00:01.56 Kurt Crenwelge Well, hello, and thanks for... Coming out, i'm I'm recording this for posterity for my podcast, Sidekicks and Sidequests. uh which is uh the best unofficial Dungeons and Dragons podcast and my humbly biased opinion. So I'm here live this weekend, October 4th. 2026. 00:24.10 Kurt Crenwelge at uh the third annual fake con uh here in the bob duncan center in arlington texas um So you know in preparing and... a Man, this this convention snuck up on me. um But i you know since my podcast deals with NPCs... 00:42.86 Kurt Crenwelge And. ah the the The background actors, the side quests, the little moments. the humanizing moments that we can work into our campaigns. 00:54.00 Kurt Crenwelge Um, because of the rise of ai and stuff like that going on in just the the tools and the technology that's getting out there, that's getting more and more powerful, more and more enticing. 01:07.25 Kurt Crenwelge you know i did want to still talk about npcs but i also wanted to talk about i guess technology and how best uh it could serve us and how like how i try and preserve and uplift. 01:20.98 Kurt Crenwelge um humanity between my guest and I and just the audience in general, how we should not forget that with this alluring. ah fruit of temptation before us with ah technology because Um, I've got a lovely audience member with me. So we're just going to keep this conversational. And if more people filter in, that's great. we'll We'll open it up wider. But we'll certainly keep track of our time. cause 01:47.35 Kurt Crenwelge As well, I would like in collaboration with my audience member here to be able to create organically through my random tables. ah an NPC character. uh live here on the podcast and the panel um so then that way you can see you know just how human ingenuity will always be better than just only leaving it it up to technology. 02:10.63 Kurt Crenwelge uh So very interesting and timely that this is. come out um because ah Pope Leo XIV, the head of the Catholic Church, obviously wrote his big first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, which is talking about... 02:28.29 Kurt Crenwelge of technology and AI in this day and age and how it's interacting with human culture and our arts and stuff like that. And I think it's very... ah telling and prominent. ah This comes from ah the Pope's uh social media account when talking about art and i feel like it could help inform this discussion in this talk so quote from pope leo xiv in this era of artificial intelligence It is becoming urgent to distinguish human art 02:57.35 Kurt Crenwelge from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference. even before an aesthetic one. between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. 03:13.65 Kurt Crenwelge algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity. 03:25.68 Kurt Crenwelge So I think that's very, I think keeping that in mind to help with our our panel here, our discussion. um You know, maybe you and you can tell me in your own words, how do you. How have you encountered AI and when it comes to... 03:42.26 Kurt Crenwelge dungeon mastering or being a player or just kind of seeing the hobby out in general what are what are some of the things you're seeing what are those concerns that you might have and what kind of brought you to this panel today. 03:55.69 Kurt Crenwelge Well... um So one of the bigger things I've seen AI be use is for my players or also um they really use it to kind of generate their own character. 04:10.67 Kurt Crenwelge while it's I understand for a budget option. it's it's if it can be expensive to go hire an artist to make a r3 or character but at the same time when i look at the np when i look at the art that ai is generating it just feels empty Yeah. Empty. 04:28.74 Kurt Crenwelge And to me, it's like whenever you hire an artist. for your character they put so much love into the art you can see the different little um additions they add to it just makes you feel more alive yeah and that's why whenever as a dungeon master or whatever I always have to make, I always have to get art for my NPCs and that stuff. 04:47.03 Kurt Crenwelge and i understand you don't want to pay for all that thatd so i usually to try to go online and just find random pieces of art and i try to make sure they're not ai generated because i want to give respect and homage to the artists who put that time to make that You know, not not to be too much of a guy who toots his own horn, but I think beneficially for you and your case in this example you brought forward, um the most recent... 05:14.67 Kurt Crenwelge panel episode i did on my podcast i have a series i do called parlays at the platter where i bring a number of my guests who all share a similar passion or expertise of topic and they get together and we have a discussion and so the last one we did was on art creativity and d and d and ai did come up into it a lot and all of the panelists that i had um were 05:38.18 Kurt Crenwelge um artists, renowned artists in the TTRPG space. And I know if you listen to that panel episode we did, they did provide. um some tips and guidelines as well as resources as well so i know there are 05:53.82 Kurt Crenwelge art resources that are available that you might be able to share with your players in that particular circumstance like if they're like oh i'm looking for like a goblin rogue there is a website where people just doodle art and then they kind of just give it away on this art website as like a digital repository so your players can go there and be like, oh, great, here's this goblin rogue that I found. But it's not like something that's been soullessly made. 06:20.06 Kurt Crenwelge by a machine through you know iterations and upon iterations Yeah, so what kind of got me into the ah you know the idea, because even I've found in my own dungeon mastering, as I've been trying to grow more and understand... 06:34.98 Kurt Crenwelge kind of like my OCD-ness that I have, like I will get hyper fixated. you know like i'm on these quests uh for verisimilitude or i'm like But no, if I really take this concept and I drill down, like what are the logical ramifications that I can come up with? and Obviously, you can't always do that with your player. Sometimes you can open up. to your players and ask them leading questions and explore together to be like 07:00.31 Kurt Crenwelge well if this means this and that means that then what do you think this means for the our world or for our game But for me... uh it is you know it is very tempting to go to ai and to be like you know If I posit a question where I'm like, here are my conditions. 