Well, it’s been nice knowing some of you, as this post will certainly rub some people the wrong way.

Yes, it’s about my AI use.

I have this desire…nay, need…to work on TTRPG-related stuff right now, so I’m at That Point in my annual cycle. I have put great distance between myself an anything “high fantasy” related which narrows my opportunity for resources, and have possibly halved it again by gently laying aside science fiction-heavy settings. I’m still on the “The Secret World-slash-Delta Green” axis which I’m sure represents a genre that is well cared for in the TTRPG world, but is still lacking the kind of near-universal support that high fantasy gets. I also think it’s a little more difficult to work with the “eldritch in modern times” genre as it’s way too easy to cross the line from terrifying cosmic horrors to Scooby-Do.

I came up with the idea to mine part of a plot of a novel that I was familiar with. This story takes place in modern day and while it doesn’t have the breadth of terror that both TSW or DG offer, it’s primary concern is pretty cool in my opinion. The likelihood that anyone I know would be able identify the source of the adventure I’d base it on would be pretty small, so I decided to run with it as my foundation.

That’s kind of where it ended. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me where to take it…or how to rekajigger the original story idea into a completely different box of my own design. That’s when I turned to AI. I entered in my basic premise, and asked it to give me an outline of a potential TTRPG adventure, specifically focused on The Secret World. The results were…kind of mind-blowing.

Unfortunately, I can’t run down what it spit out because it would be one whole mass of spoilers but as I was reading the recount of the plot, the characters, et al. I was very impressed with the overall arc of the story. I figured it was good enough for the broad strokes, but I decided that I’d need some “side quests” to flesh things out, so I asked it to provide such content and it came back with some additional missions that fed into the main arc, but wouldn’t advance it at an unacceptable speed.

After consideration, I realized that this adventure was a bit short and could be a bit quick for players who were much better at unraveling the plot than I would be presenting it to them, so I asked to have a five-adventure campaign drafted in the same setting, with the same original conceit and I have to say that I am far more impressed this time than I was before. After reading the synopsis of each adventure, I had two thoughts. The first was that this was a great story: coherent, hits the right beats, stays close to my original modified concept, and should be really fun to play.

The second was that I couldn’t possibly have come up with this story where my mind is at right now. Looking at what AI created, I was concerned about why I couldn’t have come up with this myself. I felt kind of dumb, but I’ve already talked about my general condition when it comes to creative projects lately. I do not feel dumb asking AI to take a stab at it, though. It’s given a good foundation, and for the second pass, I did not ask it to fill in the holes for me.

That’s what I’m doing now: filling in those holes, or trying to. Since each of the five adventures is just a synopsis, I’m working on fleshing them out, building characters, and creating side quests and situations. In fact, with what I have in front of me right now, I’m feeling that the stuff I am adding is of pretty high quality — not the same quality I was once capable of in my youth, but much better than what I felt drove me to ask AI to do it in the first place.

I don’t know where this falls on the “it’s OK” to “you’re a horrible human being” spectrum, but that’s for me to decide. I feel that AI has provided a good starting point, although it leaves me questioning the extent of my mental fog if I couldn’t come up with something at the same level as what it provided. There’s something about the output I did receive, though, that seems to have reignited part of my brain that used to be able to do this kind of thing without effort. I’m not going to jump the gun and scream “I’m back, baby!”, but at least I was able to get some help that will hopefully put me on the right track for the future of this project.