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More than images, ideas

- Posted in D&D by

Recently I played quite a bit with Stable Diffusion, a program for generating images from text, and it's amazing.
I'm not going to try to show here some unmatched ability (that I don't have) to generate extraordinary images, the Internet is full of tutorials on the subject (I recommend for example Sebastian Kamph's YouTube channel, he is both talented and educational).
However, let's talk about the unexpected fact that these images ... stimulate my imagination.
Indeed, in order to illustrate in an original way the textual descriptions of my imaginary world of Gilianar, I played with Stable Diffusion and besides the quality of the images produced, I discovered with surprise how this tool gave me new ideas.
Let me explain.
Let's say I want an image of a dragon perched on an old tower. With the following prompt

ancient yellow and green dragon with a large wingspan perched on an old broken stone tower

I get this for example:
enter image description here
Not bad for a start.
Stable Diffusion's modus operandi is to generate a lot of images, then once you like one of them, to modify it in a loop until you get a satisfactory result.
So let's modify it, but this time starting not from the textual description of the beginning, but from the image above (yes, Stable Diffusion is amazing, I already said it).
By playing with the enigmatic parameter Denoising strength, one introduce more or less chaos in the following images and so that's where magic happens, it's as if a part of a story was written without us.
After a few generations, an image clicks in my head.
"Oh yeah, that's cool, it looks like a forgotten tomb, let's keep this one!"
enter image description here
So much for the grave, now it looks more like she has boobs and she is instead near the entrance to her nest, on which she watches fiercely.
What if she protects her eggs? Deal!
A few random images later with guarding her eggs added to the description, this one fits my mood:
enter image description here
Definitely a good start for a place and the history that goes with it!

Thank you Stable Diffusion, I was just looking for original images to illustrate my texts, but I actually found more than that, now I own an iterative idea machine!

Read but especially re-read Tony Hillerman

- Posted in Books by

Tsé Bitʼaʼí in Navajo, the "winged rock."

Beyond the rather banal police plots, the real heroes of Tony Hillerman's novels are the Native American tribes, especially the Navajo, torn between traditionalism and the modern world.
I loved reading Tony's novels a few years ago (the reason for Kokopelli, my avatar), but above all, I love reading his books again.
Yes, they are not very accessible at the first reading, not everyone masters the Navajo vocabulary and their culture light years away from modern Europeans. If the first immersion in this universe is difficult, when you come back to it later, the pleasure of discovery is replaced by the pleasure of really appreciating this world, because you understand it much better now, you have never forgotten it, I personally never left it.
Traveling the dusty trails of the Four Corners with Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, we get to know the Navajo tribes and their very special world. Around a hogan hidden in the middle of stunted juniper trees, we feel more than we understand the beliefs and traditions of a people who roamed these lands long before the white man brought them syphilis and whiskey.
Since I accompanied Jim in his caravan on the edge of an arroyo, now when I hear the wind in the leaves of an aspen tree I am transported to this region whose austerity hides to my eyes an incredible richness.
There are days when I would like to be a Navajo, not the one who turns his back on his land to look for work in Phoenix or Albuquerque, but the one who walks the slopes of Black Mesa away from a world where CO² is the enemy and AI the future.

Read Tony Hillerman, and don't stop at the first pages, the initial investment is the key to this fascinating world.

Winged man

Life's too short not to explore ideas

- Posted in D&D by

After spending a few hours reading Monte Cook's Ptolus D&D campaign setting, it became obvious that creating a whole world was as appealing to me as playing someone else's. So why not giving it a try?
I don't know anyone who has died of shame, at least not officially, so I'm going for it. Gillianar (do you see the wink?) is a world designed for D&D, but above all to have fun materializing my ideas, my dreams, even my deliriums.
Ideas come quicker than I can write them down, it's quite exhilarating. I know I won't last the distance (let alone approach the 800 pages written by Monte) and that I might get bored pretty quickly, but getting started is pretty exciting :)
This universe will be freely available here, after all I'm writing for me and not to get rich.
It's just a pity that I waited for the advent of ChatGPT to try to write something, but at least it will all come from my fertile brain and not from an AI as good as it is :)
To the question "Where do I start?" I answered with "Draw the world as it is in your head", the first result (there will be a lot of changes I think) is the image bellow. Gillianar, home of tormented heroes Yes, 99% of it is probably just a compilation of what I've read or seen in medieval fantasy, but that's okay. For me :)

See you soon, and while then, roll high or die!