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blackjackkent · 3 months ago

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Ask prompt fill for @astreamofstars for this ask meme: The Deeper the Water Dialogue Prompts Minsc - "You can be mad at me as long as you need to be" In a throwback mood lately so here's some BG2 feels. c:

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Caden: This isn't real, is it? He couldn't be dead… Jaheira: Shut up! No more words! Words are nothing! Yoshimo: I knew him not, but I mourn for your loss. Jaheira: Stranger! Nobody! I will not hear your words! Leave me! Minsc: A brave man has fallen here, but that is no cause to hurl insults at the living. Here, Boo shall comfort you. Jaheira: Imbecile! Affront to nature! What do you and your rodent know? What can you know? No words! No more words! Save your speeches, save your proverbs! The only voice I wish to hear is… is dead! No more! No… No…

- Baldur’s Gate II

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“So this is Amn, eh, Boo?” Minsc looks around at the richly painted walls of his room at the Mithrest Inn, his eyes bright with disdain and exhaustion. “Minsc does not think it very much to look at, in spite of all the shiny baubles upon the walls.”

He examines a piece of art set over the headboard of the bed, and then shakes his head. “No. You may paint and daub all you wish, Athkatla,” he growls. “But Minsc shall not forget that his arrival within your walls was bought with blood.”

The artwork does not respond.

Minsc sighs. “Yes, yes, Boo. You are wise as always, to say this changes nothing. But if a berserker is without his wychlaran, what has he left but rage?”

He rests a hand inside his pocket, feeling the comforting nuzzle of the hamster’s head against his palm. “Well,” he amends, “rage and you, of course.”

He should sleep. Much lies ahead of them all, now that Imoen has been taken and Irenicus yet lives unpunished. But it is hard, so hard, to sleep in a room where Dynaheir's breath no longer sounds nearby - the distinctive hitch on the inhale, the occasional mumble of arcane words that meant nothing to him. He feels her absence like the phantom pain of a ripped-off limb.

He leaves the room, prowls the hallways of the inn like a tormented ghost. Caden has already gone to sleep, and the thief from Irenicus's dungeons as well, but Minsc is surprised to find, on reaching the tavern at the front of the building, that he is not the only one still awake. Jaheira sits in a dark corner of the nearly empty room, watching with hooded eyes as the innkeeper wipes down the bar. A large glass of ale sits in front of her, untouched, its foam long since subsided.

She looks up warily at the sound of Minsc's heavy footfalls. “Do you come to bring me yet more platitudes, ranger?”

Minsc says nothing for a moment. He still remembers her sharp, angry bark in the catacombs where they found Khalid, the pain in her voice that answered his own. “If to rage at Minsc again would bring you comfort, Jaheira, perhaps he may find some good words to offer,” he finally says slowly. “But he has spent all those that came easily, and what remains is little indeed.”

Jaheira looks away from him and fidgets with the base of her glass, absently rubbing a line through the condensation that has formed there. “I am sorry, Minsc,” she says.

“There is no need--”

“I think there is.” She looks up again, and there is a sudden fire in her eyes. “I am no fool, who cannot tell when her shots have gone wide of the mark and struck those not the target. If you grant me the luxury of misplaced anger, grant me also this apology.”

A pause. “Very well,” he says. He reaches out and places a hand on the back of the chair opposite her; when she doesn't object, he sits, his heavy bulk causing the wood to creak. He can feel the familiar scratch of Boo shifting position as his pocket flexes with the motion.

Jaheira watches him, then nudges the glass in his direction. “If you desire flat ale, you are welcome to this,” she says, with muted irony. “I ordered it, but I find I have no taste for it.”

He can understand this. Oblivion, he has found, can sit at the bottom of a glass, but it is a tricky thing; sometimes in falling towards it, one can miss and land instead only in deeper sadness. He shakes his head. “I thank you. But no. Minsc would rather feel this thing that tears at his insides, because not to feel it would be worse.”

“Yes,” she agrees. A pause. “I am sorry about Dynaheir. Her loss is a tragedy.”

“It is. Minsc shall not see her like again.” He examines a knot in the wood of the table. “She thought well of Khalid,” he adds abruptly. “Many times Minsc heard her speak of his bravery and kindness both. And Dynaheir saw only what was true.”

Jaheira smiles shakily. “Khalid and I both found her a fine companion in turn,” she says softly. “She was as strong in wisdom and magic as any I have encountered. We-- I am the richer for having known her.”

“And the world the poorer for having lost her.” Minsc makes a valiant attempt to smile but the muscles of his face twitch with the effort. “Even now, I feel that I might turn my head and see her watching,” he mutters bitterly. “Minsc’s mind mocks him with wishing.”

Jaheira squeezes her eyes shut and rests her elbows on the table, leaning her forehead against the heels of her hands. “As does mine,” she murmurs. “We had no time to prepare ourselves for this blow. It struck without warning and tore our hearts out of us.” Her breath catches, as if someone has struck her in the stomach. “How shall we bear it?” she whispers, more to herself than aloud.

Now Minsc does smile, utterly without humor, a savage expression showing all his teeth. “We shall sink our boots into the butt of he who took them from us, so deep that we shall kick out his guts.”

She snorts softly and lifts her head. “Wisely said, if indelicately,” she says. She breathes out heavily, her shoulders squaring, her fingers balling into fists. “We shall destroy Irenicus indeed, and if fate is kind I shall land the killing blow myself.”

Minsc's smile draws very tight; it gives his high forehead and cheekbones a distinctly skull-like aspect in the lowering torchlight. “If fate is kind,” he growls in answer, “you shall indeed, and Minsc shall break every one of his bones, that he might not run away from your blow. Nor shall he see it coming, for Boo shall chew out his eyes.” He brings down his fist on the table with a bang that makes Jaheira jump. “And so shall dear Dynaheir be avenged, and Khalid as well.”

“Yes…” Jaheira murmurs, and for a moment there is a glint in her eyes that reminds him all too clearly of the tiger she is capable of becoming. “Silvanus lay the path, and Mielikki guide our hunt.”

#ask meme #astreamofstars #Minsc #Jaheira #BG2 #baldur's Gate 2 #hope you like! ty for the prompt as always friend c:#I both enjoyed writing this one and gave myself feels XD #we've speculated a bit on Jaheira and Minsc having more time becoming friends in BG2 than the game shows up #so getting to work on adding that to the tapestry :D

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roksiksimps · 1 year ago

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How to get an Abdirak of your own!

Here are some mods you need if you want Abdirak (or any other NPC really) to travel with your party!

Abdirak as an NPC companion

Recruit any NPC is the first mod you need. For those who are new to modding, here's how you can install it. First you need the software that this mod requires to work:

Get the Norbytes script extender. Unzip the archive, put the extender's 'DWrite.dll' file into your '[Steam folder]\steamapps\common\Baldurs Gate 3\bin' folder.

Get the BG3 Mod Manager. Unzip it, launch it, go to the Preferences and link your game's exutable and folder in its settings.

Download the mod itself, unzip, drag the 'RemoveMultiplayerCharacter.pak' file into you Mod Manager's 'active mods' leftside field, then press 'save'.

It gives you this wonderful ability:

Get to the goblin camp, target Abdirak with it, and he will become your companion!

He still can be interacted with as well, so if you wanted to take some screenshots in a more scenic environment, now you can. (The penance itself is bugged though. I was able to reenact it once near the bloodstained chapel's wall, but it's not guaranteed. More testing needed. Do it before you aggro the whole goblin camp, as per usual, cause he will try to leave the camp (and the game) after if you're anywhere close to the goblin camp.)

The only problem with this method is that he's still an NPC, he can't be leveled up (and he doesn't have much in terms of abilities), and the gear doesn't show up, so if you want to take him through the rest of the game, he won't fare well.

So if you want to have a functional cleric with you, you will want:

Abdirak as Tav

First, you need a second Tav. Getting a second player through multiplayer is an option, but the Recruit any NPC mod we already installed gives you a second ability:

Target Abdirak, and you'll be taken to the character creation screen to create a second Tav for you to control. There, you can select the 'Clone' option when you choose the race. It'll give you an Abdirak that CAN be leveled up and has the selected class's abilities, but his visuals still can't be changed.

If you want an Abdirak who can wear gear that will show up on him, we need more mods (also, you don't have to target Abdirak when you create a second Tav. Target anyone, so you can have Abdirak from the very start of the game). @sweetmage has already made Abdirak as the main Tav, but he lacked the body scars. Let me rectify that!

The Customizer's Compendium modwill give you Abdirak's face (drag the 'Customizer.pak' file into the Mod Manager; you also need the ImprovedUI mod for it to show up properly, place it under the Customizer mod in the list) , facial scars included. The hair is already in the game, the colors need to be eyeballed. Here's a closeup of the NPC. In my estimation, he's got Cool Tone 5 for his skin, Solid White for his eyes, and Grey 1 for hair, but YMMV.

The body scars are a different matter. If you're playing as a human/elf/drow/half-elf male Tav, there's currently no way to give Abdirak his scars without also giving them to your Tav. If you don't mind, or play a different race, or if you're playing a female Tav, you will need:

Unique Tav (as well as Trip's old shaderpack for the mod to work, drag it into the Mod Manager). It's a bit more tricky to set it up.

- Find in the mod's 'Files' section, download and install with Mod Manager the 'Unique Tav PAK'.

- Download 'Unique Tav Data', unzip, and manually put the 'Generated' folder inside of your '[Baldur's Gate 3 steam folder]\Data' folder.

- THEN download the 'Unique Tav Body Variants'.

- Find the 3 filed inside of the 'body_variants\NORMIES\male_hairy_lovitar_actually_hairless' folder you just downloaded.

- Copy these files to your '[Baldur's Gate 3 steam folder]\Generated\Public\Shared\Assets\unique_tav\BODY\NORMIES\MALE' folder, replace the files that are already there.

Ta-da! Your Abdirak (and human/elf male Tavs) will have the body scars!

Not on their legs though. If you want that, you will have to edit the texture files yourself.

You can download a tutorial on how to do that over at Many scars for unique Tav. You will need Photoshop (and knowing how to use it), a Photoshop plugin to open dds files, and a bit of creativity (or, you know, you can just take the scars from this mod and replace Abdirak's leg segment).

