This summary sounds a bit different than my usual summaries. The intro to last session explains why. I believe only 2 more will be written this way before we get back to my usual writeups. (although the audio is not returning)

The Story

Time elapsed so far in campaign at start of this adventure: 98 days

Summary

Session Recap: The Ashen Claw Heist

Party: Storm, Valerie, and Beatrice (with a scorpion friend along for the ride) — GM’d by Eric

This summary sounds a bit different than my usual summaries. The intro to last session explains why. I believe only 2 more will be written this way before we get back to my usual writeups. (although the audio is not returning)

The Story

Time elapsed so far in campaign at start of this adventure: 97 days

Summary

Session Recap: The Ghost Ship of Velder’s Rest

Party: Storm, Valery, and Beatrice (with a scorpion friend along for the ride) — GM’d by Eric

OK, for the next few sessions worth of blog posts on sessions of Valery and The Other Two, I want to confess what the blog posts are going to consist of. When we started playing this second Tales of the Valiant adventure my oldest, Scarlett, asked if we could record ourselves playing. She had been having trouble remembering from session to session what was going on. We did so and it was fun for a time, but then a few things happened:

There’s a lot about the current AI situation to be upset about.

• Data center buildup is insane and, certainly at a higher rate than we will need when the market settles. While they’re running now they’re causing issues with loud noise, electricity usage, and water usage. The ones that are extra when all is said and done might end up being blights on the towns without any other potential uses.
• The AI stock trade is sucking lots of capital out of the market that could be going to other uses. And when the bubble bursts it is almost certainly plunging the US (and maybe world) into a recession
• Some companies are forcing AI usage on employees (see Doctorow’s Reverse Centaur book) and/or firing people without understanding how much work can actually be automated.
• Many (all?) of the AI models were trained on copyrighted material without compensation and now they want to charge for access to the models
• There’s lots of creative work (slop) like books and songs that are flooding the market with non-human created work.

However, I don’t think there’s any way this toothpaste is going to be put back in the tube. Even if we somehow got all of the world to agree that we would not do anymore AI training (getting rid of lots of the bad stuff above related to data centers, the environment, and the stock market), AI at its current level is here to stay. After all, there is not crazy innovation going on in the word processor space or spreadsheet space, but they didn’t go away.

A little less than six years ago, I started looking at moving from Doggcatcher to Podcast Republic. 24 Hours later I was pretty happy with my choice. Time and technology march on and, while looking at some software on Flathub, I discovered there was a not-quite-1.0 bit of podcasting software out there called Pinepods. It seems to bring together a few things that could lead it to becoming my new way to listen to podcasts. However, it isn’t currently without issues.

As an 80s kid, I recently got a couple dice sets that spoke to my childhood. First up is this set from 1985 games:

I saw this set one or two years ago on the 1985 Games site. I put it on my wishlist for a while because I loved the item for nostalgia, but I already have a lot of dice so I was hoping someone would get it for me. When it was recently on sale for half off, it was a no-brainer to get them. When I was a kid I remember the blank VHS tapes that we would buy to tape stuff off of TV would come in cases exactly like this one (and the other ones in their collection). I even associate some of the colors with Walgreens and others with Circuit City. But these dice aren’t only a nostalgia buy - they are also very sparkly and VERY sharp.