Oh, a lot. Scheduling games is difficult (I have free time, but not on anything resembling a predictable schedule, and the people I game with have the same problem), so to some extent the prep is a gaming activity that fills the lack of actual gaming. And when I do get to game, I want to focus on the game, and not on looking stuff up or battling with my VTT, so making the VTT function efficiently is a priority. Plus I actually enjoy prep.Non-judgmental question for you @Beoric - on average, how much prep time (including following rabbit holes about pay-weight and such) would you say you put in for every hour of play time?
I dunno man, its pretty shitty. I'm a single parent of three, one of which has serious health problems, with mom pretty much out of the picture, and I'm trying to run a small business in an unpredictable industry, where there are a ton of people counting on me, and I don't have full control of my time. And my players live out of town, and also have crazy schedules, and are luddites who can't figure out how to connect to a server.*What would you say a ballpark ratio of time spent prepping vs. time spent playing is for you? 1:1? 2:1? 10:1?
Are your players your aging parents?Like seriously
No, that particular one has been like this for 40+ years. You should see them try to navigate a TV remote, or try to connect their phone to a bluetooth speaker.Are your players your aging parents?This is like troubleshooting with my dad.
Seriously though, it sounds a bit like your players are being deliberately obtuse because they don't really want to do it. This is distinctly what my fairly bright children do when they don't want help with their homework (because they're tired of doing it).
Too much that you really like (in tech) gets changed out from underneath you. I saw my 20 year old daughter complain when they changed MS Word. It's not age, but it is experience. At some point you realize the pointlessness of all the gadgetry and start to appreciate simplicity in design. e.g. Roku remote.I'm noticing a shift in myself as I age - I too am unfortunately becoming averse to new technology, something I'd consider unthinkable in my youth. I always saw it in elders, and never thought it would happen to me, but here we are... my wife would call me down-right luddite by her standards, even though I work in tech and was very much an early adopter in my younger days.
I think its an actual recordable medical phenomenon at this point. My guts says it has something to do with neuroplasticity, comfort-seeking in the familiar (and the opposite - aversion of the unfamiliar), and an ongoing drive to de-complexify a busy life. I'm sure there are books about it I should probably read.
Seriously. Photoshop hasn't done anything new in 10 years other than turn into a shitty piece of subscriptionware with an entire global community dedicated to outpacing its anti-piracy measures. Don't even get me started on the evil boondoggle that is Windows 11. Like MS got jealous of all the negative attention Alphabet and Amazon were getting and wanted back in.I saw my 20 year old daughter complain when they changed MS Word.
There's no doubt my group wouldn't have touched something like Roll20 if I hadn't moved a million miles away. And yeah, that's as far as we're going to go. There's all kinds of tasty new VTT options out there, but nah. Sweet sweet incumbency. There's a certain conservatism (not necessarily political) to the older heavy metal/D&D crowd. Definitely a comfort of youth.comfort-seeking in the familiar
I ran it once, in high school. I can't remember the details (and I'm not sure how well I ran it), but one of my friends told me "I liked that, you should do more adventures like that."Has anybody ever run The Assassin's Knot? I'm in the process of evaluating it, and it clearly has flaws, but I'm trying to figure out if I can tweak it, or if I need to tear it down to the foundation and rebuild it to get something useful out of it.
Clearly the CrAzZy motivation of the dude who originally calls the hit has to go, and I'm trying to figure out whether to change the motivation or if he can be cut out entirely.
Anyway, stories and thoughts would be welcome.
My group only got on the right track because of the orcs. "Oh, they hire orcs here. The Lord Mayor MUST be evil!" It doesn't sound like that would happen in Beoric's Eberron campaign, if orcs aren't always evil.I haven't run Assassin's Knot, but I do own the module, and in reading it... I'm also curious if anybody has successfully run it. It looks like a clusterfuck - the information is not organized at all, and there are so many red herrings with so little actual evidence, I'm not entirely sure how a party is supposed to get the right guy.
This kind of writing can be iterative. I can spot flaws and fix them, whereas if it was entirely original it would just have problems that I would be blind to. People who turn their nose up at reboots always seem to forget that few if any of Shakespeare's plays were original stories.In all honesty, it's probably going to be easier to just invent a murder mystery from scratch at that point.
I haven't got that far, but I imagine particularly unsavoury brigands should do the trick.My group only got on the right track because of the orcs. "Oh, they hire orcs here. The Lord Mayor MUST be evil!" It doesn't sound like that would happen in Beoric's Eberron campaign, if orcs aren't always evil.
I've noticed this in myself, particularly with music. When you're young and learning how things work, This Is The Way It Is Done. When a big change comes along, you're able to adjust and say This Is Now The Way It Is Done. Eventually though you go through so many of these big changes you lose interest in them. "Hey, this was working just fine the way it was, why are you changing this? Why should I learn this? You're just going to change it again in a couple of years!"I'm noticing a shift in myself as I age - I too am unfortunately becoming averse to new technology, something I'd consider unthinkable in my youth. I always saw it in elders, and never thought it would happen to me, but here we are... my wife would call me down-right luddite by her standards, even though I work in tech and was very much an early adopter in my younger days.
It really only bothers me when there are changes to the UI in software that I rely on to do things quickly, but before I can do that, I need to wrestle with a new UI to even discover whether it still does what I need it to do. And then they hide the function I need, and I can't use it until I drill down through 16 menus (that only loosely correspond to whatever website is instructing me) to turn the function on. And it seems like they are trying to deliberately kill the function, because the function gave them a wedgie in junior high or something, because in the next iteration they inevitably kill it, because "nobody was using" the function they have been trying to prevent somebody from using.I've noticed this in myself, particularly with music. When you're young and learning how things work, This Is The Way It Is Done. When a big change comes along, you're able to adjust and say This Is Now The Way It Is Done. Eventually though you go through so many of these big changes you lose interest in them. "Hey, this was working just fine the way it was, why are you changing this? Why should I learn this? You're just going to change it again in a couple of years!"
It's exactly like this with all the paradigm shifts in culture. After a while you realize we're not going to be talking about this crap in a few years so why even bother to learn anything about these performers. Who cares?
The Heretic
So, circling back to this discussion, I see that the latest module reviewed by Bryce is tagged in DriveThru as "Contains AI-Generated Content." Which may just be the art, but I noticed Bryce said "It feels disconnected from itself, as if the designer didn’t know what the adventure was,or didn’t know how to include parts other than the main hack." Which is a complaint he has made a lot lately. Just sayin'.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.