Edit UNIQUE_M_NKD_BODY_A_NM to add texture.

Edit UNIQUE_M_NKD_BODY_A_HMVY to add color. I'm still working on the latter, but I can upload my files sometimes later when I have it, if anyone's interested.

If you want his outfit, you need the Basket full of equipment mod (install with Mod Manager, read the mod's rescription to learn how to gain access to the basket), the clothes are in the 'exotic gear' bag. If you want that outfit as camp clothes, you also need to install the Basket Equipment to Camp Clothing mod.

That should cover it. Let me know if you have any questions, I'll try to help!

#abdirak #resources #mods #bg3 #bg3 mods

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lovewyll · 10 months ago

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Day 1: Date Night

by @its-tricky-to-save-baldurs-gate. A preview to Magic Cat's fic for a romantic, date night with Wyll Ravengard!

You can read more here:

#wyllweek2024 #love wyll event: wyll week 2024 #wyll ravengard #bg3 wyll ravengard #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 wyll ravengard #baldur's gate iii #baldur's gate iii wyll ravengard #bg3 wyll

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imma-write-stuff · 10 months ago

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I MADE MY BG3 AND SSX TRICKY BLOG

its @its-tricky-to-save-baldurs-gate

I will be posting quite a bit soon hehe

#imma speaks #author speaking #baldur's gate 3 #ssx tricky

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whoyoucallinpinheaddirtydan · 7 months ago

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About Me The Author

Age: 25

Pronouns: She/Her cis female

Hobbies: Writing, video games, anime, crocheting, reading, drawing/painting, listening to music, studying history

Likes: Animals, matcha lattes, nature, memes, dad jokes/puns, music (no favorite genre though I'm not fond of hip pop and rap most of the time).

Other Blogs: @its-tricky-to-save-baldurs-gate

#about me #author speaks

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onlyancunin · 8 months ago

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@herdarkestnightelegance <3

Little diabolical ball of chaos - me!

Music - don't judge me ok, raves help me focus while working ~

Tagging: @its-tricky-to-save-baldurs-gate, @housenightstar

Tag game

this picrew + the last song you listened to :]

@prettymuchteddy thank you for the tag😉

Partly based on myself:)

Tagging (no pressure) @very-straight-blog @dr-aegon @liv-cole @vhagar-balerion-meraxes @thesunfyre4446

@sidraofthewildflowers @ladystarksneedle @wolfdressedinlace @vipervixxen @aegon-the-elder

#tag game

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zippdementia · 4 years ago

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Part 93 Alignment May Vary: A Series of Side Quests

ALast time, I introduced the concept of how I’m handling the pre-final battle side quests, which will influence how that battle goes. I’m taking a lot of direction from the RPG Blades in the Dark for this, which I highly recommend as a must-read for any DM who wants to take their game to the next level. Even if you don’t end up playing Blades in the Dark, the way it presents how to run a satisfying game and how to keep your sessions focused on actions, obstacles, and consequences, is incredible reading. For these side quests, I’ve really drawn on its lessons a lot in order to keep the action focused and our story moving. If I didn’t, the five missions I’m going to cover in this post could have taken us months to play, as we explored dungeons, fought various combats, and had downtime between each quest. As it is, we do all five of these (plus the one from the last blog post) in a single large, six hour session. In that time, the players roll a ton of dice, but we don’t run a single combat... though they overcome many many obstacles along the way.

Here, then, is a brief rundown of each of our little “side quests.” This is a long post, so enjoy!

Dragonmeet

Argent, their bronze dragon ally, tells the PCs that they need the support of the dragon council if they are to fend off Abenthy. The PCs agree.

The journey from Waterdeep to the Nether Mountains is more than six hundred miles. For three days, Argent flies you north, passing overhead many signs of ruined cities and villages. No people remain, but neither is their undead or monsters. Abenthy’s influence is silently spreading, and as it does, it is erasing this world of life, leaving nothing behind.

Arriving at the Nether mountains, the PCs are given audience by the council of the great Metalic Dragons. This is a scenario lifted out of Tyranny of Dragons, in a nod to our original planned adventure, four years ago. But whereas in that campaign, there are specific things each dragon wants, here I leave the direction of the conversation more up to the PCs. All three of them make a plea, roleplaying out the conversation, with me playing the dragons. Milosh focuses on his life in Eberron, and the fact that dragons have disappeared from his world and their guidance is greatly missed. He fears Abenthy would see everything destroyed, them included. Carrick compares the dragons to Primus, in their greatness and glory, and says that in a way people are their creations and begs them to make the decision to protect life. Imoaza’s plea is full of regret for the path her people, the Yuan Ti, choose to follow, and says that the dragons are right to judge people not worth saving in the past. But she promises that if they are saved, she will make the effort worth it in the future.

These pleas move the dragons, and they agree to give aid, on one condition: that when the war is over, the Yuan Ti turn to worship of them, and follow a better path.

Imoaza agrees to do this, if she can wrest her people free of their current leader, her son, Xaxus.

An Icy Reception

The PCs decide they need the assistance of the Ice Barbarians in order to fight successfully in the frozen plains of Friezurazov. Also, they will not abandon them to slavery, which which be their fate if the PCs do not intervene.

Argent flies you across the Moon Sea, until you come across a line of Prison Ships. The moon shines down upon them, and upon the head ship, named The Re-Enlightenment, and captained by Gregor Tolman, whose great grandfather once captained The Enlightenment, lost at sea ages ago when it fell befoul of a plot involving the Red Hand. Among its final passengers were Shando, Daymos, and Karina...

The roll to set this quest up goes really well, so I actually cut out an encounter I had planned with the Tarasque, summoned into the ocean by Abenthy to destroy the Barbarians before the players can recruit them. Instead, the PCs reach the ships before Abenthy realizes they are going after the Barbarians, and so this encounter comes down to another roleplay moment, with the PCs having to convince Gregor Tolman to give over the Barbarians to their care.

To do this, I really enjoy the plan the players come up with. Imoaza poses as a haughty noble who says she represents Nakir, their noble ally from Waterdepp, and says he wishes to buy the slaves... all of them! With the help of some magic and good persuasion rolls, they convince the captain to turn the ships around and drop the Barbarians off at the old sea elf post, then go back to their sailing. Gregor is a little suspicious, but they play upon his fears of nobility and convince him not to get wrapped up in their political games. Believing he is in over his head, he follows orders and leaves.

The Ice Barbarians are secreted away in the forests around Waterdeep. Orcaheart, in particular, is overjoyed to have the chance to fight again alongside Milosh and promises that their final drive against Abenthy will “shake the very heavens.”

Death Pact

One character that the players are very concerned about is Verrick, the four-eyed Tiefling and former lover of Karina. He is a long long term NPC, and so the players have a personal connection to him. Also, he has become a Death Knight, under the control of Nazragul. While that control seemed to be broken at the Maakengorge, the news that he may be returning to Abenthy’s side is a concerning notion, as he is quite a deadly foe.

You catch up to Verrick at the ruins of Baldur’s Gate, where you find him sitting on a fallen statue, head in his hands. He looks up wildly as you approach and gets to his feet, waving a hand at you as if to push you away.

“Stay back,” he warns. “I do not know how much longer I have control of myself and I would not want to hurt friends of Karina’s.”

It is easy to convince Verrick to fight against Abenthy, but the problem is that Verrick is magically bound to Nazragul’s soul, and has a deep connection to Karina and Abenthy as well. With the three combined in one body, he is finding himself drawn back to fight for him.

Verrick says that, as a Death Knight, he is doomed to be bound to another’s soul until such time as all bounds are broken. Even death cannot stop him while his binder lives, he says. But if they can defeat him now, he will not reform for some time, and will not be able to fight against them in Friezurazov. He prepares to duel them...

... but the PCs have other ideas! I really like how the PCs solve this one. Milosh decides to try and unbind Verrick’s soul from Nazragul and bind it, instead, to himself, thus meeting the requirements of the Death Knight’s contract, while actually winning him over to their side for the final battle!

It requires Imoaza’s mastery of the weave to pull off, and carries a significant risk of killing Milosh, but in the end the players manage to roll through it, and Verrick’s soul, while not freed, is at least bound to the force he wishes to fight alongside.

The Wayward Daughter

This is a tricky one. Imoaza receives word that Hecate is being held at Spiral Tower, an underground fortress where the Yuan Ti torture and brainwash those who have “left the fold.” Hecate’s treachery has been discovered, and she is about to go through a re-education program to make her, once and for all, a thrall of her brother, Xaxus.

Imoaza’s thoughts turned to the daughter whom she had abandoned so many years ago, and who had spent so long trying to kill her. Their reconciliation on the Abyssal plane had changed both of them and Imoaza felt that if she did not save her daughter from the clutches of the Yuan Ti now, they would be forced to face each other one final time on the battlefield, and this time one would not walk away.

This mission goes wrong from the start. A bad set up roll means I actually add in an extra challenge. Argent is flying them to Spiral Tower when he is spotted by the magical sensors of the Yuan Ti. A magical storm immediately forms to swallow the dragon and Argent has to abandon the mission. The PCs use the fly spell to drop from his back, fly through the storm, and land in the forest that grows above Spiral Tower.

They waste no time in quickly preparing their plan. This is a bit of a heist mission, involving teleportation magic. Carrick and Imoaza are going to be teleported by Milosh to a precise location in the tower, where Hecate is being held, and then try to get her out. Anyone who knows teleportation rules knows there is a huge risk here: Milosh has never seen the inside of the tower, and is forced to operate off of what Imoaza can describe to him. This leads to some tense rolls, which could result in an instant death scenario for the PCs if they fail. They do not fail, however, and Carrick and Imoaza reach Hecate’s chamber via portal.

Their time is short. Carrick begins dispelling the magic that is rewriting Hecate’s personality and thankfully the process is not far enough along to have changed her, yet. Hecate comes up with a daring plan. Rather than leave with Imoaza, she suggests that she stay behind and pretend to have been indoctrinated. Then, when the moment is right, in the final battle she will turn and strike Xaxus down.

Imoaza agrees, and tells Hecate, too, of her plan to join the Yuan Ti to the worship of the dragons. She says to start spreading the word of the dragons through the Yuan Ti as subtly as Hecate can, so that the Yuan Ti begin to believe the Dragons are their true saviors. Her hope is that when the dragons arrive on the battlefield, it throws the Yuan Ti forces into disarray and opens up a path to Xaxus.

