Geekwire: Wizards of the Coast updating artist guidelines after AI art found in ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ book . “Wizards of the Coast will update its artist guidelines to prohibit the use of illustrations that were made with generative AI tools, after fans spotted telltale signs of AI art in an upcoming sourcebook for Dungeons & Dragons.”
Vice: I Tried to Adopt a Traumatized Sims 4 Baby From Instagram. “Sims like these are lovingly created and then put up for adoption by Simmers on Instagram, which they more commonly refer to Simstagram. Most Simmers use Instagram for roleplay, given that it’s a social media platform focused mainly on still images. They pretend their Sims run the Instagrams themselves, posting as if they were influencers. Storylines run the gamut from pregnant runaway teens to more generic family drama, and just like real influencers, these Sims grow up, get married, and eventually have kids or adopt them.”
GeekNative: AR success Foundry Six comes to tabletop RPGs with Arealm. “Arealm is compatible with any video chat such as Discord, Meet or Zoom. With it, DMs, GMs and players can transform into their tabletop RPG characters or NPCs. The project asks for $25,000 to fund, and you can see progress on the project page.”
CNBC: Dungeons & Dragons had its biggest year ever as Covid forced the game off tables and onto the web. “With vaccination rates rising, an end to the pandemic appears to be in sight. The D&D brand is emerging in a strong position. Stalwart fans used lockdown to teach friends and family how to play, ushering in a new cohort of dice-rolling enthusiasts that will transition from socially distanced online chatrooms to crowded tables in the coming year.”
SupChina: Chinese youth find pandemic relief in the form of role-playing. “Murderers disguise themselves as friends, members teleport back in time, and even laws of physics are transcended on a whim. All from the comfort of home. The role-playing murder mystery game jùběnshā 剧本杀 (literally, ‘script murder’) has been popular in China for years, but it was only during the pandemic, as people were cooped up inside, that it really took off. It is now the favored pastime of many Chinese youth.”
Techdirt: Game Jam Winner Spotlight: The Great Gatsby Tabletop Roleplaying Game. “Best Adaptation is always an interesting category in these jams, because every entry is on some level an adaptation, but that doesn’t mean they are all truly good candidates for the prize. Some make use of elements of a public domain work in a way that detaches them from their source, others focus so closely on the source that it is more like a study of the original — both those things can be amazing, and both approaches show up among our winners this year. But there’s also something special about a game that turns a public domain work into something brand new while also carrying forth and further exploring its original meaning and context. That’s the kind of game that is a candidate for Best Adaptation, and that’s the kind of game The Great Gatsby: The Tabletop Roleplaying […]
BBC: Quest Sprout: ‘The most wholesome thing on the internet’. “Among the horror and the misery of this year, one tiny round hero has emerged to give thousands of people brief moments of joy. That hero is Quest Sprout.”
Washington Post: Amid a pandemic and a racial reckoning, ‘D&D’ finds itself at an inflection point. “Victoria Rogers got in trouble when she started playing Dungeons and Dragons online. It was the mid-1990s, and Rogers, unable to find people to play the tabletop fantasy roleplaying game as it’s traditionally done, played over a bulletin board system (BBS) powered by her home dial-up connection. “It was all text-based,” she said. ‘It was like writing a novel and everyone would take turns posting written descriptions of what they’re doing.’ Games of Dungeons of Dragons (D&D), where people control characters on open-ended adventures based on rules, stats and dice rolls, can famously eat up entire afternoons. But Rogers’s childhood sessions were even longer than usual.”
Mashable: Facebook role play groups offer a mundane escape from the pandemic. “The pandemic has devastated the American economy; as of Thursday, a staggering 38.6 million Americans filed for unemployment in just nine weeks. Essential workers are putting their lives on the line to keep society running, and many nonessential workers who did keep their jobs are working from home. With stay-at-home orders for some states are being extended well into the summer, everyone is struggling to adjust to the new reality. But in ‘A group where we all pretend to work at the same office,’ thousands of employees are still clocking in. ”
New-to-me, from Polygon: An artist created 3D models of every D&D monster, and you can have them all for free. “For more than five years, one man has been creating 3D models of every single monster in Dungeons & Dragons’ 5th edition, and giving away those digital files for free, so people with 3D printers can make them at home. Miguel Zavala’s art project consists of more than 1,900 digital files, and he has nearly 3,000 paying subscribers supporting his work on Patreon.”
ComicBook: Every Tabletop Deal and Freebie to Help Get You Through Coronavirus Quarantine. “The coronavirus pandemic has caused many game publishers to adapt on the fly to ever-changing circumstances, as they try and still help the local game stores that are so important to the market as well as get games to players stuck in their homes. They are fulfilling those tasks in a number of ways, from offering sales on products for players or helping out local game stores by cutting some of the profits with them. Others are offering lots of free content for their games to download, while others are offering completely free games and experiences for fans to check out for the first time.”
Kottke: RPG Dungeon Generator. “One Page Dungeon generates small dungeon layouts for RPG adventures (Dungeons & Dragons, etc.)” I’m surprised at how much of a timesink this is.
Search Engine Journal: New Google Easter Eggs: Multi-Sided Dice. “Now, users can roll 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 20 sided dice. Previously, this Easter egg was limited to a single six-sided die.”
Comicbook: New ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Adventure Takes Place in the Real World . “Dungeons & Dragons is sending people on a wild quest that involves secret websites, Yelp reviews, and even excursions into the real world. Earlier this week, we reported that Dungeons & Dragons had started an ARG (alternate reality game), likely to promote their upcoming adventure story that will be revealed in early June. The game began when the brand’s Twitter account was briefly ‘taken over’ by someone claiming to be an associate of Elminster, a popular wizard from one of the campaign settings in the game.”
In development: a database of events from 50 years of the Gen Con gaming convention. “The Temple University Digital Scholarship Center announces the creation of an online database of events for all 50 years of the Gen Con gaming convention. The database will be available for use by the public with an accompanying exhibit site for hosting articles related to the information that is gleaned from the gaming history of the database. The database and exhibit site are expected to go live in July of 2017.”
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