07:17.27 Kurt Crenwelge you know, if i haven't do very left brain thinking like i ignore it if it tries to come up with something and be like oh well you know you should do this or you should say this and i'm like no no no no Like. These are my conditions. These are my. 07:28.96 Kurt Crenwelge questions that i'm exploring logically would this work or hey you know i need to do a math calculation can you help me figure out with the you know basic rules of dnd can you help me get this calculation of like challenge rating or experience points or Realistically, if these are the conditions, what is the more appropriate amount of damage that a monster should do? like i 07:53.56 Kurt Crenwelge I feel like those are okay because you're not stealing someone's artwork or someone's monster design. necessarily. But obviously, if you're, you know, you don't want to use that basis to publish something um to like, you know, profit off of it. Obviously, you know, if we got to have. lines um where we hold some solidarity and stuff like that, where we're not going to profit off of it. 08:19.84 Kurt Crenwelge So... you know In those kinds of cases, you know I could see... you know the argument to be made of like well ai is a tool if you want it to do very analytical left brain kind of work I feel like that tool does its job that way because computationally it might be able to figure it out faster. 08:39.20 Kurt Crenwelge than you can. But as far as creative, if we're just offloading like... I need five NPCs. I don't care who they are. Just give me five NPCs. I feel like that's... I feel like that's cheating. I feel like that is. 08:51.98 Kurt Crenwelge undercutting yourself and not investing in your game, not investing in your players. Because oftentimes, you know, with the games I run, I'm more than happy to go to my players and be like. 09:04.14 Kurt Crenwelge Well, hey, are you from this town? Can you give tell me about someone from this town that matters to your... your player uh to your character or hey you do you really care about this town tell me something interesting about it basically giving your your player's permission to like invent. 09:26.36 Kurt Crenwelge and it makes him wonder. Exactly. Yeah. Verisimilitude and being invested in the world, I feel, you know, we'll we'll do better. and um And yeah, the reason why I subtitled this panel as Samwise Gamgee versus Same Size Game Cheat is because oftentimes when I have guests come on my podcast and I ask the question, who is your favorite NPC or sidekick character and why? 09:50.57 Kurt Crenwelge It's because more times... than not people pick samwise gamgee And I feel like there is a universality. and a humanity. and an honesty. of samwise gamgee as a character that kind of speaks to all of us that we wish We could be a Samwise Gamgee or that we had those Samwise Gamgees in our life, which is why I think people. 10:11.92 Kurt Crenwelge you know, when we turn to our great works of art and literature is why they pick a character ah like Samwise to be it. Um, So yeah, there's, you know. 10:22.71 Kurt Crenwelge Obviously, AI is a very powerful tool, but even more powerful, I think is our imagination. So maybe to, you know, keep the ball rolling as we're talking and discussing. um So... 10:36.86 Kurt Crenwelge for your situation your players are using it to get artwork but are they using ai to like come up with their character concepts or any background plot notes or any npcs of in their backstories To me, thankfully No. 10:56.90 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. and when it's something that my players do that I actually really... enjoy that they do. is that they they come up with some sort of concept or idea for the character but they don't make a backstory for them. 11:07.94 Kurt Crenwelge Instead they allow the campaign to build and make that backstory for them. Okay. instead of and that's so helpful for me at the end because it's not like i'm trying to force something to happened because they said that oh this happened in my backstory it's like no we're we're we're building this character as we're playing the game like for example one of my characters 11:29.23 Kurt Crenwelge She plays a necromancer. okay and at the the very basic idea of it was that she was basically one of those doctors who does the I forget the name of the type of doctor. They're the ones who deal with the dead bodies and help. 11:43.14 Kurt Crenwelge Legobortician. 11:46.25 Kurt Crenwelge So that was just the base idea of the character. But then... We started going off into as we're playing the campaign. She starts. flirting with a lot of the female characters or female NPCs. 11:57.22 Kurt Crenwelge And eventually we're like, wait a minute. What if the reason you became a necromancer was because you're just trying to vote your perfect girlfriend? mmm like a frankenstein situation yeah frankenen and she was like Oh my gosh, I love that idea. So to me, I like how... 12:12.07 Kurt Crenwelge For players, it's just come up with an easy concept. Mm. If you need help with the creative a process, there's other players. There's also the DM who can help assist you with that. but You don't need to come up with a full full page of backstory. I think it's better to just come up with a concept. and just play with that come up with either one quirk and one flaw, or maybe two quirks. 12:32.52 Kurt Crenwelge Something simple to where you have a starting point in Azure planning campaign. you just build on that character, you build on that concept to where you become invested in it. 12:43.76 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. No, I agree. that's That's great. Yeah, working with players, I think, is ah some of the best way to counter this pressure of AI trying to force its way into D and &D, whether it's the the IP stakeholders. 