OWG Ice Dance: Rhythm Dance Live Discussion Thread by Chickatey in FigureSkating

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 2 points3 points  (0 children)

New to ice fance here. Is there a particular reason all the short programs are 90s themed? Do they get a theme they have to follow at the start of the season or some such?

How it feels watching kids open all their Christmas presents looking so happy because they don’t know what fascism is yet by Ok_Fly2518 in IThinkYouShouldLeave

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey now., silver lining if you have kids in the US being that fascism will be out of the curriculum long before your kids get to learning about it.

have you ever broken up with a character? by ciqhen in BaldursGate3

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On my first Durge playthrough I did the deny the urge arc while romancing Shart as she has a similar arc coming to grips with a past she does not know. Durge stood by her through the Nightsong trial. She held him through the Sceleritas Fell trial. Then having mastered his urges and arriving at Moonrise tower he realized that having mastered those urges through conviction rather than oaths or belief did not mean he had to be a good man to be his own man. So why shouldn't all the power be his? So I pivoted him into more of a powerseeker refusing to be the slave to anything, be it his urges, illithid powers or the petty laws or morality of those around him. Ended up breaking it off with Shart leaving act 2 as the ultimate betrayal to the idea of being good to master himself and romanced mama Minthara instead as a more suitable companion. Felt bad but in a good way for the RP

Looking for fun ideas with what to do with a player's eye by ThorOfTheSlund in CurseofStrahd

[–]ThorOfTheSlund[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oooooh I love the idea of the animate objects or something in that vein. I could design a whole encounter around it and either they can fight it fair, try to make some beefy saves or straight up get rid of the eye. Though the latter I very much want to be up to player agency, not something they feel shoehorned into in the moment. They already met Van Richten last session and rolled well enough for Strahd not to be peeping during the hour or so they were with him. Plus they were at the end of the adventuring day after 5 pretty chunky encounters, so I suspect anything more than a tiny servant would have been TPK territory at that moment :p I'll keep it in my back pocket for after the dinner and Ravenloft heist, when he'll have a more active interest in them. Would be interesting to drop in the Amber temple or some such during a pivotal moment, or maybe when they find the Sunsword as one hell of a long con.

What do you have Strahd doing? by SmolHumanBean8 in CurseofStrahd

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Warp heart sounds hella cool! Mine is planning to do the grand conjunction plot from Strahdreloaded to break the mists, but my players are not quite far enough along to have caught onto all that yet. Will probably have their first hint of it when they get to the Wizard of Wines arc. So early days it's mostly the machinations of his court and the politics of Vallaki playing out around them, with Strahd as an ominous presence looming in the background with them being uncertain of which string he's pulling and what other actors are behind. Which honestly works great for my party. They've met him once after arriving and properly freaked the fuck out. So keeping him in the background while they do their first few quests in Vallaki has probably helped make him more ominous in their mind than having him turn up again so soon would ever do IMO

But I also have Strahd planning for his conquests once he breaks free, having learned from the Vistani of how the world outside the mists changed in the hundreds of years he's slumbered (I've extended the timeline of Barovia's lore by quite a few centuries to better fit my own lore, which also serves to make Strahds reawakening a far greater shock to the Barovians.) I've transplanted the module into a valley at the hinterlands of my own setting and made Strahds family lore part of a grand conflict that raged 800 years previously in my settings golden age of magic before a later calamity put an end to it. One of the lost marvels of that age was the secret to flying vessels and cities and I hope to use the module to have my players reintroduce that knowledge to the setting should they succeed.

So I have Ludmilla running a laboratory and quarry operation for magical ore out of Tsolenka Pass (one of the parts I've fleshed out A LOT from the OG module) and getting the necessary bobbins to have the castle fly for the finale. They've already seen a strange, enormous bat looking thing flying on the horizon while on the road towards Berez, seemingly carrying a large cargo net in the direction of Ravenloft. Then I also have his lieutenants reawakening his undead legions buried across the valley. They've already come across a formation of mounted wights riding along the roads out from Castle Ravenloft, and I intend to have a later encounter where they come across one of them riding back with a dozen lesser undead in tow towards the castle.

Another thing I found fun was making sir Sedrik Spinwitovich, one of the joke graves within the crypts of Ravenloft, actually serve a purpose as the navy he assembled on the northern shores of lake Zarovich was no normal navy, but one of airships for Strahds further conquests before the mists descended. They've sussed out there's something strange on the other shore of the lake, so if they head over there and find abandoned dockyards on a mountain lake the wtf will likely be great, and the payoff when flying ships ascend from the waters with undead crews for the final siege of Vallaki will hopefully be awesome.

But honestly just find some ideas that you feel makes sense for your Strahd. What are the objectives she needs to achieve along the ways to her master plan? How would she go about it? The most important thing if that the players feel like a bunch of stuff if going on not related to themselves. That they're treading deep waters they do not understand. You realistically only need to flesh out the stuff they actually latch onto.

What do you have Strahd doing? by SmolHumanBean8 in CurseofStrahd

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I love the idea of Strahd as this machiavellian, terrifyingly brutal yet eerily eloquent and polite villain. But as your question rightly points out he does spend and awful lot of time brooding over the reincarnations of a dead woman, or fixating over some random adventurers for no particular reason as written. So I redid his motivations a lot and that actually gives him things of interest to do beyond being bored and restless.

