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Down the Rabbit Hole: Lost in Faerûn

I love Baldur’s Gate 3.

I’ve been playing it almost exclusively for the last two months, and have somehow lost over 150 hours (according to Steam, though the game itself says it’s more like 120).

I have never gotten this into an RPG before that wasn’t pencil and paper, and I can think of only a handful of games I’ve spent this much time and energy on, especially in such a short timeframe.

I first started playing tabletop D&D as a freshman in college. Some of my floormates were getting a 3.5 edition game going, and I was invited to join. There’d never been a big enough group of people in my hometown who knew how to play, so I never got to play before college. Needless to say, I leapt at the opportunity to play this fabled game, and I’ve been hooked ever since. We switched to 3.5/Pathfinder stuff when 4E came out, but since 2014, I’ve been playing 5th Edition almost exclusively. Despite this long relationship, I never got into any of the D&D video game properties like Neverwinter Nights or Baldur’s Gate. That all changed this year, when Larian Studios released Baldur’s Gate 3.

Based on the 5th Edition ruleset, BG3 is an incredibly immersive experience. In case you’ve somehow missed this cultural juggernaut thus far, the premise is this. One hundred years (roughly) after the events of the first two games in the franchise, a new threat has arisen in Faerûn. You play as one of a group of adventurers who have been captured by illithids, more commonly known as Mind Flayers. These creatures have infected you and your fellow prisoners with parasites that have taken up residence in your brain. The process that follows will inevitably (and painfully) transform you into a Mind Flayer as well. Before the horror can fully set in, the Mind Flayer ship you’re travelling on is attacked by a group of githyanki, a race of psionic warriors dedicated to combatting illithids anywhere they appear. When the ship crash lands along the Sword Coast, you’re lucky to survive. You’re quickly embroiled in local events as a battle looms between a druid grove sheltering tiefling refugees and a nearby camp of goblins. From here, you’re able to recruit your fellow infected in order to build your adventuring party, seeking a cure for the parasites in your heads as you make your way back to your home city, Baldur’s Gate.

The game boasts an immersive character builder, but also includes numerous pre-built characters that can be selected. Astarion, the elf rogue; Karlach, the tiefling barbarian; Lae’zel, the githyanki fighter; Shadowheart, the half-elf cleric; Gale, the human wizard; and Wyll, the human warlock are all available as Origins characters. If you choose to play as an original character, you can add all of the Origins characters to your adventuring party (though only up to three of them can accompany you at any given time). The final option for a player character is The Dark Urge, an evil-leaning character (that has a default race and class, but those can be changed in creation if you like) with ties to the previous games in the series. Whomever you choose to play as, you’re faced with an escalating series of challenges as you search for answers. The illithid tadpoles in your brain aren’t acting the way they normally would, and a conspiracy stretches all the way to the top of the Upper City of Baldur’s Gate, ensnaring you and your companions.

The gameplay, again, based on D&D’s 5th Edition ruleset is pretty straightforward, and Larian studios included three different difficulty settings so that players who are less familiar with D&D can still enjoy the depth of the story. As a veteran D&D player, but not used to the video game format, I opted for the middle road of Normal difficulty. I quickly acclimated to the controls (once I replaced my dying mouse, which had a tendency to double-click on its own, much to poor Astarion’s frustration). Now my first party, based around a gnome bard, is approaching the end of their journey, and my second playthrough with a half-orc monk is making solid progress in the first act of the game. Because there are so many possibilities for your journey to take, it’s absolutely worth the time to play at least twice. You’ll see that different character types will be offered different approaches to situations, and start to see things that you might have missed the first time around. Regardless, it’s going to be a good time.

I’m not in the business of doing video game reviews, but every once in a while, I just have to let y’all know that I’m enjoying something new. I hope you are too.

Summer Recap

Another summer has come and now mostly gone, and the children will be starting school soon. I’m enjoying a few days of vacation time in the aftermath of the Renaissance Festival (which, both in terms of supplemental employment and getting to spend time with friends, was a resounding success), and getting around to some stuff that’s been needing attention at the house. Goodbye old, rotting wood swing set that the previous owner built, hello new swing set that we’ll likely pass on to the next house owner.

The girls have discovered Yu-Gi-Oh on Netflix, and it’s been great fun to introduce them to the card game that I’ve been playing since 2004-2005. The core mechanics have remained largely unchanged, but the introduction of a lot of new types of monsters since I had last played (like, college, 2010) has made for a decent learning curve, even for me. I’m looking at using the laser cutter at the library to make myself a nice, wood engraved playing surface. It would be a) a fun project, and b) a really cool thing to show off.

Speaking of the library, I survived the 2018 Summer Adventure! I’m really tempted to get myself the Welcome to Night Vale “I Survived the Summer Reading Program” patch. I ran more programs for the teens during those two months than I ever would’ve imagined when I took on this job a year and a half ago. I’m still loving the whole Teen Services side of things (though it would be nice if I could go a summer without our Teen Services Librarian leaving). I’m actually excited for the school year to start, because it means that I get to go do more outreach events and book talks at local schools. It’s one of my favorite parts of the job, because it’s part acting and part readers’ advisory.

I’m going to do more writing over the next couple of months. V’s holding me to it, so I know that it’ll actually get done. Until then, we’re going to be celebrating the 12th anniversary of the day we met. Take care, and I’ll see you soon.

A Plan

I pitched a D&D campaign idea to some of my old group the other day. Partially inspired by Overwatch and HBO’s new take on Westworld, I began to think about a party of warforged gunslingers (this would be a 3.5/Pathfinder hybrid game). There are enough archetypes within the gunslinger class to give a party of 5-7 players a few unique abilities. I think probably a single session, with a Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven sort of plot. A group called in to defend a small village against an overwhelming force. I’m going to make this happen. It’s just a question of when. It’s always fun to have a one-shot ready to go should the opportunity arise.

Success

I’ve accomplished a goal that I’ve had for six years. I finally acquired print copies of the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 core rule books.

Yes, it’s kind of a big deal. There’s something awesome about having the actual books and not having to rely on PDF versions, especially when outlets for laptops are limited in our gaming spaces. Granted, I don’t have as much use for them right now as I would have a few years ago (mostly due to playing a lot of Pathfinder of late). However, I plan (and oddly enough, even hope) to be a parent someday. So when the girlfriend and I finally do have a kid, they’ll eventually be old enough to pick dad’s Player’s Handbook off the shelf. On that day, family game night gets a lot more interesting.

“Honey, get the dice and the video camera. We’ve been waiting for this moment.”

“Remember, offspring, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So is antimagic, disintegrate, scorching ray…”

“Two rules. Keep the cleric alive, and never split the party.”