Imoaza half expects Hecate to question this new direction for the Yuan Ti, but Hecate says that Imoaza will always be her leader and will be trusted in all things. Then she tells them to go, before Milosh is discovered. As they leave through the portal, Imoaza finds herself concerned for the first time in her life with the safety of a family member, and finds the emotion both beautiful and strange.

The Wizards of Thay

The final side quest involves finding Daymos and helping him recover Jade’s soul. The roll on this one is not great, and so the PCs find no trace of the psychic-turned Quasit. However, they do learn that Jade, as a Lich, had a phylactery, and that she was aided in making it by the Red Wizards of Thay. Nazragul forced her into this path so that he could more easily take over her body and make use of it, and the Red Wizards were only too happy to help in exchange for some of his knowledge and power.

When Nazragul was exorcised from Jade’s body, she died, but her soul went to her phylactery, while Nazragul merged with Abenthy and Karina. That phylactery is now with the Red Wizards.

Thay is an isolated and arid windswept plateau some twenty-five hundred miles east of Waterdeep, its dark skies constantly clouded by volcanic ash. This land is defined by the prevalence of undead within its borders. The supreme leader of Thay is the lich Szass Tam, whose council of advisers-the zulkirs-are powerful liches themselves. Everyone of consequence in Thay is a spellcaster, and necromancers are common there. Undead servants are everywhere, and many of the commanders in Thay's armies are the free-thinking undead soldiers.

This is another scenario lifted more or less from Tyranny of Dragons, though it is a little simpler than presented there. Rather than have to win over the Red Wizards, the PCs simply have to offer them something that is worth the return of Jade’s soul. The PCs also learn that the Red Wizards are holding Daymos captive, for he came to them and tried to force them to release Jade. The PCs end up negotiating for both of their souls. The price ends up being twofold. One, they must stay the night in Thay. This seems like an odd request, but the PCs agree to it tentatively. Two, they must give them an item of great power.

At first, the party thinks that what they should give over are spells of Haggemoth. However, while a tempting appetizer, the Thay wizards say that it is not enough. So the PCs keep the spells and look for something else. That is when Milosh suggests, though not without sadness, that they give up Lhu-Ee, the painting gnome that Haggemoth created, and who has traveled with them since the tomb.

It is an acceptable trade: the Thay wizards are fascinated by the notion of what is essentially a living, thinking phylactery. It is a surprisingly sad moment for the -players. Though Lhu-Ee has barely had a roll in the campaign, I played him with a lot of personality, and the players felt good about saving him from Haggemoth’s lair and from the Mummer. He made a bigger impression than I thought he would and so the moment becomes a solemn one as they hand him over to the wizards. The wizards say they will begin work on the brother and sister immediately, and Lhu-Ee bids the PCs farewell, saying that no matter what happens next, he will always love them for having given him freedom, even if it couldn’t last.

Only that night does the first gift the wizards ask for really show its purpose. As the PCs fall into a deep sleep, the wizards try to infiltrate their minds and draw forth the secrets they harbor. They are powerful secrets: Imoaza is a master of the weave. Carrick has all the knowledge of the Surveyor. Milosh is from another world. They come close to cracking Milosh, who has more self doubt than the others and is really struggling with what his purpose in life should be, but ultimately all the PCs fight them off through willpower and good roleplaying, and none of them remember the night’s events afterwards. The wizards may be sneaky, but they are not necessarily dishonorable. They recognize that they had their chance to garner secrets from the PCs and it is their own faults they failed. So they consider the deal done and turn over Daymos and Jade, their bodies restored.

The brother and sister, who have been in this campaign since it’s very first session, shed tears and greet the PCs like family, saying that they will lend their phenomenal powers to winning this war. Daymos also has one more surprise: to rebuild his body, the wizards had to put someone else in the Quasit. They choose Reeves Sar Testain, whose soul had been carried with Daymos from the Abyss, ever since Esheballa’s game. So now Daymos and Jade also travel with the reborn Testain, in Quasit form.

The Siege of Waterdeep

The side quests are ended, but there is one final event before the last battle. The PCs are called back to Waterdeep by Nakir, who says that it is time to reveal the Blackstaff. They all travel with Breathgiver and the real Blackstaff to the middle of the city, where Nakir has asked several of the Lords and many citizens to gather, on the pretense of a grand announcement. However, before they can make their announcement, diaster strikes. Vindass Lanteral crashes the gathering with the army of Waterdeep and says he has come to arrest Nakir and the PCs as traitors. The PCs prepare to face him down, when alarms break out all over the city. A great beast is emerging from the harbor. It is the Tarrasque, and it comes to bring Abenthy’s wrath to the city.

This is a big battle scene, with a lot going on. Breathgiver tells everyone that she can defend the city with the Blackstaff, but they must protect her. So Imoaza, Carrick, and Milosh stand guard while familiar ethereal tentacles erupt all over the city, sucking the life from its citizens. Breathgiver enters a trance and everyone hears a loud crash coming from all over the city.

Waterdeep, one of the wonders of the civilized world, contains wonders of its own. Undermountain, the Tower of Light... many argue for fun over what the wonders truly are. But the oldest citizens of Waterdeep say there are eight wonders, and all of them are statues. The Walking Statues are behemoth statues, said to have appeared out of the ethereal plane as guardians for Waterdeep, controllable only by he or she who wields the blackstaff.

Since I first read about Waterdeep as a child, I’ve wanted to do something with the Walking Statues. Now I get my chance. Breathgiver awakens the statues and I give the players control of three of them, as the Tarasque emerges like Godzilla from the docks and begins wreaking havoc on the city. Three statues converge on it and the players get to have what is essentially a giant Mech fight. The Hawkman, the Swordmaiden, and the Godcatcher all come forward to face the Tarasque and protect Waterdeep. This becomes a tremendous fight, with the Tarasque laying into the statues and bringing down the Hawkman and the Swordmaiden before the Godcatcher grabs it by the tail and, much like Mario swinging Bowser in Mario 64, spins the Tarasque through several buildings and out to sea, where it crashes into a nearby island and falls, unconscious into the ocean.

While all this has been going on, Milosh has been pulled into the Ehtereal world by the tentacles. Imoaza tries to grab him out, but she fails and is left with severely burned arms, that will remain black for the rest of her life. Desperately, Milosh calls upon his powers to teleport him back to the city... only, he doesn’t quite make it.

A Pocket Dimension

Milosh finds himself in, of all places, a brothel. It is being run by a strange man wearing all red, who is shocked, but not unhappy to have a customer. A few questions later, the group realizes this is Immerstal the Red, old party buddy of Aldric, who the group last saw on board the Surveyor’s ship, before he was sucked back into his pocket brothel.

Honestly, this scene is totally unplanned. I didn’t think Milosh would end up in the Ethereal but once he was there, someone (I can’t recall who had the idea, myself or one of the players) mentions our old NPC, Immerstal the Red, and it just was too perfect to not bring him back into the game.

Immerstal reveals he knew Aldric, and is shocked and saddened to hear of his passing. But he doesn’t seem that interested in returning to Faerun. Things are simpler in his pocket brothel, after all, and he is not sure it is wise to bring himself back to a world which, by all accounts, is about to be eradicated.

"Anyway,” he says, “they should just throw Immerstal’s old Fireball spells at the brute. That will show him.”

“The what now?” Milosh asks.

Immerstal blinks in surprise. “You haven’t heard of Immerstal’s mighty Fireblast?”

It turns out there’s a lot of Immerstal stuff that people haven’t heard of, or have forgotten. Sensing a weakness, Milosh plays this up, saying it’s too bad Immerstal won’t be coming back to remind the world who he was. Too bad history will forget him. This finally pushes Immerstal over the edge and he begins packing a bag, and pulls Milosh with him through a portal back to Waterdeep.

Wrapping up Waterdeep

A few final things wrap up our time in Waterdeep and prepare us for the final two sessions of our RPG. In the days that follow, It is revealed that Vindass Lanteral has fled the city, his fake Blackstaff broken. He is out of our game, and never does make a reappearance, at least not in our tales.

With the former blackstaff fled, Waterdeep is in political confusion, but they rally around Breathgiver, the new and true Blackstaff. She immediately declares an end to the shadow lords of Waterdeep and says that from now on, Waterdeep will no longer have lords, but instead shall be led by a council of people from every walk of life, and the Blackstaff shall preside over the council with the wisdom of all its ancient holders. Even as she proclaims this, word comes from the city gates that the other members of the Alliance, including the refugees from Baldur’s Gate, have heard of the Tarasque’s defeat and have arrived to offer their strength in the fight to come.

There is not much time to celebrate or rebuild. The PCs need to get to Friezurazov and face Abenthy before he can revive the Tarasque. However, in the Tarasque’s attack, Waterdeep’s massive fleet was all but destroyed, and the PCs have only Argent to carry them to battle. The armies of Waterdeep cannot follow. It is a devastating blow, for alone they cannot hope to survive and bypass Abenthy’s army.

But then hope arrives from an entirely unlooked for place. A fleet of elven ships is spotted on the horizon. When they land, it is revealed to be the fleet of the Wood Elves of the Sword Coast, led by an old elf named Feluver. He is the brother of Trakki, our PC from many campaigns ago, who was lost during the Red Hand saga. Feluver says that for the first time in many years he had a prophetic dream, and in it Trakki told him to sail his ships to Waterdeep and prepare to fight that evil which had corrupted Trakki’s soul before he passed.

This, then, is the answer to how the armies will make it to Friezurazov, how they will bring the strength to stand against Abenthy, his undead and Yuan Ti, and whatever other defenses he has. This, then, is the true beginning of the end.

Next time, our penultimate session, A Clashing of Fates.

#Immerstal the Red #DND 5e #Campaign Journal #Alignment May Vary #Karina #Waterdeep #Statues of Waterdeep #Blackstaff #Tyranny of Dragons #Dungeons & Dragons #Yuan Ti

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sonofkhaz · 8 years ago

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Spyder’s Guide to Alignment

According to Wikipedia’s definition, alignment is the “categorization of the ethical and moral perspective of player characters, non-player characters, and creatures.”

