Superman - A true revival of the Comic Film

 I saw Superman (2025) twice this weekend, and will likely see it a third time soon, and who knows, maybe a fourth. It's easily the best superhero/comic movie they have done in the last several years, and the interesting choices made by James Gunn to lean heavily into the comic book reality of the movie has, I feel, paid off in spades. This feels like an actual comic book movie, they could have easily called it "Action Comics Issue #1024" and that would have been perfectly okay. It's an optimistic, uplifting film filled with crass villainy that gets soundly defeated, and it does not shy away from providing allegorical content that one can readily read in to. It's the opposite of most Marvel films, in other words.

Gunn's prior comic book outings are starting to reflect a sort of form and style that is consistent, which I suppose is good, as it means you know what you are getting with him, but it does mean you might watch this movie with a recognition of his particular style in the craft. For example, it is now clear to me that every movie Gunn makes has to have that moment in it where someone, usually with a small but incredibly dangerous object, proceeds with what can only be described as a madcap moment of violence that plays out in the background as a sort of montage or collage, often entirely in one take. We've seen it repeatedly in Guardians of the Gaaxy (standing out with Yondu's arrow sequence in the second GotG film), Harly Quinn's hallucinatory rampage in The Suicide Squad, and now Mr. Terrific and his T-Balls vs. Lex Luthor's army of raptors and mad scientists in Hawaiian shirts.

If you've heard about the movie being "woke" then be assured it is, but that is not to the detriment of the film. The "wokeness" of this film is just optimism, human decency, and a desire to see the old, better America stand out...the one that used to care about being decent and good, instead of cruel and spiteful. Salon's review describes this better than I ever could. 

I will say, if you feel (like I have) that the golden age of Superman films was with Christopher Reeves in Superman from 1978 and Superman II, then I think you are likely going to find this film to be a worthy successor. The worst thing I can say about it is that it starts rather jarringly in what feels like the middle of the third act of a normal film, but this only ultimately lends further to the unique take of the film, and I enjoyed it even more on a second watch. A+++! My favorite film so far this year, maybe even this decade.

Reinvigorated! Or maybe Reanimated?

 Well I am feeling less burnout this week! But also sometimes more burnout. I did a deep dive into various systems and found that I was definitely starting to sense a pattern in my interests. Here's what I realize now; noting that this isn't a unchanging constant; just what my tastes seem to be running to in the moment:

Verisimilitude Over Abstraction: I prefer somewhat more simulationist systems, which favor verisimilitude over "rule of cool" as a natural recourse. I liken this to the difference between a movie where our hero drops 10-15 feet and seems to take injury or has trouble getting up from such a fall, vs. other movies (Marvel films come to mind) where same hero seems able to drop 30-50 feet and is unphased, even without having super soldier serum to explain his massive invulnerability.

This means systems like BRP, GURPS, Mothership, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Cyberpunk Red and Dragonbane are standing out to me because they provide meaningful engagement levels with some sort of baseline "reality" but some other systems....even ones I like....aren't feeling too good to me at the moment because I am not presently "vibing" with the idea that the abstractions on the character sheet and in the system are really just numbers and have more to do with "did this look cool?" than anything else. That rules our D&D 5.5, Cypher System, Fantasy AGE, Tales of the Valiant, and no doubt others.

Pragmatic Character Info: I'm preferring systems which communicate clearly what you rcharacter is about, without a lot of rule-flipping and holistic interpretation. Pathfinder 2E is not a good example of this; it is laden with weird feats, obscure conditionals, and a balanced mechanical process which means skill sets are very "meh" in figuring out how your character looks different from another similar character. Contrast with BRP, which narrows the character generation to a set of common baselines defined by genre expectations for powers (if used), but in general you can look at a character sheet and understand what it means to run that PC without having to crack the book open constantly. 

The System Respects Theater of the Mind: lots of games these days lean in to the popular desire for maps and minis, and I get it; those can be fun (I suppose). But I have run RPGs for most of my life without such gimmicks, and the sorts of stories I want to convey through gaming these days (and most days) work better when the players aren't focused on the ancient wargame element that remains embedded in conventional takes such as D&D. Admittedly GURPS, as an example, supports elaborate hex-based movement and suggests this can be useful; I have played in GURPS games where the GM used this to effect, and I get it. But I have also run (and played) in countless GURPS games where it was all theater of the mind, and the experience was always more creative and superior. So systems which either implicitly or explicitly support TotM play are preferred.

