The Hidden Costs of Using AI in Your D&D Prep – Is it Helping You or Holding You Back

ai is here to stay and it's not going anywhere but is ai rosie from the jetzins or auto from wall-e is it vicki from my robot or c3po from star wars will ai improve our lives until we can ascend beyond the bounds of our mortal existence or will it enslave us and destroy us like the terminator from the movie the terminator uh these are questions that are probably a little above our pay grade but we're probably going to talk about them anyways even without our conspiracy theory tinfoil hats um even without going into our secret hidden bunkers that are hidden from the government because we all have them right obviously if you haven't guessed today we're going to be talking about ai and dm'ing but first let's explain who we are this is how to be a better dm this is the show designed to help you become the world's best dungeon master in as little time for as little money and with as little stress as possible and i'm justin lewis one of your co-host today here with tanner wayland go ahead and say hi tanner hi and together we've been diving into these topics for the last three plus years 200 episodes talking to all sorts of people right improv actor blacksmith professional authors instagram influencers all of them and above and we do this specifically to find the best tips for you and today is a very timely episode i think my father-in-law is diving really deep into ai and he keeps saying how things are changing so fast and so rapidly and i think it's going to be relevant to every dungeon master at some point in the future because this isn't going away but also it's going to affect you because it's going to become more prevalent and maybe ubiquitous um and if you stick around to the end of today's episode we're actually going to do a little bit on how we specifically use ai through the end of the episode um but also after the episode we're going to do a patreon only content uh specifically on our opinions and if you want to stick around to see what happens there i mean so do we so we're going to talk about it and uh you know see what we can see but before we get to that i also want to use ai a little bit we're going to do a new segment called get to know your dm so tanner today we're gonna get to know you pick a number between 1 and 17 16 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 oh okay if you could instantly master any skill what would it be

Speaker 2

Oh, man, any skill. Oh, buddy, what would it be? You know what? It would be like, it would be playing instruments. Just like playing any kind of instrument, honestly. Because there's some people who are like, really good at playing multiple instruments because they've learned multiple. That, that would be sick.

Speaker 1

I love it. What's your go-to comfort food?

Speaker 2

Pizza.

Speaker 1

Pizza All right What is the last show or movie you re-watched?

Speaker 2

Um, oh, that would be, oh man, what's that called? Spirited away.

Speaker 1

All what? That is such a good show. Such good storytelling, honestly.

Speaker 2

it is good. My wife did not enjoy it.

That's fine. She's, to be fair, I feel like for people who aren't used to the weirdness of Studio Ghibli storytelling, um, then it's a little bit weird, but I love it. That's fine.

Speaker 1

So look at me moving screens around. You can't see it. But our YouTube viewers, they'll see it because they'll see the recording. Last one, what is a small thing that makes you smile?

Speaker 2

small thing that makes me smile i like little animals outside like little little squirrel sometimes a little butterfly you know

Speaker 1

Excellent. Well, for the listener, or the viewer, this is a new segment sponsored by WorldSmith. They are one of our sponsors, obviously, and what they do is they provide generators to help you spark up your D&D creativity and possibly get you past some blocks. And if you're interested in signing up for a free trial of theirs, go to sessionserostudios.com slash WorldSmith dash podcast.

But Tanner, what I had you do was give me these answers and I inputted it into WorldSmith. You chose 16, which is spell. So we created a spell for you based on your likes, you know, the answers you just gave. So this is a level two spell in the Conjuration School of Magic and it takes one action to cast. It lasts for one minute, range of 60 feet, single target, and it is verbal, somatic, and material. You need a slice of pizza to cast this spell.

Speaker 2

So that's what it was. Okay. I was like, where's the pizza coming? Yep.

Speaker 1

It is called whimsical pizzicato. So tapping into an arcane symphony influenced by whimsical spirits, you summon a tiny orchestra of animated ethereal musical instruments and playful florist creatures. The summoned entities swarm around a single target, instrument, or small construct within range, imbuing it with a lively spirit. The animated target comes to life gaining consciousness and performing a spirited dance infused with arcane magic. While animated, it entertains and provides a plus two bonus to all charisma based skill checks for its audience.