Alignment is and/or was a key game element to the early editions of Dungeons and Dragons. However, the term and its categorizations have become widespread, as they can now be found in other tabletop games, RPGs, books and movies to name a few mediums of entertainment. When I have discussed alignment with other people, the subject sometimes invokes one of two responses

1. Players state that they don’t like using alignment because they find it confusing.

2. Players state that they don’t like using alignment because each archetype is too definitive.

Alignment has sparked a lot of debates over the decades, and is the main source of demotivational posters on the web. Additionally, it has created a lot online “alignment” tests which I find completely inaccurate (example: one test decided that one of my characters was “neutral evil” because his favorite color is dark red.) I decided to create this guide in order to explain each archetype and offer a broader perspective on alignment.

LAWFUL GOOD

Truth, Justice, Picket Fences and Apple Pie. Lawful good characters are often depicted as “goody-two shoes” boy/girl scouts. They believe in the good of all people, and act as is expected of a good person. Conversely, however, some lawful good characters will compulsorily object if friends/allies act in a way that contrasts their often rigid guidelines. Furthermore, they may object to breaking a law, even if it’s for a good reason, and will be left wondering if good comes before a law, or if law comes before good. Super heroes, such as Superman and Captain America are often seen as “lawful good” characters. The term “Lawful Stupid” is coined for lawful good characters, because some lawful good characters have a tendency to screw the party over with what they think is “justice”. It’s characterized by following the rules arbitrarily without actually understanding what they entail.

In the earlier editions of Dungeons and Dragons, paladins were required to be lawful good (if anyone complains to you that Dungeons and Dragons is “Satanic”, feel free to point out that Gary Gygax was a devout Christian). If they failed to uphold this alignment, they became “fallen” paladins, meaning that they lost the majority of their special abilities, and became average fighters who would have to “atone” with their church - an often odious task - or just switch classes. Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about this as much anymore.

NEUTRAL GOOD

Neutral good is the quintessential “nice person” alignment. A neutral good character is someone who devotes most of their time helping others. Sometimes they will use the law to aid in their quest to help folks. However, it’s important to note that neutral good characters follow an “internal” guideline instead of an “external” to determine what is good. Though they might use the law, they’re not confined by it, and will sometimes do what is right even if the law says no. Good doesn’t always mean “gentle”. They look at the axis of the lawful-chaotic spectrum, and see the merit of both sides.

A good example of neutral good characters are the Followers of the Apocalypse from the Fallout franchise. They’re a dedicated group of men and women who have taken up the responsibility of humanitarianism. They provide medical care, teach locals about agriculture, and search for Pre-War knowledge with the intent of sharing it with everyone. Though they’re good people at heart, they won’t tolerate raiders, slavers, or bullies from Caesar’s Legion.

CHAOTIC GOOD

Chaotic good characters live by the credo, “An unjust law is no law at all”. They are strong individuals with strong hearts who believe in good but have no use for law. They favor a change for the greater good that doesn’t require bureaucratic organizations that may get in the way of social progress. They often fight not only for themselves, but for the good of other people as well. They mean well, but sometimes in their attempts to do good they may break a few laws because to them, the “good” comes before the “law”.

A prominent chaotic good character is Robin Hood, along with his band of Merry Men. They stole from the rich and gave to the poor. For more modern characters, Jim Raynor and his Raynor’s Raiders go from planet to planet, helping out settlements being strong-armed by the Dominion. Garrus from Mass Effect can be seen as a chaotic good character, because he dislikes the “red tape” that prevents him from doing his job. This is compounded in the later installments as he admits to Shepard that killing a mass-murderer in cold blood without a trial is perfectly acceptable.

LAWFUL NEUTRAL

Think early edition paladins without the moral restrictions. Lawful neutral characters are essentially the living embodiment of the law made manifest. They endeavor to uphold the law without second guess. Steal food to feed your starving family? You’re going to jail. Steal medicine to save your dying friend? Jail time for you. Go 40 miles over the speed limit while driving to the hospital because you’re bleeding out? You’re going to pay for that.

Judge Joseph Dredd is often seen as the mascot of the lawful neutral alignment. He is the judge, jury, and executioner; if he catches you breaking the law, you’re going down with no exception. Take it with a grain of salt, however - he’s lawful neutral, but not lawful stupid. He doesn’t ignore the circumstances, and will always get to the root of the problem.

The High Heavens from the Diablo franchise are an example of lawful neutral as well. They’re concerned with upholding order in the known universe, but aren’t particularly concerned with the foibles and troubles of “mere mortal humans”. Tyrael is an exception to this rule, as the game depicts him as being lawful good.

TRUE NEUTRAL

True Neutral can be tricky, and is often categorized into two varieties: “Dedicated to Balance” and “Live as you live” mentalities.“Dedicated to Balance” characters are those who believe that the morality of their choices do not matter, only that it affects the “status quo” balance of all things (whatever the “status quo” entails is up to interpretation). This means that “balance” characters will allow things like war, disease, to happen if it keeps the balance in check. This ideology is often adopted by some Druids, especially since the base animal alignment is true neutral. They’re not particularly malevolent, but at their worst they see the world as some giant checkbook that needs to be balanced out, regardless of impending consequences.

“Live as you live” characters are unfairly treated as bland, uninspired or uncommitted people, all of which are often inaccurate. “Live as you live” describes most true neutral characters, because they don’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to moral choices like law vs. chaos and good vs. evil. For example, a mercenary may take a job to protect fleeing refugees one day, but take a well-paying job to smash up a merchant’s stockroom the next. A researcher may work alongside a good organization to create a vaccination for a disease, but they might just work with an evil organization if it means the research is being advanced. A soldier may be ordered to protect the civilians of his country, but will kill turncoats because he is ordered to do so and it’s easier to follow orders than to question them.

Yoshimo from Baldur’s Gate 2 is designed as a true neutral character because he supports intelligent decisions and making good money through both honest and dishonest work. In Runescape, the god Guthix is literally described as the “god of balance”, as he brought in other races to the world to let them live in harmony without the concepts of gods, good, or evil (it didn’t work out that well).

CHAOTIC NEUTRAL

Chaotic neutral characters follow their whims. Players often describe chaotic neutral characters as, “doing whatever the hell they want, when they want”. They’re often described as being individualistic and rebellious. They challenge authority, restrictions, tradition and customs in the name of true freedom.

Much like lawful good and “lawful stupid”, chaotic neutral suffers from “chaotic stupid” stereotypes as well. Where lawful stupid characters will adhere to a rigid code of conduct beyond the point of reason, chaotic stupid characters are notorious for their refusal to abide by anything whatsoever. Some will push this to a level of deliberately breaking any public code, law or custom, or deliberately doing the exact opposite of the party’s objectives because, “Tee-hee, I’m chaotic.” It’s important to understand that being chaotic is not about being “LOL SO RANDOM!”, but more about a strong dislike for order, laws, and routines. It’s also important to note that there is a difference between chaotic neutral and chaotic evil (killing someone and pissing on their corpse is an example of chaotic evil).

Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness, is an example of a chaotic neutral character. He helped the Chimer (early Dunmer) move from the Summerset Isles and establish their pre-tribunal culture, but will punish people for the most trivial reasons imaginable (like having a beard). Another example of a chaotic neutral character is Atton Rand from Knights of the Old Republic 2. Atton is a smuggler, completely out for himself, but is often varied in how he reacts to the protagonist’s actions. Even though he can be influenced, his attitude mostly remains the same, and he’s not very keen on getting the attention of the Republic, the Sith or the Exchange.

LAWFUL EVIL

A lawful evil character will do what they please within limits and without regard for whom it may affect. Basically, anyone who can commit evil and be a dick while staying in the confines of the law and tradition. A lawful evil character may care about order, society or law but won’t give a second glance to freedom or life. Corrupt politicians/leaders, or wealthy tycoons playing the system may be considered lawful evil, but it would often be difficult to notice since they’re so integrated in society.

Darth Vader from Star Wars can be seen as a lawful evil character, as he carries out the will of Emperor Palpatine with an iron fist, has little patience for failure, and crushes anyone who stands in his way, albeit without amusement. King Logan from Fable 3 is a lawful evil character, as he pushes Albion to its limits, orders his soldiers to shoot protesters, cuts down entire forests, and forces children into working in factories in preparation for a larger threat.

NEUTRAL EVIL

Neutral evil is the “malefactor” alignment or, more commonly known, the “asshole alignment”. Characters of this alignment have no qualms about ditching their allies, since they are typically selfish and only care about themselves. They have no qualms about hurting other people to get what they want; however, they will not go out of their way to harm if they don’t benefit from it. They obey the law when it’s on their side, but will break it if it is no longer convenient to them.

Dean Domino from Fallout: New Vegas is an example of a neutral evil. He is extremely self-serving, vengeful, and vindictive, and is largely responsible for a lot of the horrible things happening in the Sierra Madre Casino. He will try to kill you the moment you meet him if you don’t act completely subservient to him, and he views people as convenient rubes.

CHAOTIC EVIL

If chaotic neutral characters are free spirits, then chaotic evil characters are free EVIL spirits. They are usually psychopaths who are vicious, unpredictable, unstable and violent. They have no respect for rules, little-to-no regard for human life or the freedom of others. Strong leaders are needed in order to keep chaotic evil characters in line.

Shiro Tagachi from Guild Wars: Factions is an example of a chaotic evil character. Throughout the story, he is hellbent on destroying the entirety of Cantha as vengeance for being dead. HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic is chaotic evil as he cheerfully wishes to wipe out all “meatbags”, and his tendencies are only kept in check by his master’s will.

PERSPECTIVES ON ALIGNMENT

As I mentioned at the beginning of this guide, alignment is something people have argued about for decades. Some will argue that using alignment dilutes character personality, and categorizing something philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists have been researching for thousands of years is pointless.

Alignment can become a problem for character creation, because categories can be too narrow to describe characters. After all, characters aren’t always split into “good” or “evil” - they are often complex people with more than one side to them, or they might be pursuing a goal rather an ideal.

Lawful mentalities, for example, are regarded as “I follow the rules of the land” while chaotic leans towards, “I do what I want, when I want, how I want”. However, it doesn’t need to be so cut and dry: lawful can mean that the character simply follows a code or set of rules instead of literal laws, and chaotic can mean that your character doesn’t care for the above mindset and simply changes their own on a whim.