No Authorial Overtones: I won't single anyone out, but if the system has a heavy authorial overtone which tries to tell you how to play, either explicitly or implicitly, that can be a real turnoff. The author does not trust you to play the game the right way for you, the end-user, and that is just not cool. I can be in 100% agreement with the game writer's viewpoint and this will still piss me off because it is an attempt by the author to control the narrative on the end user experience.* 

There are quite a few RPGs on the market today that like to talk about how their source of inspiration was, shall we say, a racist person in his time, and then denigrate his works, even as they then proceed to write an entire system around said works, implying there was still merit to the man's creations, enough for them to exploit for money. Hypocrisy! It makes it very hard to take such works seriously. Either you acknowledge that you are, indeed, inspired by the creative works of said author which means you feel his imaginative developments have merit and inspiration beyond the unpleasant bits you did not like (okay, yeah, I'm talking about Lovecraft here) and will expand upon his vision despite your dislike of his century-old racist attitude, or you maybe should decide that its ethically better for you to go write a different game and leave well enough alone. I'm looking at you, Age of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror. 

Sometimes it feels like these games were written by authors fearful that their audience would get mad at them for not appearing cognizant of these perceived injustices or social issues. The best head-scratching example I can provide is in Liminal Horror, which has a paragraph about how its not cool to play cops, authority figures or people with wealth or means. This, of course, is actual nonsense; part of the point of RPGs is the ability to explore roles beyond most people's grasps....and horror as a medium is excellent at skewering all sorts of professionals and the wealthy with equal aplomb; its not merely the purview of the poor and downtrodden to be murdered by eldritch cults. But if you were writing this game a few years ago when there was a strong push on social media to "strike back at the man" or you are a younger author (spiritually or physically) enmeshed in antiauthoritarian counter cultural values, then this might feel like a sensible paragraph to put in, no matter how utterly stupid and counterfactual to the actual genre of horror it is. 

Important: despite this minor rant, I really like Liminal Horror as a mini-system; it occupies a unique concept space and I look forward to the Kickstarter backed future edition coming out soon. Also, I find that entire rant ironic given that the best module produced for Liminal Horror so far, the Bureau, is entirely about a fictional authority organization inspired by the Bureau of Control from the eponymous video game. So one of the system's first modules directly contradicts this angry little countercultural paragraph that demonstrates a woeful lack of imagination and genre understanding right off the bat. 

Okay, rant off! Tonight I plan to close out the D&D 5.5 game, and am proposing we tackle Dragonbane or Mothership next (because that's what I packed for).

*Note that I am not talking about games which have advice on "know your audience," sections, or talk about the use of the X card. Those are just practical advice (don't run a game for 9 year olds with Kult, m'kay? or if you are running for a diverse crowd of Gen Z players, an X card may be quite revealing if you are not good at reading a crowd as a GM). Admittedly, if a game tells me to "remove the spiders if a player is offended" my internal advice is: don't run a game with spiders for someone who is scared of imaginary spiders, you know? Maybe find different players?

True Burnout

 In recent weeks I think I hit an almost unassailable wall. I have bailed on a Saturday game night (admittedly, family stuff dragging me away from it as well), but also because I was running out of steam as GM. I have bailed from as much else as possible. I am still running Wednesday night, but even there I am finding the old spark for D&D is gone. I am not even sure its purely a "5.5 is kinda meh" problem although that doesn't help. I need to get this campaign to an end so I can look hard at what to do next, and see what happens. 

I've been fighting with periodic burnout for years, but this time around feels different.....a first for me to make active efforts to dodge out of GMing, something I have historically always enjoyed, but with this recent shift escaping from that responsibility is now now proving so enticing. I have bought some new RPGs of late, stuff I should be very excited about (Daggerheart, Cypher System Neon Noir, Batman Chronicles RPG and more) but I just can't find the motivation or interest to engage with any of it. I am finding most of my free time is subsuming into reading, both regular books and catching up on my comic and graphic novel collections. I'm just.....dang, I hate to say it....worn out on RPGs and gaming at the moment. It's weird. But maybe not so unexpected; I've run an average of two games a week now for most of this century, what did I expect?

Being a player doesn't even help! It's fun for a bit, but never really been the side of gaming I enjoy all that much. It does keep me involved in the friend circle, I suppose, but my sense of dedication as a player is paper thin; I find reading, playing a video game or watching a movie to be immensely more satisfying. 

