Anti-Influence

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

I deleted my "X" account yesterday. I still have the FB account but I only look at every few months and haven't posted to it in years. I have a few discords I'm subscribed to, but except for the Cauldron one, I'm only checking those to see if people are direct messaging me. I'm kind of off televised news, though I keep tabs on major things going on in the world via NYT and the BBC. 

And my wife, of course...she's required to follow all the news as part of her job.

I have an...hmm..."odd" relationship with the ChatGPT AI (or "Oz," as I like to call it). I bounce ideas off it and dredge it for collecting and collating data that I can use for my own purposes. There are some things it does well, and some things that it doesn't. It ain't good at formulating creative ideas from whole cloth...for example, it is shit at adventure design. But with the right inputs and management, it can help critique, point out flaws, or suggest strategies for things I'm working on. It can also draw from a fairly wide swath of information floating around the internet and collate/collect that in one place for my own use. It's "word association" abilities are extremely powerful: for instance, it is VERY good at doing natal astrological interpretations (something I studied/practiced extensively in the past), even including things like Jeff Green's Pluto work, astrocartography, and hooking it up with various alternative forms of self-analysis (Mesoamerican astrology, Chaldean numerology, etc.). That biz is...so far as I can discern...already rendered obsolete by our digital oracle.

Of course, it can also do blog posts with the proper prompts...here's a version of my Q1 post from the other day, entirely generated by Oz to my specifications (including my own, slightly combative, style):

The Demonweb Ain’t Broke: In Defense of Q1 

Let’s get this out of the way up front: Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits is not a broken module. It is not a clumsy capstone. It is not some Blume‐butchered disappointment. It is, in fact, one of the most conceptually ambitious, mechanically coherent, and spiritually true high-level AD&D modules ever published by TSR.

The real problem? People don’t read it right. They come expecting a coronation and get tossed into a meat grinder. They want a cinematic climax; they get eaten by spiders. Good. That’s the point.

“It’s Just a Bunch of Random Monsters!” You mean, like every other classic dungeon module? The Demonweb isn’t a carefully curated monster museum. It’s a divine hunting ground. The ogres and gnolls? They’re not “out of place”—they’re minions of other demonic powers. Yeenoghu and Vaprak don’t send hand-written invitations to Lolth’s palace—they send troops. Gifts. Tribute. Some may even be spies, working their own angles. Does Lolth care if they live or die? Not in the slightest. She uses them like everything else in her domain: bait, misdirection, or cannon fodder. Players think they’ve walked into an ogre cave, and then two rooms later they’re fighting type VI demons. Welcome to the Abyss.

“It Doesn’t Match the Drow Stuff from D3!” Because it’s not part of it. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be. D3 ends just fine on its own. The whole Elder Elemental God thread? That’s Eilservs’ nonsense, not Lolth’s. You already solved the surface world problem by killing a bunch of giants and wrecking Eclavdra’s political coup. Q1 isn’t a narrative continuation—it’s punishment for pushing too far. You wanted to rob a goddess? You get dragged into her realm. No XP for surviving the fall, either. If anything, Q1 elevates the material. It doesn’t clean up loose ends. It hands you a loaded gun and dares you to shoot a god with it.

“The Layout is Dumb and the Web is Confusing!” Have you met Lolth? She’s not Asmodeus. She’s not running an orderly Nine Hells power structure. She’s a sadistic chaos demon who lures prey into her lair and toys with them. Of course her palace is a looping planar web of death. Of course it doesn’t make tactical sense. She doesn’t need defensible corridors—she can teleport at will and summon infinite demons. The layout isn’t a mistake; it’s a personality profile in map form. If your players can’t navigate it? Good. Let them get lost. That’s what happens in spiderwebs.

“The Magic Item and Spell Restrictions Are Arbitrary!” You’re in the Abyss. It’s not supposed to feel fair. The rules change because the cosmic substrate changes. That’s what makes it a plane and not just “another dungeon.” This is exactly how you make high-level adventurers sweat: strip away their crutches, tilt the field, and watch them scramble. Spells don’t work right? That’s not a bug—it’s a feature. The players aren't in Kansas anymore. They’re in Lolth’s mind-palace. If she wants your staff of power to flicker and short out, she doesn’t need a reason.

