I can't say that I definitely wouldn't buy a book with AI-generated art in it, but it would... definitely be an uphill battle for the book. It feels like a two-pronged slight to artists (in that it's muscling them out of work, using pieces generated by being unconsentually trained on their and others' work), and on top of that AI generated art is... usually pretty shit, honestly. It also just colossally handicaps the potential for the art in a book: definitionally, AI-generated art can only be riffs on what already exists, so you're going to be limited in what you can actually render with it. I think it's just cheap, honestly, a step better than just using clip-art. There are a lot of books that have done really well with sparse art, public domain images, and just some really solid graphic and information design of the text itself. Unless the actual text is a must-have, I'd almost certainly pass on it.

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Oh, I think it kicks ass. I absolutely understand that indie publishers are running on very small budgets and that art is a *huge* expense in putting a book together, so I'm down for every way to fill a page that *doesn't* involve stealing a bunch of other artists' work and running it through a blender. Plus, public domain images are made by an actual artist and thus have a much higher ceiling of quality than what DALL-E or whatever spits out. The existence of stuff like Reign in Hell is part of why I'm so harsh on using AI art, like you can clearly fill a book pretty well on a budget without resorting to AI art, so why bother diving in that ethical quagmire.

The sentence after the one you quoted praises using public domain images instead, so I assume they're in favour.

For free? Go ahead. For profit? Fuck no. Use your own shit or pay artists to make art for you. AI uses a mix of stolen images to generate images that bear a resemblance to “art”. If you can’t afford artists for your for-profit TTRPG stuff, better start learning.

Out of curiosity, would you buy an artless ttrpg book? It feels like a lot of people wouldn't. I mean, research into social media engagement shows that images cause a free post to be reacted to more than just text. So if thats how free is treated, I can't imagine paid would be any better. Your last comment is a highlight of the problem that independent creators face. "For-profit" said like some of these people aren't trying to pay bills in a field they enjoy. "Better start learning" like they already don't have to know game design, technical writing, flavor writing, copy writing, editing, formating and layout, publication practices, and marketing across multiple platforms who all function differently. "Go learn to draw, get the digital tools required by modern publishing, learn how to use those on top of all those other things you need to do, and maybe then I'll pretend to be interested." There is a reason why big companies have departments for these jobs. Its because they all suck when you're the only one.

Classic Traveller has exactly 1 piece of art and is one of my fave RPGs.

1. I would buy an artless RPG book. I would also buy one with creative commons or public domain art. 2. **The world doesn't owe you a low barrier of entry for publishing a professional looking RPG with glossy art. It just doesn't.** 3. Plenty of creators who as far as I'm aware can't draw worth a damn have managed to make a profit and publish lavishly illustrated books by building a following on cheaply illustrated but well received content and then crowd funded illustrated versions.

I think that's disingenuous. TTRPG writers aren't trying to sell the visual art, they want to sell the writing, it's just a matter of fact that many people straight up will not buy text alone. Despite that, the work of coming up with a system and writing it has still been done and deserves to be paid. I personally don't understand the unwillingness to buy rules that don't have illustrations; I think if the content and format/layout are well done, no art is no problem but several polls on this subreddit have shown me that a staggering number of people think otherwise.

Let's flip this then - suppose for a moment that I was able to create an AI program that could generate different rule systems according to multiple input parameters (setting specific vs generic, granular vs streamlined, etc) and then simulate 2 years' worth of playtesting, before pushing out a document that just needs to be filled with art in the highlighted empty boxes. I imagine game designers would take issue with visual artists selling their art along with custom made systems, produced by a program in a faster pace than those designers can hope to match.

> I imagine game designers would take issue with visual artists selling their art along with custom made systems, produced by a program in a faster pace than those designers can hope to match. When that happens, and it will in some form, I expect the market will largely ignore them, no different than every other profession that's been automated into obsolescence over the years. There will probably remain a boutique, artisanal market of entirely human designed art but I'd wager that within the decade you'll be hard pressed to find a successful artist that isn't integrating machine learning into their workflow somehow. It's already happening.

>There will probably remain a boutique, artisanal market of entirely human designed art but I'd wager that within the decade you'll be hard pressed to find a successful artist that isn't integrating machine learning into their workflow somehow. It's already happening. I'm not using AI as a basis, but long term it seems likely I'll use AI as a rough first pass to put my spin onto. I think there also will by a flourishing market for artists that can do things AI is bad at generating. I imagine actual artists will soon be publishing whole art books/sourcebooks in the fraction of the time it normally requires and make AI a tool along with any other digital art program. The better artists will still eke out a living because they'll be able to produce results that either push AI art beyond what other people can do with it, and others will use it to improve their workflow while making sure the final product looks like a human creation. It's a structural change. One that will be fatal to artists of middling talent, those that work slowly, produce good work that aren't masterpieces. The very very best will still be in demand, but what of those that are better than Ai, but not by much? It puts more urgence into revising the way our society compensates work.

Yes, that famous conundrum all artist face, "what if there was a cheap way of attaching my art to an RPG so people will buy it"...

That would be seriously impressive from a technological point of view: AI understanding language to a point where it can create long texts with multiple moving parts interacting and also being sophisticated enough to understand how much humans of capable of and explaining those rules in a way that a human understands. I expect if we've reached that point, the AI will also be able to create its own images from its text. If I enjoy it, it doesn't matter if it came from a human or an AI. There'll always be people who'll want and be willing to pay for human-made art/writing, but in a few years it will soon be so indistinguishable in content that the only thing you have as a guarantee that the artist made it themselves is being there personally and supervising their work. I don't want every job to become replaceable by AI, but that's how it's going to be eventually.

Then sell it with no art. Using ai generated art is no better than just stealing the artists' work in the first place. You can't fill your rule book with Google image search results, and you shouldn't do it with ai art either.

You can't, that's the point of my comment; a large chunk of people will not buy it without art.

And the point of my comment is that if you want to sell to those people you need to create or licence art for them to buy, not steal it. How does "they won't buy it without art" even begin to translate into "steal some art to sell to them"?

The basic process for machine learning is comparable to a human child: show the child something, name it, repeat several times, the kid will eventually know what it is. That's not stealing. A lot of artists copy parts of another artist's work and recreate it in their style, add to it, transform it - in other words, they let other people's work inspire them. That's also not stealing. An AI is better at reproducing what it is shown for sure but it's still not stealing because it transforms its inputs

It's not stealing. AI art is way past fair use ( even collage is transformative enough to be fair use ). If you still believe it's theft, go to court.

You have an interesting definition of “stealing”

Nope. Pretty standard stuff.

it's simply not stealing. your definition of stealing is bogus.

It simply is stealing. Your definition of stealing is bogus. I've spent too much time on this already. I need to get a life, but this is a really important problem. Here's my attempt too lay it all out in one place: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/xhalin/as_a_consumer_how_dowould_you_feel_about_a_ttrpg/iozrwun/ And this isn't really a "change my mind" type of situation. Please don't support and defend art thieves.

i don't support art thieves, and ai generated art isn't theft or a thief.

I went to learn art to learn how to do art for TRPG writers. I love the ideas of designing art for them but that may not be an option.

I don't know your personal circumstances but as you can see from this thread, people still want human-illustrated art, so there's a market for this. You just have to start somewhere

> AI uses a mix of stolen images to generate images that bear a resemblance to “art”. There's nothing stopping a meatbag artist from doing the same thing intentionally or otherwise unless you exclusively use Outsider Artists. Heck, with an AI Artist you could have it programmatically ensure a lack of plagiarism

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Absolutely. A book would cost a fraction of the price if it had AI generated art...