13:00.28 Kurt Crenwelge Or it's just, you know, I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I see these ads on YouTube or Instagram where it's like, oh, you want to play D and &D? Use our app. Use our AI thing so you can play D and &D. And sure, you know, for full transparency, maybe there was a hot minute there where I was. bored. And I was like, sure, I'm just telling a story and maybe it's borrowing from the mechanics. But then after a while you, you just noticed that it like. it runs into logic circles where it just, it's not. 13:29.02 Kurt Crenwelge it doesn't have spontaneity it doesn't have like Oh, you know what? I was watching a Doctor Who episode last week, so I'm going to... I like this idea from this one episode. So I'm just going to sprinkle this random idea in here and see what it does. it you know you know, AI is like, you know, the, you know, 13:48.95 Kurt Crenwelge the The perfect illusion as far as like, oh, I'm getting this story of what I want, but almost kind of like a genie. wish or a monkey's paw gone wrong where it's like Yeah, it's like you get what you want, but there's no... you know like like the pope said there's like no spark of humanity in it so there's nothing no self guiding, self-propelling sort of a thing to just... 14:14.01 Kurt Crenwelge of the AI language learning model to just be like, oh, here you go. Here's this situation for you to tackle. You have to just, you have to feed in everything you want it to do. And by that point. 14:25.18 Kurt Crenwelge Wouldn't it be better to just be playing? D and &D with actual people or picking up Baldur's Gate 3 for the 300th time and playing that again. and i tried the The thing is that... I think people are just not using the AI tool. correctly like they're they're using this word Once, once it speeds out. That's what you take for... law and That's your take for basically it's written as law like you have to follow exactly but to me it's like 14:53.69 Kurt Crenwelge That's not its purpose. Its purpose is to... say you have like a writer's or creator's law use ai to just help Jumpstart that. yeah Don't like follow it letter to letter. like just Get an idea and then from that idea, of build off of it. Build it and make it your own. Oh yeah. 15:11.34 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, for sure. In those situations where I'm doing like... hey i have uh you know i have this creature here are the circumstances like what you know i'm considering these things what are you know like what do you know the math or whatever like what what do i need to remember consider and then it try like yeah exactly like you said use it as a springboard Because even a big thing to remember, the disclaimer at the bottom of every, whether it's Google or ChatGPT or... 15:39.77 Kurt Crenwelge anthropic or whatever it is, it has to have that disclaimer that like, hey, not all the information here may be accurate. It may be. hallucinatory. It may be, you know, pulling some out of answer out of its random... ether where you're like if you're not if you're not conscious of the rules or if you're not stopping to think logically, like, wait a minute. 16:01.90 Kurt Crenwelge but i just said that the character was 30 feet away how can the character make a melee attack next to them when they're 30 feet away and then the ai wrote machine has to be like oh my goodness you're so right you caught me in a you know i was wrong So, you yeah, like you said, you can't just take it at face value. You have to constantly. 16:22.52 Kurt Crenwelge be micromanaging the AI. You have to like... fact check against it if you're using it for like computational purposes. And I think you know like we're both agreeing that if you're trying to use ai for creative thinking and you're just like, 16:39.25 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, I need... Give me a description of this baker that the players are going to run into. It's just going to pull the most generic stuff about a baker. And it's not going to be anything fun. It's going to just... You're going to be like, oh. 16:52.81 Kurt Crenwelge Great. Thanks for this nothing burger. But I guess if you're... I don't know. If you're... if you're maybe it's just the Maybe it's just a reflection of this time of this day of this age where people are just so... 17:06.13 Kurt Crenwelge beaten down because they're tired or because these companies are spending billions of dollars and they want us to be dependent upon the AI. but Yeah, it becomes the easy pass out. You turn our brain off. But we can't turn our brains off, people. we got We're in this game. 17:23.97 Kurt Crenwelge to have fun with our friends and to tell a story. and you can't go on autopilot to tell a story. um You know, if you want. autopilot just do a choose your own adventure or you know play a video game where some of that is already handled not You can't be sitting around with your friends just being like, oh, hold on. Let me type in my AI machine of who you meet. It'll just be. 17:47.79 Kurt Crenwelge Not a fun time. and And thankfully, it sounds like you're not sitting there at the table being like, hold on, let me, I have to ask the almighty algorithm what happens next. 17:58.40 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. All right. yeah i like to try and do as I try to prepare as much as I can for each game. it's and glad I've had a DM before where... We'll wrap the game and he goes out. 18:10.26 Kurt Crenwelge He comes up and says, okay, let me just quickly generate a random magic item shop. for us. And ah and' feel'll he'll type it in. or come up with a list of ideas and it's just like yeah there's a holy avenger in this little magic item have shop in a small hamlet of the town like really Really? You really think that? you put a holy avenger in this little handle of a town And we're only first level? Yeah. it just like Sure. but 18:36.15 Kurt Crenwelge and from And when that happened, we're like, okay, maybe it's a knockoff. It has to be a knockoff, right? like Yeah. But... Sometimes it's just like... I feel like... 18:47.25 Kurt Crenwelge It's best. maybe And I understand. Thanks me. we We work a lot. late Oh, yeah. but it's So much time. and's sometimes So much mental energy is exp expanded is expended by the DM to build the world, which is why. 19:03.87 Kurt Crenwelge you know I'm all for use my podcast. Steal my NPCs that have already been made. Use them as the springboard to figure out how they plug into your world, into your games. 19:14.34 Kurt Crenwelge and i think one of the bigger problems of it is that new dms are coming into this the first time they do this major pitfall that I keep telling other people don't do. Don't try to hold everything. 