The way I see it, if so many people on the site are immediately hostile to it and a considerable number of others are ambivialent about it or just don't care, it can be easily removed and nothing would be lost. If it cost like a bajillion dollars to set up then that sucks and is a kick in the teeth, especially for a nonprofit site, but there really doesn't seem to be a large enough demographic of people saying "Yes, I love this and will use it regularly" to justify keeping it around outside of the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Edited by ReginaldOgron5 on Mar 19th 2025 at 2:53:49 AM

SCF is my guess for why theyve been so defensive about it. Someone was proud of their bot and doesn't want to get rid of it, even if everybody is either neutral or hostile to it and there wasn't much reason to have it in the first place.

And again, I cannot stress enough how bad generative AI is for the environment, even if they claim they make up for it by doing... something.

I understand that there's a need to introduce features to entice new users to come to your app/website, but I don't know how this story generator thing is cohesive with what TV Tropes is at it's core. This is a wiki first and foremost, an encyclopedia of information regarding repeated conventions of story-telling, game design, joke structure, etc. seen in media. It's not TV Tropes' job to make stories with or without AI. The core userbase doesn't want this, and I doubt the newbies introduced to TV Tropes through the story generator are gonna stick around and contribute to the wiki or forums. And I get that dumb stuff for the sake of dumb stuff is OK, that's why the original story generator existed, but if this is supposed to be a super enticing way to get people to install the app, I don't see it happening. Especially since the market is crowded with stuff like ChatGPT, NovelAI, DeepSeek, Google Gemini, etc.

Frankly, I think people are blowing this whole thing out of proportion a little bit, I'm fine so long as we don't go the fandom route of forcing AI into actual articles.

x3 does seem to be a divisive feature at best among the regular user base

My biggest question is why it's here at all when you could just use ChatGPT or Claude for brainstorming story ideas instead. I firmly believe that AI should not replace the creative process (augmenting it I can at least see the argument for), but it does have its uses. None the human brain doesn't also have, but still

It just seems to be targeting an audience that doesn't exist

Edited by Midna on Mar 19th 2025 at 3:00:39 AM

thump

Edited by Taco on Mar 19th 2025 at 3:02:14 AM

e:

Do suggestions of replacing Story Gen with another AI use count?

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 19th 2025 at 1:03:36 PM

Agree on all your points.

At the very least, all of us in the troperbase should sit on this new feature for a while so that we can avoid knee-jerk responses.

Edited by CanuckMcDuck1 on Mar 19th 2025 at 4:04:20 AM

I'm sure it's been suggested before, but a feature that spits out randomly generated tropes in a list-like format would be easy enough to handle with a basic algorithm. Something like:

• In this Fantasy story
• the hero is a Plucky Girl
• from a Doomed Hometown
• who must Save the World
• from a Corrupt Corporate Executive
• and their Bumbling Henchmen Duo
• Along the way the hero meets
  • a Deadpan Snarker Funny Animal
  • a Knight in Sour Armor

It would be harder to give it connective tissue or read naturally without using AI, but it has been done before

Edited by Midna on Mar 19th 2025 at 3:08:23 AM

That's kind of what the current Story Generator already does, it's just a lot more broken and unhelpful. Your version is a lot more coherent and can probably be expanded on.

And I genuinely like the idea of users being able to submit snippets and stuff for a story generator to randomly use, so that it's not pulling from AI but rather original submissions cobbled together. If nothing else it could at least be really fun, especially if people can add things at their whim (heck as an engineer if this requires a video-esque approval process, I would genuinely enjoy approving these sort of things and I think I'd be more inclined to get the app if it had this sort of interactivity — I mean clearly we'd need to weed out certain things, but if there are rules and a process to maintain things, I think it could be genuinely pretty funny even if the stories are nonsense)

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 19th 2025 at 6:10:42 AM

The fact that I hadn't heard of it before you posted about it says a lot… but it kinda proves my point. Instead of abandoning what's already here for the next big thing, we could upgrade it and fix its faults

Edited by Midna on Mar 19th 2025 at 3:12:53 AM

What about the other games people play in the forums? Like turning them into actual interactive type games.