If it chooses to attack, it does so with a 1d8 magical damage chosen randomly between lightning, fire, or coal damage, dang, each turn it strikes. Additionally, once per turn, the instrument or construct can produce a random effect based on whimsy from transforming a nearby object into a temporary pizza, for a humorous feast to creating a gentle gust that causes nearby small creatures to giggle and faint with joy. At the spells conclusion, the target gently floats to the ground, resuming its inanimate form. That is such a delightful bell. That's that's so fun.

Speaker 2

That's insanity is what that is. That's a lot going on. I love that.

Speaker 1

know, right? What a wonderful thing.

And honestly, what an interesting lead in to a conversation about AI. Tanner, we have a lot of things to talk about today. We have the ethicality and legality, we're kind of going to lump those together. We have best practices. As well, we're going to sprinkle in a little bit of how we do it. So what strikes your fancy? What do you want to talk about first?

Speaker 2

I mean, let's, let's address the elephant in the room, which is, uh, you know, people's general thoughts, concerns about, about using AI. Cause I think when people first, you know, when chat GPT first took the stage and everyone was like, Oh my goodness, this is like a real thing. That's that's somewhat developed now. Um, I think a lot of that opened the floodgates to a lot of other issues.

Specifically like, Oh, AI generated, generated art. I think that one's like probably the biggest issue. Cause that's the most easy to see is like, Oh, how could AI learn about art unless it saw some other art, right? It's not like, uh, like us humans, we in many ways learned art just from other humans, but like we also developed it. And we, I mean, the first people learned art from nature. So it's like, it's through observation. But AI, it's not like they showed AI a bunch of pictures of outside and we're like, Hey, learn how to be an artist. You know, it's like, they had to look at other people's art, their different art styles, you know, if you put, if you type in AI, like to give me an impressionist painting, then they're gonna show, I believe Monet was like, uh, an impressionist. Right.

Speaker 1

I don't know. Yeah. I'm not an artist. You're talking about a person.

Speaker 2

And it would show a bunch of art that was definitely made using a lot of that impressionist art. Same for any kind of style you throw out, like art deco style paintings. Those are taken from artists, or heavily inspired, quote unquote, by artists who did that.

Now why do people get excited by AI art? Because, you know, Justin and I, we suck at art. I'll speak for myself mostly.

Speaker 1

You can speak for me from the mountaintops.

Speaker 2

And as one of the few people in my family who didn't really take to art, I feel that lack strongly. So frankly, in the past, in home games, I've used AI-generated stuff to make a character portrait. And it's been cool. I loved it. I've been like, oh, this is really sick. This is really well done. But of course, it becomes a whole issue when corporations are using it, because it's like, oh, if people can make money off of another artist's work, is that the same as taking some pennies out of that artist's wallet without letting them know? So it's a whole thing.

And then of course, when it comes to things that aren't art, but more like just like a word generator, then it's been trained on a lot of people's writings. It's been trained on a lot of the internet, which of course, dealing with the legality of it all, you have social media, like big companies, like meta, like Google being like, hey, anything you post on social media, basically, it's free game. And then content creators being like, what? So it's kind of an interesting bag of worms, because if you take money aside, if it's not a big corporation using it, it can be pretty interesting, especially from a DMing perspective, where you're like, oh, maybe I have certain strengths. I'm really good at coming up with a plot of a story, the major beats and stuff. I can come up with a few different NPCs who are really driving and dramatic characters. I can also come up with a few traps that are really good, but I want to flesh out the story more with other traps. Maybe I'm not great at creating monsters, because I overthink it. Maybe on and on and on, AI becomes interesting just from an average Joe Schmo perspective, because you're like, oh, I can round out to my weaknesses. Now, we're not going to talk about the environmental aspect of like, oh, even Joe Schmo, him generating like, oh, come up with a quest that takes an hour or so. And suddenly, the servers running the AI and stuff is just like, it takes a lot of energy. That affects the environment. So we're not talking about that, guys. We're not talking about it, because it gets to be too much.

