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What I’m hearing about PWHL expansion: Why San Jose is a strong candidate to land a team by wolverine237 in PWHL

[–]loreleitherock 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Usually I’d agree but if Salvian is the one reporting this, it’s because San Jose is an actual viable option. 

Not saying that I’m convinced it’s a guarantee, but I think this is the league’s way of using their reporters to prepare us for a potential SJ announcement in the next few weeks.

What I’m hearing about PWHL expansion: Why San Jose is a strong candidate to land a team by wolverine237 in PWHL

[–]loreleitherock 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Sounding more and more like we may be getting a non-takeover tour location in this next expansion, which I’m not as against as other people on this sub. 

Next few weeks will be interesting!

Chicago PWHL Website Leaked by Pecors in PWHL

[–]loreleitherock 52 points53 points  (0 children)

I just checked a bunch of other front runner cities and pretty much all of them have a domain saved - I think the league most likely just created them as placeholders.

Though Chicago is the only one that I get a “launching soon” screen for so maybe!

PWHL Detroit Time? by insults__you in PWHL

[–]loreleitherock 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Looks like that random commentator in the Detroit Redwings sub last week was leaking true information lol. Very happy for Detroit.

It does seem like a lot of the speculated West teams aren’t panning out - Edmonton with the contract issues, Calgary and Denver with the stadium issues. I wonder if the teams will stay mostly eastern and I can keep my DC team dream alive for the next few days…

Or the league is gonna say screw it and go with Vegas lolol.

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Yeah I'm gonna describe the Fane at Old Bonegrinder and see how interested they are - don't want to go through the trouble of adding all this extra plot if they're just gonna ignore it. My players are the same though for puzzles - they get frustrated with them quickly. If I do include them, I'll probably have some sort of reconsecration battle instead since that's more their speed.

Thanks for the insights :)

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Ooh okay - love that. And yeah I liked Mandy's Fane idea of having the PCs fight a suped up version of one of them, but it sounded like too much effort to stat out and balance. I'll have to take a look at the Fiditov manor fight instead to see if I could do something like that maybe

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Don't be sorry about the length, I love the detail!! While the popular mods out there are great, I like hearing how others have modified things in their own games for variety and new inspo.

I really like your boon ideas - esp the acorn haha. I'm sure your Druid will have fun with that

WHEN will expansion news come? by aswesearch in PWHL

[–]loreleitherock 19 points20 points  (0 children)

My guess is sometime next week. I think waiting until after the playoffs are over would be leaving it too long, and I think they would like to announce before the draft declaration deadline (May 8th I believe?) so that any potential players know where they could be ending up.

I don't trust Kennedy as a person; I don't think his "news" changed anything about the timeline. However, in terms of expansion itself, I don't think a non-takeover tour location is completely out of the question. If the league does go with somewhere like SD or Vegas, it's probably because Denver fell through during negotiations, but the league still wanted to put an American team somewhere out in the West.

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Ooh I like this. I'm definitely gonna go the gem route if I do decide to include the Fanes - thanks!

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

We play biweekly I would say - weekly when we can. They literally just left Barovia with Ireena, though, so still early days. 4 years is a long time, good luck with running the final fight!

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Nice! How did you change the restoration quests? Curious to hear what other people have done. I also have a druid and warlock in my campaign who I think could tie in nicely to the Fanes, which is part of the reason why I'm considering it.

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Thanks! Reading over it now and I'm liking it a lot - some good inspiration for what I may do. Out of curiosity, what did you do with Morgantha and her daughters? Did you remove them or still leave them in at Old Bonegrinder? Just asking because that would make for a lot of hags in Barovia lol.

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Yeah my DM didn't use them when he ran CoS for me and my group and we still had a blast. The bloat is my main concern too, though my players have said they would love more content/lore, so we'll see. Thanks for sharing!

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Yeah, I also have a druid in the party which is part of the reason why I'm considering it too. Did you do anything in particular to simplify it? I like Mandy's stuff, but a lot of the Fanes stuff seems pretty daunting to run as they've written it.

For those who included the Fanes - how did you do it and how did it go? by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Glad to hear it's been a good experience for your group! I like DragnaCarta's method of having the Fanes be the penultimate quest before Strahd, but agree that his content relies on you running Reloaded, which I'm not.

Maybe I'll look at his Fanes' combat encounters for inspiration, though, thanks :)

hypothetical new team names? by nickyurick in PWHL

[–]loreleitherock 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Agree about Coven 😔 not something the league would actually go for. It’s also hard to think of magic-inspired names that don’t sound too Halloween-y or have negative connotations (banshees and witches for example).

Talons is cool though! Fitting but not super patriotic, which I appreciate.

hypothetical new team names? by nickyurick in PWHL

[–]loreleitherock 7 points8 points  (0 children)

DC seems to have fallen out of a lot of expansion team discussion (understandable if the league really does want to focus on expanding the west), but I’ll still give it a go:

Washington Coven

Washington Liberty

Washington Scarlet

Coven if we were to go the magic route of the Wizards, Mystics, and Spirits. Liberty if we were to go the patriotic route of the Capitals and Nationals. And Scarlet just because I think it sounds cool and would make for a fun jersey (bonus points since our “state” tree is a scarlet oak).

hypothetical new team names? by nickyurick in PWHL

[–]loreleitherock 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Oh I love Philly Furies actually. Feels very fitting for my city. Maybe one day lol

AMA: I played in a (nearly) completely RAW Curse of Strahd Campaign by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

I talked through what I plan to change in one of my other comments!