I'm hoping this is just a phase, and some time off will rest me up for a more productive GM future. But I also worry its a side effect of age, and maybe a general component of just slowing down a bit, with my interests and desires shifting focus. Deep down I am one of those introverts, and know that without effort it is very, very easy for me to sink into an isolation quagmire and that is not ultimately terribly healthy. I must ponder.....I am sure I am not the only one who has experienced this.

EDIT: I may not be giving D&D 5.5 enough credit for how much it impacts my desire to game. I just read Alexandrian's hot-take on Calibating Expectations with 5E and it really resonates with me as a clear enunciation of all the core conceits of this edition that just make it so much less fun for me.

As the Werewolf Changes

 During last night's game I was surprised to notice that Jackalweres no longer have a problem with silver in the 2025 Monster Manual. So in checking out the other lycanthropes I discovered that hey, it turns out in D&D 5.5 you can harm werewolves with anything, normally, now. They get a few extra HP and a slight AC boost but lose all the mythological flavor of the thing they used to be.

This got me to thinking about how they looked in other systems, so I thought I'd plunge down that rabbit hole a bit to see:

AD&D 1E/2E: Can only be harmed by silver or +1 weapons. So at this stage in the game, low level PCs who have trouble finding magic weapons really need to carry a silvered weapon with them just in case.... In rereading their entries I assume they transform as an action but maybe it was as part of their movement. I seem to recall running AD&D where they could move, transform and attack all in the same combat round, which makes sense in the longer 1E turn cycles.

D&D 3.5: Gain damage reduction 10/silver but only in hybrid and wolf form, interestingly! Shapeshift is an action. Looking at the old format for D&D 3.5 stat blocks on monsters reminded me of how convoluted and information dense they were; how interesting to see that the 2025 MM swung so far to the opposite direction that the current stat blocks feel anemic and drained of all color and flavor.

Pathfinder 1E: Have resistance 10 to all attacks except silvered weapons! Change shape is a move equivalent action, and they induce lycanthropy on a failed saving roll following a bite.

Pathfinder 2E: They have shapeshift as an action, and are vulnerable 5 to silvered weapons. Lycanthropy is induced on a failed save.

D&D 4E: they have regeneration 5, but silver stops their regeneration. They shapshift as a minor action, and they do extra damage against bloodied opponents. Instead of imparting lycnathropy as a disease they induce moon frenzy, which behaves a bit like the confusion spell (but does not end with the inflicted turning into a lycanthrope, interestingly). Diseases and curses in 4E were notoriously weak and ineffectual.

D&D 5E (2014): resistant to nonmagical or silvered weapons, but shapeshift as a standard action. Still have some flavor text that leans into making werewolves interesting in a traditional way. If bitten, on a failed save you just have lycanthropy now.

D&D 2024 (5.5): They gain 13 hit points and get a better AC, but lose any special resistance to ordinary damage, and silver is not even mentioned. They can shapeshift as a bonus action. Lycanthropy if bitten, but you have to reach zero hit points for it to take effect.

Tales of the Valiant: Werewolves are resistant to non-magical damage (silver is not mentioned here either). They induce lycanthropy as a curse after biting someone who fails a save.  

How about some of the other games out there? Let's see:

Swords & Wizardry Complete: mirrors AD&D 1E; so they can probably shapeshift as part of their turn, and are immune to nonmagical, non silvered attacks. Lycanthropy is automatic in an opponent reduced to 50% of their hit points by the werewolf.

Dragonbane: Werewolves hate silver as it deals full damage (along with fire) and messes with their senses. They take half damage from non-magical weapons. taking even 1 point of damage from the werewolf induces both paralysis (potency 9) and lycanthropy, and can only be cured with powerful magic or wolvesbane. And on its monster attacks a 6 induces a berserker frenzy in which your party probably dies!

Basic Roleplaying/Call of Cthulhu: They have regeneration, are immune to most damage (silvered weapons will do full damage and kill them on a serious wound, though), and taking any damage from a bite induces lycanthropy, which can maybe be avoided on a luck role if the bite also severs the limb that was bitten. Nice! The BRP statblock addresses magic and fire doing full damage as well.

