You Can’t Hate AI Art and Demand Free Campaigns

Quote from Athanar90 >>

Quote from jl8e>>

Quote from NLK>>

The AI tools I use aren’t free—I pay for them because I need very specific results for very specific tasks. The people who build the tool are being compensated.

The people who built the tool did so by scraping vast quantities of material they had no right to off the internet. The text generators, for instance, used (among other things) an enormous library of pirated books, and I have no reason to think the art people's hands are any cleaner. The tool they built is nothing without the material they took.

Ooh, this is a fun one. My sister-in-law is one of the people affected by this. She's a published author and two of her books are confirmed to have been scraped by AI. Something she only learned after the fact.

Hope she or her publisher registered the copyright; at least then she's included in the Anthropic settlement. (Small comfort, but at least it's some cash.)

But really, anyone who's done any creative work that's available electronically is affected. Got fanfic on AO3? You've been scraped. Wrote a book? It's probably in LibGen. Put something on the web? Scraped. These forums? Scraped. There's code I've written, and fiction I wrote, that I know is in there. I don't know that games I worked on are in there, but they totally are.

Quote from jl8e >>

But really, anyone who's done any creative work that's available electronically is affected. 

Well, at least if it's on the open web; licensed databases typically at least attempt to protect their data, with varying levels of success (of course, nowadays everyone needs to have anti-scraping measures, because there's so many AIs scraping indiscriminately that you're effectively DOSed if you don't block them).

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from jl8e >>

But really, anyone who's done any creative work that's available electronically is affected. 

Well, at least if it's on the open web; licensed databases typically at least attempt to protect their data, with varying levels of success (of course, nowadays everyone needs to have anti-scraping measures, because there's so many AIs scraping indiscriminately that you're effectively DOSed if you don't block them).

 Or if it was ever in say Google Docs. or Discord. Even places you may have thought were private, or gated, if they were in the cloud, it's probably been scraped or sold. 

OK, I'll bite. 

I'm a DM, been DMing since 4th edition. Been playing since the 80s, and yes I'm kind of old. I have written my own source book at one point during the wierd time between 4th kind of failing and 5th being released.  I have also published a novel. 

I use to spend 8+ hours a day writing and building worlds, maps, settings, I even calulated orbital patterns using math barrowed from NASA to make my wierd alien DnD setting more believable.  

I have never charged for a game, and even at that time when I was treating D&D  as a full time job, I never considered D&D my job.  

When Generative AI first came out, I tested it fully. My conculsions were it was theift, as I was able to find the source image of every part of the genAI creation.  I still feel the technology is a good idea, it's the billionaires who are selling it to the world that are evil and are using it for evil purposes. 

GenAI as it is today is evil and thieft. 

Now for your points: 

I am a professional Dungeon Master. This is not a hobby I dabble in—it is work. It is my job.

Cool, I could never make that step. However I am very tempted to do that at times when money is not going as far as I would like. You do you is my belief. 

Each campaign easily contains over 500 custom maps. I make maps for everything. Taverns. Alleys. Forest paths. Back rooms. Ships. Dungeons. Cities. Battlefields. I design homebrew races and full classes—deeply detailed, mechanically balanced, and narratively integrated into the world. I give those to my players for free.

Back when I was making Etz Chiam I had a world with all that plus orbital maps, with the maths to prove it. I know just how much work that can be,  Races are the easy part, building a city with NPCs with backstories, motivations, and story hook is time consuming. 

I also have two kids. A wife. I am writing a book.

Gratz on the family, although as you do 9~10 hours prep per session, and if you are like me 4~5 hour sessions, that means you don't really have time for your family. I sure hope you don't do this more than 4 days a week. Because burnout is a real thing. And you are describing a path to burnout. 

A lot of people in this community hate AI. A lot of people say, “Pay artists.”

It's totally understandable, the technology for genAI is legitimately good, and it's use is pure evil. Pay Artists is only the tip of the iceberg of issues with genAI.  As it is a list of everything wrong with a  late stage capitalistic society. 

And I do. Whenever I can afford it, I commission real artists.

