Fantasy Art, AI Images, and Where We're Probably Going With It
And Evidence Doktor Rotwang Has A Dirty Mind...
One of the hot topics in RPG discussions is the use of AI generated content and art. DriveThruRPG has serious restrictions on products which fall under this category. WOTC has been caught using it for their stuff… twice, if I recall correctly… and probably won’t stop.
How far down that road are we going to travel?
Ladies and Gentlemen, AI is here to stay. Very wealthy people are sinking massive sums of money into building AI Data Centers; it’s a controversy right here in Little Rock. They’re noisy, huge, and extremely bad for the environment. They’re also not going away.
Compound that with the knowledge that the average Joe can get really good AI service at a reasonable price that’s useful for a great many things, it’s inevitable that AI content will be part of the RPG industry for the foreseeable future, and will probably become a standard tool for generating art and text.
Just you wait and see.
The traditional artist, pen and paper in hand, won’t be able to compete with an art department of one or maybe two people who have learned how to properly prompt a decent LLM into producing stunning fantasy art.
The traditional writer can’t type fast enough to compete with the small staff of writers at WOTC or elsewhere who can crank out indepth fantasy literature or supplements. Yoke that with companies who have access to distribution pipelines you and I don’t, it’s a done deal. Give it time.
I have Google Gemini. The Pro version. I use it for many things in my life… mainly personal research. Last night, I spent about three hours playing with AI generated art in an effort to produce fantasy art roughly comparable to the art in the OSR movement.
Here are some examples. I used Google Gemini on these… hence the Gemini logo in the bottom right corner of each of them (there are ways to remove that, incidentally).
Now this is just me assing around; this isn’t really serious effort… just really good prompts. Some of them are based on reference images I provided, and some are straight from my imagination and ability to tell Gemini what I want. See if you can tell which is which.
You’re also going to get a glimpse into my taste in women, but that’s another subject.
Here we go…
Derikae, vampiress and a ranking Grave Queen of the dark Kingdom of Waerda. She likes historical novels, moonlight walks, and going out for a bite.
Lorelei, the imprisoned daughter of Castis… one of the wealthier merchants of Iot. She dreams of being an adventurer, but Daddy will spend her dearly to increase his financial empire.
We have to have a treasure chest, of course.
The main temple of the Snake Mother, goddess of the Naga.
Never adventure alone…
The Red Sorceress. She loves the smell of roast pork.
The Pantheress has completed her mission.
The party is surprised… except for the elf.
A Weald Stalker… a monster native to Fayn, but sure… use it in your dark forests. Stats later.
Ambaex, a Whore of Lilith and fast climbing in the ranks of those dark witches.
Lastly…
Sabanorak, an Onroth Wizard of some dark repute, but widely sought out for his extensive knowledge of the Najhas Taloth regions. Some say most of his magic came from expeditions into that forbidden and damned place… expeditions that few of his companions survived.
Once again, I didn’t put a lot of effort into any of these other than repeated tweaks. Gemini did all the heavy lifting. If I wanted to develop extremely detailed prompts, I could make some enticing fantasy art.
Is it fair to fantasy artists out there now? I dunno. Looks to me like they have yet another medium to master.