It’s important to understand that alignment is supposed to represent tendencies rather than stagnant points. A good-aligned character can be cajoled and shoved into committing an evil act, or an evil character may be required to perform a good deed because it furthers their goals. A lawful character can choose to painstakingly break a law in order to prevent a catastrophe, or a chaotic character may choose to work with the law to help out a friend in need. People acting in ways that don’t suit them is a good sign of character development. For example, just because a lawful character might go against the norm once does not constitute an alignment change, but that character might learn something new from the situation.

In conclusion, alignments are not set in stone, and newer tabletop editions and RPGs have made strides in reflecting this fact. You can have a lot of fun with characters this way, and you’ll never truly be confined to one alignment.

#guide #alignment #lawful good #lawful neutral #lawful evil #chaotic good #chaotic evil #chaotic neutral #true neutral #neutral good #neutral evil #dungeons and dragons #tabletop #rpg #roleplaying

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vspin · 9 months ago

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Omg a fellow Liriel Baenre fan hello!

Hi! There are dozens of us...dozens...lol

I just finished book 1 recently! Have you read them all?

#its-tricky-to-save-baldurs-gate #liriel baenre #v is reading starlight & shadows

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lehdenlaulu · 8 years ago

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Top five underrated NPCs!

I’m terribly sorry for this taking so long! I literally did not see this until like yesterday. O_o

Also, I ended up focusing on Obsidian/BioWare, because if I’d started thinking about every NPC ever in existence, you would never get an answer. :p

Anyway, here goes:

1. Bao-Dur (Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords)

I suppose I could name any KotOR 2 character that isn’t Atton or HK-47 when it comes to being underrated. But man. Bao-Dur.

You crash land on Telos and after gaining consciousness you immediately run into this kind of weird engineer guy who seems to know you and calls you ‘General’. General, you think. Yes, I was a General… And it all starts coming back to you.

I try not to spoil too much, but out of all the tragic, broken characters of KotOR 2 (and they all are, one way or another), Bao-Dur’s story and how it connects to the Exile’s is possibly the most fascinating and harrowing one. There is a weight on their shoulders only they can truly know and share and it creates a love and loyalty, a bond that is beautiful in its utter, profound twistedness. It’s not a romance. It’s not even a tragedy. It’s something more abstract, like… a dirge, perhaps.

That got weird and pretentiously poetic, but I can’t explain it better.

2. Haer’Dalis (Baldur’s Gate II: The Shadows of Amn)

I understand why he’s not more popular, in a way. The BG games had a metric fuckton of characters to choose from, and you could only have five at a time (not as your chosen team of the moment, but basically at all) in your party, and stuff like alignment and stats and general usefulness held more weight in choosing the party members.

And since Haer’Dalis is a) Chaotic Neutral, which is tricky unless you’re playing the same alignment b) a bard, which as a class is kind of like a useless combination of sorcerer and thief c) a so-called Glass Cannon - terrific fighter who’s however out cold after a couple of punches d) kind of difficult to obtain - you have to save his pretty, pompous ass twice. Yeah. I understand.

But as a character? I frequently wonder who the hell even came up with him.A charming, blue-haired, entropy-loving hellspawn on a tournee with his plane-hopping theater group. Talks in riddles and rhymes, bestows avian-themed nicknames on his comrades, is confused by trees and literally laughs in the face of danger. Imagine Zevran from Dragon Age, but like 75% weirder (yes, both are also dual-wielding bi/pansexuals with pointy ears and facial markings, who will flirt with anything). He’s just… endlessly entertaining.

3. Ashley Williams (Mass Effect)

Ahh, Ash. I don’t actually know how unpopular she is in the fandom at large, but in the female-dominant Tumblr circles at least it’s exactly as you’d expect, and it’s not exactly helped by the fact the game literally forces you to choose between her and Kaidan (the sole male LI in ME1).

She’s not a perfect person or even a character, obviously, but don’t even try to tell me the flack she gets is not affected by the usual internalized misogyny running rampant in fandom. Or that things wouldn’t be very different if she and Kaidan were gender-swapped (I kind of think part of the problem is that they already exist in roles that are traditionally gendered differently, actually).

4. James Vega (Mass Effect)

This is partially on EA/BioWare for having so much of his background and characterization exist only in extended canon (for example, it gets barely more than a mention that he guarded Shepard for the six months of their incarceration, if even that?), but weirdly many just write him off as ‘human Krogan’, or ‘random generic tank with no personality’.

And I find that sad because I think Vega is one of the most interesting, layered and real characters in the entire series, and such a hoot as a part of the team if you take him along on the missions. I guess some have a problem with him calling femShep ‘Lola’- but if you tell him to stop that he 100% does, so I don’t even know. Also the friendship he can develop with Shep is nothing short of epic.

5. Wynne (Dragon Age)

I absolutely know why: she’s an older female character and therefore not a love interest or eye candy - and she even tells you she’s apprehensive about your relationship with your chosen LI.

A huge pity because she’s amazing, but what can you expect from a fandom that treats the games largely as a dating simulation - I mean, people game for their own reasons etc. but I’m always sorry for the writers for trying to do something interesting and different when it barely gets any attention or appreciation. Oh well.

#dracoslorean #q and a #top 5 meme #video games #knights of the old republic #baldur's gate #mass effect #dragon age

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years ago

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The Black Gate: La Forge

I have a feeling we’re going to regret this.

So far in our chronology, expansions have been rare enough that we haven’t devoted any significant time to them. Although not common, they are nearly as old as CRPGs themselves. The first that I can identify for sure two 1981 games in the Dunjonquest series: The Upper Reaches of Apshai expansion to Temple of Apshai (1979) and the Keys of Acheron expansion to Hellfire Warrior (1980). Only shortly after those came the second and third Wizardry scenarios (1982 and 1983). They are now known colloquially as Wizardry II and Wizardry III, and later titles would continue from that numbering, but the original releases required the original Wizardry to create characters.

Lots of other games have lacked expansions as such but have been modular from the start, such as Eamon (1980) and its various clones. And of course outside of the CRPG genre, expansions go arguably back to 1976, when Advanced Electronics released Pong Extras for the pong console.

We have also seen in this era some confusion between the term “expansion” and wholly original games. For instance, the Bloodwych Data Disks (1990) are often given as an expansion of the original game, but my reading of the description is that the disks contain standalone executable files that read saved games from Bloodwych and offer more levels. I only consider a game an “expansion” if it requires the original game installation to run.

Thus, Forge of Virtue doesn’t earn any extra points for being the first expansion. But aside from the modular titles in which you could move characters in and out of different adventures at will, Forge of Virtue might be the first “interlocutory expansion”–that is, taking place entirely within the context of the original adventure. (We can come up with a better term.) The opposite would be “coda expansions,” which take place after the main quest and generally can only be played after solving it (e.g., most of Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal). There are of course still others that allow the player to choose either way (The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone), and others beyond that that stand completely separate from the main title (Assassin’s Creed IV: Freedom Cry). There are weird combinations such as Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, which can be a coda expansion or a standalone expansion depending on how the main plot went, or the “Watcher’s Keep” part of Throne of Bhaal, which is an interlocutory expansion to a coda expansion that can also be an interlocutory expansion to the original game.

Interlocutory expansions are tricky because developers can’t gauge exactly where the player will be when he begins the expansion. What they can gauge is how the expansion will affect the character for the rest of the main game, and the answer is almost always that it overpowers him. Such is the case with Forge of Virtue, as we’ll see.

Heaven knows why ORIGIN decided that Ultima VII needed a few extra hours of content, or why they thought the Avatar needed even more power. The game isn’t that hard as it is. I’ve heard cynical theories that the original game was so bugged that the company came up with the “expansion” idea as a way to deliver crucial patches while getting players to pay extra for them. In a contemporary interview with Warren Spector published in Game Bytes magazine, he had no explanation other than, “Someone realized we could do it, and so they did it.” If anyone knows of any source that explains Forge of Virtue better, please link it.

The expansion is introduced into the main game in the clumsiest way. The Avatar has just arrived in Trinsic and is just beginning to hear about the murders and absorb that it’s been 200 years, and then suddenly there’s an earthquake. Way to pile it on. As you recall, once the Avatar reaches Lord British, the king has this to say:

The foundation of Britannia was shaken with the rising of an island. This event was no random disaster, it was one of sorcerous intent . . . I felt a great disturbance in the ether when this island arose from the sea. The island is none other than the Isle of Fire where thou defeated the Hellspawn Exodus . . . Avatar, thou shouldst know that when I created the shrines of the Virtues, I also set upon this island three great shrines, dedicated to the Principles of Truth, Love, and Courage. They reside within the walls of the Castle of Fire. I never revealed this to thee before as I thought them forever lost when the Isle of Fire mysteriously sank beneath the waves. The shrines are meant for the use of an Avatar only, and therefore a talisman will be necessary to use one. The talismans are guarded by tests that thou shouldst have no problem passing if thou wishest to seek their counsel.

There’s a boatload of retconning in that paragraph. Originally, the shrines of virtue were created after the events of Exodus: Ultima III, and thus after the Isle of Fire originally sank after Exodus’s defeat. The entire world has been reconfigured since the events of Ultima III, so it’s hard to believe, geologically, that this is the same island even if it could somehow be determined by geography. Third, there was no Avatar before the events of Ultima IV, so the shrines would have been useless (none of the other shrines require you to already be an avatar to visit). Fourth, it wouldn’t make any sense to lump three shrines to the principles of virtue in one place; it would have made more sense to co-locate them with the Lycaeum, Empath Abbey, and Serpent’s Hold, just as the shrines of virtue were co-located with the towns that exemplified them.

If you can ignore all that, it’s not a bad opener for a plot. The true nature of Exodus has always been a bit of a mystery. Was he man, machine, or a combination? Was the computer in which I fed the data disks Exodus himself, or was it just controlling him? Either way, his defeat definitely felt less complete than that of Mondain or Minax. I could see their heads fly off their bodies (I imagine), but Exodus just . . . sank. The endgame text even takes care to specify that he was “defeated”–not killed. His return is the least implausible thing about this backstory.

