Unauthorized, AI-Generated ‘RPG History Archive’ Draws Ire From Designers It Depicts
Designers from around the RPG sphere are, understandably, upset after being included in an AI “website” littered with inaccuracies.
Just when you thought you’d seen all the ways that generative AI could cast its greasy shadow over tabletop RPGs, a new challenger appears. This time it’s an inaccuracy-strewn record of “Influential Tabletop Game Icons” from controversial designer Ken “Whit” Whitman.
If that name sounds familiar, Whitman is the designer in charge of high-profile Kickstarters in the 2010s, including one for Pencil Dice and another for a live action version of the Knights of the Dinner Table, neither of which have fulfilled their promises in more than a decade. In fact, as part of this year’s GAMA Board elections, the website Save GAMA, dedicated to informing voters about the candidates running for the board, was neutral on most candidates – save one. All that to say, given the reputation, it’s little wonder that this new AI-generated website has sparked as big a backlash as it has.
4 Pillar Games Sparks Backlash From RPG Designers
The website in question, 4 Pillar Games, launched just a day or so ago. On it, you’ll find an RSS-feed of “tabletop news from active tabletop news sources” including Rascal News, EN World, Meeple Mountain, and more. But the main draw seems to be the “historical archive,” which consists of lists of “Top Influential Tabletop Game Icons”, “Top TTG Companies”, and “Top TTG Magazines.”
However, the biographies are littered with inaccuracies, not to mention AI generated images that create an eerie facsimile, as some of the creators included in this list of luminaries have commented on social media.
For instance, over on BlueSky, Fred Hicks, president of Evil Hat, in response to the AI-created image above, posted the following:
“Haven’t looked this young in 20 years. Gave no legal permission to use my likeness in this image. Gave no legal permission to use trademarked logos placed on incorrect product images & layouts shown here. Them Fate Dice are jank, yo. Contemplating legal action. Enjoy mother******.”
Over on Facebook, Cam Banks (Cortex System, the Leverage RPG) posted:
“There’s a website called Four Pillars gaming that purports to be creatinv a living history of tabletop gaming and the way its owners are creating this thing with AI-generated images of real people with AI-generated biographies. It’s lazy and disrespectful and makes me really angry.”
As you can see in the screenshot, Banks comments on the people involved. And there, too, the story develops even further. In the last 24 hours, two of the people on the about page (which has since been removed) left the project. In a comment on Facebook, Tony Lee posted that he and Don Perrin had officially “resigned and disassociated” from Four Pillars, adding that the site was created without their approval or notification. Perrin shared a brief statement on his LinkedIn account:
Whit Washing
Shannon Appelcline, an actual gaming historian, whose work has almost certainly been scraped and used as training data repurposed by whatever LLM is responsible for the 4 Pillars site, spoke on Blue Sky about his interaction with the histories of Whitman’s own companies.
“By the by, I read through the “4 Pillars” histories that Ken has of his own companies, ArchAngel and Dynnasty. I identified about a half-dozen obvious errors in my quick-as-possible readthrough. For Ken’s ow commpanies. It’s laughable.”
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This becomes even more relevant from Appelcline’s top post at the moment, which coins the term “Whitwash”, an allusion to the fact that while Ken Whitman isn’t mentioned anywhere on the site, except for in his own bio, his name is in the site’s metadata.
Many creators have reached out to 4 Pillars, asking to be removed, or commenting on the use of “AI slop.” Sadly, the response seems to be not very encouraging. Spencer Campbell (Slayers, Rune) reached out on Instagram, requesting to be removed and received a denial (that also feels AI-generated).
Across the board, it seems that the designers featured on the 4 Pillars “website” object to being included – and not just because of the inaccuracies. The featured images have a bizarre list of things that the designers “Did Not Do.” All this to say, if you are involved in the tabletop industry, you might want to send some emails or comments. Because a big part of the danger of something like this is the inaccuracies getting rescraped or indexed somewhere much more trustworthy.
It wouldn’t be hard to cite something like this and then mix in the inaccuracies from one bio into a more trustworthy source, like Wikipedia, for instance. Then it’s just a matter of time before the truth gets buried beneath an avalanche of AI hallucinations.
Though, at press time, the future of 4 Pillars seems uncertain. With at least two-thirds of the supposed “creators” behind the project officially resigning, the website being scrubbed of store and publisher program pages, and with the public Facebook page for 4 Pillars being taken down (though this page remains up), it’s anyone’s guess how long this will last. But it illustrates the potential harm that LLM generation can wreak upon an unprepared community.
