Deep Lore

So, here's the premise for my Spelljammer adventure that I'm definitely not going to run:

The characters are each the most famous hero of their respective worlds - they are created as 15th level characters (and can be basically anyone or anything). The players are each encouraged to come up with their own legend, with the one caveat that they have absolutely no knowledge of one another.

Some time after their deaths, they find themselves gathered together in a dark and dismal temple, where they are approached by the local priest, who presents them with their not-at-all-railroaded quest: the priest's patron wants to know the secret hidden in "The Nested Sphere", and has provided a suitable Spelljammer vessel for their use.

As incentive to drive them, their patron has erased their legends from history. If they refuse to help, they will forever be forgotten. If they do as asked, their legends will be restored. Naturally, for legendary heroes the worst possible fate is to be forever forgotten.

The Nested Sphere is an unborn Crystal Sphere, and as such is protected by the Ban of the Unborn, which states that "deities are prohibited from influence, contact, or dealings with preincarnate souls in any  fashion whatsoever." As such, their patron can tell them nothing about it. But a broker on the Rock of Bral has something that might be of interest.

From there we go on a tour of the Spheres (this being a classic Spelljammer campaign, not the newfangled abomination). So off to a variety of worlds we go...

Eventually we head to The Spelljammer, and then off to the Nested Sphere, wherein lies a well-guarded library in which a hidden tome holds the secret by which a lesser divinity can ascend to the rank of Overgod. Naturally, Vecna would be most interested in this...

And then comes the showdown - face off against the God of Secrets and suffer being forgotten, or give over the tome, restore your legends... and doom the future?

"Isles of Dread" - a Lesson Learned

When setting up the "Isles of Dread" campaign, one of the things that I did was set up several key adventure areas, and then add several other small islands that didn't have fixed content - the idea being that as the characters travelled to one of these islands the content would be rolled randomly and then used.

Unfortunately, I've found that this doesn't really work - the randomly generated encounters aren't really interesting enough in their own right to justify their inclusion, and the random generator is largely transparent from the other side of the screen. Which means that from the players' perspective they're mostly seeing a number of fairly dull encounters playing out.

Bottom line: random generators like this are probably not a bad thing in published adventures, especially ones likely to be run more than once (like "Lost Mine of Phandelver"), but for a home campaign they're probably not ideal. (Except, of course, for a big book of random encounters - that has use for a time-starved DM. But don't write your own!)

About AI Art

In recent weeks, both DriveThru RGP and WotC have issued statements concerning the use of AI-generated art in their products. In both cases, they're taking a line against the use of such things.

Which is all fair enough - it's their prerogative to set their own policies as they see fit.

However, I do find myself wondering if it's at all worthwhile. The truth is that "AI" art is here to stay, and will only get better with time. Before too long we will reach a point where it is simply indistinguishable from anything that a human artist can generate. At which point unprincipled actors are likely simply to pass off the AI art as their own work, and nobody will be able to tell the difference.

I think this issue of AI art is really only a piece of the bigger issue of automation in general, which is likely to massively shake up the world of work over the next couple of decades, and which requires a cultural shift that moves way beyond RPGs themselves. Ultimately, I suspect we'll need to move to a paradigm where people create products because they want to do so, and not because they expect to be paid for them - because, simply put, it's likely the ability to get paid for them (and many other things) is likely to go away... along with the ability of people to pay for them in the first place.