Hasbro CEO says all his mates are using AI for their D&D games, which is apparently 'a clear signal that we need to be embracing it'

Wizards of the Coast—that is, the folks who make Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering—have had a very public, very bumpy relationship over the use of AI in marketing materials and sourcebooks lately. Every time it happens, the resulting outrage kicks up enough dust to cause thorough backpedalling and apologies.

That hasn't stopped Hasbro (WoTC's parent company) CEO Chris Cocks from getting very excited about using AI in D&D, though. Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference (via Futurism), Cocks casually mentions that "inside of development, we've already been using AI," before clarifying that it's mostly machine-learning or proprietary stuff: "We will deploy it significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid."

However, in a bizarre line of thought, Cocks—who apparently plays D&D with "30 or 40 people regularly" (I barely have time for two TTRPG games, Chris, are you just in a bunch of West Marches campaigns?) notes that "there's not a single person who doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That's a clear signal that we need to be embracing it."

Look—I'm not going to sit here on a throne of ethical superiority. While I've never purposefully touched generative AI to run any of my TTRPG groups, I have, absolutely, taken to Pinterest to grab one or two reference images for my games in the past. Homebrew campaigns devised entirely from the sweat of the DM's brow are few and far between. I'll concede that generative AI isn't too many steps far removed from that, and if it's just four random people I'll never meet mucking around on a Discord server, whatever. I don't approve, but it's your life.

But campaign development? Character development? That's like, 90% of my job as a DM, and part of the reason I enjoy running games in the first place. Cocks continues: "The themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling—I think you're going to see that not just our hardcore brands like D&D but also multiple of our brands."

This enthusiasm runs countermand to the spirit of Wizard's AI art FAQ, released not too long after the above controversies, which reads: "Magic and D&D have been built on the innovation, ingenuity, and hard work of talented people who sculpt these beautiful, creative games. As such, we require artists, writers, and creatives contributing to the Magic TCG and the D&D TTRPG to refrain from using AI generative tools to create final Magic or D&D products." In fairness, this is specifically referring to AI art—but it's a far cry from Cocks' seeming hunger for the stuff.

I don't know. If the tech didn't exhaust the snot out of me, I could see an alternate, less old-man-shouts-at-cloud version of myself taking a generative AI story for a jolly once or twice as a novelty experience. But, like most uses of generative AI to 'make' artwork and writing—what's the point? Aren't you robbing yourself, more than anything?

AI can't replicate the deep joy in seeing a twist you devised to shock your players land, or in seeing your table grow attached to your NPCs. No proprietary D&D story generation tool could replicate the giddy feeling you get when someone has lore questions, or wants to work an element of your world into their backstory. It can't give you the satisfaction of a well-balanced encounter or a homebrew mechanic you made paying off. It can't let you, well, tell a story with your mates, which is half of why any of us bother.

Secondary tools, like character creation or rules questions, I don't care much either way. Such models would be unreliable, as AI is notorious for hallucinating information, but it's not the end of the world. AI could also hypothetically fill the role of, say, a random name or NPC generator, something plenty of DMs use already via the traditional methods. I just don't see the appeal of Cocks' apparently 10-player strong games cooking up worlds and characters without the human touch, and his enamourment with the tech has me fretting that Hasbro will continue trickling the worst of videogame nonsense into pen & paper.