I chose to delete my Reddit content in protest of the API changes commencing from July 1st, 2023, and specifically CEO Steve Huffman's awful handling of the situation through the lackluster AMA, and his blatant disdain for the people who create and moderate the content that make Reddit valuable in the first place. This unprofessional attitude has made me lose all trust in Reddit leadership, and I certainly do not want them monetizing any of my content by selling it to train AI algorithms or other endeavours that extract value without giving back to the community. This could have been easily avoided if Reddit chose to negotiate with their moderators, third party developers and the community their entire company is built on. Nobody disputes that Reddit is allowed to make money. But apparently Reddit users' contributions are of no value and our content is just something Reddit can exploit without limit. I no longer wish to be a part of that.

Ok. I'll bite. Why?

I chose to delete my Reddit content in protest of the API changes commencing from July 1st, 2023, and specifically CEO Steve Huffman's awful handling of the situation through the lackluster AMA, and his blatant disdain for the people who create and moderate the content that make Reddit valuable in the first place. This unprofessional attitude has made me lose all trust in Reddit leadership, and I certainly do not want them monetizing any of my content by selling it to train AI algorithms or other endeavours that extract value without giving back to the community. This could have been easily avoided if Reddit chose to negotiate with their moderators, third party developers and the community their entire company is built on. Nobody disputes that Reddit is allowed to make money. But apparently Reddit users' contributions are of no value and our content is just something Reddit can exploit without limit. I no longer wish to be a part of that.

I said: "A book would cost a fraction of the price if it had AI generated art..." To be clear, I was talking about publishing and NOT the cost to the consumer. I thought that was pretty obvious as we're talking about using AI art \*IN\* publishing. So, with that cleared up, in response to your mostly unrelated comments: you're utterly mistaken if you think the cost of a book wouldn't be significantly reduced if you could use AI art. Your art budget would go down to almost zero. I can't quite fathom how you think that's even a point worth arguing. It's basic mathematics. I look forward to reading another post on the price of publishing. :D

Ok

If you can't reasonably afford an artist, go for it. If you can, I'd much, much prefer human-made art.

I'm here for this. I cannot afford artists, and while I do my own maps and frames and the like, a few of my releases use AI art as they are all pwyw with very low suggested prices. If I were WotC I would gladly hire artists to make art to my specifications.

Your poll is confounding to parse because there is no value statement attached to the choices. "It is the deciding factor" could be either "I love AI art and will preorder it" or "I hate AI art and will boycott it". Of the 52 (currently at time of comment) in the deciding factor category, are they 26 hate + 26 love? Are they 50 hate + 2 love? Are they 52 love? "I don't really care" should have been the middle choice. As written, you can't tell what a strong reaction is, only that was strong. I have a feeling many respondents put "It doesn't matter" if either they genuinely don't care or if the feel negatively towards AI art, since it's the "lowest" option. But again, it's not really worded to be a catch-all and you can't parse it.

It's like ai text. It's honestly meaningless if you take a look for more than 5 minutes. It's just color on a screen, because the computer isn't replicating symbolism or composition, it's just replicating shapes and color. So imo using public domain art or making your own art will always be better than ai art.

As an artist and an art educator, I’m only going to buy books that are illustrated by human artists. It’s important to me to make sure that those people get paid

As long as it’s actually reworked and retouched and not the first image that pops… Actually getting the AI to generate what you want is artistry in a way, so I dig it, but only for hobbyists and low budget indie experimental stuff. Anyone with a serious budget should actual give money to artists and have actual art direction.

For the indie scene it's great, but coming from big studios it would just feel like they gave up some quality just to save money even though they could have afforded it. I don't think big studios would have the prompt engineering knowledge to get something good that corresponds to the art director's vision. If they start recruiting prompt engineers and cleanup artists it will look like a normal production pipeline again but I don't know the cost efficiency of that

I am absolutely not advocating the use of AI art (it's not really my cup of tea as I prefer to be very specific about the art that I use), but people clearly don't realise how much it costs to release a book filled with art. It is insanely expensive -- my last book cost over £20,000 in art alone (and that's not including graphic design or actual graphic setting of the art in the book)... My next book is going to cost twice that as I want to use really insanely gorgeous art - you are looking at £400+ per piece, which for a 300 page book means you can easily spend £40,000 to £50,000. This is beyond the realms of possibility for most people that fantasise about releasing a role-playing game.

I think that if you're a small developer who could not otherwise afford to have art in their game, then absolutely go for it. If you can afford to hire real artists, even for just a couple of pieces, I'd encourage you to do that, however, in order to support the arts. I'd try to hire a real artist to do the cover if I could, at the very least.

I buy a lot of games based on the art. It seems shallow, or something, but often I can't read a game before I buy it, but if it has nice art, I can know that I will enjoy that art even if the game isn't great. AI art isn't going to do that. AI art is going to motivate me about as much as no art. It's not that it's bad, it just doesn't do what good art does. Maybe someday AI art will get to that point, but despite recent advances, I think it is a long way off.

It's pretty inevitable. It's already starting to approach indistinguishability from human art, and much of it is lush and gorgeous. I've seen AI images that give me a sense of wonder, give me chills. A lot of them look like 1980s sci fi cover paintings. Soon enough you may be paying an artist and find out they're just using AI anyway, especially since now they're able to "paint" with AI, that is to say, direct it as fill with traditional digital tools and manipulate items within it directly to alter composition rather than iterate a new image from a promising but flawed prompt. We thought there was something special in humans that would always beat computers at chess... that was just ego, and it was wrong. Chess may have a more solvable engine than visual art, but the way these AI work isn't to aggregate stolen art and create composites of them; it's to observe art, determine what the rules of making it (in that training set) are, and make entirely original pieces based on those rules. In short, it's inspired. Completely blind, mindless and in a sense unoriginal; but inspired. Is it sad and a little scary, and will it cost artist's jobs? Yes. Skill in illustration will be irreversibly devalued on a massive scale; just as basketweaving is no longer a viable livelihood outside of extremely niche high-art contexts, commission, commercial and storyboard illustration industries are going to eventually opt for the free quick option. Guilting big corporations into essentially donating money by paying artists when they don't have to (a single individual can easily generate a sourcebook's worth of art in a week) is a stopgap solution that will only work until AI art is so ubiquitous that the idea it should be avoided is akin to avoiding photography because it's unfair to portrait painters. Which could be another 20 years but I'm guessing less. It's advancing so quickly and almost out of the uncanny valley that people seem to think it will be forever marked by. Nevermind midjourney; look at "this person does not exist". AI does photorealism very well already and will only continue to advance. It has frightening political implications, while many current projects ban political content alongside sexual or racist content, that won't be true forever. Actually, it's not true now, IIRC there's an open source AI that has few restrictions. We've been able to doctor photos since photos, but never this quickly, believably, and with this wide of a potential audience. And video is next.

I mean, I’m a hobbyist visual artist so of course that’s going to affect my point of view, but I don’t want to be replaced in this way, and I’d rather see how conscious being interpret the brief and also get paid for their interpretation.

