Alesford - AI City Map

 

AI City Maps

So I've been playing with AI a bit more. Specifically Gemini and ImageFX. They are finicky but with patience they produce some nice stuff. I decided to try to produce some villages. First it makes you change your prompt after a few attempts and it also gives up on you after a mysterious number of attempts a day so it was a slow process.

My tags were a variation of Realistic isometric map medieval walled village. I tried Roman instead of medieval and port and city, town and castle and a bunch of other things instead of village. Also image was interchangeable with map.

Turns out it's not entirely clear on isometric because my understanding is it means a specific angle and thus all isometric should be the same perspective. That's sort of the point. But it managed occasionally to produce things that were usable.

Also realistic produced buildings with mushy roofs that looked ready to collapse. I fixed that initially by doing similar prompts but with building or city block instead of village and then using Photoshop to replace the mushy roofed buildings. 

Then I stumbled upon minimalist instead of realistic. They couldn't really manage gatehouses and looked a bit like video game cities but I really liked the results.

I added the callouts and legend myself so they could be player handouts. I'm not gonna add further details to these. I consider them in the Public Domain so if you like what you see take em, use 'em. I'll produce more in the near future if the AI starts cooperating again. Seems that Goggle screwed up recently producing black Nazi images in order to be more inclusive and has been fighting with their code and I've been getting worse results lately. Hopefully that'll figure it out.

Also I would note that these are pretty small for walled settlements. They barely qualify as small villages but in a world with monsters roaming all around I think I could justify the walls.

Spear Vs Swordsmen

 I found this video entertaining. It shows how reach really is a major factor, much more so than most RPGs account for. Also it shows how important amor would be as most of these 'hits' wouldn't go through quilted armor let alone mail or plate. I also found it interesting how the fight takes up a lot of room. Nobody is sticking to their 10 foot square. I'm sure Hema's probably done this sort of thing, I'll have to find it.

AI Artwork

 I've never really thought AI artwork was a good idea. We near the point where entire professions will be wiped out. A buggy whip sort of moment and I take that personally because I trained as an artist even if I let my drawing skills atrophy a bit over the years. Perhaps things will be better once AI has been trained and looks less soul-less and the hands aren't as creepy and all that but it'll be a painful road getting there.

The AI art program I've played with produced garbage. Maybe I'm not good enough at picking the exact words as I've seen other peoples samples that looked pretty good, but  mine all result in abominations. Perhaps for Gamma World art that might work but not for what I'm looking for. 

Having said that I read a post on Tenkar's Tavern titled Is AI in our industry really that bad? (Dungeon Alchemist). I like the samples I've seen from Dungeon Alchemist and never really considered AI for dungeon maps. After all Drawing Dungeon maps is kind of fun. Yes drawing really good ones can be a choir (I lean heavily on Dyson Logos amazing maps a lot). Still this seems a niche AI might be good at. So when I stumbled across Imagine.art, an AI program I hadn't used before I started blasting away at commands and I was actually happy with the results. 

I used the text "Isometric dungeon room with near walls removed to show table, benches, and other furniture" The near walls removed didn't really work right, and what's with the windows and no exit? Still the room has character and with photoshop I might be able to clean it up and make it to my satisfaction. Doing a whole dungeon would be painfully slow though (guess Dungeon Alchemist fixes that).

Here is another. Same text (I think) but set to Disney Style. Why Disney style gives a low wall instead of wooden fence I don't know. AI works in mysterious ways, still I kind of like it. I'm not sure how I can use it but I'm always looking for isometric dungeon dressing and there is a lot of that here.

A third one for good measure. The prompt this time: "Isometric dungeon room with near walls removed to show torture equipment and victims chained to wall". The result, well we still have a cheery little window and no victims, but the rest is kind of nice.

And lastly Most of my corridor attempts "with no windows" had windows, clearly it doesn't like corridors and Hallways and loves windows. So I typed "Isometric dungeon hallway with no windows" and the AI gave me Mickey Mouse in a crypt or something (I think Disney is gonna sue someone). So it's far from perfect but the crypt looks nice. 

So AI isn't totally terrible for some things.

Drivethru sales

are not great. 

I put Maritime POD up for sale half a month ago and still no sales. The pdf sold consistently and then died off around the same time. I'm very proud of the product and think it's very usable at the table. I've never really liked how so many folks constantly pimp their products but it's become very clear why they do. If you don't remind people constantly a product slips out of sight out of mind on Drivethru. At least until you've created enough products and hopefully developed a solid reputation with those that purchased those products to justify them buying your back catalog. 

Sad because I'm not a self-promoter. Not at all. But I'll continue publishing things because I sort of feel a drive to do so. For now, Maritime is still available as PDF and POD on DriveThruRPG.

Maritime POD now available

My little book is now available on Print on Demand at DriveThruRPG for those that prefer hardcopy. If you get the POD version the pdf is bundled pretty cheap.

Spell Memorized and Q Branch

So in every James Bond movie you have an opening scene with amazing stunts and then Bond meets with M and Q where he gets a cool gadget. He only gets one or two gadgets per movie and he never gets to take gadgets that worked well before (except the Lotus). Then at some point later in the movie Bond gets into some sticky business but it turns out the cool gadget is exactly what he needs to get out of it. How did Q know? Because the screenwriter knew.

Spell Memorization works something like that, except the player have to pick spells without the screenwriters help. They have to guess what spell might be useful today which is a somewhat impossible task and promotes more generic dungeon-useful spells. 

For Clerics, selecting spells for the day seems silly. They have no real idea what they are getting into. Clerics worship a god, and that God is represented by the GM who knows what they'll run into during the adventure. The GM should pick the Clerics spells based on the challenges they are likely to run into. Yes the Cleric should have a wider range of spells available to pick from but the GM should pick. Let the Cleric wonder why they woke up knowing Resist Cold and Lower Water this morning when they are in the desert. The GM can fill out the list with generic ones as well.

This would give the Cleric a bit more mystery, a bit more 'God' and possibly foreshadow things coming up. It acts as a really vague augery. The GM can build a few encounters specifically with spells in mind. Not rooms that require the spell as they will be fired off too soon in many cases, but even then the Cleric will knock their forehead and go that's what my God meant.

This would also work for Warlocks in 5E but does nothing to remove spell slots which are another matter entirely. Anyway just a though, maybe players would hate it.