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Well thank Ao for that much. Edit: and thanks for this snipe too, I guess.
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Mar 27, 2023 23:01
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Arivia posted:WotC has publicly said they do not consider anything that was published prior to 5th edition D&D or since then without a Dungeons and Dragons logo on it to be canon. So there's nothing stopping them from bringing back Aerie or whomever these days, you're right. Wow, that's incredibly, phenomenally stupid and an insult to everything that came before and the people that built it. The dumb fuckers completely regressed D&D by making 5e in fact 3e Lite, but then piss on the legacy that was built on the backs of 2e and 3e. Insulting.
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Mar 28, 2023 00:14
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JustJeff88 posted:Wow, that's incredibly, phenomenally stupid and an insult to everything that came before and the people that built it. The dumb fuckers completely regressed D&D by making 5e in fact 3e Lite, but then piss on the legacy that was built on the backs of 2e and 3e. Insulting. Is that like how they pissed on the legacy that built on the backs of 2e and 3e by naming a character Astarion?
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Mar 28, 2023 00:53
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Pwnstar posted:Abdel Adrian is a shocking name, spend like ten minutes thinking of something cool next time my guy. We'll get to that, actually. - So I apologize for not putting up a new post over the weekend, but I was just in a slump (not because of these books, but other reasons). Let's continue! Chapter 17 starts with Tamoko perspective, as she observes Sarevok talking with someone via magic mirror (this was something introduced in Chapter 2, I just didn't make note of it), where Sarevok is told that they can't find the 'book', in reference to the Bhaal book. We transition back to Abdel and Jaheira, who have reached Cloak Wood mining camp, where they observe that it's being operated via slave labor. Abdel and Jaheira start freeing the slaves, when they come upon one in particular... quote:“You have got to be kidding,” one of the dwarves said in heavily accented common. Yes, Yeslick made it into the book! "Keep your straw and sticks! Only stone protects the pigs!" There's then a brief jump forward to just after they kill the last Iron Throne slaver (which is fine by me, because the action scenes tend to be the most tedious things to read), and Abdel inquires about Yeslick's background. quote:At first Abdel thought the dwarf must be as slow of mind as he was of speech. Hours later, when the Iron Throne slavers were dead or scattered into the forest, he realized that Yeslick was anything but stupid. The dwarf fought with foresight and experience, and a calm certainty that he was smarter than his opponents. The Iron Throne had scraped the bottom of the barrel for recruits at this camp, though. Abdel lost count of how many inexperienced mercenaries he killed—at least eight—and he had barely broken a sweat, though he did have one nasty cut on his left forearm from some bumbling fool’s lucky slice with a short sword. Now I know what you're thinking: "Oh, they made a typo. It's 'Rieltar' not 'Reiltar'." But no. All instances of Rieltar are spelt like this. Now to be fair, apparently this typo was present in several place in the original game (according to the BG wiki). However...eh, we'll get to other 'errors' when we get to them. That aside, this leads into what's roughly two pages covering Yeslick's backstory (how he was a miner, working with the Dwarf engineers of Orothiar in the Cloak Wood mines, and how they accidentally dug into a lake, causing a flood (so the flood you use to destroy the mines in game is part of the backstory here in the book), and the fallout of it. It's honestly not a terribly written section, but it's just very out of place, since not of the other party members get a backstory like this. Yeslick talks about how he traveled to Sembia, which is where he met Reiltar, and we get this very amusing bit: quote:“Reiltar took an interest in my work,” Yeslick told Abdel. “I’m a good smith, and many a man in Urmlaspyr—all of Sembia—had heard my name. I did some work for him, some specialty stuff that looking back… well, it gives me the heebie-jeebies, I can tell you that much.”  Jaheira finds that the mining supplies have branding from the Seven Suns, and Yeslick says that Reiltar has a man working in Baldur's Gate, so we're finally off to the titular city! Chapter 18 starts as such: quote:Baldur’s Gate.  