A few days ago, I came home from work to find my wife had spent most of the day watching YouTube videos about how to leverage AI into making extra income. She has some ideas of how to use AI to advertise the small business she's trying to start up. I don't begrudge her that, as we definitely don't have a budget for advertising. But she was pretty insistent that I should also use AI to help me produce and market my RPG products.
I'm not a fan of "AI" as it currently stands. As I often say, it's very artificial and not very intelligent. I will admit, though, that the current crop of LLMs are MUCH better than just a year or two ago, at producing some simulacrum of human output.
We've probably all seen examples of AI generated text that is impressive, and some that is not. Similar with images and video clips. Flynn often uses AI to generate pictures of his RPG characters. It's not that he doesn't have artistic talent, but the AI saves him a lot of time on something that isn't that important to him. He likes having a cool picture, but not enough to spend days or even weeks creating it. Again, I don't have a problem with that. It's for his personal use, not anything he's trying to sell.
When it comes to producing content, though, even if it's something to be given away, I don't want to let AI do my creating for me. Ted posted a great essay on AI in RPGs the other day, conveniently. I'm in agreement with him. Yes, an AI could write, illustrate, and probably even format your RPG for you. I've been working on Missions & Mayhem for months now. Since last November or December, I forget exactly when I started (I should check my old blog posts). I spent most of 2025 working on the second edition of Flying Swordsmen, converting it to the d6 system. [It's still coming! Eventually...] I could have completed both of these projects months ago if I'd allowed AI to do the work for me.
But would they be any good? Would they play well at the table, the way I want them to play? I doubt it. And would I actively turn off a portion of the RPG community by doing so? I'm pretty sure I would.
The OSR and the Indie game scene both thrive on the DIY spirit. And generative AI is the antithesis of DIY. It's the ultimate plagiarism machine.
Now, does AI have its uses? Yes. I admit to using a couple of AI generated images in my TS&R monster books. The elementals in TS&R Ruby for example. I couldn't find good images in the public domain. And when I tried modifying some images with GIMP, they looked like crap. Take a look at the golem illustration to see how bad I am at this stuff...although the golems came out looking much better than the elementals I tried to make did. But I state that up front in the front matter of the book, and it's a Pay What You Want title. Don't want to pay for something that has even 1 AI generated image in it? Then don't. Download it for free.
Working on Missions & Mayhem, AI search has saved me a lot of time with gear and vehicle pricing. I don't need to sort through pages and pages of sales sites or whatever to see how much a fire extinguisher or a speed boat should cost. The AI assisted search can give me a plausible average price. I could make up a number, but this way I've got something reasonable. The game text itself, the rules and mechanics, I'm writing all of that myself.
What's the difference? Well, in one instance AI is saving me a bit of time to provide a number that isn't super relevant to game play. In the other instance, AI would be doing my thinking and expressing of the ideas for me. One is lazy, the other is cheating. I'll admit to laziness, but I'm not about to ask people for money on something I'm cheating to produce.
My wife was baffled (to get back to her). I had to explain the whole DIY ethos to her, and how using AI to crank out a bunch of slop game rules or adventure modules would turn a segment of the gaming population away from my work.
I'm already producing games in a niche (Asian-themed fantasy, or Modern day action genre) of a niche (old school rules) of a niche hobby (RPGs). Yeah, there are the Shadowdarks making millions on Kickstarter and whatnot. And if I were to run a Kickstarter for M&M or FS2E, I'd only be shooting for a few thousand to help pay for art and layout/editing. I could probably make that happen. But I suck at promotion.
Chanbara has been available for eight years now, and it's only an Electrum seller on DTRPG. My wife suggested I use AI to strategize marketing for it, M&M, and eventually FS2E. I might end up doing that, as it's really not my forte. I'm more of an Arneson than a Gygax.
But I'm also now more committed to DIYing my games.
I still plan to pay a few artists for artwork for Missions & Mayhem. But I'm also thinking I should just do a bunch of art myself. It won't be great, but it will be real art by a real human being. My game may not be slick and polished with my own artwork gracing its pages, but it will be real.