Cypher System: they are level 4 creatures, which normally would mean 12 health but they have 24 health. They can cause lycanthropy if you are sufficiently injured to be reduced on the damage track. They take a long time (1D6 rounds) to shapeshift if caught in the act.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG (GURPS): These things are terrifying with damage resistance 15 against all attacks except silver (which does double damage and ignores the DR), and they regenerate 1 HP per second (GURPS combat rounds are 1 second long, so for D&D purposes that's 6 HPs of regeneration for a D&D round). Interestingly Dungeon Fantasy punts on the lycanthropy as a bite-induced curse with some flavor text about how the local temples try to keep that under control, and the rest of the statblock ignores it. GURPS Werewolves from the 3rd edition sourcebook of course does a lot more that I won't belabor here.

Fantasy AGE: They show up in the Bestiary sourcebook, and can induce the lycanthropy curse on a stunt, with the difficulty being based on how many stunt points are applied. The inflicted makes checks each night until the full moon; if they don't kick it before the full moon they go full lycanthrope. There's a section on lycanthrope vulnerabilities, but silver is mentioned as only one possibility, with the GM encouraged to customize for the campaign.

Mythras: Mythras punts on this one terribly and you need to go dig in the wolf section to get a sense of it. Ostensibly they are emulating older, more archaic notions of shapeshifters rather than more modern takes on lycanthropy, I guess? 

Mork Borg: It's actually a character class, the Cursed Skinwalker (in Feretory). You die, and your body is possessed by an animalistic presence, returning you to life as a cursed skinwalker. a bloody, skinless wolf is only one of your options. Tangentially werewolfish, but it wouldn't be Mork Borg if it was conventional now, would it? 

Okay, it was at this point that I ran out of energy (I was looking at The Fantasy Trip's take, which is to lump werewolves and vampires together as cursed/diseased species when mental fatigue just overwhelmed me). I have to say, if you want a werewolf to be scary, then there are two games that do this exceedingly well: Call of Cthulhu/BRP and Dragonbane (with honorable mention to GURPS/Dungeon Fantasy). The least scary edition of the the werewolf can be found in the current D&D Monster Manual for 2025, which is a real shame; it really lacks any of the color and vibrancy of the mythology it derives from. Curiously, they have done a better job with some other monsters in the book (medusa got a slight improvement imo, for example) so it is a shame to see them drop the ball here just because, apparently, someone might not want to be bothered with finding a silvered weapon? Weird. Very weird. Aside from D&D 2024, the next worst take on werewolves is (imo) Mythras, which puts the least amount of effort into the concept, delegating lycanthropy to a paragraph in the wolf statblock section.

This is making me want to consider Dragonbane for gaming in the very near future now, though. 

Genuinely Tough Fight - So yeah it is possible to take out D&D 2024 PCs

 Brief post, but my D&D 5.5 campaign last week had an actual tough fight. The encounter balance was on the high end for a group of 6 players with a competent NPC ally, against 4 vampire spawn (CR 5) and 12 CR 1 satarre from the Monster Vault for Tales of the Valiant. Half of the party dropped before victory was snatched from defeat. I admit, I used some competent monster tactics, including the vampires putting out the light sources in the chamber on round two, plunging the room in to darkness. Somehow, amazingly, only two of the six party members had any darkvision so that created a harrowing round or two until they secured some light.

The real killer wasn't the vampires, although like many monsters in the 2025 MM they do have a slight boost in that their main attack leads to an automatic secondary benefits (grapple) rather than prompting a saving throw. They do then get a bite attack if a grapple is landed, which alas does require a saving throw....so only one bite was made successfully in the session. My experience with D&D has been that, on average, PCs make their saves unless something weird is going on. 

But the surprise moment in the encounter was the satarre, vicious void-driven gecko/lizardfolk things from the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault (and other books prior). They are only CR 1, but they get two attacks, which land with base damage plus necrotic/void damage. The result was that I had a furious level of success with them....they could overwhelm D&D 2024 PC defenses with so many attacks, and in the space of two rounds three PCs dropped. 

Afterwards, we agreed it was reflective of the fact that while the 2025 MM has monsters that often benefit from simplified effects in their attacks (with a secondary benefit landing automatically, for example), the Tales of the Valiant monsters seem geared to hit a bit harder.

I am not 100% sure if this entirely true (many of the changes I have caught so far in TotV are along the lines of Kobold Press design standards simply being broadly applied to their own variant system), but it does make me want to play Tales of the Valiant in a pure form at the game table even more than usual. I need to convince the group of this. With many more new tomes coming out that contain player-facing archertypes and material this may be an easier sell now. Labyrinth, The Old Margreve, a Player's Guide 2 in Kickstarter and a forthcoming Book of Swords adapted to Tales of the Valiant are all full of useful player stuff, something the core Player's Guide was a bit short on with only two subclasses/archetypes per main class. When you have an old, experienced and jaded group like my own, they need more weird stuff, not less. 