19:26.23 Kurt Crenwelge There are modules out there. Use them. Are they perfect? No. do you need to follow them exactly to the letter no but it has a back on our scholarship for a new dm to be able to just use not and spend more time trying to figure out How do I get this to work? How do I DM properly for my players? How do I make the best experience for them? 19:49.06 Kurt Crenwelge Then once you have a couple of campaigns or two under the belt, then maybe you can start diving into homebrew and that stuff. but when a new dm just immediately jumps to try to homebrew everything they burn themselves out and then they try to go okay let's just have ai just yeah this for me because i'm so mentally burnt out i'm trying to keep making everything i'm just gonna have ai just help me 20:11.19 Kurt Crenwelge it it Yeah. and And that's like the secret sin of us all, where it's like, oh, if I do it for this one thing and I don't tell my players, then who am I really hurting? 20:22.09 Kurt Crenwelge But, you know. I think. All in all. Like all sin. it really hurts ourselves and it gives and it makes us doubt our own creativity and our own intelligence when we forego our own creativity and our ability to make things. new and interesting. 20:43.55 Kurt Crenwelge You know, we we we just shun that response, that. innate responsibility of ourselves. and you know we're missing out on an opportunity which certainly in a situation of like oh i'm a new dm and i want to uh you know okay i've got this module you know, 21:00.55 Kurt Crenwelge If it's a famous module, you can look up some of the NPCs. Maybe you can examine actual plays that have used that module and see how they've done the NPCs. Like, oh, what did I like about this NPC? How they were portrayed? how were Oh, what didn't I like? What inspires me? What take do I like? cause I don't know if you've ever seen an opera or if you've seen Shakespeare. performed some you know sometimes people do it straight by the book people take 21:30.76 Kurt Crenwelge a creative liberty. Exactly. Yeah. And so then you're like. Oh, Othello in ah in overalls and a hick voice. I never would have pictured that before. But suddenly this portrayal of Othello is is very moving in this way versus like, oh, I go and it's the Shakespearean actor doing Othello brilliantly how they're supposed to be done by the book. 21:52.51 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. yeah and a good a good example That is. I beg the musical. It's basically it's just the Odyssey but the creator of it he wanted to turn it into a musical and he didn't want to just follow exactly for the letter he's like And one of his... videos he talks about i wanted to change the overall message of Yeah, I see. where um The big key thing is that you sometimes have to be ruthless. You can't just be this naive person. who just 22:19.41 Kurt Crenwelge Gives peace or is very much merciful to everyone else so he built this entire musical base off of that one idea. And end. ended up becoming super popular very well liked people love the idea of the of just turning this very grim dark story into a musical. 22:41.05 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yeah. You know, following in the steps of like Sweeney Todd or or anything like that of a grim subject. But, you know, you throw a little pizzazz on it and suddenly everyone's singing along and you're getting Tony Awards and all that stuff. 22:54.50 Kurt Crenwelge Um... So, yeah, overall, you know, I think, you know, the human spirit is good. Believe in yourself. As ah as Matt Colville says, like I have one of his MCDM Dungeon Master screens and on the back of it, it has the message like your ideas are good. 23:09.23 Kurt Crenwelge Like. If you're bored and your players are bored. orcs attack just you know make something happen you know be spontaneity uh spontaneous have something in the moment um and just you know believe in yourself and don't Don't. 23:23.27 Kurt Crenwelge forego and give up the thing that makes us human. So find those points of inspiration where, hey, I was watching that movie last night. I really liked that guy. you know what sure this npc that they're gonna come across right now is gonna act like that guy like from the movie last night because that's fresh on my mind or oh you know i want this particular town guard to be acting like a wise cop 23:45.77 Kurt Crenwelge uh a wise wise guy cop from new york city okay so he talks like in a really heavy long island accent even though it doesn't make sense for the world but hey that's just how this guy is and that's how his family talks and suddenly you're inventing stuff and your players and you are riffing on things and your world gets a lot more interesting. 24:05.07 Kurt Crenwelge Um, we've had we've had another uh guest to join us in the audience so hello yes thank you for joining us so um So as as the topic of this panel is about NPCs and the challenges we have to face with AI and technology, what are the things that you're seeing with your games or the hobby or the landscape in general? 24:27.10 Kurt Crenwelge I know for me. like uh 24:31.26 Kurt Crenwelge As a Dungeon Master? for me with with MTCs and things like that. i try to have like i created my own like troop list okay uh and i also have like and i'm 100 That guy who's like, okay. 24:44.86 Kurt Crenwelge My elves are all high British. and they all kind of speak like this and so that way My players know. o they're talking to for something like that And I can get down and do those scotches real good right now. and then with my tool 24:58.42 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, yes. kinds of things so i have my own like little cheat sheetep for npcs and things like that but sometimes i've noticed where if it's more about what the npc is wanting or doing that land so much more than doing a voice or or anything like that Oh, yeah. So most of the NPCs that my players gravitate towards... It's just me. 25:20.51 Kurt Crenwelge So, you know, like maybe I'll play them more like... like you know running fan delivered below, I usually you know, when when they meet Sildar. 25:33.13 Kurt Crenwelge Sildur is a little bit more. It's still just my voice, but I just kind of... Make him a little Batman. A little more Batman. than Whenever they get to Gundren. Guentherens appear, excited! 