All information in this article was researched by a TTRPG creator who was just fed up with TTRPG slop. I am not a journalist. I am not accusing anyone in this article of legally actionable wrongdoing.

It all started when a friend sent me a link to the 'The Ultimate D&D Date Night Bundle', remarking on how interesting the concept was. After clicking on the link, I quickly wrote it off as AI slop - AI generated cover art, AI generated texts and AI generated maps. But then I stopped for a second. My friend didn't initially think about this being AI slop, even though he is quite tech savvy. Why did he not realize this immediately? In this article, I am going to talk about deceptive marketing, companies in Romania and Dubai & how a setup of slop products for niche markets has generated them a sales volume of over 1.000.000$.

Fake reviews

I started by looking through the website and social media. They had quite a lot of reviews - several thousands actually. This is one of the things that might have brought my friend to consider this to be real. While this might look authentic to an outsider, I have to emphasize that the TTRPG market is small. These numbers seem unrealistic for the products they have. So, how did they get these reviews? Let us use their product 'The Complete RPG Map Making Bundle' as an example.

With photoshop, I presume. They just uploaded pictures of review numbers instead of actually displaying them with Shopify apps made for this purpose. This makes it plausible that they just faked the numbers, since there is no way to verify them.

It is quite telling that despite their thousands of reviews, I am seemingly the first to write one. I was about to send them another glowing review, but was unable to click the button. There was a link, but it just put me back onto the homepage.

Now some of the other review buttons do work, but strangely the number differs quite a bit. Suddenly we are talking about 150 reviews instead of thousands - the numbers just do not add up.

Looking at the site's code, they are using a widget from judge.me. As someone who uses the same app, let me tell you that it is easy to hide negative reviews. This is somewhat necessary to get rid of bad faith comments, but could be used to hide legitimate negative feedback as well.

But hey, at least these reviews generated by their reviews collected by the app are legit, right? Let us look at this somewhat prophetic review by Jonas K., who was scammed by TTRPG map creators so many times, but has finally found the one non-scammer in the TTRPG scene. So let us be extra careful and “verify the seriousness” of this review.

Now I will go on a whim here and say this review is fake. Believe it or not, there are not many scams out here in the TTRPG space, just many honest creatives doing it for the love. The only companies I can think of that might do this are mentioned in this article. This does show that whoever writes these reviews is most likely not a native to the TTRPG space, since it is not something you would ever find in a TTRPG review. In addition, judge.me does verify reviews and does display if they are verified, which most of their reviews are not. But even if they were, these reviews are still quite easy to fake if you have fake mail addresses.

But what about authentic reviews? Some of the reviews even left a few pictures! While this initially even convinced a cynic like me, I did find it curious that some of these reviewers seem to use the same table cloth. Hey, maybe they are just a lovely polyamorous commune, who all wrote separate reviews about the same product.

Or maybe, just maybe, these reviews where uploaded by the creators themselves, after they made a little photo session with their product.

Fake discounts

There is this Shopify functionality called the “compare-at-price”, which is essentially just a random price you can compare your actual price with. Shopify does not require you to only do this for a limited time, so you can essentially create a permanent fake discount. You never actually sell the product at the “compare-at-price”, so the comparison is worthless.

Even highly respectable map makers have been using this tactic for a while, and I think it is scummy. There is a fake sense of urgency implied, even though the discounts never go away. In the case of our target, they are sometimes writing something like “special offer for christmas” or “new year special offer”, but it is rarely actually a discount, since the “compare-at-price” was fake to begin with. For all the map makers out there, I am pretty sure this is illegal in the EU, so please stop this before you get caught.

Outright lies

On their German social media profile, they are outright stating that either no AI was used or that AI was used only in the marketing. How can I be so sure of that, with German being quite a famously complicated language? Well unfortunately for them, German is my first language, so I can verify that they are lying here.

They even doubled down, not only claiming that their content didn't use any AI, but was handcrafted by an internal team of illustrators and authors. To a trained eye looking at their product, as well as anyone working in the industry, this statement is dubious at best. Even if their content was not at least partially AI generated (which it most likely is), almost none of the people working in the industry have their own employees (except big publishers). Freelancers are much more usual, especially for illustrations.

A dubious origin story

Now I do not know about you, but I feel like there is something off about Lucy and Mark. They are seemingly the humble creators of this product, but I do not buy it. I do not like their backstory, I do not like their picture. Call me crazy, but there is something uncanny about both of them.

Maybe it is the picture. There is something weird about it, but it is just not large enough to be sure. Kowalski, enhance!

Now I am not sure what is happening with Lucy's charm, but it seems to face in and out of existence around the & letter. One of Lucy's rings also seems to meld into her middle finger, which is the appropriate finger if you ask me.