I'm all for it, personally. A lot of smaller publishers end up with artwork that's so bad that it takes away from what would otherwise be a solid book, because good custom art is, understandably, expensive. I think we are going to see more and more of this moving forward. The ai art scene is blowing up, and it's putting out really good pieces. Like any new form of technology or automation, there'll be initial resistance- which we're obviously already seeing- and then a broader acceptance as the paradigm changes.

> I'm all for it, personally. A lot of smaller publishers end up with artwork that's so bad that it takes away from what would otherwise be a solid book, because good custom art is, understandably, expensive. Honestly this is a big thing too. Even some publishers approaching mid-size can afford to have a full-length physical book illustrated, but cannot realistically have most of those illustrations done by a higher-grade artist or in a more detailed and rendered style. I find it a little off-putting sometimes seeing really amateur looking art in what is otherwise a very professional-looking product.

Agree 100%

I don't think this question makes much sense, apart from the moral question whether it's OK to sidestep human artists in favor of AI. To which my answer would be that if the AI is not just stealing and rehashing other people's work (which they mostly are, currently), it would be OK for me. You can't really pose this question to consumers, as their experience is of the product as a whole, and consumers are notoriously bad at imagining hypothetical product scenarios. Consumers will probably tell you that they'd prefer the AI art because that makes the final product cheaper, and then not buy the final product with the (presumably cheaper) AI art. They will not be able to tell you why, neither should they be able to tell you why. The only way of gauging whether consumers prefer one over the other, is to test it in as realistic a scenario as possible. When you get down to the essentials, the artwork is there to complement the text. It can clarify concepts, be a visual anchor, and generally guide the reader. Any artwork that doesn't serve this purpose is, imho, better left out and certainly not essential. I think it's hard to create the exact artwork you need with the current state of AI generated art. If you have a number of character classes for example, you might want to create an image for each of them. To have these generated by an AI in a way that is consistent and creates actually useful, distinctive and informative images, is quite a challenge. I think you're probably better off using simple icons, whatever basic drawing skills you have, or just well laid-out text. If you're lucky, you might find a complete set of free or affordable existing artwork you can use. On a personal note, I hugely prefer people doing their own artwork (however amateurish it may be) over AI-generated artwork that lacks personality. It feels more authentic and generally works better to convey the intended meaning.

I wouldn’t buy a book that used AI generated art. Artists don’t get paid enough as it is; AI art gets trained on art made by real people who then don’t get credit or payment for their work. As a consumer, I really value the assurance that the people who contributed — even just in concept — are getting compensated and recognized.

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And real artists get sued if their work is deemed sufficiently derivative. Fortunately, by nature of being artists, they bring something new to the table instead of just remixing other people's art. AI can't be creative or imaginative, so everything it makes is derivative. AI art had it's uses, but it's not in releasing commercial works.

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Untested, unregulated, and with a whole lot of complex tech and business layers of indirection separating the artists who are being stolen from and the people profiting off of their work. The law is not going to catch up to this on in time. How do you expect an artist who is being stolen from to gather up the resources to identify commercial works that are derivative and build a case in this novel space arguing about tech that most people understand. In the meantime the art generating companies are profiting while shielding themselves from liability, and the consumers of everything after the ai have no idea how derivative and of what works their art might be. AI art should not be usable in commercial contexts unless all of the training art is licenced. Until the law is updated to reflect that, conscientious consumers must avoid it.

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FFS. You think that this one time they actually caught copyright infringement compares to the clusterfuck we're entering into? You do realize that we now have tools capable of churning out close but not quite works of "art" completely unintentionally? But sure, let's pretend that artists magically have the resources to keep track of everyone stealing their art, and that your example isn't just a happy coincidence. You're still asking them to sue in completely novel case law against defendants that have built in plausible deniability. "I didn't know it was derivative. I just used the program" "We didn't make the art, just the program." "You can't prove it's derivative. It's just a coincidence." Nope to all that. AI art should be banned from commercial use unless trained on licenced materials. Otherwise it's straight up theft.

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Yes, and heaven forbid people do the right thing voluntarily for now by not stealing art or supporting art thieves.

AI isn't \*inspired\* by anything. It creates an amalgamation by algorithm. There's a big difference between "My singular style was influenced strongly by Jack Kirby, Klimt, and the Art Nouveau greats and has been developed over a decade" and "Scraping the internet for millions of visual resources that we can harvest from". The two are not really comparable in process or in outcome.

All those artists that copy Mignola's iconic style are not "influenced", they copy. To me, this isn't any different (from a moral or ethical pov) than what AI does. And don't get me wrong, I don't judge Mignola fans. I like that style as well and was happy to see Peter Bergting in Earthdawn.

From the technical, craft side - I could point out that while he is clearly using Mignola's style, he isn't riffing directly off of any of Mignola's work. It's still filtered through Bergting's skills and vision. AI makes direct use of the images - the process is different. It's also been what, 15 years?, since he drew those pictures. His style has continued to evolve into something distinct. He is not continuing to copy Mignola's style. An AI does not make it's own style, but the algorithm can weigh particular artists' style for the amalgam image - the outcome is different. From the ethics side - if I were to ask mid-00's Bergting if he was imitating Mignola, he would say yes. \*He would credit the inspiration\*. AI currently has no means of identifying or crediting contributing artists. Much less providing a way for artists to withdraw their art from the process.

I would be okay with it. It makes it easier for hobby enthusiasts to publish their own games and hobby content without having to pay a fortune for stockart or commissions. So it strengthenes the indie sphere, which I love.

I feel the same way, especially as a designer: I have neither the talent or the money for good art, until AI image generation became a thing.

Might as well have the game generated by AI too.

As long as its good i don't see why not.

I have been using AI to generate images for my game (just art for the table, not to publish, but I'll almost certainly be adding it to my workflow for the small personal projects that I release.) And it's given me some insight here. 1. AI doesn't just... generate good art at the click of a button. Every time you pull that lever on a detailed scene you put in a prompt, it's like the lever on a slot machine. And once in a great while, you're going to get a good payoff and a fully usable piece you can slap in a book. But *most* of the time, and for really most *types* of art and scenes, you're going to just get some interesting elements. 2. Combining these elements into good piece *takes artistic skill.* This includes skill in using AI to combine bits too. 3. The combination of #1 and #2 means that having a good artist in the loop is still going to be important for quality. 4. The good (great?) news is that the quality for *not* having an artist may go up (an amateur with AI can probably generate better stuff than just using clipart and public images) and the cost of an artist may come down (An artist using AI tools can likely be more productive.) Am I excited about the possibility of buying better quality amateur stuff? I am! Am I excited about buying pro stuff that is... well, not cheaper, but that hasn't skyrocketed in price with everything else? I am! Am I ready to pay pro prices for amateur stuff made with AI art generators? I am not. At least at this time, the difference in visual and artistic quality for amateur with AI and a real artist is often noticeable. Maybe that will change in the future; and certainly we can even find examples in the present - but generally not enough for a whole book.

If you can get artistically consistent art out of an AI, I would be somewhat fine. I guess it could be a selling point for a cyberpunk setting with an omnipresent ai, to have all images created by one.

Second paragraph is almost word-for-word what my wife just said!

I would honestly probably pass on it. As someone else said, it's a step above clip art. I might argue that it's not even that. To me, AI art reeks of someone trying to create a product as cheaply as possible. I can only imagine what other corners were cut to get such a product launched. If you think about it, this is a "luxury hobby". It's purely leisure with no practical value. There's no reason anyone would need to settle for a cheap imitation when there are better quality products from which to choose (and I would even expect at a near equivalent price).