But why is it that art must always be paid for…

For you, it is your moral obligation to pay for Art from actual artists, as you charge money for your services. If I pay money for a thing, I do not want the person providing the thing to use stolen goods. Which genAI is stolen goods. If you can't afford to pay for art, charge more, or learn to use some of the tools that make art easier, me I use Google Earth, and Heroforge to make maps and NPCs. I will hand draw battle maps. I'm a free DM so I don't have to look professional. Back when I was spending hours a day making campaigns and a source book I  also used RPG Maker, to build things, I was planning on using a large screen monitor to make a DnD table, I'm still tempted to do that one day.  I'm sure RPG Maker's latest version is Linux compatable. (

) 

while games—actual campaigns run by real human DMs—are expected to be free?

So what caused your rant, as this is objectivly false. Some DM's like me play for fun, and I do not charge my for my abilities to DM, yet I know I have the know how to do so, and even did the amount of work to do so at one time in my life. I know lots of people who DM professionally, and do even less work than you claim to, and some do a lot more, for really expensive DMs they even hire out Scottish Castles and run full immersion DnD games, they also charge like £2500 per person to do so for the four day event.  As far as I know professional DMs are a highly in demand service. 

If you are the type of person who complains about AI art,
you had better not be complaining that campaigns are pay-to-play

I can not imagine someone would be so bold as to ask for a free game from a professional DM. It's like asking that long hair DM guy who is famous, that you should be on his show without being a professonal voice actor. 

Now if someone asks this of you, tell them no, if they don't take no block/report them because that is harassment. Now if this rant is because you secretly use genAI than I will look at you cross eyed. 

Quote from NLK >>

Believe it or not, this comes up constantly. I’ve had multiple conversations across StartPlaying.games, Reddit, and Facebook where players complain that there aren’t enough free campaigns. I’ve personally reached out to people looking for games, offered them tours of what I provide, and shown them the full scope of my work—only for some to take offense that I charge while also using AI for certain images.

Every few days, I hear the same arguments from 15 to 20 different people: disbelief that I charge $20 per session, followed in the same breath by criticism of an AI-generated banner for a free dice giveaway, along with the claim that I “should have paid an artist instead.”

What they don’t seem to factor in is that I don’t even keep the full $20—StartPlaying takes about $3 per seat, every session.

What makes it worse is that my wife gets the brunt of it. She handles our advertising, schedules the meet-and-greets, and personally welcomes everyone into the server—so she’s the one fielding most of these complaints and hostility.

The contradiction is hard to miss: being told not to charge for my time and labor, while also being told I should spend more money on commissioned art.

 

Your wife sounds like a saint, but as I said above, block people, report them to mods  of what ever group you are in if they harass you. Also as you bring up a genAI dice givaway... are you running it, or is someone else. 

Quote from MonksAreGreat70 >>

D&D is not meant to be a job. It is not designed to be a source of income. 

Professional DMs have been around since the 70s. Back in the 80s the DM at my LGS charged $5 per person per night. The costs were justified as the space was charged at the store, and the DM had to buy and print materials for the game. So while they didn't make a lot of money, they would count as professional. It was also a common thing at other LGS. 

Quote from NLK >>

 

Eighth, the AI arguments are selectively applied and overstated.
If you use streaming, cloud services, social media, or VTTs, you’re already in the same environmental footprint category.
Targeting AI alone is moral cherry-picking.
And legally, AI training isn't copyright infringement under current law—you can dislike it ethically, but that doesn’t make it illegal.

 

 I agreed with everything in your post up to this one statement, because that is false. The scale is significantly differant. Streaming culture did not cause a 400% increase in RAM costs, it was the manufactures changing their manufacturing prefferance for the specialized Mememory used in genAI, to meet the needs of global mega corparations like Microsoft, Google, Twitter,  and others. 

The overall enviromental impact of the internet was high, no matter how we use it, but the massive increase harmful infrustucture by Mega corparations is hostile to human habitation, and they are laughing at people as they further destroy the world chasing their greed. GenAI is a symptom of late stage capitalism, and ironically will help hasten the collapse of human civilization as we know it. 

It is also technically Illegal, but with the amount of money behind it, there is nothing anyone can do to stop it, besides choosing to not use any service or company that uses it. As I look at your avatar, and your comment I suspect you have use genAI for paid DnD and yes that would be morally wrong. 

In the begining as I said I fully tested genAI, even used it for D&D but I have never charged for DnD, and if I did I would hand draw all my assests as I know how to use the tools to make that work. I would however have to advertise my game is set to 8Bit style, due to the use of RPG maker.  link->  https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/products/rpg-maker-mz seriously a great tool for DMs. 

edit: DnDB keeps adding junk to the URL. 

