The Business: You Deserve To Be Beaten By Bots

I do not care about people using bots for commercial ends. Jon Del Arroz gets into why, sentiments I share.

The thing that naysayers don't want to admit is this: no cares about anything but the result.

Furthermore, the Culture Industry, and several segments within it individually (e.g. artists), have no one to blame but themselves for LLM-driven tools to be able to poach their positions as they are doing now.

"But the writing-"

Is trained on the metric tons of mid-as-fuck copy churned out by hand over the last several generations written by people. Fiction, non-fiction, technical, etc. it's there and it does the job required of it.

"But the art-"

Is exactly what it trained on, with the capacity for remixing.

"But folks can-"

LOLno, they can't. You have to fuck up really hard--that's a PEBKAC error, meaning HUMAN error--for anything bot-generated to be so obvious that Normies and similar mass audiences will notice, and even minor mistakes will be overlooked by all but the most obsessive or expert observer/reader. (No one's noticed the flaw in yesterday's cat pic, but I did because I know the subject matter, and I left it there because it's a comedy enhancement.)

This is why I don't care that Wizards of the Coast is using it. WOTC, for all its faults, still is more Mammon Mob than Molech Mass and they have to deal with all the retardery that too many "creatives" aligned their way are prone to doing.

Which leads to a few other things people don't want to admit that the bots are really good at delivering:

• Folks want "The same, but different", which bots are fantastic at delivering. Revealed Preference shows this in the success of franchises and series over original IPs, and those IPs that do succeed do so by being "Like (X) but (Y)".
• Tabletop, being wholly and utterly reliant on Network Effects for value generation, is all about "The same, but different". Too divergent? Commercial death, every single time. WOTC, not being run by total morons, can do basic pattern recognition over time and notice where the drop off is and hard stop there.
• Players, especially the Current Edition cohort, are long-trained to see Conventional Play as a place for FanFic Fappery and--as The Second Story recently explained in detail--Fanfiction Ruins Everything.

The result is this: The reason for the bots being able to take over is because the people already made bots of themselves, so all that's happening is something that can do the same thing faster and with less cost/liability that we saw with automation in manufacturing and other forms of mechanization.

The consequence is that this is contributing to the collapse of the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play, which is already non-viable commercially outside of WOTC (because all of you lying twats go cap-in-hand to Kickstarter/Indiegogo/etc. to beg for money; that's not a business, that's--at best--busking with extra steps).

Maybe you should consider that you're in the wrong business, that Tabletop's commercial viability isn't in pushing product, and that you should earn your sustainance elsewhere if you refuse (like OldPub) to adapt to the new reality and Do The Meme while it all burns down around you. WOTC is not, which is one of the reason they'll still be around when all else has fallen down.

And for the hobbyists? This is how you get tools that produce equal-quality work, at a fraction of the cost, so that you can compete within the Network and win.

Just look at what I did in minutes adapting the Colonial Viper to BattleTech with Grok. All I'll need to do is double-check the math.

• Feature:
  • "TOS Viper BT: ""Viper Mk I"" (20t Light ASF, Energy Dogfighter)"
  • "RSG Mk II BT: ""Viper Mk II"" (20t Light ASF, KE Gunfighter)"
• Tonnage:
  • 20 tons
  • 20 tons
• Safe / Max Thrust:
  • 9/14 (ER140 XXL; ≈22g equiv.; pilot-limited; Viper 12-15g)
  • 9/14 (same; RCS reverse thrust std; Viper jackrabbit agility)
• Fuel:
  • 5 tons (400 points; ~5 days ops; Viper endurance)
  • 3 tons (240 points; combat ops)
• Structural Integrity: 4/4
• Armor: (N / LW / RW / Aft pts)
  • 8 / 7 / 7 / 8 (1t Ferro-Alum; light/rugged; max Nose=SI×2=8)
  • 8 / 7 / 7 / 8 (same)
  • Heat Sinks: 14 DHS (sustained energy fire) / 14 DHS (ballistic cool)
  • Weapons:
    • (Primary),"Nose: 2× Clan ER Medium Pulse Laser (14 dmg; red bolts) LW/RW: 1× Clan ER Small Pulse Laser ea (heat5/dmg5 ea)"
    • "Nose/LW: 1× IS LAC/5 ea (30mm KE; 5 dmg ea) RW: SRM-6 + Artemis (8 missiles; hardpoint equiv) External: 3× hardpoints (nukes/ bombs; dorsal cannon approx)" Ammo / Ordnance,None (energy pure; Viper lasers),1t LAC ammo (40 shots); 1t SRM (100); 4 hardpoints (nuke-tipped)
• Cost (C-bills),~12 million (exp. XXL/Ferro) / ~14 million (+ballistics/ammo)
• BV 2.0 (Alpha Strike),~720 (elite dogfight) / ~810 (missiles/nukes boost)

The TLDR is that the reason for bot-takeover of a lot of media production is because it replaces the mass of mediocrities that struggle to do Good Enough by deadline to spec, and man are a lot of "creatives" showing their asses by objecting to this fact; they can be--and are already being--replaced by men who are not afraid of the tools but instead recognize first the reality of media production as a business and then recognize that the value they add is not in the grunt work of churning out bitchwork material but in the managerial end of project management and editorial oversight.

That describes most of the Tabletop people out there: mediocrities struggling to do Good Enough on time and to spec.

