The Culture: Visualizing The Old Material Better & Making New Stuff Fit

Thanks to Grok, illustrating 1st Edition in forms most people have no qualms with is easier than ever. Your Playable Races, for example.

That's arranged by height: Halfling, Gnome, Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Human.

Displacer Beast took some work, but this is what I've gotten so far.

Grok works off natural language, for the most part, but it is still lacking comprehension of archaic or highly-specialized words and phrases. "Horney" is one of them, which is why the Displacer Beast took several iterations as I had to find substitute words or phrasing to get the desired effect.

Grok also works off weights; earlier elements get more weight, so you need to put the important stuff up front. This includes any art style parameters. The reason I get Le Animu Images is because I state "1990s OVA Style (Record of Lodoss War + early Berserk Golden Age)" up front; with a Stylize weight on the back end ("--stylize 350") to further refine the range. Sometimes I get something like Lodoss, sometimes like Berserk, and sometimes like other stuff (e.g. Yu Yu Hakusho, Vampire Hunter D).

Yes, this means that if I wanted something more like Frank Frazetta, Brian Snoddy, or Alan Lee, I could get it easily. I don't; I want the Lodoss style because that's broadly appealing to most current, former, and (especially) prospective players today.

Like it or not, far too many people run off vibes; change the art style, change the trade dress, and you change the vibe- and the vibe attracts the audience you want. What keeps them is the experience of play coupled with the ease of playing: rules and Network Effects.

Which means that consistent addition of new stuff to play with is easy to present. Take the Daevites from the SCP Wiki. First I got a consistent description, and then I fed it through Grok. Behold.

I'll be writing Daevites up for AD&D1e later this month and publishing them at the Clubhouse.

It is now that easy for one man to generate and publish playable content. There is no need for people to consume Endless Product Slop anymore.