What an AI image policy tells us about RPG publishing

In February 2023, Chaosium announced that AI art would not be permitted in new titles for its named community-content programmes from 31 March that year. The statement identifies concerns about artists’ livelihoods and control over their work. It also explicitly limits the policy to those programmes. Chaosium’s announcement

That scope matters. A rule governing the Miskatonic Repository, Jonstown Compendium and Explorer’s Society does not become a rule for every RPG zine or every publication sold through DriveThruRPG. The policy tells us what this publisher decided for a particular route into publication.

The covers for this essay series were generated with OpenAI’s image tool under a specified splattercore art direction, with each image made to illustrate the essay rather than reproduce one of the zines discussed. Keeping that method visible is part of the provenance argument developed here.

A disclosure policy and an exclusion policy ask different things

Itch.io’s creator quality guidelines ask creators to identify generative-AI use through the platform’s disclosure field. They also discourage mass-produced or minimally curated generated material and explain that noncompliant pages can be removed from discovery features.

The guidelines distinguish generative systems from familiar game procedures such as pathfinding or procedural level generation. That distinction prevents the word AI from becoming a catch-all label for unrelated technical practices. It also gives a creator a more specific question to answer about their publication.

Chaosium’s cited announcement takes another approach for its named programmes by excluding AI art from new titles after the effective date. The two sources can be compared as publishing decisions, with their dates, subjects and consequences kept intact. Neither source supplies a complete ethical settlement for every use of generated material.

A library describing a game’s publishing context should therefore retain the applicable policy and its date. A publication’s relationship to that policy may require further evidence. The presence of a marketplace page is not, by itself, proof that every production claim has been independently investigated.

Provenance needs evidence about production

An image can look scratched, painted or photocopied without establishing how it was made. A smooth image can also have involved extensive manual work. Visual style is an object of interpretation; production history needs another kind of evidence.

The useful record might include a creator’s disclosure, contributor credits, a publisher statement or retained production material. Each source has a role. A creator’s statement is evidence of what the creator reports, while a record of the actual process can support a more detailed account where it is available and appropriate to retain.

The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy treats authority as contextual and information creation as a process worth examining. Here, that means asking who can support a particular claim about an image and what the available evidence actually establishes.

I would avoid assigning a definitive production method from a stylistic impression. If provenance matters to selection, request a clear disclosure proportionate to the decision. A speculative label can misdescribe both the object and the people credited with making it.

The labour question is larger than the visible image

Becker’s account of collective artistic work asks us to examine the cooperation and conventions through which an artwork is produced. In RPG publishing, the cover connects to writing, editing, layout, promotion and the arrangements through which contributors are credited and paid.

A production tool can change that division of work. The extent and direction of the change need evidence from the particular project. A generated cover does not, on its own, tell us whether an illustrator lost a commission, whether the budget increased or how much editorial work the publication received.

Those unanswered questions do not make labour irrelevant. They make the production account important. A publisher can state who contributed, what methods were used and which work was paid without presenting a promotional claim about efficiency as a complete history of the object.

For a commissioned library publication, the institution can make its own expectations explicit before work begins. If it requires commissioned illustration by a named artist, the brief, fee and agreement should reflect that requirement. If it permits generated elements, the arrangement should specify the disclosure and records it expects.

Collection purpose and commissioning purpose can differ

An academic collection studying the history of RPG publishing may have reason to acquire a publication because it documents a disputed production practice. That research purpose differs from choosing the same practice for the library’s own commissioned work. The distinction should be stated in the collection or project rationale.

A public library may be selecting for reading, play or local creative interest. It can apply its established criteria while recording production information that is material to those criteria. A decision should follow the institution’s stated purpose and the evidence about the particular publication.

Where a policy affects eligibility, define the terms staff will use and the source of the evidence. The process should give creators a way to correct factual errors. Otherwise a policy intended to improve accountability may produce inconsistent decisions based on appearance, rumour or an unexplained automated judgement.

The administrative work needs a limit too. A collection does not become more rigorous merely by gathering more personal information from makers. Ask for what the decision requires and preserve the relation between the disclosure, the edition and the policy applied.

Make the account of the work inspectable

The useful comparison between Chaosium and itch.io concerns the different conditions each sets for participation and discovery. Those conditions influence what creators can publish through a route and what readers can infer from encountering it there.

A library can preserve that history while making its own choices explicit. Name the publication, retain the relevant statement, identify the production information available and explain why it matters to the collection. The resulting account lets readers assess the work and its circumstances without asking an image’s surface to testify to a process it cannot prove.