It is no surprise that those with the acumen necessary to lead projects from start to finish are increasingly embracing the tools that allow them to quickly reach the point where hands-on human intervention adds value to the final result. This reduces costs, reduces time to market, and increases quality while sifting out liabilities (usually in the form of dead weight, unreliable actors, or trouble-makers- the folks behind a lot of DEI/BRIDGE/SJW bullshit, as it happens).

If you want to know why I say that the future of the hobby is a return to an underground existence as a non-commercial hobby, shit like this is part of the reason why. There is no need to pay people for products when you have all the tools needed to generate what you want, when you want, how you want for free.

The Culture: Democratizing The Use Of Art For Coin & Culture Alike

Earlier this past week I posted the following to Twitter.

I used Grok--the site itself, not via Twitter--to generate them.

I am using this for the Tower Campaign specifically as references for players, and I have been generating images for characters, items, locations, and events for some time. I've settled on this Lodoss War style look because I like it, and it meshes well with other gonzo elements in the campaign.

"But how?"

I asked. Specifically, I ask the machine. "I want to do (x). How do I use you to do this?" is what I would say, and it would give me the prompt as well as explain why it do it that way. I used the prompt, and you see the results. If you want a machine to produce the output you want, it's smart to learn how to input things to get that output, and with widgets like Grok you can just ask the widget to tell you what it wants and why it wants it that way. For others, like Tabletop games, you have to actually study the manuals and use the widget to map out the results and see the emergent properties manifest.

For private, non-commercial use there is nothing objectionable about this. I'm not made of money; I use Grok on the Free tier and get these results.

I'm making these images so that all of we players are on the same page when it comes to (X), whatever (X) is, same as it is with maps of any kind. We need to stop freaking out about LLM-generated images made for private use.

As for commercial use, that's for another post. In the meantime, enjoy the shitpost.

The Culture: It's Nice When They Just Admit It

The Pundit confirmed what many of us suspected.

It's because they want a LEGO bucket, and it's because they play Calvinball- not D&D.

Their product releases, when they are not meant to be literal clones of Out Of Print products (e.g. Mutant Future), are intended by design to be "(Product) But With Muh House Rules". That's why they're a mish-mash of meh that fell away as soon as WOTC did the smart thing and made the Real Thing available again. (No, your begging-based presence is not the definition of success.)

The smart play is to focus on one full, proper, and real game to the point of mastery. One game, played to mastery, and that's it. No need (as I said a few days ago) for Endless Product Slop, not when you know the ins and outs of how the machine works so you can drive it to achieve the desired performance without trying.

If you think that's provocative, you're in for a wild ride next year when more of these Just So Shibboleths get the Idol Smashing treatment.

The Business: GAMA Is Fully Converged

Jon Del Arroz has been on the beat with GAMA and Tabletop, focusing on boardgames, and how the poz is being pushed hard. The convergence is complete at GAMA.

These folks collaborate with their Fellow Travelers at Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc. to deplatform enemies and--if they can--debank them too, or at the least have Stripe cut their enemies off (usually via the Mastercard 10 blacklist).

What is going on with GAMA is exactly what went down with SWFA, and the result will be the same: a collapse in the commercial viability of the market sector where these people hold sway, and given how most people are already cutting out the organs that GAMA holds sway over that's going to happen right quick.

All of the talk that Brian Niemeier has said about NewPub, and how it's overtaking OldPub, now applies here; you're not going to overtake the Top Dog, but you will be self-sustaining as a hobby if you stick to this sort of operation.

The Business: The Delusional Dipshits In Tabletop

Pat here demonstrates a common delusion among the Terminally Online sort.

The delusion: That Wizards of the Coast has any competition within Tabletop.

WOTC is not stupid. They know who their competitors are--Fortnite, World of Warcraft, Genshin Impact, etc.--and there is not Tabletop operator that matters.

Most people who play Current Edition are not Terminally Online and do not care about anything but Current Edition, the same way that most wargamers are 40K Only Andys and don't care about anything else and that cardfloppers are Magic Only Andys and don't care about anything else. If they aren't playing The Only Game That Matters, they aren't playing at all. This has been known for 25 years thanks to Ryan Dancey.

This has been reinforced multiple times, in multiple media where Network Effects are the source of value, over those 25 years. The majority of players in a given medium of that sort are not general players; they are Top Dog Only Andys and refuse to play anything else because, rightly, they see anything else as a waste of time and money. We see the reason most clearly with MMORPGs, but it is there in all of them: the sheer size of the Network enables these people to play how they prefer, and smaller competitors do not. Josh Strife Hayes proved this with math a while back.

Skip to the Conclusion; it's the Highlight skip. That gets to the point I've made, which he independently arrived at.

Pat's assertion that any of these defections matters is delusional. If that were the case, Palladium Books would have overtaken WOTC (or TSR before that) by 1990- by 1995 at the latest. That never happened, and it never will happen. All of these folks, like folks who quit WOW for another MMO, will be back in short order once it becomes clear that Current Edition is where the action is.

Watch for it, and watch how shameless they're going to be about it.

The Culture: Behold This Eggcelent Game In Development

Jon Mollison did a pair of videoes on a game in development.

Brian Renniger's blog is here.

As you can see, this is a loving satire of BattleTech.

Everything is a Work In Progress, but a promising one nonetheless, and just the right sort of thing when you want to have some silly stompy robot fun.

The Culture: Told You New BPL Was Soon

Right after I mention it, the trailer drops.

SOON!