Funny but the second issue is more difficult than the first, as there's an expectation to match what's been done. The positive feedback that I've received for the first one is unequalled, exhilarating and a little scary. Nonetheless, I'm passed over the feeling that "no it can't be done" into "oh hell yeah, this is great." It's a nice tipping point.
This is my first post not trying to sell the thing, but I can't not talk about it because it's become the single overwhelming concern for me. It's pushed my sales of old books up, it's pushed my patreon up, it's pushed my self-confidence up and, well, I think it's bloody brilliant, myself.
But since it's my nature to deconstruct everything, it's a natural impulse to do so here. I'm not saying that I want to talk about how the "sausage is made," that's not of interest to me. Rather, the question in my head begins with the moment of inspiration that brought this about (and I'm listening, weirdly, to Grace Slick telling me to remember what the door mouse said as I write this).
I was looking at some of those magazine cover memes that people throw together about politics and other things, where they choose a picture and then badly design the outcalls on the front, like The Onion does. That got me to thinking, "Hm. I wonder how hard it would be to take one of those covers and actually flesh out the entire interior of the magazine..."
You know, actually design a mast head, make the art, write the articles, be as absurd as the cover is, not worry about whether or not it's true. I mucked about for a bit with that, off and on... this would be about mid-last month. And got to talking about it with my daughter, because annoying daughters with stupid grandfather stuff is how the world works. Or ought to.
It was a day or so after that when I began to think... "Isn't there some way this could work for D&D?"
As it happens, I have a very dense game world, not only because it's based on the real world, but because of the way I think about the real world. Over the last couple of years, I've been playing with all sorts of possibilities that are available now, that weren't a few years ago, specifically in the crossroads where A.I. and Googlemaps meet. To explain this, I have to include a passage here from a book I'm never likely to finish, but which I mess with because sometimes I just want to relax:
"Oh," Anya replied. Reaching out, touching the button, a panel glided open — revealing a hidden, chilled compartment, from which emerged a hint of cold mist. Crystalware glasses, etched with the Rolls-Royce mirrored 'R's, were just in reach. "Thank you," she said to Marshall, seeing intuitively where ice and water came from.
"Certainly, Miss. The black button opens the other bar, but I guessed you might want to keep your head clear."
"Yes, definitely," Anya replied, feeling the Rolls ease into motion as she filled a glass, the weight of the crystal strangely grounding in her hand. Without thinking, she drank it down in a single draught, as if the coolness might steady her. Resting the glass upon her forehead, Anya asked, "Do you mind if I ask... if it doesn't bother you while you drive... how long have you known Ms. Hedges?"
Marshall flicked her a look in the rear view mirror and considered as they crossed Park Avenue. Then Madison. "Unless I miss my guess, Miss Frost, you were hired today. It's your first day of work."
Keeping an eye upon her and on the road, he saw her nod, saw the reluctance to speak. Easily, Marshall turned the car onto 5th Avenue, adding, "I don't work for Ms. Hedges, but for an agency that provides specific drivers when requested... but I do remember my first day working for her. If you'll allow me to tell you." He stopped for the light on 54th street.
"Please do," Anya replied, eyes meeting Marshall's in the rear view.
"I didn't know her but I'd heard another say she was politely reticent; she dislikes any sort of interaction, such as we're having now. That day, she directed me out of the city, towards Scranton and Carbondale. It was bitterly cold... in the minus twenties. She wore a fur coat and had a mink wrapper stretched across her legs, while I had these—" he showed his leather driving gloves; "—and a suit jacket much like I'm wearing now."
The light changed and the phantom slid forward, making a lane change once they were past the intersection. "The first stop we made was outside Honesdale. One of those old-money places where the house spreads out and sits on a lot of land. Ms. Hedges had me stop... and as a woman in the house emerged, Ms. Hedges cast off the furs and slipped into a plain cloth coat. They met, hugged and went inside. I could see they were friends. In the car, I let the engine run hot and got by, even as frost grew on the windows."
Traffic on 5th flowed well, as they crossed 55th, then 56th. "She reappeared after an hour, the woman in the house with her; again they hugged, and talked a bit longer, before Ms. Hedges came to the car. Then, as she changed her coat—" Marshall slowed down and stopped for the light on 57th; "—she gave directions for our journey in a most impatient way. I wanted to ask, but of course I didn't; we went to a little place called Mehoopany, in the Poconos. Another sprawling ranchhouse, another change of her coat, another woman waiting on the porch. I watched the same scene play out again and began to wonder."
As the turn signal clicked, Marshall smiled into the rear view, engaging Anya again. "I don't know what was going on. We went to a third place; not far away. Lawton I think it was. Same scene, same embraces and the same hesitancy before separating. I don't think Ms. Hedges was disturbed by it, not exactly; each meeting looked to be with friends. But I saw that it was wearing on her."
