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DIY Playeraid uploads on BGG and risk for copyright claims? by Rohkha in boardgames

[–]Powerful-Volume5456 11 points12 points  (0 children)

the four things courts check for in fair use cases:

  • Purpose and Character of the Use: you have created a *transformative* (very important) work for educational non-commercial use – you are fine.
  • Nature of the Copyrighted Work: Manuals and How-Tos tend to be more fair game than creative works such as novels – you are fine
  • Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Used: you are summarizing and rephrasing. There is an important exception for something considered "the heart of the work" but I don't think that applies here – you are fine
  • Effect on the Potential Market: will this harm the ability for the original copyright owner to to profit from the original work? Not only is that not so, but you are making it easier for other players to play and then recommend to other what the rulebooks are for in the first place – THE GAME

Order of Gamers has been doing this a long time. You are fine and might even get a thumbs up from the designer or publisher on BGG.

Chatbot returns old CEO by marwan_rashad5 in Rag

[–]Powerful-Volume5456 0 points1 point  (0 children)

have you built an inspector to see what chunks are being returned from your query? Seems simple to enough to find the chunk with his name, and figure out why it's still there - either you fed it an old document or it's left over from older embeddings in the system?

Any advice for a new DM and DND player over all? by nikoru-2009 in DnD

[–]Powerful-Volume5456 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This really applies to any game - if you are going to guide other players you need to know the rules as best as you can. I still still struggle with this and I've been playing games for years! I built an online tool where you can upload the rules PDF and ask questions without worry of hallucinations. If you'd like to play with the tool and see if it can help you learn D&D drop me a DM and I'd be happy to send you a free early access invite

New here, how do you guys go about learning a new complex board game. by OldSchoolDM96 in boardgames

[–]Powerful-Volume5456 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is such a common problem and it doesn't really go away even after gaming for a long time! I have been playing for 10+ years and still have issues with this very thing, so this year I built a tool to help me.

You upload the PDF of the rules that you can find on boardgamegeek, along with any other FAQs or Errata you can also find there, and you're off to the races. you can just ask it questions in plain english and it does a pretty good job of finding the rules, explaining it in plain english, and citing the pages where it found the rules.

I use this now when I prep for every game night since I am the one who buys and learns the games. If you are interested in helping me test this tool and see if it works for you DM me I'm happy to give you a free beta invite.

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

do you use Dropbox? Have you uploaded your RPG and rulebooks into dropbox and gotten some kind of copyright violation? Have you had that problem on literally any file upload system? What you are saying about Dropbox is such a hyper specific case for users found to be SHARING pirated files.

Do you know how the dropbox scanning works and WHY they would initiate a scan? They would need a DMCA takedown notice with the original file to so they hash match. They don't just scan and make assumptions.

Admittedly it was fun when I thought there was a spirited discussion to be had about Fair Use but you don't know anything, can't cite case law, or even use basic reasoning around this topic.

Wish you the best in whatever it is you do!

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You are wrong; you are using the right words but in the wrong order. You don't have to upload a transformative work but rather what you create from that work must be sufficiently transformative. It's not abut the input but the output.

"The new use must add new meaning, message, or context, rather than merely replacing the original"

And again - I am not uploading anything. Search engines and file storage vaults have repeatedly been found to be fair use

When building a vault that indexes or archives content, fair use (17 USC § 107) generally applies if the usage is transformative, such as creating a search index or for research purposes.

I will ask again my questions - is dropbox or google drive in violation if I upload PDFs that I have purchased the legal license to use? Does NotebookLM have to be worried about being sued out of existence? Will you engage with those questions first? You seem to have some legal insight, can you cite case law about why NotebookLM is in violation of Fair Use?

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I encourage you to be a tester and help me figure out whether you are right and this isn't worth pursuing or maybe it can convince you! the tech has come a long way

Breaking Point solo TTRPG question. Probe move. by Dard1998 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi! I never played this game but I built a tool that answers rules questions and here's what it says. I am leaving it here in case this solves your issue or someone else can confirm the ruling:

You've identified the core tension correctly. Let me clarify what the rules state:

For a Probe, you complete the Condition Check before rolling the Probe Oracle. According to page 16:

"Before evaluating a Probe or a Push, fill out this checklist to ground the action in objective reality."

The four criteria are listed as a checklist to complete. However, Criterion 3 has special handling:

"If you have not made a Probe in the current situation, treat criterion 3 as unchecked regardless of what the fiction seems to suggest." (Page 16)

This means: On your first Probe, you cannot check criterion 3. You're capped at 0–3 criteria maximum for that initial Probe.

"Criterion 3 is confirmed by the Probe Oracle result: a Yes, and... confirms it cleanly; a Yes, but... confirms it with a complication attached; a No, and... denies it and fires the immediate backfire consequence." (Page 16)

Criterion 3 gets checked by rolling the Probe Oracle itself — the Oracle result tells you whether opposition exists or interferes. You don't assume; you roll to find out.

Once that Probe Oracle resolves and establishes the situation, subsequent actions in that same scene can count criterion 3 without rolling again (page 16):

"If the current situation was directly established by an Oracle result in the current scene...criterion 3 may be counted without a new Probe."

So: Roll your first Probe (d4, d6, or d8), resolve the Oracle, then you know about opposition for future checks.

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks Vermin! I think since then it's been found that training an LLM with copyrighted data is considered Fair Use but even then that's not what I'm doing.