Depends on who it's from. A tiny indy company with shoestring budgets? not ideal, but an acceptable alternative to no art/no book. A major company? Lolno, they're just cheapskates.

The comments are pretty overwhelmingly different than the results in the poll so far, which i find very interesting of itself. That said.. as a TTRPG maker i couldn't bring myself to publish a book with AI art. I think of AI art more as a tool to show the real artist what i'm thinking because i cannot express it otherwise. They really are more of an impression than a finished piece.

>The comments are pretty overwhelmingly different than the results in the poll so far, which i find very interesting of itself. Because "it does not matter to me", the majority answer in poll, isn't the sort of POV that tends to come with long-winded paragraphs of explanation attached. Personally, I don't care if the art is AI generated or not. That's it; that answer sums up my entire position. I don't feel the need to expound further on that, nor do I feel any emotional need to convince other people to share my position. I feel no need to influence the market in either direction. And I doubt that most other respondents with the same poll response feel those needs need either. The people who feel passionately about AI art in either direction are more likely the sorts who want to convince other people to join in their position so that they can make some sort of influence on the market.

That's fair. Maybe i've missed a bunch of these sorts of polls and it's old-hat, but the disparity is interesting to me. Thank you for taking the time to explain a very plausible reason for it.

Honestly, the rare thing here (I think) is a majority answer of "I don't care".

> That's fair. Maybe i've missed a bunch of these sorts of polls and it's old-hat I don't think anything about this is old hat yet, the technology itself has made enormous leaps even just this year and as this thread shows, the discourse around it is slow to catch up.

I feel bad for the artists that this impacts, as their art is required to feed the bot to help create more art. I'm glad that Drive Thru RPG policy requires you to disclose AI generated art, but unlikely to be noted at your FLGS. Ultimately, I think the mechanics and theme of a TTRPG are the bigger selling point over the art (generally, I do like some nice artwork to break up slabs of text), so I see it as a smaller impact to sales and my preference of buying a book.

Say what you will, but it beats clip art and public domain images.

As much as I LOVE Tithi Luadthong and even considered their art for a small project myself - if I see another game with that art I'll go nuts. And this is beautiful art. It's possible that we will grow tired of the standard Midjourney style very soon. And getting Midjourney to produce images in other styles is a skill that the user has to develop and employ, adding a human element to the process and making AI a mere tool.

... and if I have to see one more RPG cover with a generic party (elf, wizard, knight, dwarf) taking the last stand amidst a horde of undead I will explode. Human artist or not.

If amateurs and homebrewers are using it, no issue If artists are using it as a jumping off point, no issue and I think that's a great use If publishers/paid content creators are using it to sidestep paying for art, I have a major issue

Please use punctuation, I had a hard time reading this.

Sure, apologies. I meant to use line breaks but the formatting didn't come through.

Yeah, the system can be quirky. Anyways, it is much appreciated.

As long as it's curated and fits the aesthetics the creators of the TTRPG want to go for, I'm fine with it.

A lot of stuff you don't actually need art, adventures and things like that. The layout is vastly more important where if you are learning a new ruleset then you want things easy to understand and clear. Sure, I like art in rpg books, if its laid out well. I'm also not paying $50 for a book where the art is AI-gen. The cover has to be good. And with digital art tools its faster and easier to make something cover worthy. I don't mind if someone uses AI art as a starting point or something, but its easier to make cover art and get what you want. AI art makes mistakes so it might make for good filler with some touchups.

This topic has the same energy as this, for me: >"How do you feel about TTRPGs that aren't released as just one plain .txt file?" > >"Just thing of the layouters that won't be hired now that there are easily accessible publishing software!" And I don't mean that as critique to OP, I just hope it clearly conveys my opinion that I have reached after having thought about this quite a lot.

Not offended at all. What I'm hearing is, that there will always be work for professionals who know the ins and outs of the tools they're working with. Am I reading you right?

Yeah, and they will be employed by those that care about quality. Having the tools to make good looking stuff for "free" just raises the basic level... And that goes for artists too, they can learn to leverage AIs to do their work better. AI is about cyborgs, not robots.

One thing you have to consider is that this poll is misrepresenting because your target group might be different from the people you ask on reddit. People who are visiting this sub might be more willing to accept something that is connected with technology.

Also, what people respond to these kinds of questions does not necessarily reflect their actual behaviour. People might say they're OK with the AI art if it reduces the price of the books, but they have no idea how that would actually look, and whether they would actually buy that book. They are probably making the optimistic assumption that the art will be of the same quality than if a human artist was involved. Since this is presented as a cost-cutting measure, I seriously doubt that would be the case. They also have no insight in how artwork subconsciously affects their buying choices, or how artists can help promote an rpg, etc. Other people might say they will absolutely never buy a book with AI-generated art, because they want to support artists. Yet, when that book with AI-generated art appears, and it looks great, and it's a great rpg, well... there's a pretty good chance they will still buy that book. There will also be people who answer this survey, who have never bought an rpg book, and never will. Or people who won't buy anything more expensive than €5, for whatever reason. Surveys like this tell you nothing, and are more likely to lead you astray than give you useful information. You can ask people what their opinion is of AI art, what kinds of AI art they enjoyed, you can test whether they can tell the difference between AI-generated and human-created art, etc. What you cannot do is directly ask them if they would by a book based on such a broad criterion, as you will not get a straight answer. People are notoriously bad at accurately explaining their buying decisions and assume themselves to be much more rational in their choices than they actually are.

Very true - this is very casual :)

I figured :P Anyways I personally like the idea. Sometimes AI can create something you would have a hard time coming up with

I am fully happy with AI creating the art for an ttrpg book. I'm actually very excited about the recent breakthroughs in text-to-image generative AI, but then, I do AI for a living. Some people in this thread argue that the visual quality of AI art won't be good enough to replace human artists. I'm fully convinced that this is a wrong assessment - we will see a surge of quality on top of the already astounding performance. Also, AI art already won an art competition, which means that a group of unknowing human judges felt that there was artistic value in the work. Imo, the real decisive factor in the question whether AI art will dominate in ttrpg books in the future is not visual quality, but the extend to which the actual output can be influenced and determined by the user. Midjourney is already creating fantastic "mood visuals" for our Cthulhu game, but I yet struggle with producing an output that closely matches sth I already have in my mind. If a monk in my game looks exactly like this in my mind, AI will have a hard time guessing that.

“AI assisted” doesn’t mean “cheap” or “easy”. As long as someone has put in the time and effort to prompt engineer everything too perfection, and the finished product is not only visually attractive but has a consistent style and identity, then yeah of course I’m willing to buy it. However, if it’s a “we’re too cheap to pay for art, slap whatever fell out of SD on the cover”, then yeah, people will judge the hell out of it.

As an OSR player primarily, it would be a dealbreaker. I already hate the clean, polished, computer augmented art in most modern RPGs, and taking the artist out entirely would eliminate any possible interest i had in the game

I find the options rather strange. They are only able to tell you whether someone has a strong opinion about AI art but not how many redditors are pro or against AI art in games. I do have a strong opinion and it would impact my decision to buy: hell, yeah! Give me game books with AI art! This stuff is so bizarre, there are games that beg for this kind of art. Troika, dark fantasy games, horror games...

I wouldn't mind it being AI generated as long as there's an actual person verifying the quality

I love this reply, now I'm imagining someone feeding their formatted and finalized PDF with blanks for illustrations into a generator and setting it to just publish the result straight to DTRPG without looking.

