The Conical Rabbit

 AI art, like procedures, is often criticized for lacking the creativity and imagination that comes from human artists. Both AI art and procedures can be seen as a systematic, step-by-step approach to creating something. While this approach can produce highly technical and precise results, it can also be limiting and fail to capture the unique qualities that make art and storytelling so special . Ultimately, it's important to strike a balance between structure and creativity in both AI art and procedures to truly capture the essence of what makes art and storytelling so engaging. Procedures can ruin storytelling by making it too formulaic and predictable. When stories are too focused on following a set of pre-determined steps, they can lose their uniqueness and become boring. Additionally, procedures can limit the creativity of the storyteller , preventing them from taking risks and exploring new ideas. A good story should be able to capture the imagination of the audience and tak...

Anything that’s a part of the game is going to shape how the game is played. A great example of this is alignment. Alignment is a game mechanic common in fantasy tabletop RPGs, and a very controversial one. People have argued about whether or not alignment is an essential part of Dungeons & Dragons for decades. The latest edition dropped the concept entirely, and there are many games that don’t use alignment at all. Alignment as a game mechanic is an easy target for problems. It’s often presented as an absolute, and if a character does something that doesn’t fit with the alignment, then it’s a matter of poor writing, or poor understanding of the game, or simply poor roleplaying. (I’m not going to get into whether or not alignment is good or evil, or how it works or doesn’t work. That’s not really the point here.) But even if alignment isn’t used during play in a given game, it’s often still a concept that’s very present in the game. If a game is set in a fantasy world with multiple...

 Encounter-based gaming is one of the hallmark features of D&D and OSR games. A series of encounters is a structure for allowing players to interval train their characters. Interval training is a concept from fitness training whereby one exercises for a set period of time, takes a short rest, and then repeats. For example, I might set a timer for a minute and then walk as fast as I can. When the timer goes off, I stop and rest for a minute. I repeat this until I have reached my desired distance. Interval training is more effective than sustained exercise when trying to increase aerobic capacity and it is also a more time-efficient method. In other words, it is a great way to exercise if you have a limited time. Encounter-based gaming allows players to exercise their characters, i.e. to develop the characters’ abilities and to increase their resource pools. This structure is also time-efficient, so it is ideal for short gaming sessions. An encounter-based structure also allows p...

 What do you do when your players decide to smash down a locked door? Here’s what I’d do: I’d ask my friend what sort of damage they’re dealing, and then I’d make up a number that seems appropriate. If my friend is swinging a two-handed greatsword and dealing 40 damage per hit, I’m thinking that they’re not going to need to hit the door more than seven or eight times to get the job done. If my friend is swinging the same sword but dealing only 20 damage per hit, I’m thinking that they’re going to need to hit the door fourteen or fifteen times. If my friend is just kicking the door—no weapons, no armor—I’m thinking that it’s going to take them a lot longer. If this is a one-time thing, and the door is just a simple plot device, I think that’s fine.  If this is a recurring thing, and the door is protecting the secret entrance to a villain’s lair—or something similarly important—I might want to take a second to make a note of how many hits it took to break the door, and then use ...

"Challenge Rating" is a number designed to represent how difficult an encounter with a creature or group of creatures would be for a group of adventurers of a given level. When designing encounters, a GM is now supposed to take into account the Challenge Rating of the creatures they include, and "balance" the encounter appropriately. This is a huge shift in Dungeons and Dragons - and one that I think is troubling. In older editions of the game, it was assumed that the GM would take into account the relative strengths of the creatures in an encounter and the relative strengths of the party and design encounters appropriately. There was no need for a mechanical system to "balance" encounters, because it was assumed that the GM would do so.  This is not to say that encounters in older editions of Dungeons and Dragons were necessarily "balanced" - often they were not, and this was seen as a good thing. It was assumed that the GM would take into accou...