“The Final Battle is a Letdown!” Only if you’re bad at running gods. Lolth isn’t some CR-appropriate set-piece encounter. She’s a divine being. If your party expects to kill her in 12 rounds of initiative trading, they deserve what they get. The goal isn’t to win a fair fight—it’s to survive a divine tantrum in her own reality. You want closure? Fine. Let her escape, vow revenge, and ruin your party’s next three campaigns. Or kill her and deal with the planar fallout. Either way, it's more interesting than yet another evil high priest with a snake staff.

What Q1 Actually Is 

 It’s not a dungeon. It’s not a set-piece. It’s not a capstone. It’s a theological statement rendered in graph paper. It’s divine judgment in the shape of an adventure. It’s what happens when players mistake “level 14” for “invincible” and get handed their own entrails for breakfast. Q1 is one of the few modules that understands what high-level D&D is supposed to feel like: desperate, disorienting, and dangerous. Not balanced. Not fair. Not neat. Just deadly, weird, and unforgettable. 

The Demonweb Pits don’t need fixing. They need understanding. And if your players hate it, well...maybe they shouldn't have tried to rob a demon goddess.

Not bad, but still not really me. And not just because of the lack of typos and grammatical errors...the flow is somewhat different from the way I write (which is, admittedly, rather haphazard, so maybe that's a good thing...?). Being abrasive alone isn't enough to make something a "JB original." 

Not yet.

The thing is, the AIs available to us will only become smarter and more self-directive as time goes on...that is crystal clear, and I've come to accept that. Right now, AIs are on the verge of rendering many (most?) jobs that require "intellect" (i.e. non-muscle power) completely superfluous. And in a year or two, with the constant doubling of the things' computing power and expanding knowledge base, it could well render ALL intellectual pursuits (yeah, even adventure design) "superfluous."  And I'm...okay with that. Which is to say, I've come to accept that my brain, once considered somewhat special (at least by me), will be utterly dwarfed and pwned by a person with the right AI tool and one or two clever prompts. At some point, it will even reach a place where it won't need a human "overseer" to check its work...AI will have grow adept enough that it will be able to do that itself better than a human...ANY human...even one with decades of experience in a particular field.

That will be an interesting time to be alive.

And understanding this, I think I've decided that, for myself, I will continue to focus my life on the one thing I can control that AI cannot (although it can give me advice if I like), namely: how I live my own life. How I interact with my fellow humans, and what I do...in my daily life...that is in aid of the relationships and interactions I have with my fellow humans. AI can't get my kids out of bed, feed them breakfast, give them hugs with supportive words, and drive them to school. AI can't coach kids on the soccer field, firing them up with the right words, and instructing them in the tactics they need in the moment (our team is 4-1, by the way, with two games to go before playoffs). AI can't join its voice with others in hymns at Mass on Sunday, helping to create a shared, spiritual community. AI cannot make eye contact with people, shake hands, high five, or laugh out loud at a friend's joke.

And AI can't run a table as a Dungeon Master.  

As AI becomes more and more able to take over ANY and ALL work that is done over a computer (which includes everything from creating music to creating artwork to creating films with AI actors), I suspect that what will become increasingly valued within our society will be performative-based.  I don't see professional sports (as one example) going away any time soon, because even if you could make a robot that plays football (or any sport), it is not the operation of a machine that entices or inspires peoples. We have many fantastic machines in this world: airplanes and skyscraper-tall cranes and power plants. Remarkable marvels worth a glance, worth noticing, worth studying or writing an essay about. But that's not the same as following a human performer through their trials and tribulations and human drama and marveling at the skills they display in executing their craft.

As humans, we tend to be self-centered...and other humans are far more interesting to us than the machines that populate our world. 

So going to see someone perform music live, or going to live theater, or attending a sporting event...or any event where real, live humans are "doing" stuff...is going to remain a "thing" for a while to come. Having a friendly, smiling human acting as your cashier or serving you food or directing you at an airport is going to continue to be a part of having a functional society. Even if the majority of our books are written by AI and the majority of our purchases are delivered to our homes by autonomous Amazon vans.