Lord British unnecessarily gives you his ship, docked in Vesper, to travel the five paces between the mainland and the Isle of Fire. Even if you didn’t finish the expansion, this already makes the game a lot easier because it saves you from buying a ship (admittedly, if you grab the magic carpet early, it hardly matters), not to mention all the stuff that its holds are stocked with. The king also gave me a “focused magic crystal” that’s supposed to do something on the island.

The healing potions are nice, but why did Lord British have so much hooch stashed on his ship?

I was originally going to save my visit to the Isle of Fire for late in the game, but an organic reason to visit came up earlier: I can’t defeat the demon guardian of the blackrock generator. Mages, friends, people I love, are suffering migraines so bad that they’re going insane, and I need to stop it as soon as possible. If I can’t defeat the guardian with my current skill set, that means powering up as soon as possible. And although the Avatar doesn’t know exactly what he’ll find on the Isle of Fire, his experience in the past has been that most shrines confer some benefits, as do the former lairs of evil overlords.

Just so I can say I sailed a ship briefly, I land the magic carpet in Vesper and take the Golden Ankh to the Isle of Fire. You sail a ship in this game by boarding it, double-clicking the gangplank to raise it, double-clicking the mast to prompt everyone to sit down, and double-clicking the sail to unfurl it. Then you can go in any direction with the regular movement keys; you don’t have to worry about wind direction or speed as in some of the earlier Ultimas. I guess the Avatar finally learned how to tack. You reverse this process when you arrive. You have to pull the ship up to some place that has accessible land on the other side of one of the gangplanks and then drop one of them.

The Isle of Fire has no dock, so I pull up to a marshy area and let everyone off there. The arrival area is a small inner bay with a half circle of land around it. At its apex is a ruined fortress covered with ash and ruined iron, although somehow torches are burning. There’s a moongate nearby, and entering deposits me outside the entrance to the Lycaeum. I reload and continue into the keep.

Looks a bit different from when we last visited.

The entry hall leads back to a room with three statues: a maiden, a knight with a sword, and an old man in a robe. I temporarily leave them to scout the rest of the structure, which has a number of portals and dragon statues.

In a western bedroom, we find an old blind man named Erethian. He knows who I am immediately, recounting my victories against the triad of evil in the first three games. He claims to be a researcher, recently arrived, which starts to explain why his food, furnishings, and books aren’t hopelessly waterlogged, but then he goes on to claim he’s found many interesting books in the keep. He gets tetchy when I question how books are useful to a blind man.

Almost immediately, he confirms that “the machine that [I] destroyed was Exodus’s means of communication with and control of the world,” not Exodus himself. The computer was a bridge between Exodus’s psyche and an evil database called the “Dark Core,” which blended mundane information with knowledge of taking over the world. He confirms that the gargoyles imprisoned Exodus’s psyche in the Statue of Diligence. A book in his room called The Dark Core of Exodus elaborates on these theories. (The Books of Britannia entry has been updated with two books by Erethian: Converting Moongates to Thine Own Use, The Dark Core of Exodus, and one by “R. Allen G.”: Ethical Hedonism.)

Erethian suggests several times that he knows me better than makes sense; that he saw me defeat the triad close-up; that he knew them personally. He makes asides about Iolo’s bardic abilities and the Avatar’s tendency to steal artifacts for his own use. At the same time, he seems unaware that the gargoyle world is gone, and he suggests that it was never daemons with which gargoyles were confused but balrons. I believe the creatures last appeared in Ultima IV.

Canon in the making.

Erethian is the putative author of the expansion’s manual, A Guide to the Isle of Fire. I’d have mentioned this book at the beginning, but it’s unclear exactly when the Avatar is supposed to have acquired it, so I’m assuming we found it in Erethian’s room. The book deals with a few of my “retcon” objections. It claims that Lord British built the shrines to the three principles of virtue on the Isle of Fire at the same time he created the eight shrines of virtue. (Previous sources have suggested the Great Council created the shrines, but the statements aren’t irreconcilable. I assume it was a collaborative effort; that Lord British directed the project and the Council did the work.) While the shrines of virtue were meant to help produce the Avatar, the three shrines to the principles were to help serve the Avatar, and thus were protected by beasts and traps that only the Avatar could solve. As for the Isle of Fire sinking, I guess I was relying on a faulty memory. Nothing at the end of Ultima III says that it sank, and neither does anything in the backstory of Ultima IV. Thus, it could have sank days before the Avatar arrived for the fourth game. Erethian thinks it sank because of the gargoyles’ removal of Exodus’s psyche, although he doesn’t specify the mechanism by which this would happen.

Yeah, when I need them to save the world.

Erethian claims in the manual to have started studying the Isle of Fire using an enchantment that allows him to breathe underwater. After he found Exodus’s Dark Core, he used the lenses to view the Codex and see how to raise the island from the depths. Thus, Erethian takes responsibility for the events of the expansion.

We return to the statue room and speak to the old man in front of us, assuming he represents truth. He introduces himself as the Keeper of Truth and asks if we seek the “wisdom and boon” of Truth. We say yes and are teleported to a small room with a moongate and two plaques. The plaques read: “Truth is truth” and “Only appearances are deceptive.” The south wall of the room turns out to be illusory. It leads to a series of invisible corridors through which we have to travel before we come to a door operated by a switch. On the other side is the Talisman of Truth. Picking up the artifact, we are teleported back to the statues, where the Keeper of Truth says that we have “mastered the path of truth.” He raises the Avatar’s intelligence and magic to 30 (the maximum), warns us that “the psyche returns to the core,” and falls silent.

Guys, did that seem a little too easy to anyone else?

The statue of the woman tells us to enter the portal to the south for the Test of Love. We find ourselves in a valley with a small hut. A logbook written by the hut’s former owner, Astelleron (mentioned in Erethian’s history), tells of how he lived on the island and created two golems to protect the shrine. The golems were originally unthinking machines, but Astelleron managed to use some artifact called the Stone of Castambre to imbue then with intelligence and reason. Astelleron has apparently died; a gravestone behind the hut reads HERE LIES BELOVED FATHER AND MASTER.

I don’t know. Was he a confederate general?

We find the golems, one of them dead and broken in a circle of stones, the other standing mournfully over him. The intact golem, introducing himself as Bollux, pleas for help. He explains that a wall fell on his brother, Adjhar, destroying him. He hands us one of Astelleron’s books, which explains how the Stone of Castambre can be used to animate golems and other inanimate objects. It outlines a process:

1. Find the Stone of Castambre, which should be located in the center of a group of five boulders, with a tree growing out of it.

2. Place something (it was smudged) within the chest of the creature

3. Use a pick-axe to strike the tree and fill a bucket with the tree’s blood.

4. Set down five rocks in a pentagram shape around the creature. Anoint each with blood from the bucket.

5. Cast VAS FLAM UUS on each puddle of blood while chanting some sacred words. Fortunately, VAAS FLAM UUS is contained within the book.

We grab a bucket at Astelleron’s old well. A mountain pass leads into an old mine, where we find a pick-axe. At the end of the pass, a teleporter brings us to a separate valley, where we find the Stone of Castambre and the tree growing out of it. Then next step takes a while because I’m first convinced I have to get up to the level of the tree, so I waste a lot of time trying to stack powder barrels to make stairs (this works with regular barrels but not powder barrels). I then equip the pick-axe and try attacking the tree in combat instead of double-clicking on it to use it. Finally, I figure it out and get my bucket of blood.

The deer was tempting, as I was low on food, but I figure you don’t kill helpless forest creatures during the Test of Love.

I still don’t know exactly what to place in the golem’s chest, so I start the ritual without it, pouring blood on each of the five stones that someone (Bollux?) has prophetically placed around the body. I then cast VAAS FLAM US. As I do so, Iolo remarks that we’ll need a heart, and Bollux immediately volunteers his own, digging it out of his chest and collapsing to the ground.

Technically, this qualifies more as “sacrifice.”

We place the heart in the body and finish the incantation, which causes Adjhar to awaken. Adjhar, created second, is the more articulate of the two golems. Seeing Bollux’s body, he demands to know what has happened. When we tell him, he asks for our assistance in restoring Bollux to life. At first, I’m worried I’m going to be stuck swapping hearts and collecting blood for eternity (Iolo even makes a joke about this), but it turns out we can fashion a new one with a chunk from the tree.

Too soon, Iolo.

Back we go to carve the heart and collect the blood. (The tree is looking a bit sickly by this point.) We repeat the ritual, and soon both golem brothers are standing before us. Adjhar happily gives us the Talisman of Love, as we have demonstrated an understanding of the principle. That raises a question: Was Adjhar really injured in a fall? Or was all of this just a test? If the former, what did the original test look like? The Keeper of Love bestows 30 dexterity and combat on me and warns me about an evil stirring in Britannia.

Yes, I’m sure two golem brothers encompass “all that is love.”

Third comes the Keeper of Courage, who again asks me to enter a teleporter. On the way, I happen to pass a mirror full of swirling colors. I double-click on it. A demonic face appears and calls me “master” before realizing that I’m not, in fact, his master. Recovering from his faux pas, he introduces himself as Arcadion. He says that he’s served Erethian for 200 years, and he clearly hates the mage. Erethian, meanwhile, is clearly up to something he hasn’t let on.

Give it a few minutes.

We return to Erethian, expecting to somehow “expose” him, but he agrees freely to possessing the creature, saying that he is “sometimes useful.” Apparently, Arcadion is keen to possess the Ether Gem, which he thinks will free him, but Erethian insists that it will just confine him to a “more mobile prison.” In any event, a dragon apparently burst into the castle and stole the Ether Gem some time ago before disappearing into the Test of Courage. This accounts for the damage and debris in the rooms leading to the teleporter.

Yes, it’s too bad you don’t have a better relationship with your demon.

