Day 04

We’re back to the charcoal dice, so I’m guessing we’re going to at least get a charcoal set. Based on last year it’s looking like one charcoal set and one bloody metal set. But it could be a misdirect! (After all, we’re dealing with Krampus here!) Maybe one or both of these are in the random dice camp. Odds are low of that, but we’re too early in the calendar to know for sure. Let’s look at today’s die!

Day 03

What’s always fun about the early days in the Dice Envy Advent Calendar is that I don’t yet know which dice are part of sets and which dice are standalone dice. Looking back at last year’s calendar there was one Dice Envy Special (meaning chonky d20, chonky d6, and infinity d4), one 8-piece set, 6 random dice (including 3 d12s - so it turns out to be easy to do a Daggerhart hope/fear with those), and a Wee Lads set. So as I opened up today’s flap, I was curious to see what I would get.

Day 02

Krampus seems to be tied to a purple theme. I’m not sure I’d consider purple to be the opposite of red, but who knows? Maybe it’s an inversion of purple being a royal color? As far as I can remember, this isn’t just a Dice Envy thing - I’ve seen Krampus associated with purple elsewhere. All this to say, I expected purple dice and I was not disappointed.

I wasn’t sure I was going to get Dice Envy’s 2025 Dice Advent Calendar. I had a blast opening each day last year, but, as you can see, I don’t really need any more dice:

But then Dice Envy went and got creative by releasing both a Krampus and a Santa box. I was very curious what interpretation Dice Envy might have a for an “evil” Christmas dice advent calendar. After all, last year had lots of Christmas-y dice like the ones I called Elsa Blue or the 12 days of Christmas d12. Enough preamble, let’s go!

Story

After defeating the giant, The Pyros broke up. Scrabble joined a pirate ship (the Flying Harpy) at Messori Harbor. On the ship Scrabble met Flint, The Red Moon Reaver. They engaged in some pirating off the coast of the Magocracy of Allain. After a year they have found themselves at pirating the Nieder Straits. Scrabble and Flint are friendly, but not close friends; they work together well. The Flying Harpy attacked a research vessel and Treb and the rest of the crew of the research vessel. Treb was just on the research vessel to get away from his past so he signs the book and joins the crew of The Flying Harpy. Treb is at the bottom rung of the crew as the newest member. The ship has pulled into port at Stannisgard and the crew is on shore leave.

Gameplay

As the crew leaves Mossbeard’s forest near The Smithy, Jackal looks up and sees a Ratatosk in the trees. It jumps down in front of them and it’s wearing a uniform and has a cylindrical container on its back. It casts a verbal and somatic spell to identify which of the heroes is Appaluna. As she glows, he knows to give her the letter.

She reads the letter from her patron inviting her to the palace of Countess Levosu, mentioning that she needs to come right away, and it tells her to go via the River Styx and also includes the fare for 3 folks to ride. Appaluna finds a dwarf within The Smithy and asks how to get to the River Styx. She’s told to go to the Five Ways Bridge. When they get there they see a few piers on the banks near the bridge. There’s a robed man with a bluish tinge to his skin on a gondola-style boat. They pay for passage and find out his name is Thomas.

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.”

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.

Gameplay

In the 2 weeks that have passed, Appaluna did research trying to find a lead on her quest to find the Servants of Nidhogg and how to rescue her sister. She learned she should go to the temple of the Goddess Rava, patron of Zobeck.

The team entered the university and made their way to Orlando’s study. Orlando was working on a gearforged body. They delivered the box which had a special brain gear for gearforged. They mentioned what happened to the thieves who tried to open the box before. Orlando explained that the effect on the box was a security mechanism that Aalthic (socerer that gave them the box) uses to make sure no one can open his packages.

Narrative

The party has agreed to work on a dwarven airship in exchange for free passage to Zobeck. Razzit Greyborn (captain) shows them around and shows them where bunks are and introduces them to the crew. The night shift is currently sleeping in the bunks. One of those asleep is a tiefling. The adventurers are helping out by filling in so that the crew can work in shifts.

At the navigation area, Appaluna helps them fly through misty conditions and they just barely miss a mountain.