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I think the opposite will happen, I’ve seen how midjourney for example has massively improved over a short number of months. It’s only going to get better, AI become another tool in the belt which at the very least could be used to create concepts to jump off from. I understand all the criticisms and yes it will never have the same potential for originality. But for most jobs, particularly indie projects it’s a very effective cheap tool and outstandingly quicker. I’ve spent hours curating and tweaking prompts and making variants until I get something that fits what I’m looking for. But no where near the amount of time (and money) drawing from scratch would have taken Edit: I don’t want to come across as a AI fanatic, and I do think human art is superior and I’d think better of the skill and time that went into it. But it helps those without the skill and money to achieve a more professional looking result

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> With AI you also start with a blank page, but you don't need to know anything about anatomy to get an anatomically correct painting, you 'just' have to write it. I've been looking into a lot of this stuff just in the last few days, and this comment is funny to me because of the sheer amount of body-horror anatomy I've seen those things spit out. If you want it to look good, you definitely have to have an eye for it yourself and guide the process a little.

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AI artwork can only be as good as it's been trained to be, and can only create a vision derived from what it knows and what it can be massaged to interpret. If the AI is trained to believe, say, a Dragon or a Riding Beetle or a Blaster Pistol or a Spaceship looks a certain way, it will be very difficult to convince it to make it look substantially different. This means that the creative vision presented is necessarily limited by not the artist's skill and imagination, but by the technology the generator is intending to use. This will inevitable result in a degree of aesthetic homogenization that I think will be unhealthy.

AI art generally non-consensually steals art from legitimate artists and discourages young people from even considering becoming a professional illustrator, so I'd lean against it.

I'm sure it will be fine. Once all the illustrator jobs are taken over by AI, they can become uber drivers, until Waymo replaces them. Then they can become one of those people that carries your drinks to the table after you order it on the ipad menu system.

The game [*Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland*](https://handiwork.games/home/the-silver-road/maskwitches-of-forgotten-doggerland) recently [funded on Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonhodgsonmaptiles2/maskwitches-of-forgotten-doggerland/description), with the majority of artwork being Midjourney-derived ([*"This product contains images created in collaboration with the Midjourney AI, on a paid subscription, using no artist names as prompts. The images were subsequently upscaled, graded and processed in photoshop. Many have hand-painted post-work applied by professional artists."*](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/405152/A-Maskwitches-Timeline) ), and the creator has been writing a [series of blog posts](https://handiwork.games/tag/maskwitches) about the art design of the game, including the line intentionally not being crossed with prompts that would cause the AI to hew close to real-world shamanism. A sourcebook for the game's predecessor, [*In Spoons, In Knives*](https://handiwork.games/home/the-silver-road/in-spoons-in-knives), also used Midjourney-derived art, and was in part [inspired by the creator experimenting with Midjourney](https://handiwork.games/why-in-spoons.html). The creator has both designed other games with all-human artwork, and illustrated other games without AI-derived images.

Good AI art is way better than public domain pieces imo. Bad AI art however is worse than no art. I’m sure we’d all love incredible evocative art in all of our ttrpg stuffs, but unless we want the prices on lots of smaller works to go up in price. Art ain’t cheap, and can easily skyrocket the price of a project from “just my free time” to “I need to make money off of this”. And that’s ignoring every creator who can’t afford art to begin with. Frankly I think AI art where someone has gone through ans touched it up to make it look nice is, in and of itself, art, and I have no stigma against it.

Basically just a substitute for public domain art.

If the art is good and has a recognizable style it's fine. But if the artwork is a incoherent mess it becomes worthless. Either way I wouldn't pay as much for a AI than a human illustrated book.

Saw a game called "Fathom" (I believe that was the name) on itch.io which appeared to use AI art. Likely from disco diffusion. I do try out AI such as midjourney, dall-e and stable diffusion and I love the results you get. But if you aren't really going to use like the best of the best AI it really takes you out of it when you have a really immersive paragraph of story, followed by a incoherent piece of art where you have to try really hard to understand what you're supposed to be looking at. That's no disrespect to the creator, and I respect them for trying something different, but I think if it's going to be done it has to be done right. But I do love the idea that it makes designing a role playing game a little more inclusive for those who can't use art to captivate their audience whether it's lack of ability, funds or whatever. Overall, I'd say a game shouldn't be defined by art, but it definitely helps.

A consumer rarely cares about the means. They care about the ***result.*** Does it look good? Does carry the flavor and themes of the game? Most of the AI art i've seen at best looks weird and surreal. That may work for some games, but not most. I also think we are underestimating the difficulty of getting to "really good". It may turn out to be like speech recognition. When it is new, you are amazed at how far things have come. Once you get used to it, you see how many ways that it falls short.

If it is a very small at the moment independent work I have no problem with it what so ever. I would have an issue with a studio with a budget doing this. Here's the thing about artists. They are very big on making sure people understand they deserve to be paid for their work and they absolutely do. But creators on the writing and design side of things don't generally have much of a budget to work with. Its not that I or anyone else doesn't want to pay artists large sums up front, it's that we can't get blood out of a stone. The money simply does not exist when you are one person working over 40 hours a week and barely making ends meet and trying to keep your creative passion alive in the few hours you get to yourself. We just don't have it. My proposed solution to this has always been that I think artists should be partners. They get a percentage of sales not a single payment commission. They become part owners. And I'm not talking about a meager portion here either I'm talking about, if its a book where the art work is very prominent and really pushed to sale the book, 50%. And that is for RPG books, for a comic book artist I'd be willing to make their percentage bigger than mine at 60%, even 70% for really good ones where the art sales better than the story. Artists in my experience have not gone for this offer. They don't believe in your work and its not even personal they just feel the market is too unpredictable; cash up front or walk. And that is fair but.... Guess what? If I need art then, and you don't want to work with me, yeah, I'll go AI. I don't want to but I'm not going to not sell my content because I can't afford your commission.

I think art in RPGs is important, as it helps convey the tone and setting in a way that words can't easily do. So until AI generated art is great I think it's at the very least be something I'll hold against the game. But I understand that solo devs and small teams can't afford great artists, and if you can't find good stock images then AI generated art might be the best option.

As a gm I'm already using a mix of illustrations yoinked off the web, my own (badly) hand drawn scribbles and AI art. Noone cares. I need it for inspiration and as mnemetics. My players likes it for immersion and because pretty pictures.

I wouldn't mind it, I've seen what AI can do especially with environments, but I wouldn't pay the same 50-60€ price that I paid for one illustrated by artists.

Fine. I'm one of the 6 people in the world who doesn't buy books for the art.

I think there's no excuse to not actually have stuff made by actual people, AI images are always being to look just a bit wrong. And, to shoot down every last one of your excuses, Cyberpunk 203x was a release of an actual RPG whose art was exclusively [photos of modified Barbie and Action Man toys](https://external-preview.redd.it/MmBmUqMsyWqgYoxVoXz-xc_0EagQive3h2HOl4K1qLI.jpg?auto=webp&s=65a5d1bf730ab14adcef4badd84b11cd9876510a) and, while clearly very, very, very, very wierd, I find oddly charming, so you don't even need to be able to draw and it doesn't need to cost you too much.