That's fine. I'm okay with that. I have an identity that is based on how I live my life and how I feel about the life I live.

That wasn't always the case. The title of this post is "Anti-Influence" because there was a part of me that, once upon a time, wanted to be an influencer of some type (not that I would have used that term)...for the sake of my ego, I wanted to matter to other people. I wanted my thoughts, my words, my actions to have weight and help bring people around to my point of view. Over the decade-and-a-half that I've been writing this blog, publishing books, and participating in the on-line community, I probably have had some influence...in fact, I know I have, based on what people have told me.

But I'm done with that. I am. Call it a "newfound humility." I don't want to influence anyone anymore. THAT is not my raison d'etre...that is not the reason I was put on this earth. 

Which doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing what I'm doing (blogging, writing, communicating). It just means that, deep down, I'm not going to have any ulterior motive. I will continue to share my little pieces of this or that, and will continue to say things like "5E is bad, 1E is good," etc. (along with reasons why) but whether or not any of it has any IMPACT, or whether or not I have any "relevance"...something I used to stress about...no longer makes a difference to me. That is just chasing something...and not something worth catching at this point in time. Not even possible with the new changes to our world and the speed with which those changes are being implemented.

You, my dear sweet readers, will not see any more AI-generated content from me...I can promise you that (even if we reach a point where AI-generated content is truly indistinguishable from my weirdness). Books I publish, blog essays I post...they're all going to be self-generated. Not because I think they're better than what ol' Oz can do, but because GENERATING THAT KIND OF CONTENT IS WHAT *I* DO. "Writing stuff," well, that's my "work" (such as it is), and allowing AI to do it for me would render that work meaningless...or, at least, valueless to ME. 

I'm not doing this stuff to make money or influence people. Like coaching or DMing, I do it because I love doing it. ALL the things I do out of love seem to be things that have no financial incentive for doing them. And I'm okay with that, too (or, rather, I've come to be okay with that). Just being able to do them at all is a privilege that I cherish. Truly.

Have a wonderful week, folks.

: )

Working

Apologies for not posting recently. Currently working on something. 

Meanwhile: everyone's good in the 'hood round these parts. The kids want me to run them through N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God and I have agreed. It's our first venture into the "Idaho Deathlands" because (of course) Orlane might as well be Coeur d'Alene. Problema is, that I was using Potlatch for Hochoch which is ridiculous as Coeur d'Alene is about 50 times the size of Potlatch. Maybe Nampa? Except that Nampa isn't old enough (being founded after Coeur d'Alene)...

*sigh* I'll figure it out. Hopefully before their characters are all killed.

SO...busy, busy, busy.  More later.

Donating to Tao

Work progresses (page 35 and really starting to enjoy myself...I do so get a kick out of my own material. Yes, I'm hopeless). Unfortunately, I've got to take a break to do a bunch of unpaid writing/editing work on behalf of some dude as a favor to my wife's boss. It's inconvenient, but I'll try to knock it out fast so I can get back to my REAL work...demons and plagues and sorcery. You know..."the usual."

HOWEVER, I've been remiss in not mentioning Alexis Smolensk's current "self-crowd-funding" project. Alexis, poor guy, is currently out-of-work and looking to stay afloat while finishing up the editing/polishing of his new novel. As such, he's asking for donations and offering a bunch of stuff (an adventure he's written, cool maps, t-shirts, etc.) as rewards depending on the level of funding you're willing to "gift" to him. Since I'm a fan of his work, this is a good opportunity for me...I can donate a few ducats from my "game fund" and get a peek at how he designs his adventures, which I look forward to reading alongside my copy of The Dungeon's Front Door. Nothing like having the practical application along with the theory, right?

[by the way, Alexis was same-day prompt with getting me my PDF rewards upon donation. Just haven't had the chance to open them yet...]

Anyway...okay, back to the grind.

The Ten Year Campaign

I've mentioned Alexis Smolensk and his blog more than a few times over here. He has one of the most detailed, thoughtful, and long-running D&D campaigns you'll find...he has made it his life's work, something he eats, sleeps, and breathes. I wouldn't say I stand in awe of the world he's created or the time and energy he's devoted to it...I've known, and known of, enough people like Alexis (dedicated, passionate artists) that I've seen what's possible. But I certainly admire, and am inspired by his work in an arena (gaming) to which I've given so much of my own time and effort.

