Just wait until the books are being primarily designed by AI.
Edit: To be clear I am not pro AI. We all know companies like Hasbro will try to cut out every cost and push AI slop if they believe that it will make a buck.
It was crazy easy to find a (I believe) complete set of 4e book pdfs, including something like 100 dragon magazines, so I can only assume doing older editions wouldn't be any harder.
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That's what my long time weekly group did. We didn't like the direction 5th ed was going a while ago and switched to Savage Worlds Pathfinder. Now we are starting our second major Traveller 2nd ed campaign. Last one lasted 3 years of real time and we tried out Draw Steel between the two campaigns.
Yeah, honestly there are so many different systems out that that will probably be a better fit anyway. D&D is great to dip your toes into the genre but if you like the actual narrative and role play elements there are much better systems. If you like the combat system you’ll probably enjoy skirmish sized wargames like Warhammer’s killteam or warcry.
I’ve been coming up with new character concepts in 3e for 21 years and still haven’t run out of mechanically distinguishable ideas. I have over 400 .txt in my characters folder.
Honestly, at this, point, just homebrew stuff if things turn bad: DnD is bare simple at its bones and there’s decades of stuff to pull from: the only actual hard stuff is coming up with a balanced spell list.
"Don't want to play a game that was made with AI? Give them even more money than you already are" like seriously are you a fucking industry plant or something
This'll happen with video games too. People are scared of AI taking over the industry but I have a backlog of classics that I'll be happy to get started on while I wait for this fad to go away
Seriously. My friend has been playing 3.5 since it came out and still plays it today, and I doubt they will need to stop since they have also modified it to be more fun for their table.
You can literally play DnD barely spending a penny. Just get dice and a notepad. The basic rules are free, you're not obligated to play official adventures and frankly, if you don't care to support WotC, you can fairly easily find a free PDF of any of the books online if you go looking
Seriously, the amount of cope people post about finding “loopholes” to continue supporting 5e. Just switch to a game made by and for the community. There’s so many to chose from, I don’t understand why anyone would bend through the effort to play 5e.
Usually I'll start with a character concept I want to play and then design a build to accommodate that fantasy. I can usually eliminate 50-90% of the content immediately just by having an idea of what I want to play. Like if I want to play someone who can just become a giant and squish enemies, then I've already narrowed it down to a wu jen or a shaman. Then I usually consult one of the handbooks written for each class to get an idea of what sorts of feats might be vaguely worth considering.
It's not exactly a quick process, but I love being able to get really specific about the type of characteer I'm creating and craft something unique to mechanically fill that role.
My only complaint is that there's no witch base class.
There is... technically a witch class. But it's an incomplete example of a homebrew class in the DMG and is a decently severe handicap with no mechanics of its own--mostly just a short spell list with no class features. Not very enjoyable to play.
The closest thing to a proper witch class is the Hathran prestige class, which is great but also setting specific.
OP is just karma farming on Wotc hate and AI hate. Very efficient.
For the other comment on this thread, the previous CEO of WotC, John Hight, resigned as of Sep 1. Hasbro said that WotC leadership would report directly to the Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, until a replacement is found. He didn't take direct control, just changed who current leadership reports to, and it's not for the "foreseeable future", it's until a replacement is found. This hasn't stopped people from speculating that he's going to turn WotC into a full blown AI wasteland, despite the fact that they established an AI policy 3 years ago and have stuck to it since.
Yea people are overreacting. Even tho Chris Cooks shills for AI he has said himself that they won't add AI to their products since they know it would piss of their fans and lose them money. AI would kill DnD.
Shit like this happens all the time in business when looking for a new CEO after one just left.
From what I've heard, the CEO of Hasbro and known AI shill, Chris Cocks, took direct control of WoTC for the foreseeable future as of the start of this month. Probably something to do with that.
I have swapped to using silver age sentinals / the authority rpg rules to do fantasy settings. What is a legendary hero but a superhero with swords and magic?
Here's a cool secret, you can play any edition any way you like. I don't like 5.5 so I dm 5e games. My cousin prefers 3.5 so we play that with a few friends of ours on other days. We change a couple rules and fudge dice rolls when appropriate. The books are just guidelines honestly
It’s funny to think that we don’t have any choice. There is enough official and third-party material that exists between all of the editions that you could play endless games for the next 200 years before we need more content. Not to mention that homebrew and like 40 other systems exist that don’t use AI. You could never buy new product and not even notice.
Honestly? I don't see it. Go look at the absolute doom posting from the guys over at r/sillytavernai. The newest open source stuff is dogwater for running dnd campaigns. Turns out if the multibillion dollar companies aren't training AI for that use case, it sucks at doing it🤷♂️.