Maybe it is their names. Lucy and Mark are not exactly the type of names I would pick for my children in Romania. Yes, this company sits in Romania, a land known for blood sucking vampires (which is just a fun fact and in no way a metaphor for their business practices).

But hey, I am sure their address leads to a totally legit business address. Let's do a quick checkup on Google Maps and... There it is! The crumbling facade and rusty fencing do not technically disprove that they are hand crafting maps in there, but with a sales volume of 1.000.000$ I would think they could afford something nicer. Wait, did I say 1.000.000$?

Follow the money

RPG Maps Forge belongs to the DC INTERNATIONAL AGENCY S.R.L., which, you will have to admit, is a strange name for a TTRPG company. In 2023, this company had a sales volume of 4.714.511 RON (according to North Data), which would roughly equate to about 1.000.000$. It is not entirely clear what amount of that sales volume was generated by the RPG Maps Bundle and which was generated by other ventures. But even if the real amount does not get us the 1.000.000$ I promised in the title, I am sure our next contender will make up for it!

This is not an isolated case

This was my first time looking at rpgmapsforge.com, but not my first rodeo with RPG slop content. The website rpgtabletops.com had been on my radar for quite a while, mostly for similar reasons. Even though they do not seem to be made by the same people, they use a lot of similar tactics and are therefore interesting for the scope of this article. Even if my article does somehow make one or two of these websites go away, I want to make you familiar with their tactics, because I have the feeling that these will not be the last websites of this kind.

So let us go through the same tactics as last time and see how they compare. Just see this as a little exercise to upgrade your bullshit radar.

Fake reviews, but different

Yes, I do think that rpgtabletops.com also uses fake reviews, though these are a little more sophisticated. Instead of just photoshopping an image to look like they have many reviews, they do actually have a large amount of verified loox reviews. Loox reviews are verified in different ways, two of which are relevant for this article.

• Verified through purchase. These are verified by the loox app verifying that the customer had purchased the product you were reviewing. You could fake these by buying your own product with fake accounts (just give yourself a 100% discount code).
• Verified through the store owner. Now I am not saying that this functionality is exclusively used for scams, but you can essentially import a CSV sheet with whatever you want. The idea is that you export the sheet from another website like amazon to display the reviews you got there on your website, but there is little stopping you from just writing something else in there.

Now, some of their reviews are verified by the store owner and important from an external source. This is strange, since rpgtabletops.com does not appear to be selling this bundle on any other market place.

Another giveaway is that they are not displaying the date when the review was written. You usually do this to make them seem more authentic, so my assumption would be that most of the reviews were written in a very small timeframe that would make it obvious that they are fake.

So let’s take a second to verify that. Luckily for us, if you want to have authentic reviews, you need to upload pictures. Pictures are files and have an upload date. And indeed, the reviews with pictures that were verified by the store owner were all uploaded on the 2025/12/19.

• https://images.loox.io/uploads/2025/12/19/I9ZuoseUpi_mid.jpg
• https://images.loox.io/uploads/2025/12/19/J2tF6pUrKa_mid.jpg
• https://images.loox.io/uploads/2025/12/19/UsijaMqoiO_mid.jpg
• https://images.loox.io/uploads/2025/12/19/bual0-RW2_mid.jpg

Now, just because all of the pictures of the “verified by store owner” reviews have the same date, it does not necessarily mean they are fake. It could just be the date the store owner uploaded a bunch of reviews from other marketplaces on their website. But again, I do not believe they do sell in other market places.

I also think that at least some of the pictures are AI generated. Like, nice try, but the last time I checked, the D&D character sheet had six stats instead of five. Also, what did AI do to this poor dragon?

In case you are wondering, this is how the real character sheet looks like. Can you spot the differences?

Now, I cannot prove that all of their reviews are fake. In fact, I am sure at least a couple of them are real. I am not discounting the idea that someone could genuinely like their product. Many of them are verified through purchase, even if I do think you could fake that as well (in case you are wondering, I would create fake mail addresses and buy my own products at a secret 100% discount code to write a verified review). But if they are willing to fake a couple of reviews, they might be willing to fake hundreds.

Fake discounts, all the same

We have already discussed the “compare-at-price” in detail, so I am not going to go into details again. But safe to say they are doing this tactic as well.

Another dubious origin story

Robert & James have allegedly created this "in long nights of work". Look at these two humble guys go!

Like, I would like to look, but their image is rather small. I wonder why we are not allowed to look at their beautiful faces in more detail. Kowalski, enhance again!

Dear mother of god, this is the most hideous AI slop I have ever laid eyes on. It does get worse the longer you look.

But wait, does that mean Robert & James are not real? I was already so disappointed in Lucy and Mark, the totally legit Romanian creators! I am sure Robert & James have names typical for their region, though.