The Adventure

Before the group sets out Appeluna’s patron tells her that she’s doing a good job and grants her access to more power (meta: attains lvl 6).

It’s a 3 day journey to Reywald. The first two days and nights were uneventful. On the third night Ariana’s on watch. She falls asleep for a second and when she awakens just a few minutes later the package from Aalthic Bellin, the sorcerer, is stolen. She wakes up the rest of the party and tells them what happened.

The Adventure

The team took a week in Wollerton to recover from their efforts to free the area from the machinations of the Servants of Nidhogg. The local Baron gave them each 100GP and a plot of farmland. At first they thought to set up a base in Wollerton, but it was deemed too remote. They decided to lease the farmland for a rent of 10cp per month. Gratiosa’s parents also sent them a reward of 600GP for freeing her and also said they would put in a good word with Appeluna’s parents.

The Adventure

The team’s boat arrives at Wollerton. As they arrive, they hear the sounds of a brawl at the local bar. After someone is thrown out the window, the adventurers attempt to calm the bar brawl. There’s also a halfling with a sign yelling that the end is nigh. The party tries calmly asking people to stop, but the humans and dwarves do not listen. A mastic that belongs to one of the brawlers ends up biting Jackal. Eventually they end up dragged into the fight. A human and dwarf attempt to head butt each other and knock each other out. Eventually Appeluna ends the fight by casting sleep on the brawlers.

The Adventure

The team arrived at Moonlight where the scrawler dropped them off in the middle of town. The old orc and Silgre both also got off the Scrawler. After a brief conversation, the adventurers decided to go to the mayor’s house first. There they were hired to rid the town of kobolds. They agreed on a payment of 25GP per person and 3 nights room and board paid at the tavern.

The Adventure

The adventurers had been working with Kylana for the past month to try and figure out how the mycaloid water source was poisoned. A gnome arrived with a wedding invitation for Ariana from her college friend, a gnome named Favienne Northcord. The wedding is in a town called Moonbright. It’s far enough away that they decide they will take a scrawler to get to the town.

As they are waiting at the ticket booth to purchase a ride on the scrawler, two dwarves show up looking beaten up. They tell the townsfolk that there are some goblins attacking all wagons headed into the town. The mayor tells the adventurers that if they help eradicate the goblins, their tickets on the scrawler will be covered. The team agrees to deal with the goblins.

I honestly cannot remember what made me decide to check out Tales of the Valiant as an alternate 5e ruleset. But we decided to check it out and start our first Tales of the Valiant campaign. If I have my way, this will end up being our longest running campaign. Time will tell.

Character Introduction

Appaluna Harrietdaughter (Female Human Warlock)

Stats

• Heritage: Vexed
• Background: Courtier
• 28 years old
• 6 feet tall
• Brown eyes and hair. Caucasian skin color.

Backstory

Appaluna was born to a noble family. She grew up in comfort, but was often bored and unhappy. When she was 20 she made a deal with an otherworldly creature. Some of the maids found out, and word got out that Appaluna had made a deal with the devil. Appaluna was cast out of the court in disgrace, and now works to try and earn enough money to buy her way back to nobility.

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.

The Adventure

The team traveled to the Trombie region. While there, Scrabble tried to cultivate contacts in Trombei (meta: as a downtime activity). Scrabble cultivated a contact with someone in the streetsweeper’s guild in Trombei.

The team then went and stayed in Ponte Norde just north of Trombei. They were hired by the city guards to stop a weird cart that was going round and round through the square. The adventurers noticed dead animals and Scrabble said it reminded them of when they dealt with goblins before (meta: session 01).

The Adventure

Armed with knowledge of where the trinkets came from, the adventurers went to the cave to explore and investigate. As they looked around, they saw that one direction seemed to lead to spiders. Since Ghada was afraid of spiders, they went south.

There they found an underground lake and Scrabble used his unseen servant magic to bring a boat from the middle of the lake to the shore where the adventurers were waiting.

The Adventure

Scrabble spends the next week doing some tinkering. He also offers up repair skills and fixes clocks for caravan. Finally, Scrabble spent the week teaching Seno how to use smithing tools.

