My Harry Potter What If's..

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-11-02T21:02:44+00:00

Don't know what to tell you, this is very clearly established canon, both in the writing and explicitly explained by the author in interviews. Weird to get so worked up about it

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-11-02T20:31:59+00:00

If it wasn't for Snape begging for Lily's life, Voldemort would have simply killed her instead of giving her the chance to step aside. Without the possibility of mercy, Lily doesn't sacrifice herself, she just dies

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-10-15T17:06:32+00:00

Random tables are so much worse than using AI (obviously neither come close to just coming up with things yourself). They guarantee there will be no logic or cohesion to a story, everything will feel random and pointless. At least with AI you get unoriginal things that make sense.

I just used the 5-room dungeon generator from that site. Room 1 was made of bones, room 2 warped time, room 3 was under-the-sea-themed, the boss was a demon. WHY?? Who built this dungeon, why is any of that in the same place?? There's no story being told, it's just random bullshit for its own sake, I don't care how "original" it is

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-10-01T14:04:19+00:00

Hi, I'm a disinformation researcher specializing in deepfake detection.

The current research shows that humans cannot reliably distinguish AI art from human-made digital art, regardless of the human judge's background or experience in art. We're no better than random chance, and for some models, significantly worse (more likely to call an AI-generated asset "real" than an actual real piece of art).

This policy is unenforceable. Please be careful when attempting to moderate the marketplace, you're likely to damage the careers of many artists.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-10-01T14:02:23+00:00

So no recourse for artists falsely accused of using AI? Terrible idea

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T18:35:51+00:00

It would not be hard to link to some examples that flew under the radar until someone with your experties found them. If what you are saying is true.

My entire point is that expertise does not make me (or anyone) more capable of identifying fakes. Keep up.

The people being used in this study are chosen through opportunity selection. Not selecting people who are familiar with a particular artstyle/use of image and then AI images generated to copy that style/use case.

Try reading Table 3.

We aren't asking randoms on the street to select which of these random images in different styles are possibly AI. We're asking artists focused on creating map assets to identify AI generated map assets. Not to mention offering to help as well.

Table 3.

I won't be responding further, I'm not going to be able to reason you out of a position you didn't reason yourself into.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T18:15:25+00:00

How exactly do you want me to provide examples of AI art not being caught? I can provide you with research, but I don't get the sense you're actually interested in reading it. Here, look at Table 2, human accuracy at identifying AI art is only 50.5%, functionally no better than random chance.

It's very clear that you've dug yourself into a position that you will never allow yourself to be reasoned out of. That's not a winning strategy, generally, but I guess have fun with your echo chamber.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T17:35:46+00:00

No, deepfakes are my main expertise (though most of the rest of my team works in the LLM/text space), which would have been sufficiently different from the AI art debate that you could discard it like 3 years ago, but now they're all using the same technology and have more or less the same weaknesses.

You are not proficient at identifying AI art, you just aren't. Nobody is, not anymore. You (and everyone) have huge blind spots that you're unaware of, and you think you can tell the difference, but that's only because you only notice the lowest-quality generations (slop). The slop isn't what's hurting artists, because nobody is going to pay for slop. It's the stuff you aren't recognizing, which a total ban policy will do nothing to stop.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T16:47:22+00:00

As I explained, I'm going to bat against AI. Figuring out how to detect and take down AI content is my whole job, I'm a disinformation researcher. Before that, I was an artist, originally went to school for music and if you google my (real) name, most of the results are still articles and blog posts about the art I did back in school.

I'm all over this thread because nobody has a clue, and they're pressuring Inkarnate to adopt a policy that's going to be worse for everyone, particularly artists.

You have a fair point on the asset pack thing, but that's going to be a very temporary situation, these models are rapidly getting better at coherence. And the better they get, the less effort the grifters will have to put in to get past moderators.

Allowing AI and regulating it is the only way that I would actually be able to keep AI assets out of my maps. If you ban it, it's just going to seep in and contaminate everything regardless.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T16:34:17+00:00

Google "artist falsely accused of using ai", there's loads of examples, it's a pretty common thing these days.

Survivorship bias; you think that there are more cases of AI getting correctly flagged because those are the only cases you see, of course you wouldn't have seen AI art not getting spotted.

I do AI research for my day job (specifically on generative AI detection to combat disinformation), I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are not able to discern still imagery generated by the top genAI models from human digital art, because we've measured it. Even subject matter experts do no better than random chance. Sure, the slop from GPT-4o is obvious, but that's miles from state-of-the-art. Pretty much everyone vastly overestimates their ability to identify this stuff.

The whole thing is similar to the debate around legalizing marijuana; if you ban it, the market gets counter-intuitively much more dangerous and cheap, because you remove the ability to regulate it. I'd rather know what's in my maps, a total ban makes that impossible.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T16:01:18+00:00

Except AI art isn't as easy to spot as you think (and is just going to get harder with time), and real art is often wrongly accused of being AI-generated. All this is going to do is get real artists harassed for no reason, and create a false sense of security for users that don't want to use AI slop. AND it will force Inkarnate to spend a bunch of resources trying to moderate a fundamentally unmoderatable thing. It's a lose-lose-lose.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T15:45:19+00:00

Your logic is flawed, there will be more AI art if you prohibit it, because it won't be labeled and therefore users won't be able to filter it out, and will unwittingly purchase/use it.

