New Era is a work-in-progress project, and developing an RPG from the ground up is a huge undertaking. In this current state, many of the images used on newerarpg.com and in the character artwork for the Foundry VTT system are created with the use of generative AI tools, primarily MidJourney.
I am personally against the inclusion of AI-generated imagery (I don't think "AI Art" is something we should be saying) in finished products and believe that game artwork should be created by real artists. Furthermore I believe that the use of AI-generated images in paid products is at least adjacent to art theft, as many of these AI tools have been trained on large samples of artwork that are scraped from the internet without the artist's consent.
At this stage in development, however, the project has a budget of zero dollars. I want any artist commissioned to work on this project to be paid fairly, and at this stage of development we simply do not have the funds. I am building and maintaining this entire website myself and running it on my own self-hosted servers, and the VTT system is being developed entirely by me, in my spare time. I have no intentions of publishing a finished product containing AI images. During development and testing, the current visuals serve as a placeholder to help give the website and VTT a presentable look so that we can start to see the game take shape visually. If and when the time comes to put this game into print, it will be given its own style by real, paid artists.
Thanks for your understanding.
- Emily
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