Seno used the travel time to study a new cantrip and also joins the caravan as a guard. Ghada researched Goblins (meta: gains advantage one time in a future encounter)

A week later, the caravan arrived at the town of Fernhaven. The party helpe dto unload supplies at The Pierced Hart Inn. They are offered a room at the inn. Scrabble negotiated to play bagpipes or lute for the guests later.

I’m the forever-GM for our house. The kids prefer for me to GM and I don’t know anyone in person who can match my schedule for a regular game and who wants to take on the GM responsibilities. When one of my players from last week’s New Gamemaster Month game wanted to host their own game, I jumped at the chance to be a player. Also, I wanted to repay their kindness for being in my game.

The Adventure

As the crew sails towards the Astral plane they suddenly see tons of flowers in the water as well as lots of sea creatures. Thomas checks the flowers, but they are normal. (ie not magical) Suddenly the current seems to “grab” the ship and start pulling it to an island. The Captain has everyone head to various stations where they can help with navigation and they help avoid any damage to the ship. The current carries the ship far up the shore and it’s beached. Thomas attempts to push the ship, but it’s way too heavy and too far ashore.

The Adventure

The living star, which takes the shape of a turtle, is named Shelly by the crew. It becomes over-excited while playing with the crew and causes some of the wood on the ship to sprout leaves and branches and attracts the attention of a squid-like sea monster. After the heroes get rid of the sea monster, the Oahtu who joined the journey a while ago help repair the ship.

Once the party was back on the ship after the events with the mermaids they let Hal know that dragonfire is needed to melt the adamantine on the star. Hal consults his charts and they head towards the Archipelago where Lux lives. The since the adventurers have the star, the Blackrift compass points towards them. Many Blackrift ships approach and they’re boarded. They fight a Far Elf Lunar Monk and 2 Link Acolytes. Before more enemies can board, Aurora arrives and incinerates the ship nearest them. They end the battle and Aurora lands on the deck of the ship.

After dealing with the lich and the leviathan, the characters find themselves alone on the ocean. They sail on in the direction the compass directs. Eventually they reach a point where the compass is going in circles like it did when the leviathan was near. Everyone looks over the edge, but only Hazel and Amelia have the prior knowledge to recognize that they are above some merfolk architecture. They sail in the direction of the merfolk architecture, but are dragged a mile back by water elementals.

This was our second non-kiddie Dungeons and Dragons 5e campaign after Humblewood. As it says on the tin, this is a very dungeon-focused adventure. I reviewed the first 3 adventures from the point of view of the Dungeon Master a while back. This is a session recap of the adventure as experienced by the players. If you’re not a DM, but someone who might play, there are spoilers below!

Note: we didn’t play in a VTT, I’m just using it to illustrate some key moments from each session.

Firefox

Firefox has been hemorrhaging users for quite a few years now. There are many reasons:

• lack of innovation in the browser space
• a corporate “Attention Deficit Disorder” that seems to have the Mozilla Foundation chasing everything but web browsing
• C-Suite “scandals” like the amount of pay the CEO is getting while laying off Firefox employees or taking political stances that alienate some users
• Chrome, Edge, and Safari being defaults on computers and phones

Recently they pooped the bed again with their terms of service scandal.

The adventurers are offered Bastions. Minla and Iris take up the offer and tree shapers are sent to create the bastions. Minla chooses to start off with a bedroom, kitchen, garden, and a library. Iris chooses to have a bedroom, kitchen, smithy, and armory. She also named it The Spiked Defenders.

The session starts off in Minla’s very cramped bastion kitchen. A strig in the employ of the Council delivers a letter to Minla explaining the Council’s need for the party to explore Hamlin’s rumor of The Loper because they are afraid of ignoring rumors after what happened with the fire elemental.

Last year running the Humblewood campaign setting for my kids was the experience that really leveled up my skills as game master / dungeon master. I previously made a commentary post after the first session This post collects the session notes as well as my commentary on those session notes. Spoilers ahead if you plan to be a player in a Humblewood campaign (rather than GM/DM).

Session 1

Meadowfen

Player Character backstories

Minla

Minla was a normal Jerbeen in a big, happy family. Until a band of vulpin raiders came and, while plundering Minla’s family, killed her entire family.

