Dungeon Master of Disaster? Ken Whitman’s AI Bios Stir TTRPG Chaos

Ken Whitman is no stranger to controversy, there’s even a website dedicated to tracking his adventures.

His latest venture, which has been causing quite a bit of upset and anger among a number of gaming industry professionals, is a Facebook page and website that is full of AI generated bios, and portraits, of TTRPG designers, artists, writers and company owners. Despite claiming he had found a way to curate the AI produced bios they not only read as AI generated work, but also contain a mix of truths, rumours, and outright incorrect information due to the way that AI scours the internet for data.

AI is already a very touchy subject in many creative communities, with many in the TTRPG industries very much against it, but another issue that several of the people who have been subject of these AI generated bios are concerned about is that the inaccuracies included in them will eventually be scooped up by others and end up on wikipedia pages, or articles, as ‘fact’. ‘Facts’ which, some fear, in some cases could possibly do reputational harm.

Whilst Whitman was widely known to be behind the Facebook group Most Influential Tabletop Game Icons his involvement in the 4 Pillar Games site was less obvious. The only people detailed on the sites ‘About Us’ page - a page which was removed from the site yesterday - were Reece Wardrip (CEO), Don Perrin (Chairman), and Tony Lee (Editor). All three are TTRPG industry veterans, with Don perhaps best known for co-authoring some Dragonlance novels and Tony for running the Games Unplugged magazine many years ago. All three have known Ken Whitman for decades and have previously worked with him in one capacity or another during that time.

Within hours of the outrage blowing up on Monday 11th May, the ‘About Us’ page vanished and Tony took to social media to inform everyone that Don and himself had resigned from the company. I did manage to talk briefly with Tony, and he told me of his and Don’s surprise at the situation and that the content of the site was not at all what he and Don “had planned, expected, or even had a chance to approve.” He also sad he believed this would also be the case for Reece, although I haven’t seen any comment from Reece about the situation, nor do I know him personally to reach out for comment. Don Perrin also deactivated his personal Facebook page so was not able to be reached for comment.

Whilst the AI designer articles are similiar in content and appearence to those on the Facebook page he runs, there are differences between the two in many cases. Mainly the wording of some sentences, although the overall content and information remains largely the same in both cases. Ken’s involvement in the site starts to become obvious when you look at the metadata behind it, as the following screenshot shows Ken as listed as feed author…

The 4 Pillars Games site seems to have been set up not only be a ‘directory for the top influential tabletop icons of all time’ but also cover gaming news and host a new digital download store to compete with DriveThruRPG. All mention of the store has now been removed from the site, and it seems odd that using AI generated articles was thought the best way to endear the site to creators whose work they wanted to try and sell on the same site. As for the news, that is a stream of headlines and article links to other news sites such as Rascal News, EN World, Tabletop Gaming News, and other assorted news sites and blogs… although the site does attribute credit to the sites that appear in it’s feed and if you click on the article link it takes you to the original article. So it is more of a news feed than creating its own news stories.

A number of the people who have had AI profiles covered on the site have contacted the site asking for them to be removed, only to receive rather bullish or AI written replies. One such was Lynne Hardy of Chaosium…

Ken has responded to the issues raised through a post on his Most Influential… Facebook page, stating that “…while we remain fully open to factual corrections, clarifications, historical additions, and respectful collaboration, we do not intend to remove publicly documented historical profiles solely because someone disagrees with the tools or methods used to help create them.” Whether they have actually started to correctly fact check the profiles they post, and start amending those already posted, remains to be seen. You can read their full statement below:

It should be noted that negative comments, criticism, and in some cases requests by the bio subjects, have been routinely deleted off the Facebook page.

Images courtesy of Facebook and 4 Pillar Games. Headline image courtesy of ChatGTP*.

*Whilst we do not use AI generated content, written or imagery, on Tabletop Sentinel I felt in this instance it was appropriate to do so in respect to the discussion at hand as long as I labelled it clearly within the image used.