Anyway, if this happens I will report more on it.

Handheld Gaming Update: ROG Ally X vs. the Switch 2

 Well much has gone on in this weird space of "video game devices you can hold in your hand." In prior posts I talked about my experience with the Asus ROG Ally, the Steam Deck, and the Lenovo Legion Go. Since then, I have ditched the Asus ROG Ally and Legion Go, selling both to cohorts who found good homes for them. For the Steam Deck I have my original, but last year I upgraded to the Steam Deck OLED model, which was a nice improvement in terms of screen quality and battery size. 

And then....I picked up the Asus ROG Ally X, about a month or so back, when I saw it on a bit of a sale, and just last week wandered into a Target and found a Switch 2 on the shelf. So no sooner had I pared my handheld collection down than I reboosted it back up. This does mean that I have been exploring the advantages of the Asus ROG Ally X more or less in tandem with the Switch 2, and have some thoughts for those interested. 

Right off the bat, I'll just state this: if you want the best overall handheld device with the most flexibility, I think the Ally X is the best choice. It has superior screen quality and processing power to the Switch 2; it has better battery life; it does rest on a Windows 11 platform but I understand you can load up Steam OS for Linux if you see fit. While a Xbox themed ROG Ally X is on the horizon, that doesn't appear to do much that this one doesn't other than provide a streamlined Windows experience. I have been running plenty of "play anywhere" Xbox titles on the Ally X already with excellent results, so not sure how much better the branded edition will be.

The Switch 2 does have some cool features going for it, though. They are very specifically as follows: you can play most of the original Switch games on it, so backwards compatibility in like 95% of cases so far; it is a smaller "footprint" and weighs less than every other handheld except the original Switch and Switch Lite; it runs all those Nintendo games you like (well for me that's the Xenoblade games, Metroid, and I dabble in the Zelda titles but never get far in them). It's got gorgeous visuals compared to the original Switch, and a surprising number of older games run better on it, which is good because not many Switch 2 games are out yet, certainly not enough to merit a purchase on their own. If you get a Switch 2, grab Fast Fusion, it is easily the cheapest and best tech demo for the system yet (at only $15 USD it is much cheaper thank both Cyberpunk 2077 and Mario Kart World, both of which are also good tech demos for the machine).

Both systems have some downsides. The Ally X is still a Windows environment, and that can be annoying. It's a much smoother experience now than when the original Ally came out, however. They also fixed the MicroSD card problem, so that's a positive (don't even try using a MicroSD card in the original Ally unless you want to heat-kill it). The Ally X is a bigger device, so its a bit chonkier (not as chonky as all those Legion models, though).

Meanwhile the Switch 2's downside is that if you compare games on it to equivalent games on the Ally X, you will immediately realize that the best Switch 2 can do right now is at best mid-tier for what the Ally X can do. I was running Gears 5 and Starfield on the Ally X and it was a smooth experience for Gears 5 and pretty good for Starfield, but if you load up Cyberpunk on the Ally X and compare it to the Switch 2, you will notice that the Switch 2 version is doing some tricks to make it work, while the Ally X is just a better overall experience, with more options to tweak the graphics to suit to taste (Switch 2 have quality and performance mode, that's it).

EDIT: should mention price. While the Ally X goes for around $800 base model or $900 for a model with more storage, the Switch 2 of course is $450, which many news outlets have been complaining about. As price goes, its actually pretty reasonable. It's not 2017 anymore, unfortunately; a $300 original Switch is simply not going to hold a candle to the Switch 2. I feel like I got my money's worth, in other words.

For owning both systems I am content to have them, and they both have their use cases. For travel I kind of prefer the Ally X overall, but the Switch 2 continues to allow you the ability to play games without having to check in on the internet (unless you've set it up that way), and has a smaller print when it comes to packing and portability. It also is built for multiplayer experiences, and can handle that easily. The Ally X makes up for that by letting you access any of your PC gaming libraries on the go. Both seem to have decent battery life, as far as handhelds go; but you want to tweak Ally X to improve overall performance. I haven't tried running them both down yet, but I have gotten more time of the Ally X overall on an unplugged playthrough.  

