, interesting and rewarding. Once a PC reaches the heights of 50th lvl, what is challenging? What adventure could possibly be new, novel or interesting? What could be rewarding for a player group equaling 200-250 levels?

We are going to try and find out with our Rolemasterblog 5of50 later this year. Have you run or played in a VHL adventure or campaign? What worked? What didn’t?

An Opportunity Creating Rolemaster Adventures

I don’t know if you have all seen this thread but if you have wanted an opportunity to create something ‘Official’ for Rolemaster then now is a real chance.

Colin has given a single paragraph hook for their three samples on the ICE Blog http://ironcrown.com/blog/2016/02/19/roleplaying-adventure-hooks/

Now, I know we have been teasing people with the hidden project called 50 in 50 but I can let on that you will be getting more than a single paragraph from each of our adventure hooks. I have been flicking through them and each runs to a typical 1000 words with environmental considerations, battle tactics and nicely developed pen portraits of key NPCs so you could play them off the page if you are competent seat of the pants GM.

I really struggle with the whole idea of ready to run adventures for Rolemaster. What I know about RMSS/RMFRP could be written on the back of a gnats testicle and still leave room for house rules. Even my beloved RMC is different from its grandpa RM2. Just take for instance a basic skill roll. Imagine you have a fairly good skill of +57 as a 2nd level character (two ranks for the 3 levels, two lots of level bonus and a +13 stat bonus for example) and you make a middling roll of exactly 50. The skill was an absolute pass or fail test.

Total roll of +106. Did you pass or fail?

RM2 = Pass.

RMC = Fail.

To the best of my knowledge RM2 and RMC are the two most closely related RM versions there are so if RMC NPCs and characters need skills to be a typical 10 points higher than the same character in RM2 how do you balance a prepared adventure?

How about HARP? Does anyone know all the systems well enough to cross stat?

What about setting? I think the setting should be interweaved into each and every adventure. Whether it is maybe different cultures of NPCs sat around in the inns and taverns, languages heard in the market places. When I write adventures I like to explicitly write in these cultural references so I do not forget to mention them to the players. I am picturing one thing in my mind’s eye but they may not be seeing the same thing.  If the fields are filled with Aurochs grazing open common land they would look different than Bos Indicus.

Are there Shadow World races and cultures or do you not mention them?

It sounds like a real nightmare to me. In my recent post An Explosive Situation the actual setting I had in mind was an Arabian desert town with a dusty market place and white plastered buildings, the taverna with hookah pipes on the tables and curtains in the the doorways. None of that is in the text but if I had written it for myself then that would have all be there to project that across to my players.

This all sounds more negative than I had intended but going back to the beginning. Colin has make an opportunity or three available for anyone who want to have a crack at it.