However, it was here where I picked up on something: quote:They’d been on the road for four and a half days and in that time had never been as close as they had been in the water, when they clung to each other as much to stave off the cold and madness as simply to touch. Jaheira was mourning her husband and to a surprisingly equal degree, Xan. Abdel had never traveled with anyone for very long. He’d known Jaheira now almost as long as he’d known anyone. He’d fought alongside men who’d died before—died close enough to spill some of their blood on him—and he never found it in him to mourn. Gorion’s death had changed all that. The sellsword used to revel in death, in killing, more than as a symbol of victory or a simple turning of the great wheel of life. Now, he saw the pain in it, and he hoped he could kill as easily when he needed to, and thought maybe he wouldn’t kill so easily when he didn’t. Abdel does seem to have something of an arc regarding his struggle with being a Bhaalspawn, and it seems to be tied with his relationship with Jaheira. We'll see this come up again in the BG2 novel. We get a description of the city as the ferry travels in. Another name anomaly I spied here (which again, is repeated) is that the Ducal Palace is just called the "ducal palace"; it is not treated as a proper noun. quote:“Which is the Seven Suns?” Jaheira asked the old ferryman. Abdel had almost forgotten why they’d come to Baldur’s Gate. gently caress's sake, Jaheira cannot catch a break in this book. As mentioned, though, they make their way to the Elfsong Tavern. where Abdel, along with ordering food and drink, also sends a message to Scar. Yes, in the book, Scar and Abdel were friends/work associates prior to the events of the book. We then learn the namesake of the Elfsong Tavern. quote:She stopped when Abdel put a hand to her mouth. She stopped more from surprise than anything, then she realized the general tenor of the place had changed. It was almost dead quiet, save for the rattling of a shutter in the wind, and a woman’s singing. Jaheira gently drew Abdel’s hand from her mouth and held it. She scanned the room for the source of the ethereal voice, but no woman stood among the quiet, suddenly thoughtful patrons. I didn't really pay attention to the flavor text about the Elfsong Tavern, so maybe this is a thing, but I just remember one of the three-or-four tracks that play in the various inns/taverns when I went to it in the game. Actually, fun fact: one of the tavern tracks in Baldur's Gate (Tavern Theme 2, I think) is actually a reused track from Descent to Undermountain. Scar shows up, and they discuss the Seven Suns and the Iron Throne. Scar says this is the first time he's heard of the Iron Throne (remember they aren't a competing merchant in the book), but he talks about how the Seven Suns have not been operating as they usually have, and he makes mention of Jhasso (the guy you save from the basement of the Seven Suns). Since Scar can't officially investigate, it's up to Abdel and Jaheira to sneak in and scope things out. Abdel also reveals that's he knows that Jaheira is a Harper. Chapter 19 starts with Abdel and Jaheira casing the Seven Suns warehouse, and we get this paragraph: quote:Abdel grunted and touched her arm, then pointed to a side door of the warehouse, visible from where they stood. A small group of sweaty teamsters emerged from the building, talking and laughing amongst themselves. They stayed together, probably on their way to one of the many dockside taverns, and eventually wandered out of sight. I was surprised to see the term 'teamsters' here. I looked it up, and a teamster is how they referred to those who drove draft animals (horses, mules, etc.) pulling wagons. I'm more familiar with the 'teamsters' being in reference to union members (as in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which encompasses more that just truck drivers). I'm not entirely sure what the author meant. Being generous, I would assume the former, (although according to what I read, the term 'teamster' didn't become common until the 1800s), though if it is the latter, I guess it's nice to know that there exist labor unions in the Forgotten Realms. Jaheira asks Abdel how he deduced she was a Harper. quote:“How did you know I was a Harper?” she asked, breaking the mood for the space of a heartbeat before Abdel started to laugh again. Night falls, and they break into the warehouse. They sneak around a bit, but then get caught by wharf rats (that's what the book calls them) and they get chased to an area downstairs, where they find a doppleganger that turns into a Flaming Fist, and another that knocks them out. They then wake up in a cell with another person. quote:“Abdel,” Jaheira called, apparently from another cell, “say something.” I don't know FR lore all that well, but I'm pretty sure the Lords of Waterdeep are not like 90% dopplegangers (although maybe that's  ). The first section of Chapter 20 focuses on Scar, in his home. quote:Harold Loggerson of Bowshot cut himself playing with his father’s best axe at the age of nine. He couldn’t sit down for the three weeks it took the cut to heal, and it left a long, ragged scar, a scar that few had ever seen, but that gave him a name more fitting for a leader of mercenaries than Harold. Two things: 1.) Scar's real name is Harold Loggerson. 