Gamemaster Month Lessons

January flew by and it was time to read the last two lessons before running the game as the capstone project for this class. Tuesday’s generic lesson was about gathering what you need to run the game. I didn’t really learn anything with that lesson, although I did like the acknowledgement that VTTs can offer some benefits over in-person play. The Tales of the Valiant part of the lesson included links to the character sheets as well as their ToV extra Lineages and Heritages PDFs for free (normally ~$3-$5 each).

New Gamemaster Month continued this week by building on the idea of the encounter. Tuesday’s blog post defined an encounter and the homework was to read Homework to read Encounter and Spell Casting pages from Tales of the Valiant (pp221-245). Also read ch 1 of Guide to Labyrinth. (This gave me many new ideas for my Midgard campaign). Thursday’s blog post and homework were to think about the atmospherics of the encounters.

As part of New Gamemaster month, I continued my prep work within FoundryVTT to be ready to host my game in February as the capstone project for class.

On Tuesday our homework was to learn the rules of Tales of the Valiant and watch the creators of Tov play the game. I learned a lot from watching the video, especially with how the GM often invited the players to contribute to their shared history rather than dictating it. I also enjoyed how the players would play along (“yes and”) if the players had their characters forget the name of their nemesis.

As part of New Gamemaster month, I continued my prep work within FoundryVTT to be ready to host my game in February as the capstone project for class. Whether you’re on the main page of the blog or reading through an RSS reader, click through to see the YouTube videos of my session prep. (Walls & Lighting, Character Creator, and vanilla combat)

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m participating in New Gamemaster Month. The homework for the first class was to choose a game system to learn and run. I chose Tales of the Valiant because I like it and I will be running a huge ToV campaign for my kids in the coming months.

The organizers recommended practicing what you’ve learned by the end of the month by running a game. The second class was about selecting an adventure and finding players. Kobold Press recommended The Impregnable Fortress of Dibs as it’s short, fun, and is a great level one introductory adventure. For finding players they had a few recommendations, including the #LFG channel on their Discord server. (LFG stands for lookign for group) Finally, potential new GMs were supposed to read the introduction to the Players Guide. I’d read it before, but I re-read it to get it fresh in my mind.

Whenever I get the chance, I like to watch the Kobold Press YT series Kobold Chats. Kendo, the community manager for Kobold Press, goes over various tabletop RPG topics - usually revolving around Kobold press releases or blog posts from that week. Occasionally they do interviews with Kobold Press employees or with others in the TTRPG space (like someone from Roll20). Kendo has a very fun personality on the chats and it’s hard not to find myself grinning at his antics. This last week’s video (linked earlier) mentioned something I wish I’d known about last year - New Gamemaster Month, an annual event to increase the number of game masters (also sometimes called dungeon masters) by providing a month-long tutorial on the process. Last January I would have been about 6 months into my GM journey and could definitely have made use of the month. However, that doesn’t mean all is lost for me. Whenever I teach myself a new skill - programming, photography, TTRPGs, etc - I will usually eventually seek out a class if it interests me enough. I’m not sure how unique I am, but I find that whenever I’m self-taught I end up with gaps in my knowledge compared to learning in a class. ALSO, I’ve always found that if I’m learning any skill that isn’t TOO basic, I learn it much better the second time through. (Obviously, if it’s too basic, it would just be boring the second time through) So I’ll be participating in New Gamemaster Month this month. If I’ve piqued your interest, follow the prior link. There are a bunch of game companies participating and you can use one of their games to learn how to GM. As is often the case, most of the companies are small-to-midsize (ie Wizards of the Coast is not represented). The games represented are:

Introduction

When we got to this trilogy, we had already played every other trilogy in the DnD Adventure Club world. We’d mostly, but not entirely, gone through the adventures in order. DnD Adventure Club provides some very awesome, simplified, pre-created character sheets. Back when we played the introductory adventure (which is referenced in this trilogy) the GM guidance was to have one or more of the players be an orphan raised by Baba (I don’t remember if it’s explicitly mentioned before this trilogy that this is Baba Yaga of Russia lore, but we figured it out at some point). The kids looked at the backstories of the characters they chose, and it didn’t really fit with any of them, but they chose to have Sasha (Scarlett’s character) have spent some time in the orphanage that Baba runs at the outskirts of the Tumbledowns.