The light changed and Marshall turned west onto 57th. "It wore on me, too. I'd been six, seven hours in the car, my feet ice cold despite the heater, my hands stiff as I held the wheel. If there'd been an opportunity, I'd have stopped and purchased one, but every place we stopped was in the country." Without malice, he paused before saying, "I must admit, I said a few unpleasant things in the car as I waited, you can imagine."
"It must have been a very long day," Anya replied kindly.
"It was. But when Ms. Hedges got into the limo after the third visit, she directed us towards Towanda. I followed the GPS and got us there, where she had me drive down main street. She told me to stop, in front of a men's clothing store, and said, 'You must be cold. Wait here.'"
They crossed 6th Avenue. "I still hear her saying that," he said. "Matter-of-factly; and she went in, bought me a rich, fine mohair coat and a pair of gloves, I don't know how much it was... but she compelled me to accept them, and not consider the cost." He chuckled. "You've seen already, no doubt, what she can be like."
The Phantom passed Carnegie Hall — Anya saw that Matteo Rüttimann was to begin a week-long engagement. "I've seen it," she agreed.
"Then you know. I was grateful. She settled into her seat, directing me back to New York. It was well after dark before I brought her home."
They sat silently, crossing 7th Avenue; the Phantom stopped again for the light on 8th. Anya's gaze drifted to the familiar stone facade of the old Hearst Magazine Building, before Marshall turned in his seat and looked at her. "She may not seem to care; but she does. I've look forward to driving her — not because we're friends. We're not even acquaintances. But she deserves to be treated with the greatest respect. If I'm her driver, I know this is what she gets." He paused. "I'm going to drop you off right there, just past the green awning on the right. I'll be back to collect you at four."
No one has to read this... it's merely the best way I have of describing the headspace that brought me to The Lantern. The above is telling two stories about two different geographical trips. One through New York City from the Citiplaza Centre (where that building that every youtube creator says is going to fall down) to the corner that, yes, has the Hearst magazine building, where Cosmo comes from. The other covers an area of Pennsylvania and upstate New York. And if the reader knows either of these parts of the world, they'll know the locations and timing is accurate.
But here's the thing. I've never been to New York. Or upstate Pennsylvania. But I have streetview in GoogleMaps, so all the houses in Pennsylvania that the story stops at, those are all real. The corners in New York, too. I paced all the dialogue driving through New York by word count, because it's one continous stream of conversation. Essentially, I drew it like a screenplay, if I actually wanted to film the car moving along those streets, all in one shot.
Why?
Not sure, really. Because I could, certainly. It's been two years and some since my eyes were opened about ChatGPT, which no one talks about, save a few people in my actual real life orbit. I assume there are others, but they don't share it on the 'net, probably because they'd sound as crazy as I do right now. Because they'd have to post large sections of a story that no one's read, to get the point across.
Presently, we can ask anything. And because we can also check any answer we get, pretty easily, we don't have to wait for google to skew our searches, or hope that other search engines won't. We can just ask, making the question as complicated as we wish, and go on asking question after question as we shape and build and design, well... anything. I don't have to live in New York. I have all the images of New York, through Google street view, that I need. And now I have a program that can describe every image. I can even screen shot the image off Google and give it to chat and ask, "what is this?" and get the answer I want.
And what are we talking about? Whether students can cheat on tests. Whether artists can still function. Uh huh. It's 2025. I think the 20th century is done. Yes there will be artists. But those doing it the way it was done 40 years ago? Um... no, probably not.
All right, put all that aside. How do I publish a magazine for D&D?
'Cause that was the question. I'm thinking about The Onion and trying to adapt that to D&D, which of course got me thinking about the Dragon Magazine, and how much I hated it, yes in 1981, because it really was such a shitty, shitty, shitty product.
And no, I didn't get to liking it later.
What bugged me then was how really worthless it was for my efforts as a DM. As a map guy, growing up in a world where floor plans are, um, everywhere, it wasn't of much use that a magazine about D&D thought what I needed were a lot of really badly made, not well scaled maps with extremely low detail, since I could pretty much draw this in less than a minute. The notion that I should "get excited" about this bothered me then, and it really bothers me now when people still talk about the Dragon as though it were some amazing thing. The "life cycle" of the ochre jelly? What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?
Though yes, I probably could do something with it now, I'm a lot smarter... and I have chat. But the original article is no doubt so bad, I'd do better to start with the title and nothing else.
Yet, here I am, five weeks ago now, thinking, couldn't I do the Dragon better somehow? I mean, the real issue wasn't the staff's mediocre sense of anthropology or biology, or their crippling outlook on historical politics or social structure, or even their cut-and-paste approach to dungeon making. The real problem was that they didn't take any of it seriously. For them, it was a game — no, not D&D, the magazine. I mean, nothing these guys did really mattered... they were just selling their stuff to an audience less bright than they were, in a market with no competitors, to a core audience with only a few alternatives to pick from (which could likewise be easily covered)... while at the same time, there was no way they could be "wrong" about anything, because it's all just make believe anyway. None of these things are real, right? Want the life history of the goblin? Just make it up.
