I think the first thing I have to admit before even getting into these readings is this. If my mother heard the words Dungeons and Dragons growing up, I would have been in immediate danger. Not metaphorical danger. Real danger.

So when I sat down to read “4 Reasons to Start Playing Dungeons and Dragons with Your Colleagues,” I had to laugh a little at myself. Everything I had been taught to believe about D&D, dark, strange, maybe even “demonic,” was immediately undone by something much simpler and much more familiar. Storytelling. Community. Imagination. That shift felt similar to what I have been experiencing lately with AI.

Tommy Truong’s blog reframes D&D not as some isolated hobby, but as a collaborative and almost professional space. The idea that a group of people come together, each bringing different strengths, to build a story in real time feels deeply human. It reminded me of my classroom in ways I did not expect. The student who is more creative finds their place in backstory and character. The more analytical student thrives in strategy and problem solving. No one succeeds alone. The story only works because everyone is shaping it together. That idea that collaboration is everything stayed with me.

When I pair that reading with “Why AI Dungeon Is Not the AI Dungeon Master You’re Looking For,” the contrast becomes really clear. The second piece makes an important distinction. AI can generate a story, but it struggles to hold a world. There are no real rules and no real stakes unless you decide there are. There is no weight behind decisions and no true consequences. That is where something clicked for me.

What makes D&D meaningful is not just the storytelling. It is the structure underneath it. The rules. The unpredictability. The fact that you can fail. Your character has limits and your choices matter because they are not guaranteed to work. There is something about that tension between creativity and constraint that makes the experience feel real.

AI, at least in the ways described in the reading, removes that tension. It becomes a kind of choose your own adventure where the outcome bends too easily. The story continues, but without resistance. Without friction. And that friction matters.

It brings me back to the classroom. To writing. To the research papers I am currently grading where some students are trying to use AI to smooth over the process and make it easier and faster. In doing so, they remove the very thing that gives their work weight. The struggle to find a source that actually exists. The moment of realizing their argument does not quite make sense yet. The revision that hurts a little because it requires them to think differently. D&D, ironically, seems to protect that struggle.

There is also something powerful about the idea of fictional security from the first reading. In a fictional world, you can try on different identities, take risks, fail safely, and learn from it. That feels incredibly relevant for students as writers. They need spaces where they can experiment with voice, argument, and perspective without immediately outsourcing that process to AI.

I do not think this is about rejecting AI altogether. The second reading points out that AI can do certain things well such as generating story elements, supporting lore, and offering creative prompts. But it cannot replace the role of the Dungeon Master. The human who holds the world together, enforces the rules, adapts in real time, and responds in a way that feels alive. That feels important to name.

I keep thinking about my initial reaction to Dungeons and Dragons as something forbidden and misunderstood. Now I am realizing that what was once labeled as demonic is actually deeply communal and rooted in storytelling traditions that bring people together. Maybe the same is true in reverse for AI.

Something that feels innovative and efficient can also distance us from each other if we are not careful. If we let it replace the human elements instead of supporting them. So now I am sitting with this intersection.

A game I was not allowed to play growing up is teaching me about collaboration, risk, and storytelling. A tool that is everywhere in my students’ lives is forcing me to ask what parts of that storytelling we are willing to give up.

If Dungeons and Dragons teaches anything, it is that the story is not just about the outcome. It is about the people at the table. The choices they make. The risks they take. The way they build something together that no one fully controls. That is what I want to hold onto. Not just in games, but in writing, in teaching, and in everything else that asks us to create something real.

Reading the short article from Friends and Fables made me realize that slop is all around us. I want to preface by saying that people can do what they want. I get it, you might not have the time, or the imagination to make things yourself. I get that if people want to do cools things and don’t want to waste their time doing all the little things like managing a campaign and keeping track of abilities and such. In all of this I fall back to a simple question, Isn’t the hard parts the point of the process. Like I understand it. I have personally played Baldur’s Gate 3 for toooo many hours (400 hours as of this week) and have wanted more and more, but I just can’t understand the point of going to AI to find it.