2.) Scar's nickname comes from the fact that he got a scar playing with his father's axe as child. The cut from the axe made him unable to sit down for three weeks, and very few people have seen it. When I first read this, I tried to figure out how you could play with an axe and hurt yourself in such a way, and apart from maybe hitting your thigh, they only way I can read this is that Scar managed to hit himself in the rear end with an axe, which makes me think he just sat on it by accident. Scar reminisces on his life, which is fitting because Abdel, Jaheira, and Jhasso show up, except they're actually dopplegangers. There's a long fight scene, which ends in Scar getting killed. The scene changes to the quote:“By Umberlee’s undulating bosom, boy,” Sergeant Maerik belted out, “what in the name of every other god are you doing here, you addle-pated son of a flea-bitten—!” That last line is kind of funny. The two rush to Eltan's chambers to find...that Eltan is still alive, having slain the doppleganger. quote:“M’lord,” Maerik said, “I—” That ends Chapter 20, and this post. I'll try and post some more tomorrow. There's about eight chapters left, so if I can keep my weekday posting schedule going, we might get to BG2 by the end of the week. Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Mar 28, 2023 |
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Mar 28, 2023 03:47
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So many things that could be criticised here, but two that leap out: 1) Firstly, it's rather sad that, in a game with so many colourful characters, it's really only a party of two most of the time. Intentional to constantly overplay the 'romantic tension' between Jaheira and the so-called protagonist, I suppose. B) I assume that the references to Khalid being an adulterous bastard are in order to make us think 'good riddance' when he dies, in order to allow 1), above, to seem less creepy.
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Mar 28, 2023 13:38
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I just finished my first playthrough of Siege of Dragonspear in preparation for BG3 and I'm just here to say that despite some of the jank in it I really liked it. Pity that the whole Skie Silvershield thing ends up going nowhere, because I'd like to see where that plotline would lead.
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Mar 28, 2023 15:08
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Snicker-Snack posted:I just finished my first playthrough of Siege of Dragonspear in preparation for BG3 and I'm just here to say that despite some of the jank in it I really liked it. Pity that the whole Skie Silvershield thing ends up going nowhere, because I'd like to see where that plotline would lead. There's a mod called Skie: The Cost of One Girl's Soul that picks it up in BG2. I've only ever played partway through it but it seems decent enough.
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Mar 28, 2023 22:38
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It was meant to be picked up in BG2 during their planned expansion taking place between SoA and ToB but it was cancelled after SoD underperformed. Real sad we will never get it.
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Mar 29, 2023 02:00
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cheesetriangles posted:It was meant to be picked up in BG2 during their planned expansion taking place between SoA and ToB but it was cancelled after SoD underperformed. Real sad we will never get it. Just great when a game comes out, is well received by the public and critics, but it didn't sell 4 billion copies so it's a failure.
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Mar 29, 2023 03:31
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the thread posted:
There is an adventure/module called Murder in Baldur's Gate that establishes that Abdel Adrian became a duke of BG, along with Coran, and the adventure is about stopping Viekang (the teleporting guy from BG2 and ToB) from killing Abdel to resurrect Bhaal. It looks like that adventure came out in 2013, but a search for it shows a version for 5e, so I dunno if it's canon or not. Outside of that, I know that Viconia and Imoen show up in Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, and Jaheira is going to be in Baldur's Gate 3. However, none of the BG2 cast seems like they ever made an appearance in anything else. You'd think Jan would have been able to earn a cameo or something with him being a goofy character in the same vein as Minsc, but I guess not. - Anyway, back to the book. Chapter 21 starts with the Flaming Fist coming to rescue Abdel, Jaheria, and Jhasso, and with them is Duke Eltan, along with a priest to see