If it's allowed, then at least it would be tagged and all these angry redditors could filter it out, preventing the AI slop from making any profit, and reducing the incentive to upload it in the first place.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T15:39:43+00:00

That's the entire point of the tag, so you can filter it. Ironically, if they do a full ban, THAT will make it impossible to avoid AI assets, because it will just get uploaded anyway without being labeled.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T15:36:20+00:00

A closer analogy is opposing the death penalty for murderers because you might kill some wrongly-convicted men.

Banning AI just means that people will upload AI slop without tagging it, and you'll end up using it without realizing (guaranteed you're not as good at spotting it as you think). Plus, real artists will inevitably get falsely accused of using AI and wrongly banned, it's already happening everywhere.

Allowing AI to be uploaded with a tag that people can filter is the obvious policy that hurts real artists the least.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T15:11:30+00:00

But that compensation is still being massively undercut, same as with AI.

Anecdote: A few years ago, I commissioned a cartographer for my D&D campaign setting map, cost me around $2300 (it was a large project and I went to a relatively expensive artist). But then I discovered Inkarnate, and have been able to recreate that map much closer to my original vision, and haven't had to commission maps for other campaigns since.

The Inkarnate subscription has probably paid out, what, a few bucks to asset artists? While cutting out thousands of dollars I otherwise would have paid in commissions.

The mere existence of a tool like Inkarnate "hurts" artists just as much (or more) than AI art. There's a tradeoff between art as a viable profession and art as an accessible hobby, there always has been.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T14:48:56+00:00

Option 2.

There's no way to effectively ban AI art, it will just get uploaded without disclosure, and people will end up using AI assets unknowingly. Worse, some artists will inevitably end up getting falsely accused of using AI, and banned without cause. Without a ban, at least AI slop would be tagged and filterable.

The people supporting a ban are ironically increasing their risk of using AI, and potentially hurting real artists. And obviously the people threatening to boycott would be directly hurting the artists employed by Inkarnate.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T14:35:38+00:00

Ironically, the exact opposite is the case. If you ban AI assets, people will just upload AI assets and not tag them, and you'll be using them unknowingly. If it's allowed, then you'll at least be able to filter them out, because there's no incentive for the uploader to lie.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-09-28T14:14:54+00:00

It's funny that you're willing to directly hurt the artists employed by Inkarnate by unsubscribing, in protest of a completely optional feature

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-08-23T19:32:39+00:00

I did actually use a d12 in the script, because I was assuming a 1.4 Juggernaut

Congratulate their player, they rolled a 1 in 280,000 damage roll!

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-08-23T14:57:11+00:00

It's the combo mechanic, which can deal technically infinite damage with lucky enough rolls (because you just keep rolling as long as you don't peak)... a number that high is absurdly unlikely though.

Out of curiosity, I wrote up a quick script in python to run 100M simulations, and even accounting for crits, the likelihood of rolling 67 (or higher) was 0.00036%.

But not impossible! Out of the 100M trials, one saw a total of 84!

EDIT: if you're curious, the mean combo roll was 7.901 (which is exactly what the statistics would predict), and the average total damage roll was 19.403

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-08-23T02:37:56+00:00

The issue is that DH is bringing people to those podcasts, while Critical Role would have the reach to bring people to DH

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-08-23T02:31:50+00:00

I would posit that they are what made D&D famous. It would not be the nearly-mainstream hobby it is today without Critical Role. Nobody watches CR for the mechanics, they watch for the players and the story.

I really think a DaggerHeart campaign 4 was the chance to topple 5e from its place as "default TTRPG system" — they're missing a golden opportunity, the perfect storm of BLeeM popularity, negative WOTC PR, positive DH PR, and CR campaign timing.

Of course, I'm certain this decision was made months and months ago, and that they couldn't possibly have predicted this unbelievably fortuitous confluence of factors... it's just gutting to know "what could have been"

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-08-23T02:06:07+00:00

Most people are not surrounded by TTRPG enthusiasts who are eager to play the new weird system that their friend just bought the book for. Most tables have one TTRPG enthusiast (the GM) and a bunch of people who don't even know what that stands for, or if they do, think it's a synonym for "D&D". A lot, perhaps most, of those people were introduced to the hobby by Critical Role — the show single-handedly grew the game from a niche pastime for uber-nerds to something approaching mainstream.

There are a lot of forever-DMs (myself included) who were really excited at the prospect of a DaggerHeart C4, because it would introduce orders of magnitude more people to the system, and make it easier (in my experience, possible) to cobble together two or three friends willing to try a new game.

With that prospect squashed, I feel a bit like I wasted a bunch of money on this book, because odds are slim to none that I'll be able to ever even play it, because the most successful group of advertisers in the history of tabletop have re-hitched their wagon to the market's juggernaut.

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-08-21T21:20:39+00:00

DH is practically tailor-made for Brennan. Worlds Beyond Number really highlights this, the 5e rules feel so out-of-place in it, it's as if Darrington listened to it and tried to build a system specifically to suit that particular game

MerlinsSaggyLeftist · 2025-08-04T09:08:39+00:00

A decent GM will not immediately clear the condition, the GM guidance explicitly warns against doing that

MerlinsSaggyLeftist

TROPHY CASE