NLK, it seems like you're going overboard with the images so using GenAI instead of commissions to reduce cost. I don't understand why though. NPC images for tokens? There's free non-AI generators for it, they may not look like super great but they more than do the job. If you have a computer that runs it there's also the Character Maker for Dragon's Dogma 2 available on Steam for free which has a massive amount of customisability for making NPCs. Make char, screenshot and put into a circle (there's "token makers" to turn images into tokens, some even have animated effects). 

You mention $70 a month for "Discord boosted" whatever? Why? None of that is necessary for D&D - Discord itself isn't necessary for D&D. So instead of paying that, why not just pay $50 a month to something like Czepeku - several thousand maps, animations, tokens, and more things with new stuff every week. Made by a team of artists and no AI used. So, use that and now there's no GenAI usage, all your art needs are covered and you're even saving $20 a month. 

There's plenty of non-AI tools, plenty of cheap bundles and such to provide you with more art then you would ever need. Also, hot tip - you can reuse your maps and tokens in different campaigns. You don't need to remake every token or map - and you can have multiple campaigns in the same world to reduce world-building or re-use elements of world-building in different settings. 

Honestly I don't even know why you need all that art anyway. There's many successful Professional DMs who don't use any art - even battle maps are basic freebies or just grids - and everything s theatre of the mind. Some do use more maps so it isn't theatre of mind but still use basic or free maps - and yet remain professional, top-rated, DMs. This is because a lot of players would be like me: don't give a flying rats ass about pretty maps. Sure it can be nice - but I want to play D&D not watch an art show. If I'm paying for a game I am paying for a DM who knows the rules, is fair, accepting, reliable, and can deliver an immersive world for me to play in. Art is not needed for any of that. We're paying for a D&D experience, not an Art exhibit. We don't care if you use custom tokens and maps or use cheap/free stuff. The quality of the D&D session is determined by how you DM, not by what artwork you do/don't use.

If you have a free private game or something then GenAI is fine, no different that when ya just google search images. But if you're offering paid services - then GenAI being used is, indeed, a problem as explained by many people in this thread.

Your use of GenAI for your paid games is simply not justifiable and also completely unnecessary.

Also posting to second gothicshark's recommendation of the RPG Maker tools. I play with that too, great for making maps and latest ones even have an in-built character maker - great for NPCs.

Quote from NLK >>

Using AI to make an NPC picture does not write the story. It doesn’t build the world. It doesn’t create the NPC’s background or lore. It doesn’t design the big bad. It doesn’t choose who sits at the table. It doesn’t make the story engaging or drive it forward.

The only thing AI did was generate an image.

And somehow, because I used a tool to make a picture, people act like I’m no longer allowed to charge for the hundreds of other things I do—the writing, the prep, the worldbuilding, the maps, the continuity, the player vetting, and the session design.

Using a tool to generate an image doesn’t erase the value of everything else I create. 

  As I said, morally bad... esp when it's much easier to just use the tools open to us and not use GenAI. 

I remade your Avatar using Heroforge. 

 

Super easy, sure I pay heroforge a monthly fee, and use it to  make NPCs in my games. I'ts fast fun, and when I get into the kitbash... I can go crazy... see: 

My take on Eilistree: 

Ah, I forgot about HeroForge! Such an awesome tool for making characters. Pro version even lets you make tokens and stuff. IamSposta on here has a thread about it and the stuff in that thread is amazing - and the stuff he made with more advanced techniques and kitbashing just blows my mind. 

Quote from NLK >>

• D&D Beyond library personally purchased: ~$2,200 total
  (Books I bought so players don’t have to.)
  
  And I pick up new D&D Beyond releases as they come out, if a player wants to use something for their character.

  Monthly costs I cover:

  • D&D Beyond – Master Tier (content sharing): ~$6/mo

  • Fantasy Grounds Ultimate (VTT subscription): ~$10/mo

  • Inkarnate (Creator tier): ~$8/mo

  • Paid AI tools (NPC tokens, banners, assets): ~$20/mo

  • Discord Nitro (HD streaming & perks): ~$10/mo

  • Discord server boosts (heavily boosted, ~Level 7 equivalent): ~$70/mo

  Subscription subtotal: ~$124/month

   

Hmmm... sus. But I will share. As a Free DM who might actually put in more effort than you. 