Let’s take a look at the latest die or dice from the Dice Envy Advent Calendar.

It’s the last 2 days of the calendar plus some images of all the sets together and some final thoughts on the Dice Envy Advent Calendar.

Let’s take a look at the latest die or dice from the Dice Envy Advent Calendar.

The advent calendar is mostly at the point where I’m filling out the glittery dice set. But there was a big surprise on day 21!

Let’s take a look at the latest die or dice from the Dice Envy Advent Calendar.

This batch of dice contains my favorite die, topping the candle die from day 12. It also confirmed that I’ll be getting 2 full Dice Envy sets. A Dice Envy Set has the usual 7 plus a chonky d20, an oversized d6 with the Dice Envy logo and an infinity d4 (those pill-shaped d4s that I already got 2 of).

Let’s take a look at the latest die or dice from the Dice Envy Advent Calendar.

I thought that by not having to worry about solving the advent of code problems to write a post along with the dice I would be able to keep up with writing a post each day. Twas not to be as I’ve been incredibly busy at work recently.

Although the main sets are definitely the Elsa-blue and the glittery set, we had another of their neat pill d4s during this time period.

Let’s take a look at the latest die or dice from the Dice Envy Advent Calendar.

There isn’t too much to say today that I haven’t already said while going through this dice Advent Calendar. It looks like the two main sets are the Elsa-blue and the yellow-which-photographs-green-glitter. (Hmm…need a better name). Today it’s a d4 for the former and a d6 for the latter.

Let’s take a look at the latest die or dice from the Dice Envy Advent Calendar.

I got extremely busy with both work and my personal life, so I fell behind a bit. I also decided to drop Advent of Code from these posts (and from my life) as I can’t fit it in with the other things I’m busy with this month.

Time once again to review my Advent of Code solutions! The GitHub repo with all my solutions can be found here. Also featuring the latest die or dice from the Dice Envy Advent Calendar; scroll below the AoC code to see today’s die.

Advent of Code

Today I did not attempt the advent of code problem. It involved solving a word search in which there could be overlapping words as well as, if I read it correctly, multiple words starting from the same place. I’m guessing it’s to be done with a depth-first or breadth-first search in which you kill off searches if you can’t continue. I know these sorts of problems present themselves every year, but I never have time to learn during the AoC period (with work, life, and Christmas in the way) and I never make it a priority to relearn (I was taught this back in undergrad). So rather than waste my time on something I know that I won’t know how to do, I’ll save it for another time - maybe when I’m taking time off closer to Christmas/New Years Day.

Time once again to review my Advent of Code solutions! Also the latest die or dice from the Dice Envy Advent Calendar; scroll below the AoC code to see today’s die.

Advent of Code

As the years have piled on, Eric Wasl has thrown in references to past years’ problems. However, as of day 3 we now have 2 references (perhaps that’s what the historian story line is about). Day 02 had you visit the location of 2015 Day 19 and today visited the location of 2020 Day 2 (my first year doing Advent of Code!) The only thing I’m slightly worried about is if this signals that this year will be a grand finale for the annual event.

Time once again to review my Advent of Code solutions! Also the latest die or dice from the Dice Envy Advent Calendar; scroll below the AoC code to see today’s die.

December has finally arrived and with it my favorite activity of the month - Advent of Code! I also wanted to give myself a fun little present this year, so I bought the Dice Envy Advent Calendar. Every day I’ll get a fun new die (or dice!). Scroll below the AoC code to see today’s die.

Advent of Code

Let’s start off with Advent of Code. This year I haven’t done any of the Advent of Code problems ahead of December so I was a bit rusty. One is not often using the same algorithms or libraries for Advent of Code as one does for everyday programming. I started off with Python since that’s my most comfortable language. First you can head over to today’s page to see the prompt. If you’re not solving the problems yourself, you won’t be able to see the prompt for part 2, so in summary: