When me and my younger brother were little, we were outside playing and digging in the snow with an old claw hammer from the barn. It must have been shortly after watching the classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

I got the bright idea to tell him to stick the claw of the hammer in the snow, then pull it out and lick it, just like Yukon Cornelius does, and maybe we could find gold.

Needless to say, tongue + ice cold metal hammer were quite the match and he was stuck instantly. Being as little as we were he panicked and ripped it off, along with a large thick chunk of tongue skin. Quite a bit of red snow that day…

I remember getting in trouble for that one. My parents definitely thought I tricked him on purpose, but I couldn’t have been more than 8 or so and definitely did not. I also remember that hammer sitting outside for the rest of the winter, with a chunk of tongue still frozen to it.

I think a better analogy would be paying for an all you can eat buffet, but every time you go up for a plate, Google shovels some of whatever they want onto it.

Oh sure, they try to guess what you might like by tracking your eating habits every time you visit the restaurant, but they still keep putting crap you don’t want on your plate that gets in the way of what you do want.

Oh, and also, some all you can eat buffets have a plate limit, after so many plates, you can only get a spoonful per trip. And Google still crams on stuff you don’t want.

It’s great at coming up with ideas for magic items, monsters, traps, plot hooks, etc.

I ran a Christmas session last year, it was a dream session so I handed out tons of magic items cause they wouldn’t be keeping them. ChatGPT generated every single one, and I didn’t tweak anything at all. Which made for a few interesting items with redundant or contradictory stats, but that was explained by it being a dream.

I have used it many times to give ideas for new items, new monsters, etc. Recently I was creating a blood-themed dungeon and asked for monster ideas and it gave me an Animated Bloodpuddle (reflavored Gelatinous Cube with extra abilities), and a Hemogoblin (ravenous blood thirsty goblins). There were others but those ones stuck out as cool and ended up being quite fun for the party.

I’m either going to be a badass or a dumbass.

The Prometheus may have been ugly, but it was my favorite because it was Earth’s first. It was kinda janky and totally experimental, but it was absolutely a necessary step in our advancement of science enabling better and cooler ships like Daedalus. It was usually outgunned and outsized by everything it went up against, but still managed to leave a mark. It saved the day in the battle of Antarctica enabling the discovery of Atlantis.

Do I think it was a better ship? Of course not, it was totally inferior (and ugly). But it made for a better story. For a good portion of the show it was all we had and it was barely enough, but it became more of a character than a tool. The moment the Prometheus was blasted in half was just as serious as any character death (and not just because of Pendergast). It was a huge blow to us and let the viewers know the Ori were a real threat.

YOU MUST GATHER YOUR PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH!

Baldur’s Gate