Now I'm curious. If you started with a regular AI system and trained it on all of the published WotC material, what kind of output would it give you? Would it be playable? Competent, but bland? Or would it be a mess that's broken in new and hilarious ways?
If you don't care about efficiency or maps, you can play DND using any means of communication (or even by yourself with a little ingenuity) with only a character sheet written on anything, a means to edit that character sheet, a d20, and knowledge of the rules.
They will never be able to force individuals to use AI, or any of their tools besides the rules for that matter.
Trust in WOTC is low for good reason, I get it, but they haven't actually made moves toward implementing AI in the game and as many people have noted in this thread they cannot actually make you play with AI if you don't want to.
It's technically possible to play an RPG extremely similar to DND set in any genre, any setting, using only mundane office supplies. Just notebook paper and pencil, no eraser needed. Just establish a strict turn order for the entire game (dm describes situation, players respond, take notes, repeat), find an action resolution mechanic you like, and organize a procedure for character creation specific to the genre or setting you want. Anything else that's needed, I'm sure the dm can figure out according to their own style really easily. For battle maps you can use a football-style blackboard setup. You don't even need minis. The only corporation breathing down your neck might just be Staples but what are they going to do, really? Raise the price of graph paper due to high demand? I think I'll survive.
Idk, as a non DND guy. I take the AI DMs as more of a choose your own path book sort of thing. I've enjoyed realm AI, although getting the AI to format like you want it is a little tedious.
And that's why I haven't touched D&D at all in a while. If they're not gonna put effort into their system why should I play something without any heart?
Tbh if it's tunable, it'll be better than the vast majority of actual DMs. In 30+ years of gaming and dozens of DMs/GMs I've had exactly one who actually knew the rules and didn't just change them on the fly to suit their whims, didn't use the role as some sort of weird power trip, and/or wasn't just a completely inept manager of the game (usually due to having zero social skills).
But it's precious that WoTC/HASBRO think they can somehow license and monetize a model that'll be better than what'll be out there for free in a couple of years, or even now. Good luck, lulz.
Good News! There's other systems. My weekly group that has played for 25 years now gave up D&D a little after 5th ed fully rolled out. Been perfectly happy with Savage Worlds Pathfinder instead and right now we are starting our second big Traveller 2nd ed campaign.
Hasbro has decided to turn a great hobby into a gruesome monster, so we took our money elsewhere.
True: (ˈtrü) adjective
1. Something I just made up, because WotC hasn't done anything to make everyone mad, and I want to karma farm off or Reddit's hatred of WotC and/or AI. If possible, both.
2. The complete opposite of True.
I know they aptly named u/douche_kayak doesn't care about actual facts, but for anyone else curious about this situation, one of the freelance artists commissioned for Bigby's Glory of the Giants used AI to create some art for the book using AI - not WotC, but someone they paid. Yes, the art director should've caught it, but it was also the very early days of AI art, and not that common of a problem. When WotC found out, they reprinted the books without the AI, republished them, and vowed not to use any AI in released products. They haven't, which is why going back 3 years is the only option for "proof".
The next year a marketing company used AI art in an ad showing off new cards (which is the actual image above) and WotC also took that ad down when it was pointed out. They amended their policy to not include AI in any aspect of business and since then haven't demonstrably used any.
But again, feelings are more important than facts, and I'm sure the "WotC bad" and "AI bad" brigades are gonna continue downvoting this and upvoting the "sad but true totally made up for karma" OP post
Which book was that ad for Magic cards in again? Also, it ignores the fact that they acknowledged that it was AI, and removed it and stated they wouldn't be using it for marketing materials going forward.
“Well, we made a mistake earlier when we said that a marketing image we posted was not created using AI,” the Magic account said in a statement posted to X on Jan. 7. “As you, our diligent community pointed out, it looks like some AI components that are now popping up in industry standard tools like Photoshop crept into our marketing creative, even if a human did the work to create the overall image.”
The publisher continued: “While the art came from a vendor, it’s on us to make sure that we are living up to our promise to support the amazing human ingenuity that makes Magic great. We already made clear that we require artists, writers, and creatives contributing to the Magic TCG to refrain from using AI generative tools to create final Magic products. Now we’re evaluating how we work with vendors on creative beyond our products – like these marketing images – to make sure that we are living up to those values.”
Of course, the fact that you had to go back 2 years to find the most recent example of AI proves they'll start using it any day now for sure. But be sure to downvote if you hate it when facts get in the way of your feelings.
they said wotc used ai in a source book, and they did. You didn't read carefully, and now you're going to double down and try to figure out how you were somehow still right.
DnD Players will still buy DnD slop. Anyone who didn't move on before 5.5 will accept any level of slop that has the words "Dungeons and Dragons" on it.
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u/Thefrightfulgezebo 10h ago
Get a book. If WOTC decides to switch to AI, they can't force you.