25:44.70 Kurt Crenwelge you know oh like way more even though he's half dead he's like i can't Thank you enough that we're gonna be a rich and all that So it's more, I think... personality okay and things like that and then you have with ai and stuff i don't know 25:58.79 Kurt Crenwelge Like I was like I was sharing earlier, it's it's it's great to do it for like left brain analytical work where you're like, I'm really trying to struggle to figure out the challenge rating or like I want this to hit a little harder or, you know, just busy work stuff that I maybe have weakness in. which would encourage me maybe to try and do it more and do the hard work. But it is a tool that is there. I'll tell you. 26:27.79 Kurt Crenwelge is I do, i with consent, I request... quarter sessions. Mm hmm. And then I use AI that then takes... the session turns it into i know a sheet. it does yeah it It takes it and turns it into a script, basically. of the seven people talking. yeah then i give that to another ai who knows my prompt of turn this into session notes and it gives me 600 word like this is what happened 26:56.01 Kurt Crenwelge It gives each of my characters their highlight moments. good now And... like what they got like his rewards and what is the upcoming mystery or whatever, that kind of thing. 27:08.13 Kurt Crenwelge I see. that all of that can happen in 15 minutes. Right. makes history For years, I painstakingly took notes and all that. Yeah. kind of thing but I tell you what it has made. My... players remember more. 27:23.99 Kurt Crenwelge and like they now have their own like and everyone has access to that um and some of my players i make them do But I'm like... 27:35.69 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. They have access to this. And so I'm like, write a character journal. And we can all share these character journals so everybody knows what's going through everybody's mind. You can't roll with it. 27:46.39 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Yeah. like it's It's been fun. they get another chance to like talk in their voice and have something to work on Yeah. outside of the game where it's like hey has everybody done their journal entries That kind of stuff. And I had one kid. Let's do this link. 28:02.98 Kurt Crenwelge So it gives these like, oh, it feels like homework. Yeah. like okay then like that's fine don't don't do it i'm not forced you to do it but then when the rest of the team was doing it and they were like my gosh i had no clue like that was part of the backstory and all that kind of stuff that they're like Like, I can't at the table look at you in a different light, but me, the player, is completely looking at this character. 28:26.70 Kurt Crenwelge and all that and finally he was like Okay. And then it was funny because he was like, I don't know how to write or read. it would just be simple sentences and then by the end of it And then he's over here writing beautiful paragraphs. and Yeah. And then he made a part of the story where he's like, one of the characters is teaching me how to write read and read. Oh, that's great. So cool. Yeah. it It was fun. That's been fun. 28:55.35 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. Yeah, I do agree. like ai is here We can use it as a tool. i just It's the... it's When it starts Touching on the creativity side right Phew, that's so awesome. 29:09.78 Kurt Crenwelge weird Yeah. yeah i we saying too it just feels weird when it touches that creative side because it just It's just basically, takes it just takes something, chews it up and spits it back out. like Oh yeah, it's someone else's stuff. 29:21.59 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yeah. you know But if you're feeding it ideas and putting it... into something that's cohesive and should read and having mean I swear I can't send an email without running it through. 29:33.54 Kurt Crenwelge you the we just go I'm like, oh. this sounds so much better than me going back Right. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, so, yeah, it it it does seem like, you know, the powers that be. 29:45.74 Kurt Crenwelge the times as they are you know ai is a tech you know it's a pandora's box that's been opened and we can't put the lid back on pandora's box so We just have to be good, ethical dungeon masters and stewards of the technology to make sure that we silo it and be and be like. 30:02.99 Kurt Crenwelge You're fine doing calculations or if I run hypotheticals, just make sure that my logic is sound. So then that way I, the dungeon master, am still empowered to make those calls to be like, you know, even if it recommends like, oh, you know, you should, your players should like, you know, get this much experience points or they should find these kinds of items. You still have the ultimate authority to say. 30:26.22 Kurt Crenwelge Well, no I know my players. I know Becky's been, she's been hunting for this specific item. So no, this is the time that Becky's going to get, finally get the thing. She's been, she's been struggling for five levels of this dungeon. And by golly, she's ready for that uplift in her spirit to get that fire under her. So now we have an epic on our hands and not just like a. 30:46.43 Kurt Crenwelge you know If I just want to play a boring procedural sort of a thing, I'll just play Zork or or you know some old game where... in the It wasn't as... sweeping as Baldur's Gate 3 or something like that. yeah But okay, I mean, so it sounds like ah with my guests here, you know, we're we're all in agreement on AI, you know. 31:06.79 Kurt Crenwelge it's it's a It's a tool. It's here. Use it for the left brain stuff. Don't use it for the creative stuff. Believe in yourself. Believe in your players. Believe in the table. And believe in the story. 31:18.61 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And so now as I've done now the past ah two cons or the past two times that I've done panels, kind of like a slice of how my podcast works, where I have guests come on, we interview, we go through the questions. 31:32.56 Kurt Crenwelge We do the part now where we do some NPC creation. So woo, we got random tables. And with audience input here, we're just going to roll some dice and we're going to talk out the character. And we're going to come up with someone brand new, thought up by three minds. Isn't that crazy? so The first of the questions that we have to ask ourselves is, what's going to be the name of the character? So I'll roll a d20. 31:58.20 Kurt Crenwelge And we got a five. So based on this list. provided to us by our previous guests, Allison Kuntz and Ryan Tempte of the Kids Table D and &D Podcast. Fantastic. family-friendly podcast if you've never heard or listened before. 32:12.42 Kurt Crenwelge Marblehead. So Marblehead is the name we have to work with. so All right, so we've got Marblehead. And let's see, now we roll for the ancestry of the character. So this will be 2d10. 