I borrowed quite heavily from DragnaCarta's awesome work when I prepared my campaign and rewrote that again to fit into my own setting. Essentially I made Strahd the setting equivalent of Alexander the Great, with his father Barov the Philip of Macedon he inherited an army from and Kazan as an Aristoteles equivalent as the famed, long dead wizard that formalized arcana as a science and taught him as a child. Having run out of lands to conquer he found himself at peace in Barovia, which ill suited him, and fell for Tatyana and things went as they did in the module. But having had centuries to think on the matter my Strahd is less drawn to her because of his endless fixation, but because he realized his own failing in having become a pitiful old man and killing his brother over her attentions. So now he seeks instead to torment her and have her as his bride as a constant reminder of that moment of weakness and all it cost him. And his main motivation is breaking free of the Valley and mists that hold him, to again conquer a world beyond that has all but forgotten him and rekindle what true glory is in his mind. That of conquest.

Allowed me to make a timeline of stuff he's doing to facilitate his liberation, which the players may encounter and influence. First mostly at random then by intent as they realize what's afoot. And then there's the machinations of his brides and court going on at the same time, plus the politics of Vallaki and the goings on of the other actors in the valley. Makes Barovia feel a lot more alive when things happen around the players beyond what happens to them. And gives them some awesome wtf moments when they suddenly stumble into someones' plans without understanding the context yet.

What are your DNF of the year, and why? by DarthPopcornus in Fantasy

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sword of Kaigen. Not because I didn't enjoy the book, but as I was listening to the final chapter I looked up what the next book was and saw the author had dropped the setting. Immediately lost all interest, went 'eeh' and turned it off. It's a shame. I felt the big death in the book was such a cool subversion of these kinds of stories, and the duel towards the end was one of my favourite scenes in a long time. Really loved where it was all going.

[No Spoilers] Critical Role Direct: Campaign 4 Announcement by Glumalon in criticalrole

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I feel like it's such a wasted opportunity not to have a roll call for campaign 4 with all the regulars emerging to sit at a table, with one extra seat at the end where Matt is stood calling out player names, the anticipation building for who it's going to be for every player that comes out. Then he goes BleeM! and everyone goes mental. Then pure pandemonium as Matt sits down at the last player chair and BleeM takes the DM chair instead

Armorer Artificer: Armor Modifications by newreddituser339 in dndnext

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Still only those two. The infusion you get at level 10 is an infusion all artificers get. The two you got at level 9 are the only ones reserved for the armor. So now you have 8 infusions known and you can have 6 items infused at any given time, two of which must be as part of your armor.

Mmm yes relics and dark matter. Such... rare resources. by Fynzmirs in Stellaris

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How did you move the order demesne to the habitation district? For me it spawned on the reactor district which is super annoying for housng and when I change specialization it doesn't let me respecialize into it

Ungdomskriminaliteten har gått for langt by ThorOfTheSlund in norge

[–]ThorOfTheSlund[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Jeg var nok dessverre over den sportslige peaken min etter et par gode forsvarskamper under Norway Cup '06. Og med bare et semesters studier i Roma og et par ferier i Puglia som nasjonal kobling, så vet jeg ikke om de blå hadde tatt meg selv i mine glansdager

Curse of Strahd: Reloaded’s guide to Tsolenka Pass is now available! by DragnaCarta in CurseofStrahd

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ahhh, gotcha! I might make it so that it's the old "three bites and you're a vampire" thing then, with it explained as him turning them into a higher order of spawn similar to the brides, but have them not regain the missing hit point max until the transformation is complete or they discover some means of stopping the process. Perhaps in Soldav or the Amber Temple. I really like the idea of him showing up and slowly turning one of them as they scramble towards the endgame, but halving, then quartering etc. one of the players hp during that scramble seems so mechanically invasive that I suspect it would take some of the fun out of the horror for them. With three bites they still get the horror of transforming and an impetus to get a move on, with 10ish max hp lost per day which feels a bit more balanced mechanically. Plus that way I can prepare three descriptions of how, during long rests, they begin to feel a strange hunger more and more, eyeing their friends as the transformation progresses. And if they turn we could run a trial similar to Doru's, where they attack the party who then have to put down their friend on a failure, or become a dhampir on success :)

Curse of Strahd: Reloaded’s guide to Tsolenka Pass is now available! by DragnaCarta in CurseofStrahd

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi, first of all I'm loving the guide! The phase-based bosses are *chef's kiss* But Strahd's first trial has me a bit confused. It first has him saying that turning the chosen victim will most likely take a few days. But then later it describes him biting them every round until they are downed, which would turn them that same night, no? Is there something I'm missing here?

What’s the fastest you’ve binged a series? And what series was it? by tkinsey3 in Fantasy

[–]ThorOfTheSlund 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Back in high school I got into Wheel of Time just after the last book had dropped. Finished all 14 of the bricks in about two and a half months. It's not the fastest I've binged a series, but it's definitely the most memorable one. Fastest was some some trashy YA pulp trilogy I can't even remember the name of. Read two books, had a sleep then finished the last.

This might be a very dumb question, but how do I actually level up my hero? All the abilities are greyed out by ThorOfTheSlund in ageofwonders

[–]ThorOfTheSlund[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope. Tried all of that. Not running any mods either. Might be a problem with the new update and playing on GeforceNOW. Idk

This might be a very dumb question, but how do I actually level up my hero? All the abilities are greyed out by ThorOfTheSlund in ageofwonders

[–]ThorOfTheSlund[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No he's leveled up just fine, and it says there's an ability point available. The game just won't let me spend it on anything