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Dice Roost: a free virtual tabletop with AI-voiced NPCs (thelemmy.club)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/rpg@ttrpg.network
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Hi all,

Sharing Dice Roost, a free browser-based virtual tabletop for running tabletop RPG sessions online. No installs, just open a link and play.

A few things that make it a bit different: • AI-voiced NPCs: give an NPC a personality and let it actually talk back to your players during a scene, instead of you improvising every voice • Shared map with tokens, dice roller, character sheets, and session chat, all in one place • Built to be lightweight, easy to get a new group into with no learning curve

Still actively growing it and happy to answer any questions.

👉 https://diceroost.com/

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[–] 8 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Going forward, I'd suggest reading the room better.

All of your marketing documents hype up the AI features to the exclusion of all else. If I were such a "puritan" and turned off all AI features what does dragons roost offer that DndBeyond, roll20 and Foundry do not?

The only thing I can see is that it's "free", but that's freeness that is built on the backs of the lives and livlihoods of thousands of people.

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  • [–] [S] -3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

    The only thing I can see is that it’s “free”, but that’s freeness that is built on the backs of the lives and livlihoods of thousands of people.

    Sorry, what does even mean? Being free is already a significant incentive in itself. I hype AI features because, in my opinion, it's precisely the missing element in other systems. If you're a purist and feel my system offers nothing more, you're free to stick with your favorite sites. Instead, you could give me your idea of ​​what others are truly lacking that I could offer, since that's exactly what I'm looking for: constructive feedback on what I could implement to help the community.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (3 children)

    You even directly quoted the complaint that this is built on the backs of thousands of people's work. Without their consent, without the possibility of attribution and recognition for their work.

    And then blithely ignored it, failed to address it at all.

    You have demonstrated you just don't care about the creative work of countless people over countless hours, that has been shredded and fed into the machine which extruded this thing you want to promote. Why should anyone care about giving you “constructive” feedback? De-construct this thing and think a lot harder about the people you're trying to market to.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    I keep not understanding what you're talking about, the site is entirely developed by me, I haven't exploited anyone. And if you're talking about D&D instead, I'm not exploiting anyone's work: all the material on the site is free-copyright, and I specifically only pulled unofficial, unprotected documentation, whether it's the rules (which are free), the spell and monster database, etc. Every reference to the material I've drawn on is specifically credited, which makes my product a sponsor and an opportunity to introduce other people's work to more and more people. What people create in the site afterward is their own property. It's funny to me that you first compare my system to other, more famous ones, sneaking in flimsy criticism of the (entirely optional) use of AI, and then dwell on some supposed "inappropriate" use of other people's content, when the very sites you cite do the same thing, and not only that, they commercialize the product and profit from it, which I don't do. Through all of this, I haven't seen any response to all the other points I raised. ;)

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (1 child)

    @DiceRoost @bignose

    What they’re saying is they find the inclusion of some kind of LLM based AI system to be unethical. The manner in which the data was obtained for training LLMs, the environmental impacts of the AI data center build outs, and the way AI companies have been undermining human labor, and so on. Shallow or not, people have their reasons to avoid it.

    It’s like you brought a steak salad to a vegan potluck. Telling people they can pick the steak out isn’t what they want.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

    If this is their position, and I'm not convinced of this, then I understand them and what I can say is: don't use Dice Roost, not even for features that don't involve the use of AI, if they believe they're supporting exploitative multinationals. However, the discussion seemed to me to be going on a completely different path, not to mention those who simply wrote, "Fucking ew." And just so you know, Foundry, just to name one, has a bunch of plugins that use AI.

    I understand the comparison with the vegan dinner, but no one directly invited you. Meat-based dinners will always be around. I open a restaurant that 'also' advertises meat dishes (and not only), and vegans come to me in the comments to tell me I'm a 'murderer' or 'insensitive', for goodness sake, they're free to do so, but the discussion is dry and leads nowhere. It would be much more useful to start a discussion where they explain their reasons without offending the work of others and giving the opportunity to set up a serious and mature discussion table.

    I'd also like to add a thought of my own: this battle against AI seems like the latest fad. I'd like to know if the same people who are blaming AI for the new evil (without considering the benefits it brings to serious matters, not just D&D, such as curing rare diseases, genetic mapping, land mapping, preventing geological disasters, and many others) are the same people who avoid buying plastic bottles, don't buy the latest iPhone made in China from companies that exploit children, or only buy homemade clothes to avoid exploitation in third-world countries.

    I'm here to accept any negative criticism, but it must be constructive. It seems to me that there's a stance here for which people can't even provide valid reasons. No one has yet responded point by point to what I wrote.

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