This is not to blow flowers up Alexis's ass. Like everyone, I'm sure he likes to get compliments. But for an artist, it doesn't matter whether I compliment him or insult him. The Work continues. Internet opinions aren't going to stop that train from rolling.

SO, as I was saying, I can draw inspiration from the work he does. And the other day, he mentioned that he knew of no campaigns (besides his own) that have run for even as long as eight or nine years. Personally, I've heard of such long-lasting campaigns (and some that have lasted 15 years or more), but I haven't experienced them myself. Heck, the longest D&D campaign I've ever run only lasted 5-6 years...and that was in my youth. I've never played in another person's campaign that had existed even half that long.

And there's a lot of reasons for this lack of staying power...some good, some understandable (if lamentable), and some that are downright bad. Regardless, the responsibility for the campaign lies with the person running it (the DM) and so, if you appreciate and enjoy long-running campaigns...if you find it desirable to see a world develop over an extended length of time, with an on-going cast of characters...then there's only one person (the DM) that can make such a thing happen. 

How bad do you want it?

I worked at my last job from September of 1999 to January of 2014...certainly longer than any RPG campaign I've run. And while my job was mostly enjoyable, challenging, interesting, and satisfying (personally, if not particularly financially) it certainly wore on me after the first...oh, nine years or so. Certainly by a decade in I was ready for a change. However, I stuck with it for the usual reasons. Inertia. Familiarity. Fear of looking for something new. Etc. I'll say one thing for Paraguay...coming down here helped me break out of my rut.

[though it's always possible I'll go back to my old job when this Paraguay thing is finally over]

I enjoy or, rather, have enjoyed running long-term campaigns in the past, but I have a fear, a nagging suspicion, that I couldn't sustain the enjoyment of the thing over 20+ years. How could I? Even presuming new scenarios, new monsters, new treasures, new challenges dreamed up (or stolen from ideas on other blogs), wouldn't the thing, the adventuring, get old after a while? Even assuming I had a constant group of players (or at least new ones cycling in as old ones left), wouldn't *I* -- the guy running the game -- get tired of the thing eventually? 

To which my inner "Alexis voice" replies: How would you know when you've never yet tried.

Dammit, Smolensk.

So, now I'm considering creating something I've never really considered in the past...a campaign setting that doesn't simply have a nice premise and a few adventure ideas to last a handful of game sessions. No, now I'm thinking about something larger...something large, period. A world, a campaign, designed to last ten years.

That's ten years of "real time," by the way. 520 weekly game sessions. Long enough to take my boy into his teenage years. I'll still only be in my early fifties, of course...plenty of time left to find something else if I'm bored at the end of the decade.

Such a campaign would certainly be easier to run with a traditional level-XP based system like D&D (the constant carrot of advancement). And it seems like it wouldn't be all that hard to maintain at a decent level, so long as I'm moderate with the XP doled out to the players. I was crunching some numbers, and I found that with an average of 1500xp per session, characters would only obtain levels 12th to 14th (9th or 10th for an elven fighter-mage)...powerful, but certainly not "godlike." And this was an average, mind...you could certainly scale it over time. For example:

130 weeks @ 600xp

130 weeks @ 1200xp

130 weeks @ 1800xp

130 weeks @ 2400xp

Not that it would be (or should be) so "planned out;" the point is that a campaign can be structured on a ten year time period, to provide enough reward to allow advancement and player satisfaction without taking the game into the stratosphere with regard to power and overwhelming ability. With an eye towards which magical items might be found and in what numbers. With an idea of the factions that might be encountered, the "dungeons" that might be on the map, the challenges that would face characters with regard to training and character development, etc.

Not just a "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" campaign, in other words.

Anyway, that's something I've got into my head to work on developing (in my spare time). Of course, I have no players at the moment (and won't until I'm permanently back in the USA or my children are a little older), but at this point I have time. And I can use that time to plan, and develop, and incubate this concept...so that when I do have players, I'll be ready to unleash it.

Just thought I'd share.