On some level, I appreciate that. Except that, apart from the magazine, the players in the game campaign DID want a certain degree of consistency, which the magazine wasn't. Not even remotely. Which of course matched the audience, which hard as it is to believe, were actually more ignorant then than they are now. It's just that all the ones still with us from back then, like me, educated themselves. The true idiots, whose money nevertheless supported the magazine, quit the game and ended up selling insurance.
All right, you can see, I have some issues. Fair. But because they didn't take it seriously, the writers and self-styled gurus of the culture all ended by representing themselves as fatuously "above it all," beyond criticism... which is really a terrible place for a writer. If you don't listen to criticism, and adjust to it, as a writer you just get worse.
Therefore, the problem with the dragon, I realised, was that the writers all lived in the real world. Which put them "above" the game in their heads... and thus, "too good" for it.
What if all the "writers" were inside the game world? That's where my head went. What if Geoffrey Fleetmarsh, the editor, was a sort of desperate, haranguing self-righteous publisher, sure that he's always right, yet beset endlessly by incompetents, bill collectors, a readership that didn't appreciate what he was doing and so on? What if the articles were written by people who had been there, suffered the thing personally, and now had a reason to take it to this small broadsheet that'll print it because the agenda is "to shock while telling the absolute truth"? And if there are ads, they wouldn't be slick and clean and well written... they'd be self-submitted, clumsy, full of nonsense that never ought to be in an ad, but rural truthful too. And since everything was "inside" the setting, then every off-handed comment about a wolf, an abandoned building or a missing drunkard would be "real," and therefore a potential "hook" for a DM to use.
In a lot of ways, the hooks sort of write themselves. The first rule, obey the Dragon and accept that the main aren't going to take things seriously. An edict against casting weather spells indoors? Absolutely. The inn has a problem with dwarves? Well, they do throw dishes and bang the table when they sing. The fellow who fixes wagons doesn't want to travel more than a mile to do so... of course. And it's not like addresses existed then. So don't include them in the ads.
But then, because I'm me, and I don't play a game world that's all fun and fluffy bunnies, why not make the world real. I mean, pick a year. 1635. That's 15 years before the game world I've been designing for 30 years takes place. I know the time period. I know the people, the sociology, the politics. The west counties is a good place for it. Separate from the main land routes, but populated and familiar as an English countryside. A good mix of sea and land. Ships regularly landing at Plymouth from all over the world. Someone arrives from... oh, Africa, and tells a story. Any story. Any standard D&D warstory, but told from the point of a view of someone in that world, whose been there, and was invested in the outcome. No autocratic, objective DM's point of view. Players, experiencing the world and writing the story. So that other players would want to read it.
I knew how to research this, how to put it together, how to follow each little scene with google maps, what questions to ask, and how to shape the dialogue and frame the concept, in the time frame I have, because of that scene above where I wrote about a car driving through New York City. Each bit of design we do, each thing we learn, gets a later application. I don't worry that I'm "wasting time," because whatever I'm doing now, it'll apply to something later. That's how I became this, and not the guy scrambling to come up with something about ochre jellies.
I was kind of shaking when I thought of this. And I would have dropped it... if this had been 2022. Because in 2022, there was no way to adequately address what the world was like in 1635. There would have been no way to produce this much art, this fast, for the cost that would have been, adjusted to both the time period AND the idea that the work wouldn't be limited by 1635 technology. There simply wouldn't have been a way for a single person to do this, monthly. Not and have it look like this. If it were 2022, I'd have had this idea and it never would have happened.
And those who have expressed, here and there, their trouble with my use of A.I. art? I've paid for art. I bought my first piece of art for a publication I was putting together in 1994. And I have deliberated, discussed, dealt with and paid artists for the last thirty years, when I had to, because I had no choice. Those bringing up the issue, I'm guessing you've never done it... and certainly not as often as I have. And certainly not with the understanding that being able to invent a piece of art in one's head, and have it in usuable form inside of 20 minutes?
You might as well tell me I should walk to New York, because trains put coaches out of business 185 years ago.
Sorry. I can do this now. I'm not going to wait for this to be "all right" for a lot of people who can't cope.
There you are. That's where this came from. I'll bet the above doesn't make much sense. A lot of time, when I just throw out a post like this, without planning it, the logic doesn't hold up well. I go down this side passages, rant, come back, sort of just stumble around to the end, until I run out of "Oh yeah, and..." moments in my head. Which is now.
I always enjoy following you around the barn to get to where we are getting to. Maybe I'm inferring too much, but I think I understand how the sausage was made even though you said you weren't talking about that, and I liked finding out.
ReplyDeleteI immediately thought about Dragon when I first looked at The Lantern. It's like a reverse parody of Dragon, where you've followed their format and style, yet made a far more serious (I'm not sure that's the right word, maybe useful, meaningful, thoughtful) product (also not the best word).
Anyway, this is terrific--AI involvement or not.