AI Art in TTRPGs: Backlash, Gatekeeping, and EN World

At the risk of sounding somewhat repetitive, I have to keep speaking about the use of AI and the creation of roleplaying games.

Let us be clear: using AI to generate images will make you enemies, but that is fine. And it is fine because, no matter what you do, whatever your niche or communication channels may be, there will always be people who oppose you, who will not value your work, who will leave a dislike, post an absurd comment, or simply try to go against you.

The clearest example of this is very easy to verify. Just visit any YouTube channel with a large following and plenty of engagement. No matter how high the quality of the creator’s content may be, there will always, always, always be negative comments and a certain number of dislikes. As Cipolla said, the proportion of stupid people in the world is constant, and they are present in every field, profession, and social stratum.

This reflection was prompted by my recent disagreement on the EN World forum, specifically in this conversation, which seems to have triggered some kind of personal vendetta against me. A moderator sent me a private message saying that he “suspected” I was using generative AI to write my replies.

At the time, I did not know that this was little more than an initial formality, an empty procedural gesture that would later be followed by another message that made no sense whatsoever. So I replied sincerely and politely that, since English is not my first language, I can read English perfectly well and express myself in it slowly, although not without making grammatical mistakes, and that I therefore write in my own language and use ChatGPT for translation so that I can share my contributions properly.

Since nobody apparently expected to receive an actual explanation, the response was simply a generic message, one that did not even apply to my particular case, stating that posts written with generative AI were not allowed, and so on and so forth.

This is just one example of the fact that there will always be people trying to sabotage your work without taking any interest in its quality. If you use generative AI for your images, be prepared to receive hate, make enemies, and receive polite generic responses, perhaps written by AI, that have very little to do with reality and serve merely as a screen for a much clearer subtext that is rather harder to admit in an official position: we disapprove of you using AI for your images, so leave. If you do not leave, we will make you.

I admit that I am sorry I will no longer be able to help people on EN World with my knowledge and experience, but unfortunately the world is a strange place, and sometimes an unfair and hostile one. Fortunately, I will still be able to do so elsewhere, for other people, and of course right here in my 5e-Free section.

P.S. Perhaps another day I will write about why I believe that the more creators there are on Kickstarter, whatever kind of creators they may be, the more all of us stand to benefit. Then again, my posts in that forum thread may already provide more than enough argument on the subject.

P.S. 2. Although the moderator who contacted me spoke in the plural, saying, “we mods have discussed this issue,” I cannot confirm that this was actually the case, and I am personally more inclined to believe that it was not. For that reason, I am keeping my references to this communication strictly limited to what I actually know: that I was contacted by one single, specific person.