Cypher System Rising

 As the weeks have gone by I've begun to settle on a system with consistency: Cypher System. I mean sure, I've run this plenty in the past, but I've honestly not run it in a good while and I think maybe now it would be the ideal solution to my doldrums. 

Cypher System does have some warts, though. It's a player-roll facing system, meaning the GM never really needs to roll dice except maybe for some random cypher charts or something. 99% of the time the players roll to attack, roll to defend, roll to take action, etc. So this does mean that the core conceits of the system depend on player honesty and understanding of this mechanic. A player who unfaithfully does not report a roll of a 1 which incurs a GM intrusion, for example, is defeating a key story-telling element of the game. 

The second issue with Cypher is really user-dependent: the system's dice pool methodology has some "numbers that mean other numbers, and ways of making tasks reduce in difficulty that also mean converting to numbers" sort of approach that can seem simple enough to some, and can be oddly baffling to others. I know that when I first got Cypher System I sat on it for like a year or two because the core conceit of the system seemed so counter-intuitive to me, and felt like it would be a real hassle to teach people. I eventually pushed past that (long, long ago) and quickly grokked and loved the mechanics for what they are, but this has always proven to be a problem for at least two of my regular players. One of them has actually expressed keen interest in playing it though, despite my recalling she was very frustrated with the system in the past.....so maybe she (like me) suddenly grokked it. 

The third and final issue I have always had with Cypher (and other players of the system as well) is that XP gain is pretty quick, and the rules as written make it that way. Your characters advance over 6 tiers of play, the system's version of leveling and in each tier you have four advances which cost 4 XP. In addition, there are a range of temporary and circumstantial benefits that can be gained by spending XP. In the past, and this tends to reflect the first edition of Cypher, it was easy to see PCs gain power creep by advancing fairly quickly in tiers (especially if they horde XP for long term advancement, as that only takes 16 XP to hit a tier cap). This led to a problem where the PCs were improving overall power level faster than the GM could readily account for it (a polite way of saying that you could plot out threats that in a matter of sessions become trivial and inconsequential for the players to overcome). 

My first few campaigns of Cypher System (all in the first edition) ran into this issue, as I would tend to hand out enough XP through GM intrusions along with 1-2 XP at the end of the session, and the players hoarded XP so they tended to tier up every 4 sessions or so. After 20 sessions the PCs were approaching tier 5 and the storyline (and my newbie GM experience at the time) meant my plot was pacing for a group about half that power level, and they were already hitting what felt to me like godlike levels of performance with boosted Edges, talent pools and effort levels. In Cypher System, higher stat values often simply mean that difficult tasks at tier 1 by tier 4-6 often become "descriptive sentences in which the GM explains how cool you are" as you step past a task...unless of course the GM wants to drop an intrusion on you.  

Under the Revised rules there's more wiggle room baked in to how one goes about handing out and allowing XP to be spent, so I think this will pose less of an issue. The new rules emphasize options such as requiring players to spend XP awarded in-game to be spent in game, and XP between sessions (so end of game, for goals met, story arcs progressed, etc.) to be retained for tier advancement. The GM can award XP at a slower pace as well by focusing only on XP gained through character arc advancement, and between-game awards amending that total for specific "group/plot" goals. They give the GM a lot of leeway, in other words.

In addition, as the group levels up I have since wrapped my own head around the idea that higher level threats and concerns in Cypher System are (and should be) more about discovery, cosmic revelation, and existential threats of unusual nature, and the things which were of dire nature at tier 1 are now just footnotes along the way. 

Either way, I am looking forward to this planned excursion, and I have been pretty exclusively focused on what I can do with Cypher next. I am still mulling over the idea of Numenera vs. one of the Cypher genre settings (or maybe Magnus Archive which is rather cool), but its definitely going to be this. 

Hot Take: D&D 5.5 is kind of boring now (but it could just be me)

 Well, the title says it all: I played more D&D 5.5 ongoing last night, and while fun was had, I realize I've been avoiding combats, sometimes like, a lot. We have them; the game kicked off with an encounter between the group and a red hag, some millitaurs (both from Tome of Beasts), and a stone giant from the new Monster Manual. The fight was brief and while its "sort of fun" the combat wasn't terribly exciting for a group of level 6 PCs, nor was there much in terms of dynamic interaction......D&D 5.5 is basically a process of generating numbers (attack rolls and damage) to make other numbers (hit points) go down. Words are interspersed to imply something different is going on, but ultimately it is a very basic process. 