We could turn the story generator tab into a “games” tab and add multiple games to play

A LLM-less Story Generator as a community project would be amazing. Dedicated threads for discussions, participants hashing out possible plots and lines — not only we avoid the use of controversial technologies many people (including me) are not comfortable using, it could be a fun activity gathering different tropers together. Now I am not going to use the app as I am never on mobile, but I think I'd still love to contribute on such a project if there's the option.

We could still have other games such as the "guess the trope" hangman idea suggested in the previous page. Jay suggested a wiki bingo too (though not sure how that'd work), and other games like a trope wordle could be considered. I am aware these games require a lot of coding time, though, so maybe an idea for distant future updates?

I got ninja'd but yes, a Games tab is a really good idea! If the community-driven Story Generator project is picked up, it could still go into that tab with the other games.

Edited by Allisterarch on Mar 19th 2025 at 7:17:47 AM

I'd be down for that. Unsure of how it would work out besides just taking the framework of Ask the Tropers and putting the Forum Games board into it, but the concept of being able to, say, constantly track score for games that have them is a good one

Also, I don't know if I should list this as a bug, but if you guys want to keep the AI, or spin it off into its own app.

You may want to implement some safeguards on what it will generate. I'm not gonna post here the absolutely horrible things I got it to spew out, but you can make this thing say anything. Like, even Chat GTP has basic functions where it'll refuse to generate stuff with certain keywords or topics. This clearly does not.

I think this post is formatted so nicely it should be taken into account when the old Story Gen gets some upgrades.

There was one troper's project to turn Encounters into a Dungeon Crawler-like text adventure to educate new users about the wiki culture, but that didn't get anywhere. Since we have a lot of internal terminology, that could be a thing.

e: missed it.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 19th 2025 at 1:22:42 PM

Yeah, I suggested that on the last page. Encounters was a genuinely cool idea that fell to the wayside and reviving it could help us train new tropers in a fun way.

A "games" tab would be cool though I'm not sure how we'd convert the Forum Games into official games, mainly because most of them sort of require the medium that is a thread. But it could be fun.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 19th 2025 at 6:22:43 AM

I think 209 works as a novel way for a search engine as well, imo

Edited by TTFan on Mar 19th 2025 at 3:23:17 AM

I'm fairly sure that an improved Non-AI Story Generator would be a simple yet fun idea to implement with some easy markup for randomized database calls. (Genuine Artisanal Bespoke Story Engine, Certified Asbestos-Free!) I have basically zero coding skill and I've done similar to amuse myself with word banks in Tracery— automated Mad Libs, basically.

>_ "One day, ($character) was walking through ($setting) when she saw an ($obstacle). '($stock_phrase)', she exclaimed, 'I'm going to have to ($action)!'"

>_ "It's ($show_X) meets ($show_Y) in this ($reviewer_stock_phrase) ($genre) series, starring ($character) who has to work with ($other_character) to ($goal)!"

Already we're off to a more entertaining and useful start than anything Claude can slop out, plus it doesn't destroy the environment or steal copyrighted works.

Might as well toss this brainstorm in:

Mad Libs or something.

Or maybe an All Bluelinks Story.

Once Upon a Time, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born in this Old, Dark House.

"Good Morning, Crono"...

Edited by Malady on Mar 19th 2025 at 3:27:53 AM

x3 Wasn't on my mind when I wrote it, but it could be a clever way to shine a light on new or less trafficked tropes, yeah

If it's true that the Story Generator doesn't have any safeguards, then… uh-oh. I don't see the advertisers being too happy about that

Edited by Midna on Mar 19th 2025 at 3:26:42 AM

Again, I'm not gonna share what I got, but the last step the generator accepts suggestions you can just type out, and it will absolutely take anything I've given it and act accordingly.

Considering all the more racy/risque tropes out there, yeah, this could have been thought out slightly better.

We're being called kneejerk for our complaints, but another user calling us autists is just fine I guess.

Edited by WinningPony on Mar 19th 2025 at 3:32:03 AM