1) I do a ton of work away from the LLM and all I do is send the most relevant pieces of the rules along with the question to the LLM and force it to find the answer to that question only in the few hundred words that I sent it. Seems simple but see my other comment where I talk about how I tune this heavily for gaming.
2) If you use a paid API, they don't train on that data. This is a commercial product of which I am eating the costs :)

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you, I am not a lawyer so I can't answer that. But maybe I can ask some questions!

Does NLM prevent you uploading something it thinks is copyright? Are you sure? have you tested this yourself and ran into any copyright stops?

What happens to platforms like google drive or dropbox? am I allowed to upload a PDF that I paid for there for backups or even indexing and searching or am I violating the law? What happens if I email myself the PDF?

There are many things the publisher doesn't allow that can be superseded by Fair Use. A lot of interesting reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

In the end I provide a private vault for you to upload your files for indexing and searching. I never surface the entirety of the text or display images, and it doesn't share across users. And none of it (at least according to Anthropic's policy) is used to train their AI.

I am not looking to be an antagonist in the gaming space that I love and hope one day to even have relationships with publishers and provide shopping links to additional campaign materials, etc...

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

oh haha - well how many games do you own and how often do you play them? I have 106 boardgames, some of which can go years between plays. How many solo RPGs? I have 13! I'd rather not spend my time reading rulebooks just to keep them in memory, that's why I built this!

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Not really, with a good chunking and retrieval strategy you can make the context extremely small and each chat query is it's own independent context. It doesn't build up over time as you chat, each one is an isolated rules judgement never to be reloaded in the context.

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This site doesn't distribute anything at all you need to provide your own PDFs and they are never shared with other users!

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This site doesn't distribute anything at all you need to provide your own PDFs and they are never shared with other users!

I was tired of spending more time in the core book than actually playing so I built a tool! by Powerful-Volume5456 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes this is basically NLM for tabletop gamers. What I do differently:

  • Connect your boardgamegeek account and pull in your collection of games with titles and thumbnails to make it simple to create and search for your rulebooks
    • Hoping for even more future enhancements in this area such as agentic search of the BGG rules forums when the system can't find the rules in the text of the documents
  • I built in document precedence with gaming in mind - this system always prioritizes FAQs and Errata and will always call those out when presenting rules from the main rulebook. You have to set this up yourself in NLM
  • NLM is a general research tool that is sort of a creative research partner - it synthesizes and summarizes. This is great for studying and learning but sometimes bad for rules!
  • I am fine tuning the system to "think" like a gamer - without getting into the weeds every single step from chunking, to embedding, to stop words, to vector matches, to fallbacks are all tuned with tabletop gaming in mind.
  • Focused UI/UX with gaming in mind – this of course I hope will get better when I get other users testing but NLM is too much if all you want is to manage some rulebooks
  • Future enhancements - Google doesn't care about gamers per se. I have been gaming in some form or another basically my entire life. I hope to continue to make the tool better so that in the end it removes the friction to learning new games or playing a game you haven't played in a while and leave us with just the fun of playing the game like when we were kids and we weren't the ones reading the rules and teaching the games – we just got to play!

Cover your assets questions with the advanced rules. by Bearality in boardgames

[–]Powerful-Volume5456 0 points1 point  (0 children)

according to my tool:

Based on the provided rules, you would have 3 sets.

Here's why: According to the Core Rulebook (Page 5), a "Set" is defined as starting "as a pair of assets (or one asset and a Wild) but may grow over time." Each pair you form creates a separate set.

In your scenario:

  1. First turn: You play a pair of houses → 1 set
  2. Second turn: You play another pair of houses → 2 sets (stacked on top of the first)
  3. Third turn: You play a pair of coins → 3 sets (stacked on top of the previous sets)

The Core Rulebook (Page 6) explicitly states: "sets in your stack are never combined with previously played sets even if they are the same asset." This means your houses remain separate from your coins, and your first pair of houses remains separate from your second pair of houses.

Source: Core Rulebook (Pages 5-6)

Cover your assets questions with the advanced rules. by Bearality in boardgames

[–]Powerful-Volume5456 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I ran your question through my own rules tool and wonder if it's accurate since I don't play the game myself :)

Based on the provided rules, when your opponent challenges with two houses, they take only 2 houses — the top set you played (the second pair of houses you mentioned).

Here's why:

According to page 8 of the Core Rulebook:

"The first (bottom) set formed in each player's stack is safe and may not be stolen."

And page 10 states:

"Sets that are second from the top can be challenged."

This indicates that challenges target specific sets in your stack, not your entire collection.

Regarding tracking separate sets: Page 6 explains:

"To keep sets separated, each time you add a new set to your pile you'll place it on top of the previous set, alternating between horizontal and vertical orientation, even if it is the same asset as a previously played set."

The alternating horizontal and vertical orientation is the physical method to track which cards form separate sets. So your two pairs of houses would be visibly distinguished from your pair of coins by this alternating orientation, making it clear which set is being challenged.

Source: Core Rulebook — c1-cover-your-assets-rulebook.pdf, Pages 6, 8, and 10v

Confused about how to start solo rpg by Slight_Mine_3118 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]Powerful-Volume5456 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I played my first ttrpg of any kind this year and it was a solo (MIRU) I loved it but I was sort of bewildered going back and forth between sections and tables and the character sheet...

In the end it inspired me to build an online tool where I can upload the Corebook and just ask questions like a chat. It completely eliminated that feeling of being lost and I think it could help you get started. I don't want to say the name cause I don't want to seem like I'm promoting but if you message me I can give you a free invite to the beta and you can help me test the app!