check if the three are legit. I...kind of like this. Duke Eltan didn't really do anything in the game, save for being the guy who sends you to Candlekeep with a book to continue investigating the Iron Throne, and then you have to rescue him when you return to the city. Since Scar dies both in the game and the book, making him more active in actually addressing the issues plaguing the city is more interesting. They take Abdel and Jaheira back to the ducal palace. quote:“I understand,” Eltan said, “that you fought beside my friend Harold Loggerson more than once.” I don't know how Eltan knows where the Iron Throne meets. Maybe Scar's spirit told him? The book cuts ahead to where they've just finished raiding the Iron Throne's hideout. They find a journal that points them back to Candlekeep. quote:“Can they get in there?” Eltan asked. “My understanding was that Candlekeep rarely if ever opens her gates. How could a whole cabal of conspirators use Candlekeep as a meeting place?” Unless I'm mistaken, I think Gorion was supposed to be a Harper. quote:“It’s possible,” Jaheira said. “We—the Harpers—have thought there’s one man behind this whole thing. A dwarf the Iron Throne had made a slave told us this man’s name. He’s a wealthy merchant from Sembia named Reiltar. I have reason to believe this man Reiltar is the—is a son of Bhaal.” quote:Chapter 22 Sarevok and Tamoko talk, with Tamoko not being keen on the whole 'murder, on a grand scale' thing, which Sarevok challenges with her being an assassin when he found her. A doppleganger shows up, and Sarevok is mad that they got discovered, though only he didn't expect it to be so soon. Tamoko goes to execute the doppleganger, but it fights back, while shape-changing into her. The fight is brief, though, as she manages to dispatch it. quote:Tamoko batted its sword away and took its head off in a single zigzagging swing that was too fast for even Sarevok to see. The headless body convulsed through its re-transformation, but Tamoko didn’t watch. She closed her eyes and forced her mind and spirit back together, forced herself back to the plane of life and time.  We return to Abdel and Jaheira on the way back to Candlekeep. Abdel decides to take another look at the Bhaal book, and he has a reaction to it. Jaheira then tells him that he is a Bhaalspawn. Something I skipped over is that when Abdel meets Khalid at the Friendly Arm Inn, Khalid refers to him by his full name (Abdel Adrian). Chapter 4 posted:“You are not Abdel Adrian?” the Amnian asked. Later, Jaheira refers to him by his full name, and it puts him on edge. Chapter 19 posted:He smiled at Jaheira, who could see his white teeth in the darkness and said, “Abdel Adrian, Master Thief.” Here Jaheira explains his name: quote:“And Abdel Adrian?” he asked. That's...not totally accurate? I looked it up, and the name 'Abdel', in Arabic, means 'servant'. Adrian seems to have a couple of meanings. 'Dark' or 'dark one' is among them, but also 'rich', and also 'son of Adria' (in reference to Hadria, an Italian town that was located near the Adriatic Sea). So while Abdel Adrian could be 'Son of the Dark', he could also be 'Servant of the Rich', and just a few lines before this paragraph: quote:“I am a sellsword, Jaheira, a hired thug. I guard caravans and warehouses and fat merchants. I have a good sword arm, and I’m taller than most, but I’m no god.” They talk a bit more before the chapter closes out. quote:“Do you take pleasure in killing anymore, Abdel?” she asked him pointedly. Not according to Throne of Bhaal.  Chapter 23 begins with Abdel and Jaheira at Candlekeep, arguing with the Beuros the gate guard to let them in. Beuros will not let them in without donating a book, which makes me think that the two walked nearly ten days to Candlekeep, hoping that they'd just let him in. quote:“Why this all of a sudden, Beuros? What’s going on in there?” Not according to Merriam-Webster. Abdel realizes he does have a book, so he give Beuros the Bhaal book. We then get the scene again from Beuros' perspective. When I first started reading this sectionit, I thought maybe there was an error in the book, where they just repeated the last part. However, it soon deviates with some background on Beuros. quote:Beuros was one of many charged with defending the gates of Candlekeep, the place that had been his home for his entire life. He’d known Abdel for almost as long and never liked him. Abdel was the adopted son—foster son really—of Gorion, a priest and a scholar, one of Beuros’s favorite teachers. Beuros had been pushed around by the young Abdel, as had many of Beuros’s friends. When Abdel left Candlekeep, years before, to seek out his own life as a mercenary or hired thug, or whatever his slow wits and strong arms had bought him, Beuros, like many others in the monastery, was nothing but happy to see him go. He’d returned a few times, once quite recently, to visit Gorion, and that time had actually left with