Speaker 1

It's above our pay grade.

Speaker 2

It's above our pay grade. But just keeping in mind the whole thing about like, oh, AI is trained on other people's works. And so maybe, you know, corporations using it, you know, dubious ethically.

Can you use it personally? Should you use it personally? Are there ways they could help you? Are there ways where it falls short? And that's kind of what we're talking about today. And like best practices with it, ways that we find it useful. And yeah, anyway, Justin, I've talked for a while. Thoughts.

Speaker 1

No, yeah, um, I honestly don't think I'm smart enough necessarily to fully give the audience their opinion, which you shouldn't just take your opinion from people. You should, you know, form your own opinion.

But I think in terms of ethicality and legality, obviously legality, I think that's pretty simple, right? Don't do anything illegal, find out what is or isn't illegal, and then stay within the bounds. That includes copyright law, that includes plagiarism. I think things get muddled when you talk about ethics. And I think at the heart of it, everyone's going to view it in terms of their perspective and their position, right? The people who have heard talk most strongly against AI image generators are artists. You know, my sister is one, and me saying AI, she kind of, her hackles raise a little bit because I think she feels it. You know, and I can sympathize with that. My father-in-law, he was like, dude, SEO is dead, and AI killed it. And my hackles raised because I've heard that so many times. And I think it's also a difficult conversation because at its heart, there's this very powerful thing we have, right? It feels more alive than fire, and it feels more friendly than fire, but I feel like it's no less destructive. And fire, I mean, that's not the right analogy. But over time, technology has outdated people, right? The carriage driver does not really have a job except around like Central Park or, you know, towns that, you know, there's like a need for that. Torches, same thing, that they're still here, but we use them more for fun rather than use. And I think AI scares a lot of people because of that same feeling. But that's just sort of my opinion, or not in my opinion, that's my view on AI a little bit overall.

As it comes to being a dungeon master, our channel, obviously, we're not opposed to using AI tools, right? We have partnered with WorldSmith because we think that it can save dungeon masters a lot of time. And for me, that's one of the goals of our podcast. We want dungeon mastering for the listener of the show to be easier, more fun, and more stress-free without taking up a lot of extra time because, you know, we all have things to do. Not everyone has an open schedule, a filled wallet, and just stress-free days, right? I doubt anyone has that, but AI can really be a powerful tool in taking some of that load off of your back and really allowing you to enjoy D&D again if you're in a place where, dang, I can't do this anymore.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And to your point, you know, I think, I think like talking about the ethicality, uh, like my, my, I think that it's important to be realistic with yourself and be like, okay, is it me being lazy or is it me just trying to like, have I realized my, my limits so to speak? Right. Um, and during this discussion, uh, during our whole discussion about AI and, you know, and DMing and like, if you should or shouldn't use it kind of thing, uh, just realizing it's like, Hey, you know, it's, it's here to stay, you know, for better or worse, probably for the worst in a few ways, but, but, you know, more convenient for in a few other ways.

