#anyway i know next to nothing about anything that doesn't directly involve carol

[n1ghtcrwler]

The story so far:

Carol and I were excited to play Baldur's Gate 3, and decided to play it together, so we bought two copies. We livestreamed the first bit of the game as part of our Couple's Game Night show, in a multiplayer game hosted on her computer. The next day, due to scheduling, we each started a single-player campaign as well on our respective computers. Everything is fine.

I had started getting into mods due to The Sims 4, and expanded into using mods on Fallout 4, so I happened to be on Nexus shortly after installing Baldur's Gate 3 and noticed there were already over a thousand mods for the game, which blew me away. I didn't know about the early release, so I thought the community had somehow busted out 1.6k mods for the game in the span of just a few days and was deeply curious about what kind of mods they could possibly be, so I started looking through the list. End result: one dozen mods and a mod manager downloaded and running. Nothing major, just stuff that gets me new dice or access to camp clothes at a shop, one thing that makes feats available more often, that sort of thing. Most of them just make the game more closely aligned with the 5e books. One set of mods stands out; a mod that makes WASD move the character instead of the camera, because the "move the camera and then click somewhere" mode of moving around drives me nuts, as well as a camera fix required for that and the special mod loader needed to run both. These are installed directly in the game's bin folder instead of through the mod manager. There is an Improved UI override in the mod manager that does not turn off when I turn off other mods. Everything is working fine.

Carol and I load a second multiplayer game hosted on my computer, which involves turning my mods off because she doesn't mod, except the WASD set and the Improved UI because I can't directly turn them off and they don't affect anything that matters for multiplayer anyway. Besides, after talking about it, Carol decides to install the WASD set on her computer as well. The idea was to avoid playing the streamed campaign off stream, but we didn't want to not be able to play together when we weren't streaming. So a second multiplayer campaign was the best solution. The next day, I also join another multiplayer campaign being hosted by a couple guys in my Discord server. Everything is working fine.

My Dwarf druid/cleric reaches level 5. I go to level her up and the game crashes out. No message, no hesitation; click the level up icon, and I'm back on the desktop with the Larian crash reporter opening. I start experimenting with the mods, removing them one at a time and trying again, to see which one is causing it. Nothing fixes the problem. That same day, Carol and I decide to jump into our non-streamed multiplayer game, so I turn off all my mods in the mod manager just like before. But we can't connect. When she tries to join my lobby, she gets a message that "GustavDev" is different between our computers and therefore preventing her from joining. We try switching to the streamed one hosted on her computer; it won't let me connect, but doesn't give an error message. Carol tells Steam to validate her installed files and walks me through how to do the same thing. Finish that process, but still can't connect. We don't know which computer is the problem.

Carol reaches level 5 on her game and is able to level up her character just fine, so we now have ample reason to believe the problem is my install. She explains that "GustavDev" is a core game file, and has me uninstall and reinstall the game. This does not fix my leveling problem, so I start testing mods again. This does not work. I switch to my Shadar-kai (yes, a modded race) bard playthrough, which is at a lower level, so I can at least enjoy the game a little bit until we sort this out. But this is a temporary solution, as I know I'm going to be constantly frustrated with the game and unable to finish it if I never figure out how to get past level 4.

Last night, we tried to join a party with a different pair of guys from our Discord server. Carol gets in just fine, my attempts fail. I have my mods off, so I start poking around some more, and fully uninstall the Improved UI override. Now the game still won't let me join the lobby, but does at least give me the "GustavDev" error message. I validate files again and Steam reinstalls one. Still can't join. I go into the game's bin folder and manually delete every file added or altered by the WASD mod set. The game crashes without opening; presumably, one of the files I deleted was necessary. So I validate files again, hoping that will notice the missing file and reinstall it. It doesn't find any errors. I try to load the game again, and it crashes without opening. So I uninstalled and started a new install and went to bed.

This morning, with a new install, I verify my mods are off and my Improved UI and WASD set are uninstalled, start up the game, and load the multiplayer campaign I'm hosting. Carol is still in bed while our daughter is getting ready for school, so I hop on her computer and see if she can connect to my now-open lobby. She can't, it gives the same "GustavDev" error message. This tells me things are still not going to work on my computer. So I exited the game and uninstalled it again. Then I went through and deleted the mod manager itself, the game folder, and the Larian games folder that contains all the save files and all the mod files. I purge every scrap of Baldur's Gate 3 and the mod manager I can find off my computer, then restart my computer, THEN tell Steam to install the game anew.

The install is at 40%. Carol tells me that if that doesn't work, the next step would be a refresh of my entire Windows system. I'm debating whether or not this game is worth that level of effort. Stay tuned for updates.

[catelyngrant]

He finds her behind the little cabin they’ve settled into for the evening, alone on the porch swing that looks about five minutes from collapsing beneath her. She has a half-smoked cigarette in one hand and a leg curled under her; the other moves back and forth on the patio floor, creating a gentle rocking motion that stops when Daryl carefully settles beside her.

“Everyone asleep?” she asks, staring at the yard instead of facing him.

“Yeah.” It hadn’t been easy. Most of the kids had nodded off fine, and the adults even easier, but the events of the last few days have caught up to RJ in a big way, and Daryl knows that more likely than not he’ll be up and down through the night, begging for Michonne. And Judith - hell if Judith doesn’t remind him of the woman sitting beside him, all brittle strength and both eyes on the greater good. It scares the shit out of him.

Carol casts her gaze sideways towards him, biting her lip. They haven’t talked about what Judith told them - what Michonne told her - hell, they haven’t talked about anything, but this is a can of worms that Daryl can’t even look at tonight and he cuts her off before she can open it.

“How’s your head?” he asks, looking at his own lap.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her give a weary shrug.

“Hurts,” she replied. “Your leg?”

Daryl shrugs too, wincing just a bit. “‘S a bitch,” he confirms, and reaches with his good arm for the pack of cigarettes on the swing next to her. “Gimme one of those.”

Carol grabs his wrist just as his fingers close around it. “Ask nicely,” she teases, but her voice is flat. Daryl snorts, unamused, and she pulls her hand back as he selects a cigarette for himself. Wordlessly, she hands him her own, and he lights his with the embers barely burning at the end before offering it back; she shakes her head. He drops it instead, extinguishing it with his shoe.

The clear blue of twilight gives way to the black of night, the thin sliver of moon and the fire inside offering more shadow than light. Daryl’s shoulder throbs. He finishes his cigarette and shifts on the bench, more tired than he can remember being.

“You don’t have to babysit me, Daryl,” Carol finally says.

MORE ON AO3