AI Prompts: Edo Period Japan
A downloadable book
Disclaimer: This is AI generated content and not meant to present historical fact.
As a fiction writer and solo TRPG gamer, I often need to have critical information close at hand to keep my stories moving along smoothly, or else I have to stop my creative flow and go find the answers I need in books or online.
With that in mind, I used Bard AI to gather a lot of the information for me, asking as many questions as I could think of early on, that I might need answers for later. Once I had the results, I organized them and found I had over 200 pages worth of content.
This can be a great resource for creative types in writing fiction, playing narrative journal RPGs, solo RPGs, or for world-building in projects focused on Edo Period Japan. You have everything you need to get you started, with tons of background information and suggestions for characters, plots, locations and a lot more.
This resource includes:
Part 1
* Culture - lifestyles, period books, theater, poetry and music
* People - clothing, food, drink, livestock, markets, currency
* Major Topics - festival, piracy, attitudes and more
* Travel - regions, roads, and sea vessels
* Beliefs - philosophy, religion, mythology and more
* Military Governance - shoguns, daimyo, samurai and ninjas
Part 2
* Fiction, Biospheres - flora, fauna, sea life, dinosaurs, megafauna
* Fiction, Locations - examples of hans, cities, towns and villages
* Fiction, Characters - suggestions for samurai, ronin, common folk
* Fiction, Adventures - many suggestions for single heroes, small groups, rich, poor, performers, etc
* More Adventures - popular themes adapted to Japanese equivalents, such as Conan, King Arthur, Cthulhu, Song Of Ice And Fire, etc
* Fiction, Magic System - basic elemental magic system you can adapt to your specific needs
* Fiction, Loot - a few examples of Japanese-centric loot and reward weapons
* Fiction, Weather - this part came out so-so, it's not balanced, but it could help or ruin your character's travel plans, includes seasons in forest, tropical and arctic locations
Also includes over 700 historical and modern Japanese names and a list of resources used.
Download
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Comments
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TL;DR: This document is for creating a themed FANTASY setting, not for teaching real world HISTORY.
You're missing the point. This is not meant to be an accurate description of world history. This is for creative minds who might not know where to start when it comes to feudal Japan, ninja, samurai, etc. who might be interested in creating a fictional fantasy world setting for playing tabletop games, journaling, adding flavor to existing medieval adventures, etc. If someone has the itch to go and read real history, that's a bonus in my eyes.
In my writing project, my world of Old Nippon has dimensional portals and people from multiple eras and worlds being thrown into the setting, with local people trying to take advantage of them. For my purposes, the information I've gathered is fantastic, as it allows me to skim through a page or two for obscure details I don't have time to research, and this gets me back into the story right away where I can keep the plot moving. Four dollars is a fair price, I think, for a 250 page book on a fictional setting based on / inspired by a real world era.
I have seen for myself that AI is not providing true results, so no, I wouldn't try to teach a class with this information. Having said that, I looked for a ttrpg setting based on feudal Japan, and could not find one that suited my needs, so I created my own. You may have missed this part, because you don't mention it, but HALF of this book contains FICTIONAL characters, locations and adventure scenarios.
Having said that, I appreciate that you've taken the time to go through the book. If you'd like to have a conversation on this topic, see my bio page for a link to my writer's blog, and I will add a reddit link to that soon. Thanks for the comment, and for the concern that, when it comes to presenting real history, I agree that people should get their facts right.
Whether it is meant to be accurate or not, you A) label this as being for Edo Era Japan, a real time and place, and B) have one half of your book specifically cordoned off as fiction. These two things, taken together with no other disclaimer, present the other half as being nonfiction about said time and place.
Also, I motioned towards this before, but to say it more plainly - this is something you clearly and openly copied from a different source, and are now selling for money, despite it just being a re-organization of material from someone else's tool. This not okay and could be illegal!
I am not a lawyer, but, you are selling something from Google without their permission. Even if it was edited, the baseline material - as you've said - is taken from Bard AI, and that itself may be taking training data from copyrighted material (which it would then potentially spit out verbatim every so often, something that is more likely over 200+ pages than a single prompt). If I were you, I would not sell a supplement like this without something signed and stamped confirming that I wouldn't be obliterated in court over it, by Google or by anyone Google might have taken training data from.
If you want to share a big collection of AI responses with people because you think they'd be a useful resource, then that is your prerogative, but I would think twice before charging money for them. Like I said previously, I don't think it's worth it to buy a collection of prompts when you can just go use Bard AI yourself - and, by extension, I don't think it's worth the massive legal risk to get a bit of money from people interested in such a thing.
I thought it was pretty clear that I am not presenting a history book, but I can understand your perspective. I will add a disclaimer to this product stating explicitly that it is not meant to be historical fact. As to the second part, I'm not too concerned about legal issues with Google. See the following:
Google is willing to defend users who face legal trouble due to AI-generated content, but this only applies to unintentional copyright infringement... On the heels of these public discussions, Google has announced that it will assume responsibility in case any AI art or content created using its tools inadvertently results in copyright infringement (via Reuters). - Oct. 2023, not sure if I can link the article here, but it's on Android Police website.
I also read that some conditions and restrictions apply. Better safe than sorry, so I may end up removing the price tag and listing the AI Prompts series as free. I am already doing that for the 24XX modules, which again are storytelling tools, but based on active IPs. This whole AI business is something fresh and exciting for me, and I did jump on it, not to make a fast buck, but to write better stories and play better games. Thanks for your input! If you can recommend a couple of Edo Period websites, I'd love to take a look at them. (As soon as I get through like 50 Viking-based sources!)Hey, notice for people - this book contains large amounts of erroneous information, and even if you were okay with an AI's version of Japan's history, you could go use google's Bard AI yourself without paying 4 dollars for this.
As a rule, do not trust AI for accurate information - it is communicating info-chunks that sound like they "should" be correct when it responds to a prompt, not actually comprehending the context behind a question. I understand that for a TTRPG, when you need content fast, they can be a handy resource for quickly generating fictional concepts, but if you want accuracy, do the research yourself.
The quickest and simplest method for accurate information is to go to Wikipedia, read through, and then go read through the things Wikipedia itself is sourcing. It's not perfect, but it will give you real information from multiple sources. For something like the history of another country, specifically seeking out resources from or recommended by people from that country is also a good idea. Overall, just make sure you've checked multiple sources to confirm that the information you've gotten is correct, and not something that someone posted as a joke or misinformation... or something improvised by a language model.