the old monk. That had been at least a dozen tendays ago, though it seemed shorter to Beuros. As far as he was concerned, anytime Abdel came back to Candlekeep was too soon. Now he’d returned with some woman—a half-elf, and she was dressed for battle. Beuros could believe almost anything about Abdel, up to and including the distasteful notion that the bully had somehow managed to trade the learned Gorion, a man worthy of respect and beyond reproach, for this mercenary trollop half-breed. It could just be this guy's perspective, but I like to think that when Abdel left, everyone in Candlekeep was like, "I'm so glad that rear end in a top hat's gone." Beuros sends a message to Tethtoril during the argument with the two, and he shows up just as Abdel hands the book over. It then transitions to Tethtoril' chambers, where he explains that the book is a copy of Bhaal's unholy rites. He also presents to Abdel items that Gorion left with him, that being a pass stone that gives him 'free run of Candlekeep' and a letter. Chapter 24 Abdel reads aloud the letter Gorion left to him. The letter differs from the game. I don't want to post the whole thing, but one of the changes I noted was that it was a paladin that brought Abdel to Gorion, and that in addition to the Harpers, an order of paladins of Torm were also monitoring the Bhaalspawn. He also names Sarevok as being Abdel's half-brother. Gorion letter also talks about the pass stone, where he says not to tell the monks about it (lest they confiscate it), and that it will allow access to the inner libraries, which have a secret route out of Candlekeep. This is convenient, because just as soon as he's done reading, guards come into the room and start assaulting the two. When one guard hits Jaheria, it sets Abdel off. quote:Jaheira pulled back on the staff still pinned to her side, and the guard let go. She staggered back half a step, and the guard punched her squarely in the side of the jaw. It was a tight-fisted, full-out punch that men rarely, if ever, threw at women, and the sight of it made Abdel’s blood boil almost as much as the sight of Jaheira falling heavily to the ground, blinking, stunned, and rapidly losing consciousness. Tethtoril casts Sleep on Abdel, and then he wakes up in a cell with Jaheira. It's not super clear, but it comes across like there were people killed in Candlekeep, as Tethtoril says 'the guard makes nine', and presents evidence implicating the two. One is Abdel's dagger, which if you remember, Xan stole. The other is Jaheira's braclet (I skipped over it, but Jaheira gave Xan her bracelet when he went to scout the bandit camp, and when he returns, he says that he lost it). quote:“Pilten,” Tethtoril said, and the guard Abdel had known when they were both children stepped forward. “Take these and… all of this… and secure it.” That ends Chapter 24. Only five chapters left. Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 04:02
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about canon and characters
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A fun fact is that the novels were basically first drafts based on preproduction documents, without even like, the game being available to the author, and they weren’t meant to go into publishing https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/my-bad-short-bad-book/
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Mar 29, 2023 06:52
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Max Wilco posted:There is an adventure/module called Murder in Baldur's Gate that establishes that Abdel Adrian became a duke of BG, along with Coran, and the adventure is about stopping Viekang (the teleporting guy from BG2 and ToB) from killing Abdel to resurrect Bhaal. It looks like that adventure came out in 2013, but a search for it shows a version for 5e, so I dunno if it's canon or not. iirc it was released as a module for the D&D 5e playtest, so that's why it might be showing as released before 5e's official release date. Since the module explains how Bhaal was brought back in 5e, they probably wanted to get it out of the way early.
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Mar 29, 2023 07:35
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Max Wilco posted:There is an adventure/module called Murder in Baldur's Gate that establishes that Abdel Adrian became a duke of BG, along with Coran, and the adventure is about stopping Viekang (the teleporting guy from BG2 and ToB) from killing Abdel to resurrect Bhaal. It looks like that adventure came out in 2013, but a search for it shows a version for 5e, so I dunno if it's canon or not. Fun fact: the adventure is actually about something else entirely and Viekang and Abdel kill each other more or less off screen to resurrect Bhaal.
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Mar 29, 2023 08:15
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...Scar's name is Harold Loggerson?
