jordangreywolf

I've been using Bing and some other resources in an attempt to create handouts for my post-apocalyptic retro-futuristic Savage Worlds TTRPG campaign set in an alternate-history Florida heavily drawing elements from Fallout and Deadlands: Hell on Earth. The thing is, Bing only gives me square images that are very low-res, and it's a real paint to get exactly what I want ... so I've had greater success just getting ELEMENTS (against a blank background) that I can then try to paste together. I've tried using ChatGPT to help me do stuff like determine "loot blocks" -- a list of interesting things the PCs might find when digging through an abandoned car or the ruins of a store -- and I'm still floored by what it *CAN* do, but it's very, very difficult for me to try to set the parameters and "prep" it to only give things that make sense for this very particular setting.

For instance, this is not set in the 1950s. It's definitely not in the present. Ideally, it's a possible future AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN IMAGINED by someone in the 1950s or early 1960s. There is no Disney World. There is no internet. There are no cell phones. "Hacking" requires a physical connection to a local computer network. But on top of all that, the bombs dropped, and this is taking place over 200 years afterward.

The kind of stuff it generates shows me that the computer can get confused. In a way it's funny because the points of confusion seem to match some of the glitches the makers of the Fallout games sometimes were guilty of: They'd forget their own lore (too many chefs, no unifying "lore Bible" keeping track of the timeline) and introduce all sorts of anachronisms -- references in pre-war records of things that lore-wise DID NOT EXIST until after the bombs dropped, for instance. So, hey, maybe I should give the AI a break. I think it's a useful tool as a sort of icebreaker to get me past "blank canvas syndrome," but I don't buy the exaggerated claims I'm heard from people along the lines of, "I asked ChatGPT, and it wrote an entire Savage Worlds playable adventure module for me." Not likely. When it offers statistics, it'll give a mishmash of old d20, D&D 5th edition, and who-knows-what-else game systems in addition to such Savage Worlds terms as "Bennies" or "Edges" or whatnot. It also keeps "forgetting" things it generated just a couple of exchanges ago, or even contradicts itself in the same block.

It also tends to fall back in on the same tropes. I tried using it for a "random treasure generator" for Dungeon Crawl Classics, and it freakishly often give me items that give a bonus to stealth or that promised ephemeral bonuses with vague drawbacks that would be a mess to try to translate into game mechanics, and never ONCE did it give me something as basic as (say) a dagger with a super-sharp edge, or a healing potion.

Floridaland Park Map Brochure
The first major location in this campaign is Floridaland. In a way, it's a microcosm of everything I wanted to work into the overall campaign, and a chance to give "previews" to a lot of things to be found earlier on. This is parallel to its purpose in the game world: In this timeline, Floridaland is a theme park created as a joint venture funded by the state and a group of corporate sponsors as a way to promote Florida as a whole. Toward that end, it's located along I-27 ("Florida's Backbone") near the small town of Lamont up close to the northern border with Georgia. (In this timeline, there's no I-75. The major routes leading into Florida are I-27 from the northwest and US 1 running along the east coast, together forming the stretch of the "Dixie Highway" system looping into Florida, with tourist traps all along the way.)

So, the idea was that you'd come into the state, and a little ways after Tallahassee, here's this theme park shaped like the state with a bunch of attractions that are located in parts of the park that are supposed to correspond to where their real-life counterparts would be in the real state. Furthermore, there were a bunch of mascots corresponding to different animals native to Florida. (In this timeline, Florida has two state birds -- the scrub-jay, as the only bird that's ONLY found in Florida, and the flamingo, popularly associated with the state -- so of course they're mascots.) The idea was to be a showcase of Florida attractions and industries, though the park suffered a bit of mission creep over time. Costumed characters were largely replaced by "Masbots," which are basically robots customized off of the basic Protectron frame but with a level of intellect closer to that of Mr. Handy/Ms. Nanny robots so that they can better interact with the guests. Eventually, many of the animatronics in the "Everglades Safari" at the south end were slated to be replaced by artificially-generated versions of Florida species of animals, using the same technology employed at Nuka-World for their on-site animals -- but the bombs dropped before that could come to fruition.

200+ years later, a community of mutants lives in a portion of Lamont in what might outwardly look like a slice of pre-war Americana, but the residents are supported by bands of raiders who steal from merchant caravans and rival settlements. They've employed Floridaland as a literal tourist trap, reprogramming the masbots to gladly welcome guests in, and make a bunch of noise celebrating their arrival (alerting the local Lamutants), but they won't let them leave. The Lamutants show up in firefighter and police gear to "rescue" any people so caught, but their fate is far from improved.

