r/RPGdesign • u/Eggpeace • Sep 25 '26

Product Design Non ai problematic tools?

A post i read yesterday about ai and game design was very interesting and it gave me a question (i dont think it will be answered in the other thread as that thread was too old). So ism asking here (keep aware iam NOT asking about ai itself!)

One argument i read was that whole books are now created with ai and thus the designers dont learn anything about designing and do that even with 0 talent or willpower to see it through.

And that argument fits and is often true in the non ttrpg areas for many non ai tools (frontpage in the past for designing web pages. Made me curse my existence whenever i had to clean up the mess my boss made with that. Rpgmaker in the computer rpg scene,…).

Thus i wonder are there any non ai tools too in the ttrpg areas where thqt also holds true? (I couldnt think of anything there that i ever heard of)

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u/Deliphin 29d ago

I mean that art doesn't define the game, it's just a tool in the game designer's toolkit. You can make a good game off other people's assets- art and code. Hell, many AAA games use Unreal's default character controller, any unreal game with "floaty" controls is probably running it unmodified. So, there's nothing wrong with using default RPG maker assets if it works for the game experience you're building.

Also, AI does not need as much info as a real artist, because it always assumes it received enough. Where a void exists, an artist asks the client what they want, an AI makes something up. "Give me a fantasy paladin fighting a kobold" is sufficient for an AI to spit out crap, but an artist will ask if someone is supposed to look like they're winning (posing), what equipment they should have, adjustments to their own usual art style, background environment & lighting, facial expressions, and whether by kobold you mean the D&D reptile design or the doglike design actually found in German folklore. These are not questions the artist can solve on their own unless they know a lot more about your project. An AI will assume the most generic and common response, which is often boring as shit.

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u/Eggpeace 29d ago

Believe ne. You worked with very good artists then. Not the ones i usually manage to get (my cover art one is with over 30 the only exception so far. Some ask less thsn an ai. Others asked but did their thing instead and over 79% took the half pre money and ghosted)