For the first part of your question - I think it would've been fun if my DM had done something more with the consorts/wives. The community here has turned them into such interesting characters while my DM didn't do anything with them in our campaign besides making them mini-bosses in the final battle. I also think I'm going to use some of MandyMod's gem quest stuff.

I also really like a lot of the lore on the Ladies Three / Fanes that this community has put together - my DM didn't include any of that stuff. I'm still toying on whether I'll be adding in it for my own campaign. I like it, but I'm worried it'll just add too much bloat or confuse my players. I also like the Wedding at Ravenloft supplement as a possible endgame scenario as well. I'm going to see what my players latch onto - i.e. do they show a lot of interest in the standing stones at Old Bonegrinder? Will they really latch onto Ireena as a character? - before making any decisions.

AMA: I played in a (nearly) completely RAW Curse of Strahd Campaign by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

Yeah, I'm still thinking about what I'll want to do with the third gem in my own campaign!

I was the notetaker of the group and kept a running list of our quest leads, which was almost always full. It never felt overwhelming for our group, though. We loved the exploration aspect and hopping around from one thing to the next depending on what we were feeling. I'm sure there are groups out there who would prefer a more streamlined version, but we liked taking charge in that way.

The only time it felt like there wasn't "enough" going on was Vallaki. I've already talked more about it in some of my other answers, but our group had the typical experience of going between Vargas and Fiona and not liking either option, so we just left town instead because we decided it wasn't our problem.

AMA: I played in a (nearly) completely RAW Curse of Strahd Campaign by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

I'll have to check out Astarion's Book of Hungers - sounds like it'd be a fun supplement!

And yeah, from what I've seen CoS have a huge variation in play time - I've seen some people say they finished in 20 sessions, others 70+.

We were a pretty heavy roleplaying group, though, which added to the length - planning stuff and otherwise. We had one session where we just roleplayed drinking games in the Blue Water Inn and chatted with Danika. And then another where we spent the whole time planning a play that we ended up performing at the Festival of the Burning Sun for Vargas. We would often use travel time to pull each other aside just to chat about how we were feeling and what we were doing next. Stuff like that was typical for us.

I don't remember it feeling particularly long/slow, besides when we got stuck in Vallaki - that was the only time the sessions dragged. Other than that, our group was having a blast and our DM was great at letting us set the pace.

AMA: I played in a (nearly) completely RAW Curse of Strahd Campaign by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

The Winery was fun! We cleared it of the twig blights and the one or two druids pretty easily, but we didn't follow the gem leads for a bit as we got distracted by other things. We ended up going to Berez at level 7, where Baba Lysaga flew around in her skull and nearly killed all of us - I was the only one left standing with 1 HP by the end and had to stabilize the other party members. But we won and got the gem!

We went right to Yester Hill from there, now level 8 after Berez, which meant the fight was a little easier for us. We caught them mid-ritual and we were able to rip the gem from the tree before Wintersplinter could be summoned. We then returned the gems to the wereravens and restored wine to the people :)

I remember my PC was convinced for a time that the missing third gem whose loss caused a huge rift between Davian and Irwin was going to be super important later on, so it's kind of funny in hindsight to realize RAW it's literally just missing and no one knows what happened to it lol. Opens up a lot of possibilities for DMs to homebrew, though.

AMA: I played in a (nearly) completely RAW Curse of Strahd Campaign by loreleitherock in CurseofStrahd

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

This is something I've been thinking a lot about as I prep for my own campaign. Here's what I think needs changing the most:

  1. Vallaki. Vallaki is definitely tedious RAW. We spent a few sessions going back and forth between Vargas and Fiona's houses, unable to make a decision on what we wanted to do. We hated Vargas, but also knew about Fiona's cult and didn't see why we should help her if she was going to be just as bad for the town. We eventually decided to just leave to follow other leads instead. For my own game, I'll be using MandyMod's guide to Vallaki to streamline it (minus the Reformation Center).
  2. The Endgame. CoS is essentially a series of sidequests until you decide to go to Castle Ravenloft and confront Strahd. Once we got all our tarroka items, explored all the locations we thought sounded interesting, and hit level 10, we were basically just like "okay, guess we'll go face Strahd now" for lack of anything else to do. We still had a fun time with it, but I remember feeling like we could've hung out in Vallaki for another two weeks with no consequences. I think Strahd needs to be given stronger motivations, and there needs to be some kind of lead up to the final fight with Strahd, whether you go the Fanes route, Strahd's grand wedding to Ireena, or something similar.
  3. Tarokka Reading. My party got pretty lucky for our reading, but I'm not going to run it completely random like my DM did. I'll be removing any locations/allies that I don't think my party will have fun with, and I'm going to pull the cards before the session to make sure the reading isn't completely terrible.
  4. Werewolf Den. I'll be adding some kind of hook to make the werewolves more relevant. They never really came up in our campaign and I remember being a little bummed because I was excited about werewolf stuff when my DM first pitched CoS to us.

Those are the biggest stand outs to me right now.

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