Today I was playing Tales of the Valiant with my kids. It was time for Stella to level up her character and that involved selecting new spells. As she reviewed the spells available to her now she saw one called “Control Water”. The main part of the spell says:

Until the spell ends, you control any freestanding water inside an area you choose that is a cube up to 100 feet on a side. You can choose from any of the following effects when you cast this spell. As an action on your turn, you can repeat the same effect or choose a different one.

Gameplay

(started off with the following flavor-text)

“Ariana, as you look around at this verdant forest you’ve entered by the use of the Portal Key that belonged to your parents, you feel a deeper connection than you’ve ever felt ever since you chose to become a Leaf druid after becoming an adult. It is not just an ancient forest, but it also has a certain vitality and magical quality you’ve never felt before.”

I like to read Hackaday’s weekly security posts to get a quick summary of the latest security issues. Last week’s post had the following Wordpress section:

István Márton at Wordfence has the story on a pair of WordPress plugins with severe vulnerabilities, effecting a whopping 500,000 sites combined. Up first is AI Engine, with 100,000 installs. This plugin has an unauthenticated URL endpoint that can expose a bearer token, which then allows access to the MCP endpoint, and arbitrary control of users. The good news here is that the plugin is not vulnerable by default, and requires the “No-Auth URL” setting to be configured to be vulnerable.

A month ago I posted about how TTRPG editions don’t truly die. Then I went down a Matt Coleville rabbit hole and discovered this video. I think it adds a lot of historical context to what I was writing about as a TTRPG newbie.

Matt brings a lot to the table: his great conversational style, his history with the game, his reasonable opinions. I think the fact that he’s seen this happen a few times before gives the best perspective on what it means for new D&D editions to arise.

Gameplay

Grif the Kobold from the Keeper of the Keys meets the adventures as they cross a bridge into The Smithy. He expresses happiness that they found their way to The Smithy after the attack. They give him a summary of what they did. Eventually Griff tells them he will take them to meet Kontak Tekar (head kobold mechanist of the Keepers of the Keys) to repair Ariana’s key.

As they walk around they see steam and multicolored smoke bellowing out of various workshops. They head towards the hill at the middle of the city where the Citadel of the Keys is situated. As they walk to the citadel they see mechadron caravans and celestials bargaining with fey over goods.

Gameplay

The adventurers had landed on a ship when they fell out of a portal. Captain Catapult interrogated them about where they came from and what they wanted to do. The team is able to convince him that they are from another world and need help getting back. Captain Catapult knows a powerful priest who has happened to have given him a letter to summon his friends (meta: the characters from the Dungeon in a Box campaign). The captain says she doesn’t know what they look like, only their reputation so he gives them the letter and sails them to the town of Bloom.

Gameplay

Now that Ariana has her parents’ key, the team returns to Rava’s temple and is escorted to the high priestess’ chambers. The high priestess introduces them to Griff the mechanist who examines the key. Unfortunately the key is spent, but the team is in luck as he explains he just made a new key to The Smithy yesterday. Griff explains that he is in a secretive organization called the Keeper of the Keys which is allied with the church of Rava. He puts his new key itno the air to open a portal.

It’s been an unusually productive few weeks for me when it comes to blog posts and there have been some updates and social media responses, so I wanted to talk about some of those here. (this isn’t to say that I will always create a post encompassing social media replies, I think they are just especially relevant)

On the 17th I wrote a blog post comparing Game Master / Dungeon Master books across TTRPGs. There were 2 replies worth pointing out. First of all, there was a post by Shades Corvid which confirmed my assertion that Pathfinder did have the Player Core and GM Core as one book in the past, but player demand wanted them as 2 books since the combined book was so huge. Kobold Press also wanted to point out that they consider the GMG to be an optional book. We could probably quibble over the tiniest details on that point, but they aren’t entirely wrong. I would argue that Wizards of the Cost could probably say the same about their DMG. It’s really only Paizo with the history of Golarian in the GM Core that would seem to be slightly less optional for anyone who wanted to play in Golarian.

The Adventure

Having resolved to take on the hill giant, the team took the wagon filled with food and started off along with Martha.

On the way to the giant the group found some traps that were too small to have been set by the giant. The adventurers went into a clearing and found a rock that had wolf fur on it. Hendrian investigated a tree and found a door in the tree. Upon opening the door, Hendrian found a preserved rabbit in the tree.

The Adventure

Since the team had been hired to look into the goblin situation in Trombei, they decided to meet up at the Horse’s Tails Tavern near The Brawls. As the team was eating a wizard walked in with a fire lizard on its shoulder. Scrabble invited him to join their group and they introduced each other.

As the team was talking to Unthar, the wizard, the captain of the guard came walking in with a Ravenfolk, Rikka the postmaster. Rikka had a job for the team. Rikka needed the mail to be delivered to Fern Wallow and their last mail carrier did not return. Rikka agreed to pay 5 silver each plus a bonus if the team found out what happened to the last mail carrier.