I would argue this isn't entirely a D&D 5.5 issue, and not even really an issue; I may just have played this game for too long now, and its no longer as exciting. But there are some fingers that can be pointed: D&D 5.5, for example, has some big numbers being thrown around, and there's not a lot of nuance; the notion that someone might miss an attack isn't terribly common; its far more likely that the staying power of a monster isn't in resisting damage or avoiding it, but instead in being a bag of hit points. All of the older mechanics that let a monster bypass, ignore, or deflect damage are mostly gone these days. I was musing on the fact that the red hag, with her magic resistance, was still easily dropped by magic missiles in the final round (she was whittled down to a few HP left) because, unlike the original incarnation of magic resistance from long ago there's no possibility it would affect magic missiles. 

The characters all have their cool attacks and abilities, but these are by and large the same abilities, used over and over again, because the game system has since at least 4th edition been trying to flatten out and remove all the bubbles or bloat in character options; the bygone era of 3rd edition where a PC could have too many choices to pick from in terms of actions and strategies are a thing of the past, for the large part. It all plays more or less the same.

So for me, this means I spend an inordinate amount of gameplay time focusing on the story, exploration, role play moments and mystery because that stuff is fun and doesn't get old. But for my players, some of them do look forward to those combat moments. It is hard for me to admit to them that....yeah....those combat moments are just not doing it for me. And for some of my players they aren't that excited anymore, either. 

Last time we played Cypher System a couple of my players commented that it was really exciting to play a game where the combat/conflict was genuinely exciting and unpredictable, with a sense of tension. It is very, very hard to get that feeling in D&D 5E. This is, of course, why a lot of my recent posts are all about figuring out what game system I want to play next.

Heck, I feel like I would love to be playing this exact campaign I am in, right now, but with the Cypher System and Godforsaken fantasy book. That would be cool! And fun! And surprising. Maybe that will be what we do next. 

On AI Slop Part 2 - When the AI Consumes Bigger Projects

 I just received my hardcover copy of Delta Green: God's Hunt, a four part campaign series that is, as all things tend to be with Arc Dream and Delta Green, really cool. The reason it comes up is because, in a rather interesting observation from my son, we were looking at the cover, and I was speculating on the insects on the cover swarming the astronaut when my son said, "That really looks AI generated." 

I was a bit defensive at first, suggesting that there appear to be obvious tells its not AI generated by the use of certain painting techniques, such as on the bugs, to evoke imagery through a stylized brushstroke, and that I wouldn't think AI could easily replicate that, but I sort of realized that yeah, at this point it probably could. Moreover, my son pointed out some other inconsistencies, such as the difficulty in telling where a thumb is on the hand. My take is, the thumb is hidden....but in consideration, that's not really an easy "pose" for a human hand. But still....it seems so unlikely to me this would be AI art, right?

Well, when I read the contents of the book I find that there are credits to Dennis Detwiller as the art director and illustrator, which is interesting. There's no other artist in the book? My old school self is just impressed at Dennis Detwiller's art talent even as modern me is growing suspicious. My son, however, finds it odd that no piece is evidently signed, as real artists tend to leave signatures. I don't muddy the water by pointing out that AI can probably imitate badly scribbled artist's signatures easily enough. 

When in doubt on these things I google a bit, and do hit a patreon notice about Dennis taking steps into using AI art. I'm not a patreon supporter so can go no further on this, but it does lead to me now leaning toward the notion that my son, in fact, is right. 

All of this is a bit of a shame. I really want to enjoy my Delta Green works, but at the expense of real artists? I am more than a little uncomfortable at supporting projects out there which are not giving real artists a fair shake. To contrast, there are an enormous wealth of real artists supporting the gorgeously illustrated Daggerheart RPG (more about that soon.) You know all those weirdly bemused reviews I and many others had about the oddly off-putting art in the new D&D books? Yeah well all the really cool, evocative and inspiring fantasy art is sitting in Daggerheart, which resoundingly slaps the D&D art  around when it comes to showing it how its done. But if you do some searching, people have at times questioned if the art in the game is AI generated, and while this has been refuted, it is an example of how the use of AI more broadly is impacting the ability of people to tell when a real person is behind the art. 