They do have an address in Dubai. Dubai is such a great place, I am sure no scam artist would ever live there! But for real, I think Dubai signifies everything wrong about our system of wealth distribution. In practice, it is also almost impossible to seek compensation for financial wrongdoings as a foreigner, which would make it a great base of operations for fraud. It also is not a place where anyone is called Robert or James, unless they are tax fraudsters seeking refuge (which, let's be real, they very well could be).

Interestingly, their company seems to specialize in up-scaling ecommerce business in general, which seems to suggest that they do a similar activity in multiple markets. I sure hope so, since the name SRC ECOM SCALING - FZCO does not exactly scream TTRPG company for me.

AI based theft of intellectual property

I have a confession to make, I tricked you. I did not in fact want to compare rpgtabletops.com with rpgmapsforge.com. Just stating that there are other websites that basically do the same would have been sufficient in my eyes. I actually just brought them up because I could prove something with them that I could not prove with rpgmapsforge.com, which is AI based theft of intellectual property. This story was reported on by the TTRPG map creator the_reclusive_cartographer, who was the victim of one of their scams.

Imagine that you are a TTRPG map creator, making a living by drawing maps for the community. Sure, it is a huge financial risk and hard work, but you somehow make it in the industry. Then some scam artists from Dubai do a drive-by and just steal your work.

Here is a map posted by RPG Tabletops on Facebook, showcasing a harbor with a very specific shape.

Here is the original map made by the_reclusive_cartographer, which looks almost identical in terms of shape, though the RPG Tabletop AI seemingly changed the style and details.

But maybe this was a one time thing, right? No, actually! They did it again! This time we start with the beautiful original art of a bandit hideout.

And now we go to the stolen AI art version of it, which was posted by RPG Tabletops on Facebook. The layout is identical once again, though details have been changed by the AI.

These were obvious cases of theft, but what about the question of AI training data? If they had access to all of these maps, why wouldn't they have used it to train their AI for more sophisticated theft? This time it was caught due to its obvious nature, but what if the AI does deviate a little further? How many of their AI generated maps are based on handmade maps?

Beyond the TTRPG space

I am sure that "Robert & James" have even more fun business ventures than just RPG maps! Let us google what SRC ECOM SCALING - FZCO is up to in other industries…

Yes, they sell therapy sessions for "exhausted daughters of elderly parents with dementia". Yes, this is the same company. But, to the credit of "Robert & James", this one is actually done by "Samantha Ashford"! I am sure she is totally real as well. 

We also see the old trick of uploading photos of reviews instead of using verifiable applications, making it possible to tinker with the numbers.

Now, we do not have the sales volume of SRC ECOM SCALING - FZCO, since they did not disclose these publicly. But I assume the number to be even higher then of DC INTERNATIONAL AGENCY S.R.L., since I have seen even more marketing and multiple business ventures from them.

Why I did not want to write this article

As a TTRPG creator, I want to focus on productive and positive content. With my upcoming project "A Witches Guide to Grimm's Keep Academy" and my career as a professional game master, I do want to focus on positivity. I feel like most TTRPG creators feel the same way. The core of our industry does not like controversy interfering with the wholesome brand we have created for another.

After the OGL scandal, where Wizards of the Coast tried to topple the Third Party Content Creator industry, we have seen the potential of this community coming together. We managed to push back and win our industry back. But it also created a sub category of content creators focused on drama and controversy. I do not want to fall into that category. I want to create wholesome games that contribute to our communities health.

But in this case, I got too fed up with these faceless institutions and scam artists creeping into our hobby. I feel like I have to just get the anger out of my system to be able to get creative again. So this article is a little therapeutic in that way.

Closing thoughts

The AI Slop machine is knocking at the doors of the TTRPG industry. Some might even say that they already breached the first wall. But it is not only the TTRPG industry who is affected. AI scams based in foreign countries are our generation's Indian call centers. We cannot touch them, they are relentless and sell bad products using dubious tactics. We will have to work together across the aisle to increase awareness.

We will never get rid of these scam artists completely. But we can increase awareness by producing and sharing content based on our convictions. So if you could share this article or write up your own thoughts, it might already help. All TTRPG YouTubers and other content creators can feel free to use the research I put into this article, though a shoutout would be nice. And I would love for actual journalists to dig deeper. I feel like I barely scratched the surface of this million dollar industry.

If you would like to stay up to date with this blog, I do have a newsletter you can subscribe to for free. There, I share GM tips, new products and share news about the TTRPG industry.

I have reached out for comment to SRC ECOM SCALING - FZCO and DC INTERNATIONAL AGENCY S.R.L., but did not receive an answer. Stillmecare.com has been taken offline one day after I reached out.