MU Peeves Thread

ten

first, ideas

now, mope

Tez

I am begging game-runners to stop using ChatGPT.

bear_necessities

@Tez which one where lol

Jennkryst

@Tez What if we dump game logs in to the ChatGPT database, so we add random game lore to the list of ‘Chicken can definitely be cooked at 130F’ and ‘Some people say if you run off a cliff, you will not start to fall so long as you do not look down’ results?

Testament

@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:

I am begging game-runners to stop using ChatGPT.

It does however, making me want to dump a bunch of logs from a mush into ChatGPT and then ask it create a wholly new scene and see what kind of destruction it’ll create.

Tez

@bear_necessities There’s the usual suspects but some newer games appear to be following the trend and using it for theme information. Outsourcing theme to AIs just makes me wanna put my head in my hands.

Or as a real bully of an @Apos put it:

I really don’t get it, writing theme is like the fun part of creating game
that’s like let me outsource this to a computer so I can get to the real fun of handling player disputes
‘letting AI write all my lore so I instead can fast forward to dealing with 3 mage players who each describe their characters as an alpha’

Third Eye

@Tez
This is a case where I don’t want to name names because I don’t feel like an individual game doing it matters at this point. It’s clearly a trend and it’s clearly going to continue. It’s a bummer to pull up a new game in a theme you like and see significant portions of thematic information clearly (to me) generated by LLM in a way that doesn’t even seem edited, and then see no mention of ChatGPT in the news files or posts. IDK I know a lot of players wouldn’t care and would even enjoy engaging with ChatGPT content. And my stance is still, this is fine, but make it clear what you’re doing.

Gashlycrumb

Double standards.

Abelard’s so pissed about what Bridgit did IC, so mean and it messed up his RP prospects. So he does the very same thing to Camille, because she was standin’ next to Bridgit, and accuses Camille of being unable to accept IC consequences when Camille doesn’t like it either.

bear_necessities

@Tez I feel like there’s something wrong with me because I can’t tell when a theme is AI generated or not, but I suppose that’s only going to get worse as time goes on, huh?

I don’t know what the solution is, truthfully. If it’s becoming a consistent problem, naming-and-shaming won’t work. And if people like to RP a theme that’s AI generated… well, I don’t know what to do about that, either. I just would rather not RP with a robot (but I’m also not sure if I would catch someone using AI to generate their poses???)

Juniper

if you’re running a writing game why would you outsource the writing lmao

mietze

@bear_necessities maybe it’s just a matter of reading enough of it that you develop a sixth sense. I’m not there yet to be honest. The only time I’ve got pings has been over a bunch of room descriptions that seemed just really off compared to how that person RPed (lots of You feel X when you see in the room descs when they NEVER did that sort of thing in RP, or example. Or when I saw a bunch of things obviously generated at the same time that also appeared together, (like a bunch of room descs hitting the grid at once with a weird similarity that was hard to put a finger on that i probably wouldn’t have noticed just slowly discovering those rooms organically via play/looking for scene locations, ect.

Third Eye

I do make use of AI detection tools, both free versions and a paid one I subscribed to after Too Many Of These Incidents For Me, but mostly they’re confirmation for me when something feels REALLY off. There’s tons of AI generated stuff that’s actually been edited or was just a touch-up on something a human wrote that I don’t and would never notice. I associate LLM with being over-long and flat yet also weirdly effusive, mainly, but it’s usually not ‘bad’ writing, as such. It’s weird because it’s not ‘written’ at all, it’s word-generated-after-word. ‘Simple’ language that’s also repetitive due to that generation is probably the rhythm of it that twigs me the most. This article mentions it and some other tells.

https://readwrite.com/how-to-tell-if-something-is-written-by-chatgpt/

IDK, I think there’s also a ‘scales falling from your eyes’ quality when you know this stuff is becoming widespread (presuming it bothers you, I guess). Once you actually start to look for it, you start to see it when it’s obvious, and a lot of the time people don’t bother not to make it obvious.

Jennkryst

@Juniper I can kind of sort of see why someone would do it. After all, anyone who runs a Star Wars mush has outsourced the writing of a lot of the theme to George Lucas and/or whichever EU writers of the specific setting they want. Shadowrun games have outsourced their writing. WoD games outsourced their writing to White Wolf or Onyx Path…

I mean yeah, you still gotta do more specific things for your local setting, but none of them started from scratch. They all had a world already built, they’re just adding on to it.

This is actually supposed to be the appeal of unique settings. You’re not caught up on what some other author wrote (or having players being hyper-focused on trying to adhere to canon or that one specific bloodline’s lore or whatever).

But also unique settings take work writing, and people be lazy. They want the benefits of no player being able to contradict the game lore, but don’t want to put in the effort of actually writing any of it.

Or maybe I’m wrong, WHOMST CAN SAY?

Gashlycrumb

I dunno. If I, like many before me, write a story about Conan the Barbarian, I am not sure I’d describe it as having outsourced part of the work to the late Robert E. Howard. I mean, technically, yeah, but there’s sort of a fuzzy line there. If I write a story about Robin Hood did I outsource it to Anonymous? One weird drunken night a friend of mine and I wrote a hilarious libretto for an imaginary opera about Robert Downey Jr. tripping on mushrooms and getting shipped to Guam, and okay, this notion was inspired by Robert Downey Jr.'s actual drug-fueled antics in the late 90’s, but outsourced to? Hmm.

If I cut and paste room/area descriptions from a novel and just cut and edit a little to be more MU-desc like and uniform, that seems clear plagarism/outsourcing. But not necessarily a terrible thing if the novelist doesn’t mind.

None of these actions seem equivalent to getting a glorified markov chainer to do the job, but maybe I’m just sour; I have a lot of professional artist and writer friends.

Artemis

when players are so nasty and unpleasant to deal with you’re afraid of being spied on and bullied a second time for imposing IC consequences.
lol this isn’t even a mush thing, i’m on a mud, but shit i just needed to say it publicly somewhere. carry on with your actual MU peeves!

Tez

@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:

I am begging game-runners to stop using ChatGPT.

I AM BEGGING PLAYERS TO STOP USING CHATGPT.

Coin

@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:

I am begging game-runners to stop using ChatGPT.

I AM BEGGING PLAYERS TO STOP USING CHATGPT.

at this point i’m gonna hazard the suggestion of maybe telling the people in question that you can tell they’re using ChatGPT.

maybe you can privately shame them into stopping.

cuz they probably won’t just from reading this. XD

Tez

@Coin You’re right. Sometimes I just need to scream into the void, though. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and tell them WE KNOW YOU ARE DOING THIS so that they can course correct, but it’s a bannable offense if they keep it up.

AND EXASPERATING. I just don’t get it.

Coin

@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Coin You’re right. Sometimes I just need to scream into the void, though. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and tell them WE KNOW YOU ARE DOING THIS so that they can course correct, but it’s a bannable offense if they keep it up.

AND EXASPERATING. I just don’t get it.

I understand.

but also if it’s a bannable offense, imo you’re under the implicit obligation of telling them you can tell, since ‘keep it up’ suggests they’ve been warned, yah?

i mean, working from the absolute very little i have to go on based on how vague all this is.

Tez

@Coin Well, I mean, I did. I did tell the player. The first incident of screaming into the void was a separate thing: new games using ChatGPT vs new players using ChatGPT. It’s just the one right on the heels of the other makes it especially exasperating.