AI Killed the Hobby

I look at these massive new RPG books, huge tomes filled with art and page after page of text, and my mind shuts down.

I am overwhelmed.

It is all too much.

Somebody, please, set me free from shelves full of overwritten, page-after-page, books filled with meaningless art, filler text, and endless rambling about nothing of much importance. We are in an obese age of gaming, where nobody cares about usability, and everyone damns the torpedoes to ship a 500-page "statement" book. The RPG to end all RPGs. A monster phone book of a game.

Likely filled with AI-generated "filler" text. You know that "help me write" sort of "press the button and fill out the next few sentences and make me sound smart" AI text.

They all suck.

The more you say, the less it all means.

Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy. I get the feeling more work was put into this small book than an entire 1,000-page, three book collection game. It takes nothing to write filler. The hardest part of writing is deciding "what do we cut?"

What do we leave out so this is the "best of the best?"

Every page in this book is designed to be amazing. That must have been a lot of hard work paring this down, and in the end, it is worth far more to me than a 500-page slog of a game.

With D&D 2024, when I look at those books, I could take a box cutter and cut out 70% of the chapters and have a better game. Even the decision to include as many sub-classes as they did bloats the game and lessens usability. Huge spreads of art make for a good coffee-table book, but try using that thing in play. With OSE, this little book can travel and be used as a table reference without any problem.

It is the same feeling I get when watching a nearly 3-hour long movie and wishing they would have cut an hour of runtime to just deliver the best parts while I am sitting in the theater and having to hit the bathrooms. 

Shadowdark was designed with the same ideas, that 2-page spreads should convey only the best options. The more you add to Shadowdark, the worse it gets. The game is already severely bloated with classes and too many options. The more I get rid of for that game, the better it gets.

Designers who fill their books with bloat and fluff I will give up on. The books are worthless. 

I want designers who care to give me the very best on every page. 

With care, and consideration.

Something AI is impossible at doing.

Using judgment.