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Update on the use of AI text in Chaosium Community Content programs

Posted by Michael O'Brien on 21st Oct 2026

Hello to all Chaosium community content creators in our programs at DriveThruRPG. Thanks for the inspiration you bring us daily through your work for Chaosium roleplaying games, published via our community content programs. We always love to see new publications, and much of it finds its way onto our own tables when we run games for friends. You all rock.

But, we have noticed a recent disturbing trend in the use of AI-generated text from some authors. In recent days we have removed 40+ publications from sale.

None of the authors affected were members of our Facebook community writers’ groups. There's no need to speculate on who they were, or name names. But we did want to let you know that we look at what's published, and if a work has any of the telltale signs of AI writing, our community content ambassadors inspect it.

We use a mix of our own instincts from decades of writing scenarios and running games, backed up by the use of multiple AI detection tools if we smell a digital rat. Volume of publication is another obvious indicator that we should take a look. We know many of you and you often share what you are working on, how it's going, previews of the cover, when it comes out: you all know that the process takes weeks, often months, sometimes years. But when a brand new author appears out of nowhere and publishes one or more new scenarios daily, our suspicions are aroused, and soon confirmed on inspection.

How do we detect AI text, in addition to software designed for the purpose? AI writing has many hallmarks, such as:

  • Absolutely perfect grammar and spelling, zero typos.
  • A certain present tense breathless style that is relentless.
  • Strange but uniform formatting with many lists and many tables.
  • Expressions and structure applied meticulously in a way that we have never seen before in any published scenario from any roleplaying company.
  • Not-quite-right application of the rules, world lore, or advice to the gamemaster.
  • "If not this, then that" syntax.
  • A feeling that the scenario has many words but you never quite understand it because it has not been explained by a living gamemaster.
  • Layout so neat and published so quickly that it has been exported, not laid out.
  • Em dashes, it's always the em dashes, that blameless and useful piece of typography.
  • And finally, worst of all: it's dull.

In short: we hate it. It is antithetical to every reason that we all come to the table to play games with each other, to meet characters that we have created or inhabit, and in doing so explore our collective humanity.

AI is not art. It is theft from you and every writer who has gone before you, repackaged dishonestly and shamelessly as original.

This phenomenon has only risen in recent times, and all of you here who make honest effort have nothing to worry about. If you are concerned, here's what not to do when preparing Chaosium Community Content publications:

  • Don't use AI to generate ideas for a scenario. Those festering digital bones will remain visible though to the final publication.
  • Don't use AI to write the actual scenario text, obviously.
  • Don't use AI to summarise, paraphrase, check rules, or create stats. It will get them wrong, or it will regurgitate them, or it will express them in a weird way.
  • Don't use AI to revise or check your human text. It will rewrite it into AI-speak. Be wary of Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini here, and anything that makes autocorrect suggestions for you, as it replaces your voice with AI. We strongly recommend disabling such tools from your workflow.
  • Don't use AI to do your artwork.
  • Don't use AI to do your layout.
  • Don't use AI to write your blurbs.
  • Don't use AI to create your covers.
  • Just don't use AI.

Checking 40+ publications to confirm AI use drained and demoralised us, but it had to be done. The net result is that we are now better at spotting it, and our tolerance is lower than ever before. Publications which have the characteristics of AI-speak will be removed from our programs, as will any future publications by those creators.

This was horrible to write. Thanks for reading, but thanks moreso, many times over, for being genuine, creative and truthful. After going through this awful AI vetting project, we recharge our strength and energy by looking at our bookshelves and hard drives which are bursting with your endless, imaginative, incredible, and above all human work. Please never stop!

The Chaosium Community Content Ambassador Team:Bridgett, Don, Mark, MOB & Nick

Chaosium Community Content at DriveThruRPG

Our community content programs at DriveThruRPG enable fans to self-publish material for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Age of Vikings, and Pendragon TTRPGs. Independent creators can offer their work free of charge, set a price, or offer it as pay-what-you-want.

The success of these fan-driven programs is evident by their thriving communities of creators and the rapidly growing number of titles every week.