Please consider adding your quick impressions and your rating to the game entry in our Board Game Directory after you post your thoughts so others can find them!
Please start new threads in the appropriate category for mini-session reports, discussions of specific games or other discussion starting posts.
Frohike wrote: These AI generated images bring up lots of questions for me, specifically about "genre" art, especially in genres that oversaturate the current visual design space. In a sense, current pulp fantasy art might as well be algorithmically generated in a lot of cases, especially when we're looking at hyper-representational public domain sourced material (Conan, Cthulhu, etc). Then there are the stylistic outliers, like Virgil Finlay (Cosmic Frog), or stuff like Dungeon Degenerates or Cave Evil where AI generation would lose something in translation. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something that feels subversively "ok" about letting AI sift through the murk of over-used art styles to barf out usable material.
Hot take: The AI is better than 85.6% of human artists.
Seriously, for kinda dreamy semi-surreal stuff, the AI is damn near perfect, that slight lack of human perspective is actually quite captivating.
I'm not sure AI can generate art that shares a single artists style though. It's nice when a game or comic has consistent art with a unique style.
n815e wrote: I just finished reading the first of the Elric Saga hardback editions (the new collection). This one has four novels in it.
Never read Elric before.
I regret buying the second in the series without reading the first.
The stories get set up where I think this is a cool situation, something fun or interesting will happen. But then the rest of the story is just a series of badly scripted rpg style encounters. You run into some (random generated) beasts and fight them. You come across a stranger that will instantly be your best ally. Here are more enemies to fight. You fall into a marsh. Here are some additional enemies. You make it to the castle. In this room are just a bunch of enemies (none seem to be thematically tied to any of the others).
It’s kinda dull. I don’t feel like the characters have any depth, even Elric. I don’t feel invested in what is happening. It’s disappointing.
If I recall correctly Elric was written as a serial for a monthly magazine. So it has an episodic cadence to it.
But I agree, as did my English major buddy Pat in college. He read Stormbringer first and imagined all sorts of backstory had proceeded it. Then he read the backstory and said something on the line of, “there’s no foundation here.”. It kicked the legs out from under his opinion of Stormbringer after the fact. That’s why I always get concerned when someone wants to do an origin story for a bad guy. Their badness is diminished; sometimes you’re just better off leaving Vader in the mask.
It’s been a few years since I read Elric (low quality sci fi book club hardbacks from the early 90s, still on the shelf). When it first read it as a kid, I read it right after reading Conan, so I loved it as the louche anti-Conan.
jason10mm wrote:
Hot take: The AI is better than 85.6% of human artists.
Seriously, for kinda dreamy semi-surreal stuff, the AI is damn near perfect, that slight lack of human perspective is actually quite captivating.
I'm not sure AI can generate art that shares a single artists style though. It's nice when a game or comic has consistent art with a unique style.
To steal that thought and take it further. AI art is probably better for stand alone art. Human direction is probably still better for when the art is secondary to some other purpose.
Gary Sax wrote: "This Year" by the Mountain Goats is one of the greatest songs ever written.
I'll start a separate thread entitled, "Undeniable facts" if you'd like.
See also: "No Children"
Darnielle is an incredible songwriter with some breathtaking lyrics. I follow him on Twitter where you can find out that a) he is extremely funny b) he loves playing Magic the Gathering Arena
Games
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
:strip_icc()/pic7070673.jpg)