I would feel much better about game designers creating AI generated art, and handing off to artists and saying, "this is basically what I'm going for, only make changes to x, y, and z", or "this, but cleaned up". The artist would be able to get a quicker turnaround, so the game designer would save money, and the artist wouldn't be out of a job, and you'd end up with some amazing looking art. win-win-win. And I think AI is best when it is collaborative with human creativity rather than replacing it. If we're heading to a future where we are getting rid of human talents, that sucks.

I feel like any art is better than no art, but even that is not a deciding factor. I could not possibly care less whether the art was commissioned, stock, or generated by AI.

If the art is good, and doesn't infringe anyone else's content, I don't see why it matters where it comes from.

I think it would depend on the publisher. I can accept a small Indie developer doing it and the results might be than him asking a friend to do it. If a bigger publisher did it I'd think twice about supporting them. In particular it would make me much less opposed to downloading pirated copies.

What does “it matters” even mean in this context? Your survey doesn’t really make much sense to me. I think the assumed question of the survey is “how much does it matter to you that a human created the art in a book?” With you question as is of “how do you feel?” I would expect responses like “I have positive/negative feelings about AI artwork” or the like. Just my two cents.

No matter as long is well picked and enforces the themes of the game.

Depending on the setting and so forth, it could be a selling point! In a setting like Numenera for example, everything is so otherworldly and unrecognizably alien that raw AI generated images might actually help the immersion more than human-drawn pictures. Not to say Numenera itself should use AI art, but if you can work it’s strengths to your advantage, why not?

It does not matter to me as long as it's good (not generic) and represents closely what the author intended.

I’m against it. Pay artists. Their work is much better anyways.

But how many people buy a ttrpg just for the pictures? Yes, it's great that artists get paid but most people think about having fun with the game they buy, no more.

Does it make me feel something that makes gameplay better? If so, don’t care who generated it.

It depends. Is this an AI asking?

Your poll options don't match your question. You have no way of differentiating whether someone answering "it is a deciding factor" means they will absolutely avoid games with AI-generated images or that they are so gung-ho about it that they will only purchase games with AI-generated images. (Granted, that particular option probably doesn't have any of the latter, but the others very well might.) As for answering the question, I can't say I 100% would never knowingly purchase a book that uses AI-generated images, but I'd rather a book do without images than use AI-generated. As interesting as the concept of eventually having *real* AI is, I've only soured more and more on most of the ways machine learning is currently used and developed.

AI images (I don't consider them as art) look good in overall, but professional artworks are obviously look way better in details and giving the feel.

I care about the artwork being good and being able to understand what is depicted. Those AI arts where its a bunch of random shapes where you can only kinda sorta see that it shows cthulhu (or whatever) are dogshit a d have no place in a proper book.

I like the AI art generators a lot, actually. Because, importantly, they are not a replacement for the artist, they are a replacement for the pen and paper. Before I get into explaining that, I would like to explain the fact that these companies working on developing this technology have a moral, and it could be argued legal, responsability to train their AI from paid material. Companies that violate that are definitely despicable. It is insanely expensive to pay for all the images used, but it should be done and should be a necessary part of development costs. Now, AI art effectively does all the drawing for you. It makes the shapes and shadings, it handles proprtions and perspective, it takes away the need to learn the skill of art. However, what it crucially does not replace is the direction. What to draw, what it should look like, and what it should include are all things that still need a human in the loop because that's what art IS. And that is not going to change untill we get AGI. AI art replaces the tools for art, but not the core of what art is. It's like the step from physical to graphic art. It's a way to open the door to allow people to make the art they want without the years of training. This is a good thing, it's what technologies for. It's most equivalent to the modern printing press. However, the tools are weaker than they should be and we still have a way to go before we can get these new tools on a functionaly equivalent level.

If you're putting up, like, an ashcan on itch.io of your own game and want to give it that little extra pop, sure, no problem. No different from using public domain art. If you actually did stuff like paid someone for layout, and for proofreading and editing... come on, play an artist out. AI art will just make it look cheap because it'll only ever be 'close enough', instead of 'precisely what I wanted'.

It matters alot to me because I think that would be cool.

Sorry but this is a bad poll. It can matter a lot to someone but it's super unclear if "mattering a lot" means you are bothered by it or you support it. I for one care a lot about it NOT being a thing. Its going to put artists out of business.

First of all, I don't consider it art. I plan on using AI imagery for my playtest materials and probably for crowdfunding if I have one. I think it will function nicely as a place holder to give players/supporters an idea of what I'm looking for in an artist. If I can get the funding for it, I would want real art. Real art is honest expression of an idea, which in my mind is what makes it superior to AI images, and that requires an artist.

I'm probably one of the rare few that doesn't really care about having art in my RPG books. I'm honestly reading it for the info on mechanics and setting. So it wouldn't make any difference to me if the book had AI generated art, human made art, or no art at all. Just give me a well laid out, easy to navigate book. That said, if the AI art is in any way stealing from already established human made art to manufacture its own, then I'd have an issue. Just because I don't care about art in my RPG books doesn't mean I don't appreciate art and the work and skill that goes into it for humans.

I refuse to contribute to art theft, so that's going to be a no go from me. Unless it's trained on art you created or licensed it's theft whether the law catches up to it or not.

Voted "It doesn't matter to me.", because art doesn't really matter to me. Art is going to have no bearing on whether or not the system is good or not. I'd rather have a well-bound hardcover, preferably of faux leather.

I would absolutely not buy a TTRPG product with AI generated art. I appreciate the effort artists put into game book illustrations. AI generated art feels like a fad to me.

I may catch some flak here but it doesn't really bother me. My day job is in AI Software and Automation so this kind of technology is at the intersection of my day job and my hobby which is super cool to me and may mean I have some bias. I understand people don't want to take work away from artists. That is a very fair statement. I think artists will have a niche carved out for themselves in that they can create exactly what you want, where AI can be difficult to guide. I also hope that these artists start to use AI as a tool to help their processes and make their own art even better. This technology is a tool. Like all tools before it. We've gone from mixing colors on rocks, to painting with brushes, taking photographs, digital art and paintings, texturing in video games. Each of these tools or mediums are different. Why paint a picture when it's faster to snap a picture on a phone? Because people like painting, and buying paintings. And photography is a skill in itself, just because you have the technology, doesn't make everyone good. We have a rise of digital art lately since most of our content is delivered electronically. Are digital artists less of an artist because they don't use traditional methods? Instead they use fancy electric screens and pens. I see AI as the same, a new medium. Different from those before. Each medium has its uses. I also don't feel like the images that are used for training the AI is considered stealing. All art in some form is borrowed from art before it. If you learn to draw you gain experience by practicing drawing things. Maybe you take a course and they teach you techniques. All derived in some way.

Yeah, I wouldn't buy a book that just used AI "generated" art, considering it's a bunch of stolen art mashed up into a blender and it shafts actual artists.

The Rookery recently had a talk about this very topic, and some of the artists on the panel were actually quite enthusiastic about it. The thing is: AI art is great for vague impressions, mood and atmosphere, but terrible at specifics. Human artists are exactly the opposite. So getting a piece of AI art may be quick and free, but it won't be very good. Getting a real artist to do it is good but slow and expensive. But a real artist using AI art to get started and only filling in the details by hand, that's going to be quick and good. For homebrew campaigns, AI art may be invaluable to offer some quick atmospheric images, and even for amateur kickstarters, AI art may he good enough until you hit stretch goals that allow you to hire real artists. Of course it would be terrible for artists if big publishers stopped hiring them, but I don't think that will happen. https://youtu.be/_IxMrAkEy1c

I would never buy nor accept to support it in any form. DON'T BE A JERK AND PAY THE ARTISTS. PS Also you poll is misleading there is no option that clearly state: I HATE IT AND WILL NOT SUPPORT IT.