DnDB: I own everything on DnDB, and I own most of it again in physical. I also have all of 1st, 2nd, most of 3rd/3.5, all of 4th.   Plus and equal number of SRD and other TTRPG source books, Traveller, CP2020, P2E, Iron Heroes, Star Wars d20, etc.  cost to me, no clue but a lot. Definatly more than 2k USD (probably close to 20k usd) 

• DnDB master tier... paid yearly. 
• Molten Hosting for Foundry VTT, don't remember the cost but annual. 
  Discord Nitro yearly
• Heroforge yearly
• Own RPG Maker, although it's an older version and tempted to get the newer one. 
• Own my own Home with a Tabletop gaming room with all those books, Plushy chairs, a ton of high quality minitures 3d printed by me, and purchased from a ton of kickstarters and similar.  so... £300000 at least invested for live games.  
• Living in Edinburgh priceless. 

I have never charged anyone for D&D, and have paid out of pocket for it all, while having to work full time until I retired. Lucky me, early retirement so more D&D. 

The discord server boosting seems pretty egregious, bordering on suspicious given that discord only provides perks up to level 3 (14 server boosts). To boost that much, ignoring the free boost tokens you get with discord nitro, that's only $49. But let's look at what those levels get you in terms of perks:

Level 1

• +50 Emoji Slots (for a total of 100)
• +10 custom sticker slots (for a total of 15)
• +16 Soundboard slots (for a total of 24)
• 128 Kbps Audio Quality
• Go Live streams Boosted to 720P 60FPS
• Custom Server Invite Background
• Animated Server Icon

Level 2

• +50 Emoji Slots (for a total of 150)
• +15 custom sticker slots (for a total of 30)
• +12 Soundboard slots (for a total of 36)
• 256 Kbps Audio Quality
• Go Live streams Boosted to 1080P 60FPS
• Audience capacity for Stage Channels with Video/Go Live: 15050MB Upload Limit for all members (server only)
• Custom Role Icons
• Static Server Banner

Level 3

• +100 Emoji Slots (for a total of 250)
• +30 custom sticker slots (for a total of 60)
• +12 Soundboard slots (for a total of 48)
• 384Kbps Audio Quality
• Audience capacity for Stage Channels with Video/Go Live: 300
• 100MB Upload Limit for all members (server only)
• Custom Invite Link
• Animated Server Banner

Honestly the only relevant perk to me seems to be the audio quality one, which even then I doubt people notice the difference between 128 and 256 kbps, let alone 384.

But let's say 384kbps is essential for being an online DM (as someone who ran an online campaign for 6 years, I'd say it matters infinitely less compared to the reliability of your internet connection and quality of your mic), the boosting cost seems really off.

Also if you're running this as your main business like your post claims, why on earth are you paying all your subs monthly and not annually? Here are the adjusted monthly price points if you pay annually:

• DDB - $4.58
• Fantasy Grounds Ultimate (no yearly option) - $9.99
• Inkarnate (Creator tier) - $39.99 p/a = $3.33 p/m
• Discord Nitro - $99.99 p/a = $8.33
• Discord Boosts just to tier 3 = $49
• AI tools - not needed, **** that noise

Total - $76 approx, almost a 40% cost reduction on your overheads

If being a paid DM is your primary source of personal income you need to be making more savvy business choices.

Quote from Davyd >>

 

Honestly the only relevant perk to me seems to be the audio quality one, which even then I doubt people notice the difference between 128 and 256 kbps, let alone 384.

But let's say 384kbps is essential for being an online DM (as someone who ran an online campaign for 6 years, I'd say it matters infinitely less compared to the reliability of your internet connection and quality of your mic), the boosting cost seems really off.

 

 I pay for Nitro, and don't even bother with boosting my DnD sever, as I just use it for communication. The extra amount is because I will often share a Heroforge mini as an NPC or monster. 

ie recently for my D&D 5.5 game set in the WH40k universe. I had this as a boss at the end of a Dungeon. 

I made a Homebrew Hag who uses an Aeldari sword (custom lot drop for our Drukhari player) 

Honestly I do love a good Kitbash mini. Really got the Chaos and Nurgle going here.