LANTERN OF THE THIRTEENTH WORD
ABOUT THIS STRANGE LITTLE PLACE
If you have stumbled across this site, you may reasonably be wondering what it is.
This is our gaming group’s personal campaign blog.
Our group has been playing together since before the Red Box. Yes, we are old. Yes, our knees hurt when a storm is coming. Yes, we are sleepy.
This is an unofficial, noncommercial record of what happens at our table. What you will find instead are campaign reports, original worldbuilding, characters, artwork, generators, and the many strange things that have accumulated around decades of play.
AI DISCLOSURE
You may notice that this site contains a substantial amount of AI-assisted material.
Yes, we know.
This world predates generative AI, but it is being presented here with its assistance. AI tools have helped with drafting, editing, organization, coding, and artwork. I remain responsible for the creative direction of the project in totality: what belongs in the world, what does not, what gets revised, and what gets thrown into the sea.
Like many people, I have a complicated relationship with these tools. Their environmental costs are real. Their social and economic consequences are real. Their effects on artists, writers, and other working creatives should not be dismissed merely because the technology is impressive or convenient.
The site itself was hand-built—as much as anything on the modern web can be said to be hand-built. I have worked professionally on the World Wide Web since close enough to the beginning that I still occasionally call it the World Wide Web.
If the site looks a certain way to you, and that way is good, thank you. If it is the other thing, noted. My feelings have been hurt to the appropriate degree.
WHY USE AI AT ALL?
For better or worse, these tools are becoming part of the work.
During my recent and much-beloved process of searching for a job, nearly every interview began with some version of the same question: “Which AI tools do you know, and what do you use them for?” For anyone hoping generative AI would simply be defeated and disappear, I regret to report that I do not presently have good news.
That does not mean we must use it carelessly.
For me, its ethical use has to clear three bars.
IT CANNOT BE SLOP.
I refuse to make disposable material simply because a machine can produce it quickly.
All I wanted to be when I was young was an artist—or at least someone allowed to spend a life making things. By and large, my career has given me opportunities to satisfy that need. I will not knowingly close that door behind me or treat the work of younger artists as expendable.
The first obligation is therefore simple: use these tools to make the best work I can. Learn them. Push them. Question them. Make them push me. Revise ruthlessly, reject weak results, and never confuse “finished generating” with “finished.”
THE BEST THINGS SHOULD BE SHARED.
Generative tools carry real environmental and sociopolitical costs. Data centers are not rad.
My personal rule is that if resources are spent making something, the best of that work should become useful to someone. It should be shared, played, adapted, enjoyed, or used to help another person make something of their own. Otherwise, we risk imposing those costs upon one another and the planet merely to fill another forgotten folder.
That is why the campaign reports, world material, generators, and playable tools are here.
THIS STUFF SHOULD BE FREE.
Everything on this site is free to read and use for your own table unless producing and maintaining something eventually requires a genuinely substantial amount of my time and labor. If that ever changes, it will be explained clearly. There will be no surprise tollbooth guarded by a hungry dragon.
If AI-assisted work is not your thing, I understand and respect that. Sincerely.
Otherwise, stick around. Read the dispatches, follow the campaign, borrow what inspires you, and use the generators and tools as they come online.
I will do my best not to make any of it slop.
—Alderman Flint