An eldritch voice whispers to you, words seeping into your brain without bothering to go the usual route, through the ears. “Roll 3d6 to determine your DEX score,” it hisses. Quest Portal has made an AI assistant for Call of Cthulhu that can clue you in on fiddly rules, and teach you the game’s lore.
Named ‘Elder’, the AI chatbot is trained on a number of sourcebooks, including Call of Cthulhu 7e’s Investigator Handbook and Keeper Rulebook. Quest Portal ultimately plans to add the entire library of Chaosium’s rules, lore, and published scenarios. To access it, you’ll have to pay $5 a month after a free trial, but the website notes this is ‘beta pricing’.
Apparently this “intelligent and immersive companion” is capable of “deep conversations” and “expert guidance”, it’s intended for Keepers seeking some assistance while running or planning games.
Call of Cthulhu publisher Chaosium isn’t about to start embracing AI wholeheartedly, the company assures in its blog post. “Elder is designed with responsible AI practices in mind and prioritizing the rights of creators,” it says, emphasising that the bot only provides information from official Chaosium content and hasn’t gazed upon any forbidden texts (copyrighted content).
For good measure, Chaosium also restated its policy of forbidding AI-generated art, a major issue of the day in the RPG community.
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