32:25.62 Kurt Crenwelge For D100 effects, we have 57. As I scroll down this list, Number 57, what are you? Marblehead. Ah, Marble had the gif. 32:38.57 Kurt Crenwelge So one of the hippo folk, of like from Spelljammer. Okay. And now we need to figure out what's the job or role in Society of Marblehead the GIF. We roll ah just a regular d10 and get us a 9. Ah! So this is suggested to us from Frederick of Hell's Enemy. the ah the online metal band group. ah Rat catcher, literally. So Marblehead catches rats. is That's his job in society. 33:07.24 Kurt Crenwelge And then now the age range of the character, we just roll a D8. and get a three, which would make him a young adult. So with these details in mind, we have Marblehead, who's a gif. 33:21.42 Kurt Crenwelge who's a literal rat catcher and is a young adult. Describe the physical appearance of this marble head. So when you picture these things, what are what's coming to your imagination and your mind? 33:34.04 Kurt Crenwelge Completely full. Completely bald. as not to give a thing about. like bobus A bulbous head. this kind of top of the... 33:46.13 Kurt Crenwelge and maybe there's just like the sheen An indescribable sheen. that is kind of like no matter if there's no light source. there's still like the sheen. Oh, is Marblehead like a nickname because he's bald? 34:02.32 Kurt Crenwelge Because what I was thinking is... for the bobblehead. He has to always be down in this this Sewers or that stuff always with like all the poo and that stuff. So maybe he just wears like some sort of like helmet dome that just your wife. 34:17.21 Kurt Crenwelge So he just got that nickname. because mar He wears this to protect himself from all the different stuff that just could fall on him, all the different little nasty stuff down there. 34:27.95 Kurt Crenwelge It's a marvelous moment. Ooh, okay. i'm the you know because then you give somebody like Hey, Wizard. We're rolling our comment check. like maybe something's up with that maybe there's something else it's like uh is it animal like friendship kind of thing so they can like lower the rats or something 34:44.56 Kurt Crenwelge oh okay we yeah okay so he so he has like a piece of ah equipment on that's like probably arcane of some nature that allows for the speak with animals or in animal friendship spells to kind of come from it Because I feel like... 35:03.91 Kurt Crenwelge being a young adult. Yeah. I think he's killing me. I think he's 100%. Like, he's catchy. Yeah. So kind of a different way of the pied pipers. He's not playing any pied pipes to call them. He's literally just going in the sewers. He's got his magic helm, and he's calling out to the rats like, Hey, guys, come on. Yeah. 35:26.59 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. okay And because... let's see if you guys in the gif let's say he's again he's very well adapted to the sewer the sewer water So it's not like it's affecting him. 35:38.14 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And let's say we put this in a spell jammer setting. yeah he's taking his rats he's taking them off world to another world where they can just populate be free and have their own little society which ends up being this rat colony society that advanced so 35:52.64 Kurt Crenwelge exactly Well, and also because of Spelljammer, the big Other species of rats are obviously the ones that are experimented on. by the mind flayers, which are the cranium rats. So I wonder if it's more of like a preservation thing. He's trying to save the rats. so they don't become cranium rats. yeah there you go yeah Yeah. So that's why he takes a more nonviolent approach because he's like, well, I don't want to kill the rats. They're like, you know, rats serve their part in the ecosystem. Maybe not as. 36:22.07 Kurt Crenwelge friendly to folks in the civilized parts. But you know what? I'll call my rats. We'll get them out of there so that way they don't become mind flayer experiments. side push right he asked the players to help him if there have been some rats that he's noticed at the start. development. 36:39.04 Kurt Crenwelge he needs the players to help them. Okay. Well, we're definitely jumping ahead, but yeah, let's let's go ahead and and keep that for sure. And we've had another guest join us in the audience. This is great. The the podcast is audience is slowly getting more live audience members. This is great. um So, okay, so we've got, and then as far as his appearance, so we've ah we've got the marble head. 37:03.13 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. But like, is there anything else in the gear that he's wearing? Because if he's down in the sewers, is he wearing like waders and stuff like that? what else 37:14.99 Kurt Crenwelge And I'm thinking maybe he's got. the little small cages like around his a belt or it could be like a satchel he just got page to keep. the rats in. probably lots of s nibbles and and snacks and stuff that he can feed them. And like, Hey, thanks for coming over. Here's a, here's a hunk of cheese. Here's some fruit. returns Ah. 37:41.57 Kurt Crenwelge The good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we we got an idea of kind of his physical appearance. And then for role-playing purposes, when ah when you think of Marblehead now, ah what three adjectives would best describe him, his personality, his vibe? 38:02.84 Kurt Crenwelge We have three audience members. Each audience member can offer up an adjective that describes Marblehead. I'm gonna say enthusiasm. Enthusiastic, I love that, yeah. 38:14.90 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 38:18.13 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, okay. Resourceful? Oh, obviously, yeah. It's got to be resourceful to get all the rats. Um... I can't remember the time. I can't remember the type of work, but maybe he's... 38:30.54 Kurt Crenwelge the type of person you just... You can't read the room. so he's like oh is he is he oblivious they oblivious he's enthusiastic resourceful but he's oblivious Okay. 38:43.32 Kurt Crenwelge over 100 golden retriever energy okay okay all right all right so this is good all right so we're getting up we're getting a picture see this is human generated creativity making an npc that's suddenly way more interesting than anything a computer could come up with so Now we get to go back to some dice rolling. And we we um he's obviously going to have like the the magic device that lets him... 39:08.94 Kurt Crenwelge cast of animal friendship and speak with animals. but we like all of our npcs to have something cool on their person whether it's a valuable item a piece of lore, a secret, or an ideal or concept that they subscribe to. So this is a combo where we're going to roll a D4 and a D6. 