We take the teleporter to the Test of Courage, which turns out to be the hardest of the tests–hard enough that I probably would have done less reloading if I’d just stayed at the Tetrahedron Generator and kept trying to defeat the guardian. The hardest part is near the beginning–a large room full of the remains of previous adventurers, in which skeletons and headless spring to life, a mage casts spells from the center, and a lich casts spells from an area to the north. Even worse, the lich is protected by some kind of ring of candles, so he can’t be engaged. The mage has in his possession the key to the next door, so his body must be identified and looted before progressing to the next section of the dungeon. Meanwhile, flames are burning everywhere for no reason and there are two red moongates in the lower corners of the room. Trying to get through this room with my entire party alive reminds me why people hate combat in this game. In previous entries, I suggested it wasn’t so bad, but I recant those statements. The primary problem is that you cannot keep your party in any kind of sensible formation. The moment combat begins, they go storming off in every direction. Party members with missile weapons become convinced they need more room and go tearing off in search of a better vantage. Anyone with combat settings for “hardest foe” or “easiest foe” or “random foe” will go charging after distant enemies–sometimes ones on another screen entirely. The only way you can keep people remotely together is to have everyone target the “closest” enemy, but even then, some party members have an odd idea of “closest.” Then they decide to flee when they take too much damage–sometimes–but they have no discernment while fleeing and often flee right into the path of other enemies or into patches of fire, where they enter a never-ending cycle of falling unconscious from the fire damage, slowly regenerating health (characters don’t take damage while unconscious, even if they’re sleeping in fire), waking up, taking damage, and immediately falling unconscious again.

This room has a lot happening.

Enemies in this room seem to spawn more or less continually, so I’m trying to herd everyone through the room while still killing the mage and anyone else who’s a direct threat. The only way I can do this is to periodically exit combat, which causes everyone to rush back into formation, and then enter it again. The issue isn’t that it’s hard to win; it’s that it’s hard to win while keeping everyone alive. The more characters you have, the stronger your party is collectively, but the greater chance that someone doesn’t survive a tough combat. Not for the first time, I wonder why ORIGIN allowed you to select individual party members in Ultima VI but not VII. With that option, I could hustle some characters across the room while others fight. I could leave most of them around the corner and send one character forth to lure enemies one-by-one. Instead, I’m reduced to a lot of reloading. I can’t tell you how sick I am of hearing the Guardian say, “Poor Avatar. Poor, poor Avatar” before waking up in Paws.

At least there’s some good equipment in the room.

All of this complaining should be tempered, of course, by the knowledge that I’m in Forge of Virtue a bit earlier than the game probably intended, so the particular difficulty of this dungeon is by design. Eventually, I do get everyone through the room, picking up a lot of valuable magic armor from the corpses on the way. We unlock the door and continue down the corridors. The rest of the dungeon has a few switch puzzles, giant spiders, giant scorpions, and other creatures before we reach the end. There are a couple of puzzles in which you have to sacrifice magic gear (although you find the gear in the same dungeon, so it’s really a draw). There’s a room with a couple of dragons before the final room with the dragon. I think I’m being clever by using a Potion of Sleeping and a vial of sleeping powder on the dragons, knocking them out long enough for my party to administer a couple of coups de grâce and then looting their corpses for gems. Then I encounter a locked door that requires the same key used on the first door, which I left behind. By the time I return, the dragons have respawned and I have to defeat them “for real” this time.

I thought I was so clever.

In the final room, we meet the dragon Dracothraxus, who indicates that he’s the final test of courage. We’re plainly meant to defeat him with a glass sword found on a charred body within the chamber, but I don’t find it until after we’ve won with regular weapons. This only takes one try, which surprises me given how hard the first room was.

The true Test of Courage.

For our victory, Dracothraxus gives us the Ether Gem and says that we won’t have passed the Test of Courage until we defeat him for good, which will require an artifact that doesn’t exist. This doesn’t make a lot of sense given that Dracothraxus forced his way into the test, but whatever. We have to walk back through the dungeon–fighting the dragons a third time–to return to the castle. Back in the fortress, Erethian tells us that the artifact of power we’re looking for is probably a giant blackrock sword, which he once attempted to make but lacked the strength to properly forge it. He waves his hands and magically summons a blacksmith’s workshop in the entry hall of the castle, including a well and bucket, a trough, a hearth full of coal, a hammer, an anvil; a bellows, and the sword blank he’d previously attempted. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the help, but this part seems far too easy. I think I might have preferred if I’d had to take the sword back to the mainland, find a forge, and figure it out for myself.

Erethian, acting as the deus ex caminus.

There’s a lot of trial and error in the ensuing process. The winning sequence goes: Fill the bucket a few times at the well and dump it into the trough; put the sword blank across the hearth; pump the bellows until the sword is glowing bright; put the sword on the anvil; beat it with the hammer; repeat the process until the game tells you you’ve done as much as you can; heat up the sword one last time; douse the sword in the trough. For a game that allows you to do so much with the environment it is unnecessarily finicky with the controls during this process. You can’t manually pick up the sword and move it to the anvil; you have to double-click on it and then click on the anvil. You can’t equip the hammer and then attack the sword as in combat; you have to double-click the hammer and then click on the sword. And the first few times you heat it up and pound at it on the anvil, there’s no encouragement that you’re doing the right thing.

The Avatar hammers the blackrock sword.

When it’s all done, the game tells us that the sword is too heavy to wield, so back we go to Erethian for advice. He suggests binding Arcadion to the Ether Gem and then binding that to the sword. This is supposed to be as easy as holding the gem in my hand and smashing the mirror, but here I run into significant problems. It turns out the Ether Gem is about the size of a marble, nearly impossible to find in my backpack, and at the same time I never really looked at the gem that Lord British gave us. I confuse that gem for the Ether Gem and keep trying to use it, which keeps causing it to shatter. It takes loads of time and a YouTube video to figure out what I’m doing wrong. Afterwards, I do it right–but what the heck is the purpose of the gem Lord British gave us?

Denial to acceptance in a few words.

Arcadion is at first delighted to be freed from the mirror. He then swiftly goes through the five stages of grief as he realizes he’s trapped in a gem. In the resulting conversation, I order him to bind with the sword, which then becomes usable as a weapon. I can talk to Arcadion at any time by double-clicking on the sword in my inventory. It allows me to call up on special abilities titled “magic,” “death,” “fire,” and “return,” all of which I need to experiment with more. We return to the Trial of Courage, fight our way through the monsters a second time, and confront Dracothraxus again. He and Arcadion have some dialogue indicating that they’re old enemies as the battle commences. I defeat the dragon without much trouble and he departs, giving us access to a northern room with the Talisman of Courage.

A little smack talk before the rumble.

We are teleported back to the room with the three statues, where the Avatar’s strength is raised to 30. The Keeper of Courage then demands that the Avatar seek the Talisman of Infinity. Erethian again fills us in: If we focus the convex and concave lenses on the combined Talismans of Truth, Love, and Courage, it will call the Talisman of Infinity from the void. “Once here,” he says, “it would seem that its sole purpose is to coerce a powerful force into the void.” He suddenly realizes what that “powerful force” might be and shuts down, but Arcadion pipes up and fills us in on how to perform the rest of the ritual.

The persistence of NAME and JOB when talking to a sword belie the Avatar’s newly-increased intelligence.

We have to take the Golden Ankh to Britain to grab the two lenses from the museum, then head back to the Isle of Fire.

These don’t really belong in a museum anyway.

Back in the fortress, we arrange the Talismans as instructed on top of the Dark Core. (Until this point, I didn’t even realize it was the Dark Core. I thought it was just a pedestal.) The Talisman of Infinity appears long enough to snatch the Core into the abyss. Erethian teleports in, enraged, and tries to cast VAS ORT REL TYM, which means something like “through great magic, change time,” but his spell backfires and reduces him to some bones scattered across the floor.

The Talisman does its job while the bones of Erethian litter the floor above it.

We sail back to Vesper, board the carpet, travel to Britain, wake up Lord British, and tell him the news. As a reward, he doubles my strength to 60. And thus the Forge of Virtue ends.

What if Exodus had returned and the Guardian invaded at the same time? That would have been interesting.

I have to say, as much as I’ve enjoyed Ultima VII so far, there wasn’t much that I liked about the expansion. The backstory started out promising, but then the game started playing me instead of vice versa. There was too much exposition from Erethian, his instructions were too explicit, and the resolution of his story was unsatisfying. I had hoped that it would turn out that he was Exodus–or at least his psyche–trying to figure out how to reunite with his “Dark Core.” Something needed to explain the mage’s familiarity with Mondain and Minax and other mysteries in his backstory.

If Lord British is going to keep to one side of his king-sized bed, I don’t see why I shouldn’t crawl in next to him.

Finally, while it’s nice to leave an expansion with some improved stats and gear, this one goes way too far. The Avatar’s dexterity, intelligence, magic, and combat all doubled, and his strength quadrupled. There’s no point in any further training or development for the Avatar, except for leveling so he can cast higher-level spells. And honestly, if you have a weapon this powerful, is it really necessary to make it capable of a “Death” spell, too?

My character at the end of the session.

But of course I knew most of these things going in, so I can’t complain too much. The trip serves its purpose. After our visit to Britain–where we return the two lenses, as well as cash in our accumulated gems and gold nuggets–we return to the Dungeon Deceit and the Tetrahedron Generator. The Avatar goes in and its guardian dies in a couple of hits from the sword. The Generator is destroyed.

You’ll have to take my word for it. I would trade every spell that sword is capable of casting for a permanent “Light” spell.

We cap this expedition with a return to Moonglow. Mariah is her old self, no longer confused or insane, although her character graphic still suggests she hasn’t slept, bathed, changed, or combed her hair in a while. She thanks me for restoring magic, as does Penumbra.

The way you know is that no one else ever solves any problems in Britannia.

I think it’s finally time to move on to Jhelom and Dupre, and to test out our new sword in the Dungeon Destard.

Time so far: 40 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-black-gate-la-forge/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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Larian’s gorgeous Baldur’s Gate 3 looks to be a game of groundbreaking systemic depth • Eurogamer.net

It’s early days for Baldur’s Gate 3. An end of year release window seems to have leaked but there’s “no exact date” for when it’s coming out, according to developer-publisher Larian Studios, of Divinity: Original Sin and Original Sin 2 fame. And when it does come out – simultaneously on Google Stadia and Steam – it’ll be in early access first. Understandably, early access can seem a bit icky to some, but Larian’s argument for it seems fair enough: the game needs en-masse testing from its own audience if it’s ever going to come together, and having now seen a marathon, over three hours long presentation of live gameplay, I can see why. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game with an extraordinary level of systemic depth and remarkable complexity. Across the board it’s a game that’ll need time. Time to polish, time to balance, and quite a bit of time from the player, I’d imagine, to really get anywhere close to understanding and mastering its systems. But from what was shown of the game and what Larian has told us in our Baldur’s Gate 3 interview, it’ll be worth the wait – and then some.