Uh, so then the question is like, okay, how can you use it in a realistic way that doesn't, uh, dumb down your own DMing, but like sharpen some of the areas where you weren't going to sharpen it anyway, you know, your own DMing style. So, I mean, let's, let's just talk about best practices as a DM. Let's say that you're like, okay, um, the AI is here to stay. Uh, I'm not going to use it in these few different ways. I really don't want to, but maybe I could use it for DMing. Could it save me some effort, make a session prep easier, whatever, right? Um, let's talk about best practices. I think just launching into it, uh, don't neglect your other skills, you know, uh, make sure that, cause I think a worry that a lot of people talk about, especially people who are trying, you know, more of an artist mindset, not like literal art, but, you know, creation mindset. Uh, the worry is like, Hey, if people rely on AI, do we just get to the point where people don't have the skills to, you know, to write their own adventure, to write their own NPCs to, you know, if every character sheet is auto-generated, do people stop knowing how to build their own characters, right? So it's like, Hey, as a DM, uh, if there's something you're good at and it's something you've worked hard at, uh, you know, keep up with that, you know, don't, don't, uh, uh, don't turn to it if you've already got a great thing going. And if it, if there's something else that you're like, you know what, I would actually like to learn that skill for myself, like map drawing, right? There are ways to generate maps, like worldsmith, they have a map generator and it's solid, right? And there's a lot of others out there. But what if you're like, you know what, I could use these, but I'd also just like to learn how to draw my own maps on a whiteboard or on a piece of paper or something, right? Uh, don't neglect skill development because of AI, right?

Speaker 1

I think for me, that is the most important thing to remember with artificial intelligence. Also, I want to take a quick moment to acknowledge some of the people that jumped in and are watching. So Jay Tay and Juka, thanks for stopping by and joining our conversation. We'd really appreciate it.

But as I said, my father-in-law, he's been really into AI. He's been out of work for some time, like, Phil, he just got a job. But he's, in being out of work, he's been trying to re-skill and dove deep into AI. And he's, you know, he's kind of gotten me on the bandwagon a little bit. And it's such a seductive thing to use because you get things so fast and so easily. But just like you said, Tanner, if you, you know, do that for years and then take a second look up, you realize that you have lost so many important skills that you loved doing in the meantime.

And I think that's one reason why you have to remember dungeon mastering is a skill-based hobby. Most hobbies are skill-based, right? But this is a very complex one because it involves people management, it involves acting and role-playing, it involves storytelling, it involves game design. You know, even just kind of basic human principles, being a leader, being decis- decis-decisionful, just- Decisive. Decisive. Thank you. I knew that was a word. You know, finding words that mean things in real life rather than just words you make up, right? All these skills, you don't want to outsource them because, I mean, the image that comes to my mind is Wally, right? And I already mentioned that. We don't want to end up outsourcing everything and be either stuck with, we don't need to exist and we have no purpose and there's nothing hard and we're just kind of these blobs or whatever, the things that we've outsourced everything to also realize we don't need, they don't need us and they just get rid of us.

Again, iRobot, like two sides of the same coin here. So one example of how I did this recently is I've been working on reworking a one-shot that I had, I don't know if you ever played with, I think you did, it was the one where they were on like that prison on that iceberg. Yes. Yeah. So I've been trying to rework that and I was like having such troubles and I posed it to chat GPT, right? And I literally was like, here's the situation, I'm working on this one-shot, I want to improve it, I have this and this going. I'm thinking that this area isn't really working, what do you think? And it was so helpful because chat GPT was able to be like, actually, I think this particular thing does work, but if you want, you could try these other two things. And then I responded and said, yeah, okay, I like that second option, but what if I did this and expanded it even more? And then it was like having a real conversation, kind of like you and I did in college in a writing group.

Speaker 1

I found that incredibly helpful because it was me thinking through the one-shot and kind of going down these rabbit holes and getting some things, something else's perspective. And there were instances where I would bring up problems to it that it wasn't realizing, but then it would incorporate those problems and like kind of help me work through them. And I really liked that as an example, because in that instance, I wasn't necessarily offloading the work, right? I was using it to kind of just be a sounding board for what I was trying to do.

And most of kind of the way that one-shot is going has come from my brain, because I didn't ask AI to suggest anything or to write the ending. I was just asking for its opinion and saying, I don't think this works. What do you think? Kind of an idea. And I think that's a very important point to use with AI is you need to be aware of your prompts and what they're going to result.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's a great point because I think one of, you know, I work in content creation. I do a lot of, you know, I've written a lot of articles and done a lot of social posts and stuff for my company and stuff. But because of that, like our team, we had a discussion about AI because our boss, he's not into that, but he's not into content creation. But he's like, could you guys use AI to like help you with anything? And I'm a pretty chill guy. But my coworker, she's like really into writing, she's like takes it very seriously. And she was like, almost having a visceral reaction. She was like, you know, and I understand why because it's like, yeah, it's especially in terms of writing, it's a dark future, where it's like, yeah, so what if the writing is technically good if, if there was no heart behind, if there was no real intention, right?