Within the park, some of the rides actually still function (partly), and some parts are relatively safe, but only to a point. There's also a small community of survivors living in the "Everglades" part of the park, beyond the reach of the Lamutants, who have formed a sort of cargo cult, turning surviving sections of the Floridaland Employee's Handbook into a holy writ, and venerating Old World relics, awaiting the day when Guests will return to their part of the park.

(This image is a Photoshop collage of different elements created by AI, plus some logos I made up -- or borrowed, in the case of Interama and USSA -- for the campaign. I had to do a lot of rearranging and touch-up to get it to where I wanted.)

Welcome to Floridaland / Gabby Gator Billboard
Cobbled together from AI generation (Bing AI for initial square-box "scene" and gator mascot, Photoshop Generative Fill for textures), with a lot of cloning tool and brush touch-up work. (The "gator mascot" the AI gave me was pretty badly mutated, with flippers instead of hands, for starters.) This was one of several "AI-assisted" billboard designs I churned out for a couple of reasons:

1) I wanted some billboard "inserts" I could use with my 8"x4" billboard frame to swap in at different encounter locations in a TTRPG campaign;

2) I wanted inspiration for various locations that might be explored either along the planned travel route, or off-course if the PCs decided to go all "sandboxy" on me and strike out on their own across the map.

Although there was once a real-world "Floridaland" (with 10 different attractions) that existed in Florida in the 1950s or so, this is, as described earlier, something different for my campaign.

Gabby Gator is one of several "Masbot" characters created for the park, and the "Everglades Hoverboat Ride" (AKA "Hoverboat Bingo" as kids are presented with a quasi-educational mini-game to see if they can spot all the wildlife along the ride) located at the south end of the park, roughly corresponding to where the Everglades would be in the actual state.

The Gabby Gator "signature" was made using the Mrs Sheppards font designed by Sudtipos Studio (https://www.sudtipos.com/).

I've since made some 5"x2.25" versions of several of the billboards (rearranging elements) to fit old Lionel No. 310 billboard frames (scenery pieces for railroad hobby sets) as inserts. The big billboard piece usually just stands on the dining room buffet table, and I'll swap out images each session as sort of a "preview of things to come," whereas the smaller Lionel billboard frames can be less intrusively added to the table, facing the players.

Atomic 66 Cafe Billboard - Pre-War
In the early concept for my Fallout-esque TTRPG campaign, it was going to be a grand "road trip" along Superhighway 66, a mega-lane suspended roadway with mobile carwashes, autotrains, rolling diners (shop and dine from your window as you speed down the interstate!), and other crazy ideas inspired by things such as the "Magic Highway USA" episode of the Disneyland TV show (the futuristic angle starting at the 35-minute mark), or the optimistic and crazy ideas from the "Closer Than We Think" comic strip.

As part of such a campaign, I thought it might be nice to have some recurring locations, after a fashion -- a similar layout, though there would be different encounters and a different story/problem/adventure to be found at each one. For instance, I might make a few map locations for a recurring rest stop design, a recurring standard service station, or ... a recurring franchise of roadside diners.

I came up with the notion of the "Atomic 66 Cafe," which would be a self-contained fusion-powered micro-diner that had been set up at various far-from-civilization locations alongside Superhighway 66. This 24/7 diner would be staffed by a Dinerbot ("DINAH"), and serve cheap coffee and synthesized food made on-premises. The modular business was designed in such a way that if it wasn't profitable at that location, it would be fairly easy to collapse the whole thing, load it up onto a trailer or two, and cart it off to a new location.

Then came the Big One. The bombs dropped, cities got nuked, civilization ended ... but the Atomic 66 Cafe, still self-sufficient and with plenty of protein and carb stocks in the pantry, was still in business, awaiting customers. Of course, there might be some issues. Perhaps DINAH's logic circuits are on the fritz. Maybe the diner has run out of its protein stocks and it's using "innovative" ways to acquire more. Maybe the place has been taken over by hoodlums or apocalyptic cultists. Perhaps DINAH needs some replacement parts and sends the heroes off on a side-quest. And so forth.

Anyway, I thought I'd try making a billboard that I could swap out with my display frame (8"x4"), so I collaged together several different images (and pieces thereof) from different Bing Image Creator requests, with a bit of touch-up work. Bing only generates square images, without any tweaking for dimensions, so I had to expand a bit to get wider images. Also, to my frustration, I could not figure out whatever magical word combinations would give me an otherwise headless multi-armed robot with a TV screen in its chest displaying the face of a waitress, so I had to do a bit of compositing for robot body, extra arms, TV screen image inset (with "scan lines"), and the waitress cap on top. The signage is also semi-collaged, since there's no way it could handle that many words without turning into complete gibberish.

The "distressed" version is what I actually printed out to use on the table, but I decided to keep a "clean" version as well.

The "Swanky" retro typeface featured on the motto is from Fontdiner.com, one of my favorite sources of retro lettering.