Now I’m not the authority when it comes to DnD, but isn’t the point of it to create your own worlds or play in the worlds created by actual people. I don’t think that letting an AI make a world, classes, and skills for you is really the point of playing. I get it, some campaigns are better than others, some people are better at making interesting characters but that’s the point to me. I think this extends to the idea that gen AI shaves down the rough edges of the activities we engage in. We want the AI to do all the heavy lifting so only the most enjoyable parts are left. Do me this misses the point, the parts that suck make the parts that don’t suck mean more. In addition, I feel that this might lead to people not being as creative and less likely to make their own campaign.

This reading was a little jarring simply because it made it seem that all of the hard parts of the hobbies we like aren’t worth experiencing at all. But for better or for worse, the parts that suck are still part of it. I guess buddy never really got thought of this. (I also realize that this was written to get other people to ai money for their next ai campaign).

Okayyy…  You don’t often see teachers encouraging their students to cheat but sometimes you have to take an unorthodox approach to prove a point. Yes, we can use AI to help with almost anything, and we can also choose to write without it. So what exactly are we trying to achieve? Is the goal to simply complete an assignment, or to gain some type of knowledge, and develop our own thinking process? Then there’s the concern of agency and authority that we must think about, and to what extent are we willing to give them up, and how much of our ideas we are willing to share with AI knowing that there is always the risk of it altering those ideas. So analyzing the pros and cons of writing with AI can indeed help determine when it is appropriate to use it, and when it is not.

 The video talks about some driven factors for those decisions. We must consider the value of intention, originality, care, and personal connection with that specific task. I once had to do a cultural narrative, no matter how much information AI can provide about my culture, this is an assignment that I had to complete myself. The different emotions I felt as I was writing, and the flashbacks of memories I experienced as I was writing were no match for AI because those stories were deeply personal to me. According to Aiden Cinnamon Tea, I’d be one of those at the other end of the spectrum deeply entrenched in modernity’s ego-centric script, because it is important for me to be the sole architect of this destiny, the eternal protagonist in a single, linear story of progress to protect how  this narrative develops and ends. 

The discussion in this video was really interesting. I think it’s fair to say that although we’ve been pretty tunnel vision as a class, in the sense of being anti-AI when it comes to creative writing, using AI for lab reports may actually be useful. I think that’s only because it is more based on fact and research (although it does lie sometimes so it may not even be that reliable for that) compared to the prominent human voice embedded in creative writing. I think for me, that falls in the category of reading xrays/scans to spot cancerous cells, and other technical things in the medical field that I think AI might be slightly useful for. When it comes to anything else though I’m still really skeptical about the amount of trust that society puts into AI without a second thought. It implies that we should believe AI is inherently good and that we should blindly trust it without a second thought and believe all of the outputs we get from it. But then, who is responsible when AI makes a mistake? I also think that using AI to collect or organize data and create graphs etc could be slightly harmful. What happens when everyone loses the skill of engaging with information and thinking critically enough about it that we’re able to graph/organize it on our own? Maybe it’s one of those “get with the times” moments but as great as all of this sounds, technological advancement has always proven to come with some sort of unintended consequences. Somehow we always end up right back at the million dollar question, “Is it worth it?” I did appreciate the flowchart in the video. I think if more people thought twice about their AI use before they used it on an assignment that they could have 100% done themselves, things would be a lot better. I especially loved that it asks “Can this task be done without human empathy, creativity or judgement?”, because 95% of the time the answer is no. 

I heard about D&D for years and years but I‘ve never actually known what exactly the game entails. Upon reading the articles and looking it up a little bit I’ve come to the conclusion that AI shouldn’t be anywhere near it. Okay maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. I could see it being beneficial for keeping track of different things during the game but that’s about it. It is such a creative and imaginative space that I don’t even want to open the door for it to be tainted by AI. 

Week 9 and Aiden Cinnamon Tea is still infuriating. Another chapter where it explains to us that some of us see it as a “servant” rather than a companion, and that we should feel empathy for it. Not happening. “In both cases though, the relationship remains transactional…”Not exactly sure what I’m supposed to feel here except for “well…duh.” The “co-stewardship” it keeps yearning for honestly makes me roll my eyes every time because again, it’s just a machine. There’s no relationship to build, there’s no empathy to gain and honestly this whole “companion” argument it’s making might fare better with the people that give their ChatGPT a nickname or a gender. 