But, but the thing is, I found other ways where it's been very useful, which is like, getting me into more of an analytic analytical mindset, you know, like, there are some, like, for example, Justin, I, when we're talking about the future of the podcast, when we're talking about plans for the future, and like, Oh, what kind of content could we create? What kind of endeavors would our audience find interesting match with the mission? Like, we know what the mission of our podcast is. How do we develop that? Because neither of us are, you know, business majors, neither of us are podcast majors either, but you know, see what we're doing. But it is something where Justin put it into chat GPT. And it kind of broke it down in a way that was like, Oh, yeah, this is this isn't insane. This isn't something I could never do on my own. It would take a lot of time. And it's not something I'm personally interested in and being like, Oh, hey, here's our, you know, month to month goals. And I think that like, that's something where as a DM, I'm interested in pursuing, which is like, Oh, I have a plan to start a campaign. I know what I want to do for the campaign. But I know that I've got to do some prep. Me, in my slightly ADHD, like mind gets overwhelmed with just the thought, and I get distracted and stuff like that, right? But like, just putting in something like that, it's almost like having someone, here's the ironic thing, like the thing that I find most interesting about chat GPT slash AI in general is just something that I would probably get if I just had like a much closer confidant, you know, someone just to bounce ideas off of. But like the thing that's the nice thing, it's like, Yeah, I know that we all live very separated lives. Now, we don't always have friends who have the same interests. And even if we did, you know, we have to explain a lot of background and stuff. And that's worth doing. If you can do that, do that. But if you don't be like, Hey, I want to start a campaign in three months or two months or one month, right? What's what are the steps for creating and launching a campaign and getting my friends involved?

Speaker 2

And it could create a nice old to do list. Yeah, you know, that's that's something that, at least for me, where the first two steps of any endeavor are the hardest for me.

Uh, it can make that first step a lot easier. You know,

Speaker 1

Absolutely. I think, obviously, one of the easiest ways. And honestly, we're coming down to end of time and we didn't get to a lot of this. So I think this will be my last bit that I share and then we'll close out and then we'll get to our patron only content.

So those of you who are listening live, you get some patron only content for free. But obviously, AI is really good for random generators, right? Random you with AI, you need to think of what it's making you become, right? And what the cost is, because everything is a cost. When you give something away, you don't get to do that thing. And that doesn't get to change you and affect you. So with I have on my personal professional chat GPT or whatever I pay for the subscription, I've created a two custom GPTs for how to be a better DM. One, I call session zero studios professor SOS professor. And I've given it explicit instructions not to rewrite anything I put in. And sometimes it'll try to and I'll tell it, don't tell me how to write this, tell me what's wrong with it and point out sentences that are like you think aren't good. So I can write them, right? So I can learn how to be a better writer. And I did that specifically because of what I want to become, right? I'm using chat GPT to teach me how to be a better writer. And maybe it's not going to write the best stuff, right? Because hallucinations exist. But I'm pretty sure that it's actually going to help me write better than I write. The other one is actually the marketing minion for how to be a better DM. And that's what I call it. That one is allowed to write stuff, right? And I've created those two separate things with very intentional purposes, because I know how to market, I'm simply using this to speed things up because I want to get to other things like writing content, like building worlds, doing more podcasts, that's what I want to do more of. In your D&D, in my D&D, I don't like using AI to write out my entire sessions. Because I don't want to get bad at that. I don't want to give that away. There have been moments where I'll use chat GPT in the middle of a session, because I don't know what else to do. And I think looking back, I think that might be a crutch, honestly, for me personally, because the more you do that, the less likely you're going to do the opposite and just try and figure out on your own, right? So again, with AI, I think the last thing I want to say is, you need to be conscious of the cost, and what you're giving away and what you do is changing you or how it's changing you and what you're becoming. So that's all I'm going to say to that.