39:27.06 Kurt Crenwelge So four is going to be an ideal or concept that kind of guides Marblehead and informs him as a character. And then for the D6. That is a one. 39:39.02 Kurt Crenwelge so ah This suggestion given to us from previous guest, ah Dane Fox McGraw of the Dispel Magic podcast. Meat Freak. so I do know that there are some species of rats ah that are very concerned with cleanliness. Maybe that's something he's picked up from the rats or as far as how he presents himself when he goes down to the stewards to gather up the rats non-violently and take them elsewhere. 40:05.42 Kurt Crenwelge Just neat freak. And I don't know your thoughts on how that might express in his everyday life, his speech, his mannerisms, just how he conducts himself. 40:16.07 Kurt Crenwelge Neat freak. defined. 40:21.82 Kurt Crenwelge Maybe he came from more well well family. and They probably looked down on him because he's over here in the sewers trying to save these rats Mmm. 40:33.28 Kurt Crenwelge And I can feel like... Like, once the waders come off, maybe he's... in Like. Very nice. like oh yeah well right right because it is yeah because the the gif are said to be basically like space hippo victorians so he's got like his Crisp suit. 40:57.57 Kurt Crenwelge He has ascot. He's got, yeah, exactly. He has nice shoes. So he takes the waders off. He's done with the day of. literally catching Ratch. And now he's ready to go to the smoking club with the boys and to have a lovely dinner with his family and stuff like that. So neat freak. Okay. I like that. Okay. 41:16.04 Kurt Crenwelge And now would be the part where we we come to the quest. And it sounds like our audience has already come up with a quest. We could roll for it randomly if you want the last dice roll. We've already made it this far. if we got Yeah, I remember he got the- What's his name? 41:30.78 Kurt Crenwelge The side quest is there. thekrainium rats and he's nursing We're a disturbance in the... rads and 41:40.66 Kurt Crenwelge is a mindflare. Ooh, okay. Okay. All right. So. all right so we got the side quest that he's noticing when he's more rats are not coming up when he calls them and they're being turned into cranium rats. which then could be your breadcrumbs that leads to, surprise, you have a mind flayer colony in the area that you now have to deal with and an elder brain. and all that stuff. 42:05.27 Kurt Crenwelge Or other combinations. I've never run an Elder Dragon before, but the... the the elder brain that latches onto a dragon. That'd be pretty bad. videos 42:19.89 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, yeah. Nasty stuff. So, okay. So this will be our breadcrumbs that'll lead to it. But as far as Marblehead is concerned, he just wants to look out for the the rats. And so... 42:32.55 Kurt Crenwelge as So I guess this one kind of feels like, oh, it's like a... i don't know if I don't know if the term is Trojan horse sort of a quest, but like... you seemingly start off with small stakes, like, oh, let's figure out the rats. And then suddenly it becomes... Oh, we have a whole Mind Flayer colony we have to deal with. So is that... if you have this subversion of expectations there too because If we made this. 42:55.69 Kurt Crenwelge If this became like a... A starting a level 9 or level 10 quest? And you're like... Wait, what happened? you're the rats 43:07.38 Kurt Crenwelge And then, you know, as you... further your life. oh this is getting bigger and bigger and bigger ah Snowball. uh but yeah but it would also be it could be that level one only now Instead of like, hey, get rid of the rats. of them In the basement, it's, hey, help me save these rats. some of these Yeah. and it just jumps off to the whole campaign where is all elic Yeah. 43:31.42 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, all right. So, okay, so we've got... ah So we've got our okay so we've we've roughly charted sort of the outline of the quest. So as far as... 43:42.68 Kurt Crenwelge Marblehead is concerned. when we have successfully completed the side quest whether that means If it's a lower level stakes where it's like, hey, we just rescued the rats. we got them great or if it's the higher level where it's like Guys, we finally slaughtered that entire Mind Flayer colony. Woo, work done. 44:00.52 Kurt Crenwelge As far as reward is concerned, from Marblehead's perspective, How is he going to reward the party? for their efforts in saving the rats. 44:10.53 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 44:13.72 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, so Marblehead gives up his magic item and gives it to the party. think not would All the rats are saved. 44:22.09 Kurt Crenwelge so Okay. And perhaps something to kind of... that ties into that mind. is that maybe there was a secret. operate the helmet that protected him from... second attacks oh it shielded in his mind yeah and he didn't he never realized 44:40.31 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, so yeah, so then if it's in higher stakes, like where we have to go hunt more Mind Flayer colonies and stuff like that, now you have a dedicated piece of magic equipment that will not only protect you from... psychic attacks and stuff like that, but it allows you to call the rats to like come help you and stuff like that. 44:59.82 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. All right. So that's a good reward. And probably all the loot you can find along the way. 100%. 100%. But then we have to consider the opposite. What's going to be the consequence of failure? 45:12.33 Kurt Crenwelge or refusing the call to the adventure. So Marblehead comes to the party and is like, I really care about these rats. Help me rescue them. And the party says. No way. Waste of our time. And they just... they they don't pick up that breadcrumb. 45:28.12 Kurt Crenwelge Or they're on the process of the mission, but... They don't. save the rats. So what's what's going to be the consequence of failure or refusing the call to the adventure? Well, one thought that... 45:39.54 Kurt Crenwelge is full. Brass with everybody. like they You can find them everywhere in the city in every sort of building. Perhaps the mind players were using these cranium mats to kind of mentally control other people in these buildings. 