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Random Musings. Shadow World & Rolemaster

I’m already falling off on my blog schedule, but time of year, work, RL and Shadow World projects take priority! I have a number of pending blog topics, but I use these Random Musings as a way to organize my thoughts through writing. Hopefully they add value for reader(s), but it also creates a record of my creative development. I was reading back through my posts from 10 years ago, and I was surprised by how my perspectives have changed or my approaches to the game have progressed.

  1. Rolemasterblog.com. Clearly the RMBlog activity has really whimpered out over the last few years. Peter isn’t actively playing, we’ve covered A LOT of topics over the last 10 years and you sort of run out of things to discuss. Additional, sites like discord have become the primary place for roleplaying discussions. We are pondering the future of this blog and hopefully we can come up with a long term solution to keep things going. Other ideas are porting over to substack; this seems to be the new alternative to long form discussions.
  2. AI. I heard there was some discussions on Discord regarding AI. I’m dealing with significant industry disruptions from AI in my own professional practice, and it’s no surprise that roleplaying, and publishing, are also coming to grips with new technologies. As a hobbyist, AI can be a great aid for organizing sessions, generating quick content during gameplay (battlemaps, NPC’s etc). As a content creator, I certainly feel defensive about AI generated material. I just don’t see how it goes away and we aren’t far from AI run games…exciting or scary?
  3. RMU. Based on a relatively small data set, RMU continues to be a crowd pleaser! I think that’s fantastic. I will reiterate that there will always be a base of gamers that are seeking out “crunchy” systems. That was true in the 80’s and still true now.
  4. Shadow World. Not sure what to say about Shadow World. I’m going to keep pushing out material.
  5. Verisimilitude vs Simulation. I’ve been reflecting on this a lot. I would argue that Rolemaster provides verisimilitude: the appearance of realism and complexity. Despite it’s reputation, RM mechanics are a simple probability system. Culturally, we are programmed for probability and deterministic outcomes, so the d100 system is appropriate for modelling virtually any action. I also have a background in early wargames (Squad Leader) and RPG’s were birthed from wargaming. These games arose out of battle field analysis and tactics. Rules were specific, inflexible and were designed to simulate reality: line of site, facing, weather effects, morale, RoF, etc. To finish this thought off, I feel like there is a streak of simulation design driving RMU right now. Endless debates on rule wording, the appropriate penalty, conflicting effects. For me the goal is the appearance of complexity with tactical options without the need for over engineering.
  6. Trends. LitRPG/Progression Fantasy/Challenge Zones/Level Matching. I’m probably late to the topic, but fantasy literature is being parsed into all sorts of sub genres. Two that keep cropping up is LITRPG and Progression fantasy. Both are fiction that emulate a game system mechanics and seem quite popular. Adjacent to these fantasy genres is the concept of level matching. Whether it’s difficulty zones in Everquest, or a progression of challenges starting in the village, moving into the wilderness capped with increasing difficulty as one goes deeper into a dungeon. This is the norm in many RPG’s and now in fantasy fiction as well but I’m not a fan. The reason I like Shadow World as a setting and Malazan as a book series is it’s lack of progression. Shadow World has a deserved reputation for being dangerous and perhaps high level. As a mixed genre setting, dangers can be mundane, magical or even technological. Power is not distributed evenly or uniformly and the Rolemaster system can be the “great leveler” with it’s open ended rolls and critical charts.

I’m not sure I fully thought through any of these! But I wanted to get it down in words and reflect upon it further.

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The Shadow World A.I. Project

  

Of course the subject of A.I. is all the rage in our society nowadays, and there has been a lot of discussion about using this tech in content creation in roleplaying games. Recently, Wizards of the Coast banned the use of AI generated art in their products. But make no mistake about it, AI content is here to stay and will quickly become a invaluable tool artists, designers and writers. The wave is here and there is no stopping it.

I’m not going to make the argument against AI content creation; many better informed people have done so online and in public forums. I don’t disagree with them. And for now, I certainly support the arguments against using AI in monetized products; but what about fan made material, open source products and free OGL supplements?

First, let’s demise two types of basic content in RPG’s: text and art. Can AI generate basic copy for adventure hooks and seeds, or even fully fleshed out adventure plots? Sure, but they still feel a bit flat, derivative and lacking some “flair”. But that content will get better, more setting and game rule specific over time. But artwork and graphics are very different. My own self-publishing experience has shown me that artwork (illustrations, diagrams, floorplans and maps) are a major obstacle for me to put out average quality product. I don’t have the skills and I don’t have the time or experience to properly commission art for a product. For many amateur writers or small publishers good artwork is just not financially feasible or pushes the cost of publishing a product up to the point there is no profit making ability.

What about Shadow World? A rich setting with significant amount of content, but it’s author now passed away. Many of us believe that simply reorganizing and compiling existing information could make some of Terry’s products better and more user friendly. For example a Jaiman source book or a new, fully comprehensive edition of the Master Atlas. I’ve blogged about these ideas for years, but given the overall pace of SW publications and ICE’s current focus on RMU and HARP it’s getting less likely that SW will continue on in any official capacity or with substantial new publications. But AI can leverage existing SW material and IP and accelerate a publishing schedule that would introduce new SW books that are derived from CANON material.

My brother Matt (Vroomfogle) has started to deep dive into AI capabilities and see how they might be used for his own SW and Rolemaster gaming, but perhaps as an assist to generating some new material as well.

From Matt on his first endeavor:

I ran this campaign with the boys online around Covid…we actually played quite a bit, with maybe a couple dozen sessions.  Some of them took notes which was pretty spotty, random, and didn’t make much sense.   Well I combined the notes along with my own notes, and threw that into ChatGPT to get what was a pretty decent narrative for each session.

I then find myself wanting to expand upon descriptions of NPCs, groups, organizations….e.g., throw all the text about Yinka in ChatGPT to create a 1 paragraph summary.  

Then, I went one step further and started creating images with Stable Diffusion….

This is all because we’re picking up the campaign again and I needed to summarize the story so far.  Now, this still took a fair amount of work, but I finally got it together, in 37 pages!

You can check out the results on the RMForums. This site doesn’t seem to support the file size.

But note the artwork. Barring the town map and the map of Jaiman, this was all AI generated art. Of course they are different styles: watercolor, line drawing, colored etc but it certainly provides a look at the opportunities AI may provide for amateur creators. So what types of projects might AI assist in for Shadow World?

  1. Shadow World Herb Supplement. I’ve been working on fleshing out a supplement on SW herbs and wanted to add artwork for each plant. AI would make that very easy–and quick!
  2. Shadow World Races – Illustrated. Based on previous comments on blogs and forums I think there is a real demand for illustrations depicting the various SW races. There are a lot them, and I think it can be hard to visualize them without a reference point.
  3. The Nomikos Library. What would you get if you partitioned a vault, assessable to AI and uploaded the full SW Timeline and supporting historical materials? Then you wrote code to create a user portal where you could “Ask Andraax” any question about SW. That would be a powerful tool and perhaps add some differentiation and user value to the Shadow World setting.

These are just 3 simple products that could be developed without messing with CANON. They would be done quickly and at a fairly low cost! Combined with PoD and Drivethrurpg it could revitalize SW in a way that hasn’t been possible.

What are your thoughts? Check out Matt’s work on his “Legacy of the Y’kin” campaign over on the forums.