@Malrex, I was looking at Bryce's
latest public masochism, and I was about to write that these days, "Creation Method Not Chosen By Publisher" should be a red flag that AI was involved, because I assumed that was the reason the category of "creation method" was added.
But I though that might cast the net a bit broadly, so I looked at what I think is your latest,
The Coming of Winter, and saw that it said the same thing. I gather CoW was published back in April, were they asking for that category then? And if so, what options were you given? Because I would def want to answer "Made by humans with no AI assistance" to that question.
TLDR: It's unfair to say that...most publishers may not realize this box is new from DrivethruRPG and an option. MM products are all handcrafted EXCEPT for Slyth Hive to my knowledge and possibly NAP (AI Art). I'm also taking Squeen and DP off ignore.
WOW Beoric!!!...thanks for pointing this out.
I had trouble following what you were talking about, so I went into the Publisher Tools for Coming of Winter.
DrivethruRPG recently changed a bunch of stuff on their website. I don't recall them mentioning this new box to click, but I could of missed an email.
Publishers get a series of boxes to check when putting up their product for sale. There are a lot of options--from rulesets (OSR, Savage Frontiers, Traveller--there is like 16 options that are then broken down even more...Osric, OSE, Labyrinth Lord, etc.). Lot's of choices!
Then there is Product Type, Genre, Format, Languages....all broken down quite a bit more. And I think you get a limited amount of choices to choose from (10 maybe?) but seems like hundreds of options...
This is the age-old argument where customers get pissed when some publishers click everything--- OSRIC, OSE, Shadowdark, etc. to try and sell their product and get more eyes on things...(I don't do that or try not too).
ANYWAYS---yes, it looks like they added a box under Format that has Creation Method, which has 2 choices: Handcrafted and AI-Generated content. I actually just noticed that this is plastered on the publisher tools:
"AI-Generated Content
We have recently deployed two browsing options on our new DriveThruRPG marketplace and DriveThruComics PHNX Preview. Customers can now choose to filter out AI-Generated content in their Account Settings, and titles are now clearly labeled as Handcrafted or AI-Generated if the publisher has selected one of those options."
Looks like I will need to update all of the Merciless Merchants products (oh joy).
All of the Merciless Merchant products use either stock art (which to my knowledge is not AI as I actually have stopped most purchases of stock art back in 2020 before AI became a big deal) or commissioned art from human artists EXCEPT for Slyth Hive by Prince and maybe NAP stuff which I don't have as much control of as its various authors (and free). The Coming of Winter is definitely hand crafted--this is the main reason we even do Kickstarters for our adventures--to commission kickass art done by humans to cover the costs.
The only time I personally have used AI for D&D is to generate NPC's real quick before I'm DMing that night because I ran out of time (and its still rough and I have to change things), never for something published.
..............................
As far as ignoring Squeen and DP, I think the timing of the election was raw and maybe things have settled down, so taking them off ignore because I value their input, discussion, and art on D&D topics and I truly don't want to bolster support for 'cancel culture', but at the same time, I don't want to discuss/support discussion of politics here. May we all roll 20's.