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Mar 29, 2023 09:50
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Vichan posted:...Scar's name is Harold Loggerson? Weirdly delivered, too. E: "I hear you fought alongside Harold Loggerson." A: "Who?" E: "Oh, yeah, everybody just knew him as Scar. But he's dead now so I might as well tell everyone that his real name was goofy as heck, lmao"
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Mar 29, 2023 11:54
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That bit about the "heebie jeebies" deserves to be in a much better book
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Mar 29, 2023 15:15
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cheesetriangles posted:It was meant to be picked up in BG2 during their planned expansion taking place between SoA and ToB but it was cancelled after SoD underperformed. Real sad we will never get it. Yeah, I figured something like that might have happened. Still a bummer. docbeard posted:There's a mod called Skie: The Cost of One Girl's Soul that picks it up in BG2. I've only ever played partway through it but it seems decent enough. I'm not usually a fan of these types of "unfinished quests" type mods, but I've been meaning to play through BG2 and ToB anyway, so I guess might as well give it a try. Anyone knows a good, simple shapeshifter rebalancing mod? Honestly all I really want is a bigger number of greater shapeshift:GWW uses early on, claws counting as +3, and restoring off-hand usage in BG2EE so that it works like it does in BG1EE. I could probably edit the files in Near Infinity myself, but I might as well ask here in case something like that already exists.
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Mar 29, 2023 16:06
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Snicker-Snack posted:Anyone knows a good, simple shapeshifter rebalancing mod? Honestly all I really want is a bigger number of greater shapeshift:GWW uses early on, claws counting as +3, and restoring off-hand usage in BG2EE so that it works like it does in BG1EE. I could probably edit the files in Near Infinity myself, but I might as well ask here in case something like that already exists. SCS includes an 'Improved Shapeshifting' component that works pretty well. It works similarly to the much-less-balanced component in Tweaks Anthology in that it gives you a 'shapeshift token' that you equip as a weapon to transform at will, but with somewhat more reasonable constraints; no spellcasting while transformed, most effects that buff (or nerf) your strength and dex don't affect you while shapeshifted, no benefits from shields/offhand weapons, etc. It feels like it puts you on par with a reasonably well-equipped fighter to me. My most recent Iron Man run was with an SCS shapeshifter and she did very well. (You could probably just install this component while avoiding most/all of the rest of SCS if you really wanted to, it's pretty modular that way.) I think there are a few Shapeshifter kit enhancements in some of the various kit packs out there (like Artisan's) too but I've never really tried them.
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Mar 29, 2023 16:36
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Anyone else seen the DnD movie yet and noticed any cool stuff from the games? I loved how the main bad guys was Edwins mage order. It makes mechanic and narrative sense, even if all you know of it is Edwin (because he's a super powerful murdurous rear end in a top hat)
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Mar 29, 2023 20:41
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The Red Wizards of Thay aren't really a game-specific thing. Iirc they have been major bad guys in the Forgotten Realms background since the start, and only increased in prominence with every edition.
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Mar 29, 2023 21:20
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At this rate DnD 1 is be written from Edwins point of view and the first line people are gonna read is "Again, you disturb me!"
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Mar 29, 2023 21:24
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Slashrat posted:The Red Wizards of Thay aren't really a game-specific thing. Iirc they have been major bad guys in the Forgotten Realms background since the start, and only increased in prominence with every edition. Yeah, I kind of figured, didn't mean to imply it was from the game specifically just that it was fun watching the movie looking for things that are also in the game and that stuck out more than a lot of the others.
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Mar 29, 2023 22:44
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Slashrat posted:The Red Wizards of Thay aren't really a game-specific thing. Iirc they have been major bad guys in the Forgotten Realms background since the start, and only increased in prominence with every edition. True. Szass Tam, the head Necromancer and de facto head of the nation, is basically a demi god and drat near untouchable. He's about one step below Velsharoon, the actual demi-god of necromancy and the undead. Thay is a horrible nation regardless. There are more slaves than actual citizens and murder is basically the national past-time. It's basically an antagonist that happens to be an entire country.