Anyway.....more examples of how AI generated art is creeping in to places you could not or would not expect it, and the unfortunate results. Look, I get that some AI art is now reaching the point where it is quite impressive. But every time I see a piece of AI art like that, it means somewhere an actual artist was not given a chance to show their work and get paid for it. I know art is probably one of the most expensive components of writing an RPG product (especially for small press publishers), but this is one corner of a larger erosion of human value and input into the picture; I'd rather just not buy a product that doesn't support live creators (be they artists or authors) than contribute to a product that removes live creators from the mix. Unfortunately this means I need to be more meticulous in my consideration of Arc Dream purchases in the future.  And if I am on Drivethrurpg going forward, if your art credits on your listing don't look like the ones on Daggerheart RPG which says "hand crafted" (see here), then I am going to assume that declining to identify your Creation Method (as Delta Green Products do, for example) is tacitly endorsing AI use in your art, and that's a no-go for me. 

AFTERTHOUGHT: I was looking through older Delta Green books and it seems Dennis Detwiller is pretty consistently the only identified illustrator, even when its from books that predate the rise of AI generated content. This certainly makes sense, as Delta Green has a pretty distinct style to it and having one illustrator will keep that style. Maybe Dennis doesn't want to identify himself as utilizing AI in the art to avoid conflating his use of the tool with his own style, but this is only exemplifying my point: AI is muddying the waters here, badly, when it comes to identifying human generated works vs. AI generated works. So I suppose if, regardless of tools in use (treating AI as a tool) the artwork would remain consistently the vision and intent of Dennis Detwiller then there is perhaps no conflict here. But how much longer before we start seeing competition that uses AI with prompts like, "Make it like Dennis Detwiller does?" I can see a lot of art like that on Drivethrurpg already.....even with the "block AI art" button turned on. 

No matter where you look at it, this road doesn't end well for human artists and authors. 

Random Musings - AI Slop on Drivethrurpg (and elsewhere)

 I was browsing Drivethrurpg.com and noticed a lot of what looked like AI generated content (cover images on the home page). Sure enough, these were listed in their descriptions as containing AI generated content. I double checked my account settings and the icon said I had it set to turn off showing AI generated content. Hmmmm. I clicked it on and off again and now it seems to be working.

It is weird, because there is indeed a lot of AI generated content. The one image I checked out was a solo scifi book (solo journaling book? Not sure). The woman had too few fingers (but had a cybernetic hand so who knows) and her negative percent fat stomach had more muscles than I think actual human bodies do. Still, it seems like there's a lot of this art out there. 

As someone who grew up in a family of artists I can empathize with the irritation and existential threat that AI art creates for real artists doing real work. From a purely aesthetic perspective I find the AI art to feel derivative and soulless. But from the writer's perspective, after decades of battling with people who liked to pirate work and complain about cost (as there's a majority out there who are good consumers of content but have no creative bone in their bodies) I eventually let it go with the caveat that hey, these people who pirate were never going to pay anyway. 

While I gave up on the fight of protecting written works, I feel a bit differently about AI art, though. I am not a great artist myself by any means, but if I put some effort into it I can do something halfway okay. If you are a good artist, one would like to get some fair compensation for your work, right? But AI art removes the creative soul from the process, generates a product that is purely derivative of other works, and ends up being, to use the popular term, slop. 

A lot of people like slop, though. And some of these AI products I saw on Drivethrurpg.com are probably not coming with content that was heavily written by a human, and may also be computer generated. How much of a market is there for this? None of the AI stuff I saw appears to be showing up on the top 100 list on the site, so that's probably an indicator that people prefer content with actual agency behind it. If this is true, then does this content, which will only appeal to people who are not bothered by AI slop, really harm anyone anymore than the pirates who would never pay for a PDF will not also harm anything?

The answer of course is: yes it will, as does the ancient problem of piracy and the devaluation of the work and effort a creator puts into their work, be it writing or art. But without a good solution, which the internet overlords are disinterested in providing unless it suits them to do so in some way, nothing will happen here. AI slop will, over time, devalue human work as it becomes more normalized. PDF piracy at least diminished somewhat, but people still engage with it and continue to perceive a PDF as somehow having no value to it despite containing the core energy and creative output necessary for the PDF to be worth downloading in the first place.

There's not much to be done other than to abstain from supporting AI slop generators. Likewise, to not pirate PDFs if you want to reflect a respect for the creators of actual human content. But these things require taste and consideration, and the large crowd out there that has grown conditioned to consume content regardless of quality are a tidal wave of cultural destruction.

Okay, rant off!