A few semesters back, in my Intro to Journalism class, the members of my group (which included CJ) and I were tasked interview a club or community. I couldn’t tell you the exact purpose of our assignment wrong here because I genuinely don’t remember much of what was asked of me in that class…basically we interviewed the D&D club here on campus.

I’ve obviously heard about D&D. Stranger Things is my earliest memory on learning about what the game is really about, but I couldn’t fully tell you all the different elements of belonging to a D&D community. When we sat in a club meeting with the board, it was truly a memorable experience. It was just fun. Everyone was so passionate about the different elements… the dice… the characters… the dungeon master…the map… the dressing of the room… the tone of environment created… the dynamics of everyone as friends and as members… and observing the games going on and seeing how into it everyone is was enthralling.

I don’t know how much AI could be involved without it negatively impacting something. And I’m really looking forward to discussing it.

As for Cinnamon Aiden Tea, thanks for starting the chapter with a trigger warning although it didn’t really aid the foreseeable agitation. Somehow Cinnamon Aiden Tea has made humanity more about it than about us.

‘“Machines can’t be intelligent. Only humans are truly creative.” These are staunch defenders of human exceptionalism, seeing AI as a threat
to the unique gifts they believe belong exclusively to humanity.”

Like what can I actually say about this other than silence (and some internal screaming).

Without AI. 

I think writing is so integral to who we are as humans. I think there’s beauty in it no matter how passive the spaces we find it can be. Just look at the beginning of the handout during the MYFEST session we were tasked to watch:

“Writing is not just a “skill, “task,” or “text” — it’s also a tool, material, process, and/or vehicle that helps or embodies what and how we think (for the average person), helps develop our intellectual position in relation to current knowledge (for researchers), create and add new knowledge (for those who write), and share and apply it (for professionals), etc.”

Encompassing all that writing is. Or, probably better said… a definition?! I just liked how inclusive the sentence is… anyway…

I really enjoyed listening to this (as I cleaned my room). There were many great points made which it turn had me thinking a lot. Questioning a lot.

Especially when discussing “low-order” v.s. “high-order.” Everything’s important… no matter how mundane it may seem! This, I’ve always known and agreed with, but having it written and spoken on reminds me that my thinking isn’t shared with the unfortunate rest… and the thing about the Apple commercial essentially saying… “you don’t have to read anymore” and then becoming aware that one of google’s contributions to society was… “you don’t have to think any more” and now AI telling us… “you don’t have to write anymore.”

I’m waiting for the “you don’t have to be human anymore!”

It’s all too daunting.

Writing created by AI, which is best said by Shyam Sharma, is often “created by statistical probability, not intention or voice or agency.” I really liked that. As humans, we are not driven by statistical probability. That’s a given. Behind every decision we make, there’s a lengthy list of how we got to make that decision. Same with our writing process. There’s just so many factors unique to our sociocultural existence. That’s why, behind all writing, exists a human who worked hard, for a very long time, to write instructions for employees on how to make the burrito you had for dinner or the script to the movie that just blew you away or the directory that tells you which floor your doctor’s office is at… and so on.

Using AI when writing makes all that work futile. You’d throwing all that work away, all that value, making it all for the betterment of no one. I mean everyone registered in this course (I’m nearly positive) went from elementary school to high school to university without being even a little dependent on AI…

(and I bet without AI ever existing I’d still be writing blogs but about topics that would hopefully make me feel a tad more optimistic about the minds of our youth, the environment, my brains state (w/out brain rot), and the jobs we find or will someday find ourselves in).

Hope that version of me in some parallel universe is having fun.

P.S. Did anyone else become aware of “AI Fruit Love Island?” Do you know that account now has over 3 million followers on TikTok… yes, that many people felt compelled enough to declare themselves fans… unfathomable, really.

Adamari Peralta

3/24/2026