Baldur’s Gate 3

Developer: Larian Studios

Publisher: Larian Studios

Platform: PC (Steam), Stadia

Availability: Early Access “later this year”.

Our presentation opened with the same stupidly pretty CGI intro you’ll have seen from the Baldur’s Gate 3 panel going on at PAX, before a quick run through the character selector, a skip over the “secret” tutorial, a couple of hours of early game party-gathering and dungeon crawling, and then a closer look at a massive, later-game dungeon that showed all the flashy systems off with a little more depth. To start at the beginning though, on the most fundamental level, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a darker, more viscerally detailed story than what you might have been used to from Larian.

The story begins with a bunch of Mind Flayers – angry, definitely-not-Cthulhu squid people with some pretty gnarly magic powers – flying around in a jumbo squid mothership called a Nautiloid. On board, you and a handful of others are held prisoner and infected with what could more or less be described as brain worms: a “tadpole”, with lots of teeth, bores its way under your eyelid, through the back of your eye and into your brain. The Nautiloid crashes, you wash up on a spot of beach, and your mission is to find someone who can get that tadpole out of your head before it pops through your skull and rather gruesomely turns you into a Mind Flayer yourself. As I said: a bit darker than Divinity.

The tadpole does come with a special power though, which acts as one of Baldur’s Gate 3’s central gimmicks: you can sort of “mind meld” with anyone else who has one, and as well as the “origin characters”, plenty of characters around the world will turn out to have a pet tadpole of their own. (The character creator itself appears just as detailed as Original Sin 1 and 2. Origin characters and their special, fully-voiced, cutscened and backstoried facets return of course, and in the creator you can choose race and subrace, background, class, subclass, and just about everything else conceivable).

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On the surface, much of the time the tadpole mind-melding boils down to the odd special dialogue option with fellow brain wormers, acting as sort of shortcuts through tricky conversations, in the vein of special origin character options that are seemingly always positive. But that’s a superficial explanation, really. The tadpoles are one part of a much wider set of systems – or perhaps more accurately, a wider web of sets of systems – that all play off one another with Larian’s now-typical panache. To get to the heart of how this little story gimmick plays into the wider game you need to go deeper, into what Baldur’s Gate 3 really is and how it really works.

What it is is complex. Start by thinking of a typical CRPG like Divinity: Original Sin, where the background numbers power the visible numbers, like your characters stats, which dictate your ability to navigate certain situations like persuading someone to let you out of prison through dialogue, or smash through a door with magic. All of the people-persuading and the door-smashing intertwines with a set of rules, which in the Original Sin games is built around surfaces and statuses. So, if the floor’s on fire and you throw some water on it, or cast a water-based spell at it, the fire and water turn to a lingering cloud of steam. Standing in the steam might do damage to you or cure you of an ailment or whatever else, depending on all the moving parts like what race you are and what innate traits you have, and so on.

The devious grease and fire trap in action (click to expand these images, and for better look at the UI behind our captions).

Now, intertwine those rules with the rules of Dungeons and Dragons, as they were back in the original Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2. You can dip weapons in flaming sconces to light them on fire, you can throw anything you have on your person (more on that in a bit) you can stack objects to create stairs (more on that too), and, above all, everything is powered by a D20 dice roll. Sometimes that’s behind the scenes, little formulae whirring away in the background as you walk around the world passing and failing perception checks for little hidden levers or pressure plates; or spotting or failing to spot facial twitches that reveal anxiety or anger in conversation, all the working-out of which viewable in a little bottom-right tooltip that lifts the mathematical bonnet. Most of the time, however, that dice roll is quite explicit. You roll for initiative on encountering enemies, according to things like who has the high ground or the element of surprise. You roll for explicit attempts to do things like persuade or intimidate in conversation, as well as the passive rolls in the background that might just pop something up. You roll, three times, to see just how “dead” you are when you’re downed: fail three and you’re dead for good (if you haven’t already been picked off, or if you haven’t got a resurrection scroll on some other party member to recover).

Stir all that together and what do you have? Chaos. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a molotov cocktail of a game, every action’s consequences shattering outwards, spreading and spurting across seemingly the entire length of a run through it. Take the experience we had, with Larian’s founder, Swen Vincke, taking control of the origin character Astarion, who’s a vampire spawn (like a vampire only he has a boss, who’s more of a proper vampire). Astarion, being a vampire, regularly has the option to just go ahead and feast on the neck of whoever he’s talking to. Most of the time that’s not a very good idea and there’s not a very good chance it’ll work, but if you want to try it, you can. To demonstrate this, Swen opted to chow down on a sleeping party member at your camp (you can make camp in most places to heal up, restore ability uses and so on). He needed to role an 18 or higher, out of 20, to succeed – the purposes of the demonstration was to show it was pretty tough – and of course he rolls a natural 20 and now we’re noshing on our mate, left the next day with an especially upbeat Asatarion and a very “tired” Cleric.

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But that, really, is only the surface of what you can do – and more than that just how much the inherent chance-based systems of D&D affect an already complicated mesh of things you can do in games like Divinity. At the very beginning of our first playthrough, at what would be the first little tester battle after the tutorial, Vincke missed a shot that had a 90 percent chance to hit, scored a critical miss on what would’ve been a one-hit-kill spell, and got killed in one shot by a critical hit from the enemy. So we roll back through all the intro chat for another go and: two hits, two kills, enemies done and dealt with before they could even move.

In another skirmish, this time our party up to three members, against about four bandit grunts, Vincke showed off the game’s new stealth system, sneaking Astarion up behind an archer that would have had an incredible high-ground advantage to punt him off the ledge before the battle begins. Again though: bad luck. Misses and critical hits in all the wrong directions mean that, even including the tactical ledge-punt, the battle goes horrifically and we’re left kiting the bandits out into the woods towards some neutral fighters nearby, in the hope they’ll join in. A magical, disembodied hand was used to try and nudge someone off another ledge but missed. Potions were used up, abilities spent, and Astarion left to throw his boots at an enemy for a bit of chip damage – and hits. Half-triggering the nearby group of neutrals changes how we meet them later on, forcing us to fight the last one instead of triggering a cutscene. Some party members are lost for good. Some secrets, hidden in plain sight just off the beaten path, through some bushes and under some noticeably odd-looking rock, go undiscovered. The point above all is luck can swing a playthrough to the wildest extremes of success and failure. Enjoying that will come down to how happy you are to improvise, make do and fly by the seat of your throwable boots. Or how regularly you like to save.

There’s 4 player online co-op, and two-player couch co-op confirmed by Larian so far.

There’s another rather ingenious twist to all this, too, which that bandit skirmish hinted at. You can split your party and put any of them into turn-based mode at one point, while the others can simultaneously walk around in “real time”. Baldur’s Gate 3 is technically a turn-based game. The combat is turn-based, dialogue is turn-based, so to speak, and the environmental puzzles, of which there seem to be many, are solved in that manner too. But you move around the world in real time and this system, really, is a bit of a hybrid. In our playthrough Astarion wandered down into a dungeon – previously guarded by those bandits – on his own, and worked his way through most if it solo while the others were left presumably frozen up on the surface. Then we got stuck in some combat after some more bad luck, including a key that failed to open a chest it should’ve (and an attempt to smash the chest open that just… smashed the chest entirely), and had to bring in some help. So back up on the surface another party member smashed through the ground they were standing on to drop down, conveniently, into a room next door to this tricky battle – a spot of movie magic, I’d suspect: “oh no it’s going wrong in exactly the right place, we definitely didn’t plan for this as a way to show you how the hybrid system works!” – and so we turn a 2v1 into a 2v2, that additional party member automatically entering turn-based mode when he reached the “battle area”.

Later in that dungeon we got stuck in a particularly grisly grease and fire-based trap (with a dash of raising the undead thrown in for good measure) and again Vincke demonstrated the power of lateral thinking by juggling real-time and turn-based movement to bring other party members to join and work around the hazards. Often that actually descends into a sort of calculated gaming of the game itself, and fascinatingly that seems to be where the game really finds its groove. Baldur’s Gate 3’s magic is in its malleability, but also in your malleability, as a player that has to react and adapt. You are supposed to try and break it. You’re supposed to build a staircase of crates the other side of a door to an enemy and keep popping it open and closed to confuse them and juggle the aggro. You’re supposed to see what happens when you throw this at that, cast this on them, say this to her or climb up onto that.

The elaborate verticality in action, as our party splits and sneaks through a multi-floored dungeon.

Which brings us to the climbing, and perhaps the biggest shift in how CRPG regulars will need to work their way through Baldur’s Gate 3: its fascinating use of verticality. Your characters can now all jump quite a significant way – success depending on, you guessed it, character stats and semi-hidden D20s – and so even in towns and hubs you can work your way onto a building and down into it through the roof, bypassing locked doors or barred gates. In the later-game dungeon we played, you’re tasked with tackling a tough boss surrounded by enemies. He’s got a tadpole himself, but try to use that in dialogue and, unless you’re lucky with the dice, it’ll probably fail, leaving him angry and you exposed to a pretty nasty ambush. So what do you do?

Well, if you picked up some interesting-looking barrels several hours ago, you could use them to create sort of veil of darkness to sneak up behind him. Things – obviously – went wrong when this was attempted in our playthrough so again, improvisation. The stealthiest character was sent up to the rafters – this must be the third or fourth level up of at least a four or five level dungeon – and around beside the boss. A very risky jump is attempted, to right behind him, and somehow pulled off. An explosive barrel is placed, and the our rogue Astarion works his way out up the other side, knocking down the escape ladder with him. Then the conversation, which our other party members had seemingly been paused in, half-way through, this entire time, can play out. Mind-meld fails, boss gets angry – planted explosive barrel gets detonated! – and he goes flying across the room and through a hole, down three floors to some giant spiders in the basement. Carnage – but all predicated on a decision to pick up some barrels hours earlier, your own ingenuity to think of it, your knowledge of how the systems themselves can be gamed, and the luck to pull it off.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/larians-gorgeous-baldurs-gate-3-looks-to-be-a-game-of-groundbreaking-systemic-depth-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=larians-gorgeous-baldurs-gate-3-looks-to-be-a-game-of-groundbreaking-systemic-depth-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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