45:51.72 Kurt Crenwelge So now... You've got this whole shadow government that's fully now in place because of this. Shit. Shadow government with the rats. That sounds like an internet conspiracy theory of like, what was it? The pigeons not being pigeons or cameras or whatever. 46:06.85 Kurt Crenwelge The Cranium Rats are are are puppet lords! And then it's lower level. 46:13.98 Kurt Crenwelge Now it's, you know. premium rents get out of control. Yeah, yeah. it didn start 46:21.94 Kurt Crenwelge Ciao. That was fun. Yeah. Every encounter ends up having a couple. yeah And you're like, wait a second. Why are they... here So just continuing stakes. So as the longer you ignore the problem, the worse it will get. yes every encounter 46:47.06 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yes. Is there a difference in how Marblehead reacts if you're on the quest and you're trying to rescue the rats, but you fail and like... 46:58.47 Kurt Crenwelge Your wizard shoots a fireball into the room and all the rats are dead. Is Marblehead going to react? with anger or hostility towards the party is going to be grief stricken, like. I think it's really cool. 47:12.84 Kurt Crenwelge playing gold on this guy. and the things that you're trying. Mm-hmm. Real bummed. Okay. and And if Marblehead here is a member of high society, they just lost the concept. 47:27.78 Kurt Crenwelge to a higher society they need to Ah. where they're starting to spill. His villain arm. so marblehead becomes rat king from teenage ninja turtles yes Okay. 47:40.79 Kurt Crenwelge So either has this villagen villain origin story or your party takes a massive hit. uh in the social standing because it's like Oh, I didn't realize Marblehead was the son of that guy in town. 47:55.84 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 47:57.96 Kurt Crenwelge yeah what are you going 48:03.08 Kurt Crenwelge turned up Doing the obvious vision. Okay. for you. And sometimes those are the best villains in campaigns. villains that the end that the players make Oh yeah. 48:13.85 Kurt Crenwelge very infuriating Okay. So then it sounds like we've pretty much got a character formed. um And I know I'm checking our time to make sure that folks will have the room after us. Because normally in this part of the show, I would do what's called... um the uh the random encounter, which is like a role play vignette. 48:36.23 Kurt Crenwelge um but i mean i i could do like i could attempt a one-man show of like uh of doing the character or if one of the audience members wanted to do uh the voice of marvel head but i don't know i mean since it sounds like we've got four dungeon masters sort of in a room. like It sounds like no everyone's like everyone's like, no, let's just let's just call this good and just kind of wrap it up. 48:59.98 Kurt Crenwelge Yesterday. Oh! There you go. Yeah, way to learn about deep dive and get into NPCs. so Okay, so then we'll I guess we'll just... 49:09.18 Kurt Crenwelge Just kind of naturally just shift into the into the ah the the the wrap up, the the discussion. of it so now that We've kind of gone through the process of human making. a an NPC live here at FateCon 2026. 49:25.65 Kurt Crenwelge Um, and you know having our discussion of ai like what it's strengths are and what its true weaknesses are and really what our strengths are as humans. um How do you think our fair Marblehead or... 49:40.60 Kurt Crenwelge The topic of AI and NPCs and just D and &D in general has been, as we're, I guess, here in our... final moments of this panel and of this episode. well Just I mean just from that random empty that we just created you could make a whole campaign. out of that one little. scenario we just created. exactly and like if you were to give it to ai i think ai would obviously give you the most 50:04.16 Kurt Crenwelge generic gift like he's just a rat catcher who's just here to catch rats and he's part of just whatever the gift society is it's very plain andpointable with what we just created. We just added mind fires to this. We had made it to where it could be low level, higher level. We created a campaign for them, created consequences. I don't think AI can do that. Come close to that. 50:23.91 Kurt Crenwelge And we did this in what? like them. and 20 minutes something like that yeah yeah So that's that's kind of like what started the whole podcast out was I was doing podcasts with a friend and then I was like, I really like D and &D, but I like interviewing people and I like being collaborative. and i didn't know it then but it's kind of like it kind of scratches that ocd itch i have of like oh i want verisimilitude i want to logically game out things and so doing this podcast now for 50:53.48 Kurt Crenwelge seven seasons and I'll start season eight in February. It's just really rewarding to get to do this. podcast have this experience talk with people because i think when we crowdsource when we collaborate and work together whether we're playing at the table or i have someone on a podcast episode with me, I really truly think that our brains are fully unleashed and we're fully in our most creative and fun mode. It's like our way to get to be kids again. 51:22.18 Kurt Crenwelge We're playing make believe we're having fun. We're making up characters. So whether, you know, whether you're five or you're 55, you can still make way more cooler characters than same size game sheets. so All right. So any other final thoughts or discussions to have, I guess, before I hit the old stop button on this recording? and Say au revoir and adieu and all that. 51:47.93 Kurt Crenwelge I guess for the listeners. Don't be afraid to make mistakes like I understand that being a... Is it your new dungeon master or new player? it can be daunting and you may want to just go to ai so because if you don't want to make that mistake you want everything be perfect. 52:05.55 Kurt Crenwelge Mistakes make the game more fun. He's back. Okay. All right. Well, thank you everyone for for coming to this panel and ah hopefully my ah recording will do well. I'll have to do some. 52:19.89 Kurt Crenwelge ah work in the lab post-editing to make sure it all sounds good or it picked everyone up. but Lots of discussion here, lots of good discussion here. And I think everyone feels a little more rejuvenated and believing in humanity once again. so Take that, AI. 52:37.70 Kurt Crenwelge All right.