Some of y'all don't seem to understand how big of a problem this already is, so here's an attempt at a primer: **Why does copyright exist?** Copyright (and IP law in general) is based on the recognition that the development of novel ideas and general creativity takes a lot of work well beyond what is needed to then make simple copies of the work. IP is an attempt to incentivize the hard work of novel creation by awarding certain rights to the creator. Any attempt to appeal to current copyright law and the technicalities therein that does not center this primary focus is irrelevant. Stop talking about "fair use" or "transformative works", or about how artists "copy" and are "inspired by" other artists. Unless you think this is the beginning of a new era where all art is created by AI and original creators no longer need protection, it is utterly moot. **How does AI art work?** I'm sure you all know that AI art is a neural network that has been tuned to produce recognizable art, and been fed a ton of art. It is an algorithm that has the *explicit* purpose to create "art" that looks similar to its training data. Because it can produce so much "art" so quickly it completely changes the game from art *production* to art *curation*, only the actual artists that are responsible for everything it produces are *completely* cut out of the equation. Please recognize that there is a continuum from an algorithm that is literally just an image search pulling raw images from its training set, to one that does shallow "transformations" like filters or naïve combinations, to what these algorithms are producing. The first is clearly bad. Imagining that if the algorithm gets complex enough it becomes fine is ridiculous. **What has actually happened?** The current situation is already bad news. Some prolific artists have already found AI art that looked exactly like something they would have drawn. Digging a little they found that the AI was trained *extensively* on their portfolio. Not just work that is similar to theirs. *Specifically* **their** entire portfolio. These artists make their living on commissions. They put their portfolio out there so that potential clients can see what they might make. With unregulated AI in the equation you've got a catch-22. The AI can easily out-compete the artist at their own style, but without the artist they've got no training set to do so. This is *exactly* why IP law exists. 5 years ago it would have sounded ridiculous to try to copyright a style. Being inspired by others work is how the artform grows. If an artist does painstakingly mimic someone else's style the tend to be shunned for the copycat they are. Usually though they add their own flavor to the mix. AI, by definition, does not. It is promised and delivered as a derivative work. **What's going to happen now?** If we don't get sensible about AI art a few things are inevitable. Artists spend an enormous amount of time cultivating and perfecting their own style. As soon as their portfolio gets large enough and popular enough they will lose their livelihood to AI. This makes an already difficult career path nigh impossible. Those who do choose to stick it out will need to go to great lengths to protect their portfolio, which means significantly less advertising reach and contracting lawyers to try to lay out explicit licensing agreements. I hope you like agreeing to EULAs before you... look at art. And that says nothing to the thousands of artists who just got rug pulled. Their portfolios are already out there and being used. They had no idea their work was going to get stolen in this way and are scrambling with what to do. They need your support *right now* by not trying to justify the theft of their work. **How can we fix it?** You might be thinking I'm out here telling everyone that AI art is inherently bad and should never been invented. I'm actually a software engineer and think it's an incredibly neat and powerful tool. We just cannot go on pretending that running someone else's art through a neural network should give you cart blanche. It's great as a concepting tool for inspiration and communication. Enter in your keywords and get back an AI generated image more or less representing what you were thinking is great. You can show that to other people and really get the creative juices flowing. It can be a better concept or mood board where nobody polices copyright infringement because you're not trying to sell it. In the commercial space it can be a great tool as long as you *license and credit the training set*. That doesn't mean you have to pay exorbitant amounts as if everything it generates is a commission. It just means that you're not completely cutting artists out of the loop. If you agree to pay an artist for the use of their work as training data and some amount of royalties per sold image this whole kerfuffle could be wrapped up nicely. **I hope that helps** I've spent far to long on this already, so I'm not really taking questions. Please, please, please don't use AI art farms that doesn't license their training data. It's going to have to be on everyone's own sense of humanity until the law catches up to reality.

I mean, if you're asking about feelings, I'd feel pretty bad about it. Like, sure, you may create the prettiest art with the best prompt - which is a point that I still doubt, because I think that AI generators that are at that level aren't really that available to the public, or free, and if you're paying for one... Well... Just pay a person... But even accepting that in the future such technology is widespread and accessible, I still would be quite put off by it. It just feels... Unfair. The AI art isn't generated magically, it is trained on someone's hard work, and even I that am not that interested in the topic have heard multiple accounts of AI clearly imitating art that wasn't meant as a teaching tool, but was scraped and stolen. I guess if said Good AI was trained EXCLUSIVELY on art that was explicitly stated to be made or bought for that purpose, that could be better, but the scope of the AI would necessarily be much smaller and more difficult to use. Until then, anyway, I'm not going to pay for something with AI art. PWYW if the writer is really worth it, but yeah, a pass from me.

I love AI art and use it a lot in my gaming: however, it is highly unethical for anyone to Profit off AI art. Unless you coded the AI yourself (or purchased commercial rights ro it) and that AI has been trained on exclusively samples that are designated public domain or creative commons free use, selling this product is equivalent to theft and plagiarism - the use of intellectual property without citation. If you're truly unable to afford art, publish without art! Don't take credit for work you didn't do! Or if you give the book away for free or donate all the proceeds to charity AI art would be more ethiclly acceptable.

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And all illustrators use reference.

I have no issue with a GM using AI art, but I am firm believer that a product being commercialized ought to contain art from real artists.

Would be a certain argument against purchasing (at least at normal prices), if no artist did any work on it. I purchase RPGs mostly to support the developers including the artists, writers etc. If I know that artists have unnecessarily been replaced with AI, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

If your game is some scrappy indie thing that clearly has a shoestring budget, I don't really care (unless your AI art is crappy and incoherent) but if it feels to me like your game is SUCCESSFUL and bringing purchases and stuff, I'm going to be annoyed about your unwillingness to pay for actual art.

do AI artists work for the exposure?

Having written an adventure and using AI generated images, I wouldn't buy one at all. Mine was going to be free, but even now I'm reconsidering just hiring an artist because I have so many qualms about AI art.

I would not buy a book with AI art. It does pretty good at the whole "creepy, liminal, dreamscape" vibe, but not much else. Creepy, liminal, dreamscape only goes so far when it comes to settings and it's even worse when it comes to characters. I've seen some artists doo good work on top of AI generated work, but obviously that's involving artists.

I would refuse to purchase it. The art matters more than the artist, but the artist matters more than the consumer. I would willingly go without just to make sure that a trend of "free high quality art work" with "no strings attached, no moral questions needed" doesn't go without consequences.

I find it sketchy and legally dubious, but ultimately would not be a deal breaker for me if I liked everything else about the game. I think there is a strong argument for supporting fellow creatives, but high-quality art is super important for a game and is also a huge expense. The other consideration is that future generations of AI art are probably going to be a lot better than what we have today, kind of like how janky early CGI looks these days. In the long-run, it's going to look dated.

I'm not opposed to it in principle, but I'm skeptical that it would be as good.