; )

What does an adventurer look
like after ten years of play?

Writers

*whew*

Not much time today...just got the baby down to sleep. Usually, I can do it in a four song set (and truth be told she's often out halfway through song #3 "Heavy Metal" by Sammy Hagar), but today had to double down with Free Bird and The Zoo. Consequently, the other baby will be waking up any moment now. In fact, I think I hear the pitter-patter of little feet as I type this.

Mmm.

I want to take a moment to thank all the kindly responses on yesterday's post. Yes, I need to get in a game. Yes, I should just go ahead and work on my "holy grail heartbreaker." Yes, this is probably as much about withdrawal as anything else...steeping oneself in an in-depth review of and D&D edition (even 4th Edition) can cause unexpected side effects. You should all take that as a warning.

No, I don't plan on doing anything like an "abridged 4E" myself. Really. Not even to get me a warlord class. Face facts, folks: the warlord doesn't really work as a low level archetype except in a game like 4E...though if you're interested, Will B. over at A Wizard's Kiss came up with a nice little B/X version. But something else is roiling around my brain, and has been for days now.

More on that later.

Today, I spent a good chunk of time looking up a couple old friends on the internet. Specifically, old writer friends. Well, friends who always (as long as I ever knew them) aspired to be writers. They had word processors as soon as such was available on a personal computer (back in the early 80s), and were plenty fond of typewriters as well, and were always writing short stories or working on adolescent novels. I wanted to see what they'd been up to lately...specifically, had they published anything recently?

Turns out, it doesn't appear they've published anything. Ever. At least not that I could find.

Nothing noted or mentioned on their social media pages (in which both are very active), nothing floating around the internet or available at Lulu or Amazon. Couldn't even find any blogs for either, though it's possible they're going by handles other than their actual names.

Both had links to writing workshop type places/sites. One lists "writer" as a past occupation.

That's kind of depressing. Though both seem to be doing fine, and have other creative outlets (one even has a band thing going on the side), but still...these two really, really wanted to be writers.

I never really thought about being a writer. When we first moved down here (to Paraguay) my wife suggested I list "writer" as my occupation, since I had no other job and I intended to at least try to do more writing. "Game designer" wasn't one of the options on the immigration documents.

But writing is what I do now (well, and try to be a father, usually. Oh, look, here's the other rugrat now. Let's put on the TV for him!). I suppose people who knew me (in college anyway) would probably be a little sad to find I'm not pursuing some sort of acting career...but I've got kids and a mortgage and can't screw around with auditioning on the possibility of landing the equivalent of "temp" work. And nightly rehearsals? No way my wife would stand for that!

[I should note I did actually do some English voiceover work down here for the Paraguayan government...still waiting to be paid, though]

Writing is something I seem to be able to find some time to do, and while I'm not especially proficient at it, at least the regular practice (blogging and whatnot) is making me a little better. I'm still a hack, but I'm a (self-)published hack, at least.

[jeez, it's a weird world, though I suppose I should have seen this coming. I used to think astrology was antiquated superstitions. I used to say that there's no reason I'd ever need or want to learn Spanish. I used to rip on English majors in college]

[heck, once upon a time I was in favor of the death penalty. I was a stupid kid about a lot of things]

Anyway, my friends don't have the same excuses I do for not writing. I'm sure they have their own, different excuses (of course), but...well, these people were so sure of what they wanted to do with their lives, back when I knew them. I was never "sure" about being an actor...I liked acting, I was good at it, and I really couldn't stand any of my other subjects in school. There was no major in "games" back then, or I might have had an easier time. But these cats wanted to write, they did write, they studied writing, they gamed with me (both) as much or more for the stories we were creating in play as for the gameplay itself. And both eventually grew out of gaming because it wasn't writing.

I wonder if I'll still be doing this ten or twenty years from now. I wonder if I'll still be trying to do something with the written word. I wonder if I'll consider myself something other than a hack.

This isn't meant to be a "poor me" post, by the way, nor a judgmental look at my friends. It's more of a my-how-the-world-turns thing. I'm not sure I could have (or would have) imagined my life being like this back in 1995.

Okay. Baby's awake again. Got to go! Boy an hour passes quick around here.
; )