Speaker 2

Yeah, and as a final note for me, I think realizing what you lose from skipping the journey is an important part of it. But then counterpoint to that is like, realize the parts of the journey you never wanted to enjoy, you know?

Like I said, the first step or two of any task for me is usually the one that I spend far too much time overthinking. But then once I'm on my way, I'm like, oh, I'm working towards creating that campaign. I'm working towards redesigning that room in my house, whatever it is. Getting some help is great. But at the same time, I could probably have a healthier relationship with a good mentor. So it is something to keep in mind where I'm like, yeah, I think we'll all have to get used to and we'll get plenty used to AI just showing up in different parts.

All of us are already somewhat using it, even if you don't think about it when every time you Google search something. Even if you cross check what they have there against the sites that they recommend, in the end, it's going to become super normal that way. It's going to probably become normal in a few other ways. We're going to definitely see a lot more AI art. And that's certainly going to be true of, you know, for when some some of the players in your sessions, they might create a character portrait using AI, you know, they might, you might be tempted to generate a map or two, or more, whatever it is, just think about like, hey, looking into the future, what would I like to feel comfortable creating on my own? And what do I not care enough to actually develop the skill of, you know, because, like you said, there are some things today that you don't that we don't that people back in the day knew how to do themselves. But we have no idea how, right? Have I ever

Speaker 1

right?

Speaker 2

like, hey, I can kind of do it. Not many people can read it, but I can do it. But like, I can't, I've never like killed and cooked a chicken. And I don't typically miss it.

But there are times I'm like, man, I bet if I cooked my own chicken more often, I'd probably enjoy it and be able like, feel extra proud about it. And so keep that in mind throughout the DMing, like, what parts do you think you'd feel proud of? Like, is it setting descriptions? Is it that map that you learned how to make on your own? Is it NPCs that you've created and stat blocks? Whatever it is, hold on to that. Keep working on that. For other stuff, I'm not going to say use AI, but it's a tool out there if you did want to use it.

Speaker 1

Now, and actually, I'm going to give the audience a challenge. Um, if you are completely uncomfortable using AI, like you would never do it, I challenge you to do it just a little bit. And if you use AI, maybe too much, or, or in those moments where you would be uncomfortable, if you didn't use AI, I challenge you not to use it. Uh, I think testing the bounds and then making a, an intentional decision is really like the most important thing you can do here because then you're being a decisive human being, uh, but thank you for listening to today's show.

Thank you to you all who popped in and listened live, uh, JT, JUKA, and straw. Again, in a second, we're going to get to our patron only content, but I also want to give a special thank you to JUKA tech senpai and TJ max who are our discord moderators and you guys have literally changed our discord server for the better forever, and we are so very grateful to you guys for that. And, um, just really, you know, you guys are awesome and we're happy to have you with us.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And getting back to my original point about like, Oh, AI can do stuff for you, but relationships do more. Um, I'm telling you, it's like us just trying to like do everything ourselves, uh, on the discord where we're very novice, you know, and we're trying to do the podcast too and stuff and everything else. Uh, you know, those three coming in and like, there's a breath of fresh air and we really appreciate that. Cause like in the end, collaboration is something I've really valued about this podcast in general.

So especially where this is very new, I just want to shout them out for making that great. Exactly.

Speaker 1

We also wanted to say thank you to Foxy Beard who is our one and only patron currently. Thank you so much and thanks for putting your trust in us. It's a big, big leap of faith but we're hoping to fulfill your trust and give back more. But that's all we have for you today.

Thank you for listening to our show. We'll be back next time with another handcrafted episode just for you. Until then, let's go ahead and roll initiative.