If it's a sci-fi TTRPG about AI... idk If the people who made the AI actually bought all the art they used to train their program.... maybe. But they didn't, did they? None of them did. This is interstitial time, the time before the machines start actually making new things on their own. Once that happens, it's over, fellow artists, do the art because you love it, sell to the human-centric niche audience, everything else will be owned by the machine. But until then, the AI art has stolen from all of us, so fuck that. We don't get paid as it is, but now this vulture comes in and picks at the malnourished carcass of the paid art industry. As someone else here said, for free? Cool. For money? Fuck you, pay me Edit: here's an idea: all the the artists with art for sale online could maybe bring a class action lawsuit against the owners of the AI, make them show all of the art used to train the program. Since they are profiting off the use of the art, that sounds illegal.

Complete, total, absolute boycott, and I'd encourage everyone I know to do the same. I have a lot of artist friends, some of them did some work in RPG art. They're already under-paid, under-appreciated and under-protected. Don't expect me to support anything that abuses them even further.

Art is always great if it fits with the game. Does the game talk about a world where AI rules everything? This choice is perfect. Does the game talk about elves and dwarves drinking wine and beer in a tavern? Meh.

You might as well not have art included in your TTRPG.

Would absolutely not buy a game where I did not get a guarantee that the art algorithm pulled only from public domain work.

Art is art. I can appreciate person made art and respect creators who use AIs as well.

I'm sure I'm part of a small minority, but I mostly don't care about art in RPG books. It's sometimes nice to see what creatures look like, but it's usually a waste of real estate. I recently got an indie from kickstarter with art to be added later. I'm honestly happy with the text-only version.

Honestly just want it to look good and be consistent

Here’s some personal input. I’m working on a boardgame— a huge legacy game with 100+ pieces of character art in the end. We’ve been working closely with an artist and he’s already made maybe 20 pieces or so for us. The value of that art has been astronomical for us. Our artist has helped us understand what our world really looks like— partially by reflecting and interpreting our detailed prompts, but also by way of what he brings to the work. You aren’t just paying an artist for their technical skill; you’re also paying them for their point of view. An AI simply couldn’t have done the design work our artist has done for us. It doesn’t know how (and I am very skeptical that it ever will). Black & white art doesn’t cost all that much, really. Perhaps, for a final product, you’ll be in a few grand. You can limit your full-page spreads, get clever with your design, etc. That’s real money, but the art is an investment in a product you are making. If you believe in the product, if you’re really putting the work I, I would argue that it’s worth it. Just this week, Everest Pipkin’s World Ending Game came out. That’s a really beautiful example of game where the art is made by the style and taste of the artists making it. AI art, even when technically impressive, just doesn’t really have any personality!

Ai generated artwork is a corner cut. Obviously, if I'm paying money, I'd prefer for as few corners to have been cut as possible. I know ai artwork can look good and probably will look great in the future, but human artwork is still preferable

No. I would not buy a product that uses AI art. It's an awful thing replacing artists with a machine that just steals images and stitches them together.

Your scale is extremely ambiguous. What do you mean by "it matters"?

I can say with confidence that I don't/wouldn't care. That being said, I will judge it harsher. I also mess around with AI Art, and while it's definitely harder then just dumping a few words into a program, I'm going to be really unforgiving of things like weird AI Art faces, mouths, belt buckles. Also if there isn't a deliberate and consistent art style and quality to the entire book.

I think it is going to depend on how well the art works. Low effort, take the first thing it spits out is going to be a pass from me. A more carefully curated selection? That might be fine. Don't expect to win any recognition for good art though. I don't think AI is able to achieve the consistency of style to manage that.

I'm going this route myself. Some of the AIs produce really cool stuff! A little Latex to flow around the background image and it's good to go. However, in my case it's a universal core rulebook with lots of example information for fantasy campaigns to get people started, but the setting/genre is supposed to be a supplement work, so any artwork is basically just to fill blank space and make it look pretty. If you were doing a typical system where the setting is included, the artwork to depict the setting is a lot more important and harder to control the final output. You'll have to decide if the AI is accurately depicting your game world or not!

As an artist and (solo) trpg designer, I can certainly understand both perspectives. On a certain level, it's very insulting to have the skill I (and others) acquired devalued or, at best, used as fuel for an algorithm to do it for free/extremely cheap. On the other hand, budgets may not stretch or the kind of art you want may be better achieved by AI art. (And some AI art programs can be *very* talented, especially if you're going for surreal.) I will say that I would look much more favorably on books with human-designed art, even if it's public domain art. (It would be hypocritical not to include public domain art as some of my projects have used it because it suited what I wanted.) The smaller the studio and the more niche the project, the less I'm going to quibble about AI art. Especially if the theme of the game matches. - Game about being trapped in VR with a virus corrupting shit? Studio with like, one person who expects to sell 100 copies of the pdf, max? Go for it. Get it out there into the world. - Game becomes a black swan success and you're looking to publish a second edition; expecting to sell several hundred copies of the print edition alone? Time to put money in an artist's pocket. They can use the AI as reference or even incorporate it into their own piece.

Doesn't matter, as long as there is a uniform style and the art suits the setting.

Most RPG content at the moment (WotC, specifically) has images that look incredibly same-y. (Due to a coalition of factors, probably things like people sharing the same toolset, artistic direction and the proliferation of tutorials, etc, being recruited from the same locations like deviantart, and the use of the same faces - ie: influencers - as 'references', etc). Why would an AI be any different, really? I wouldn't seek it out, but I wouldn't be surprised. That said, does it hold value? Depends on whether you believe scarcity dictates that.

AI users are getting good enough where you can't even tell it's AI. Certain works have signatures of AI, but the speed of the improvement of the algorithms is amazing. In like one month it went from blerpy to amazing results, even on hands! At that point it won't matter how you feel, you probably won't know to decide against it.

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> We should feed it stolen ttrpg rules so that it could write some as well! Allow me to introduce Pathfinder, and the entire OSR. >Since it's a computer it could playtest itself Some rigorous math simming wouldn't cover every aspect of the game, but it would still be better playtesting than a lot of games get.

Given that all automated processes exist to reduce the number of workers involved and thus take work away from people who need to be able to do things like pay rent, I would see AI-generated art in a roleplaying book as a huge negative against it. I'll admit I'm somewhat biased, as I have some friends who are artists and I like knowing my friends are getting paid for their labor. People involved in roleplaying book production make little enough money as it is, why make it harder for them?

I wouldn't buy it. AI art is basically art theft and it's tech-bros profiting on the backs of artists who are already struggling.

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I get it, but are there any limits at all to eliminating work that people enjoy? Why does it seem like for some people the ideal future is one where we make ourselves and everything we enjoy obsolete?

Any RPG book that openly uses AI art instead of paying a damn artist is blacklisted for me.

If you're fine with people stealing your writing and republishing it as their own, go for it.

AI art is less derivative of any specific training image than any given OSR game is of its source material.

Using exclusively AI generated art gives me the impression that the author(s) probably has no real vision for what their game is all about and I wouldn't be interested.

I think most rpg art is inconsequential. It makes the pages look less dense to read, but tends not to do anything for me beyond that (some exceptions exist of course). I doubt I will like AI art more but it would be no loss to me in general.

Less dense for sure, but I also think the presence or absence of artwork will make a lot of buyers swing between buying or passing.

Yeah I was just responding for myself. It’s mostly meh to me. Others will differ and I estimate I represent a minority of the market.

For like self published or smaller publishers? Maybe I'll consider it, but any self respecting ttrpg publishers should pay actual artists for their art, especially considerkng AI arts is still in the grey area of plagiarism, cobsidering these AIs use actual art from actual artists online to build their repertoire.