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Mar 30, 2023 00:32
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goblin week posted:A fun fact is that the novels were basically first drafts based on preproduction documents, without even like, the game being available to the author, and they weren’t meant to go into publishing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfwBhIGUZiM&t=3s I had intended to go on a long preamble before getting into the BG2 novel, but seeing this has prompted me to post it now. One of the things I noted about BG2 when starting it was that the book was published in 1999, putting it roughly a year out from when BG1 was released, but a full year before BG2. Given how BG2 starts with Khalid dead, my thought was that the author had accidentally wrote themselves into a corner; they couldn't have known that BG2 would establish a canon party for BG2, and that Khalid would die there, and not during the course of BG1. The other thing is that, I think given the task, making a novelization of Baldur's Gate would have been an issue. Prior to reading the novels, I had actually read a fan novelization of BG2 I had found (it was on Sorcerer's Place, but the author has a website, where they've done the same with BG1, Planescape: Torment, and VtM:Bloodlines). The fan novelization is far more authentic to the game, but the issue with it (and I don't mean this as an insult), is that it doesn't really read like a proper novel. The big issue with it is that it tries to encompass as much as the game as it can, and while it does well in that regard (I actually learned a couple of things in reading it), it has a lot of things that don't really work. There's one part where Minsc is injured in an encounter with vampires, and the protagonist decides to eject him from the party, hoping he will return home (he doesn't, and comes back towards the end). It tries to cover all the quests and side-content that it can, but it results in the book feeling unfocused, where (as is often joked about) despite the fact that the priority is to save Imoen, a lot of time is spent running around, doing various quests. Again, my point of this isn't to slam the fan-novel, but it occurred to me from reading it and the official novel that if you were to sit down and try to adapt these games, how would you do it? What party members do you include in the cast, and which do you reject? Do you try to cover one of the side-quests from the game, or craft something new that makes for better pacing? Should the main character be a fighter? A wizard? A thief? If you were tasked with writing an adaptation of BG, how would you plot it out? Consider if you had just played it for the first time, and hadn't used all the party member or opted not to do certain quests. Knowing now that the Athans only had pre-production docs to go off of, and was doing it under a time-crunch, it makes sense why it reads so poorly, and why so many things are different from the game (I actually want to see those design docs, because I'm wondering how much changed) . One of the things I meant to say was that regardless of how bad these books get, I don't have any ill will towards Philip Athans. Even prior to reading that blog post, I wondered if it was the issue that he was just tasked with a lovely job, and I wondered if his other work was better (it looks like he's done other FR books, including one of the books in the War of the Spider Queen trilogy, which I remember being vaguely interested in checking out at one point.) Philip Athans posted:Under no circumstances should you read Baldur’s Gate. It’s out of print anyway, and please don’t bother trying to find it. This was my first published “novel,” and I wish it would disappear from the memory of mankind for all time. I dunno, should I keep going with this?
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Mar 30, 2023 02:18
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Max Wilco posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfwBhIGUZiM&t=3s No disrespect to Phil, because he's done good work elsewhere, but yes. I would never watch a car wreck or American football because I'm not a bloodthirsty Yank, but this is vaguely amusing in an 'Oh my <shake head>' sort of way. Edit: He wrote one of the novels in the 'War of the Spider Queen' sextet - I knew that I had read one of his books.
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Mar 30, 2023 03:24
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Please keep going.
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Mar 30, 2023 06:46
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Yes, keep going. We’re not doing this to hate on a novice writer who got a crappy commission, we’re here to extract entertainment from a goofy piece of writing. As long as everyone knows there’s no malice meant towards a person who it sounds like has left the cringey stuff behind him, we can still toast our marshmallows over this smoking crater of a novel.
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Mar 30, 2023 07:28
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ya he was called out on it and said hes just glad ppl remember SOMETHING he wrote
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Mar 30, 2023 07:34
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Well in that case, I'll continue, but there probably won't be another update until tomorrow. I had an appointment yesterday, so I got home a bit later, and I wanted to touch on that blog post first. After that, I was going to start drafting something up to try and post later, but since I wasn't sure if anyone wanted to see more, I decided against it. I can start drafting something when I get home today, and maybe I can get the end of the BG1 novel posted tomorrow evening, and then maybe get the start of the BG2 novel ready to go on Saturday (provided I don't get caught up in other things). Also something I forgot to bring up: the BG novel being based on pre-production notes tracks because from what I've read, the Planescape: Torment novel had the same issue, where the book differs because it was based on the first draft of the game.
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Mar 30, 2023 13:07
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Well I won't speak to the character of Phil Athans because I don' t know anything about him personally or frankly care about FR fantasy books anymore, but I was thoroughly enjoying the War of the Spider Queen books back when I read them. At I was, right up until I got to the second last one, the one he wrote. It was just very different in tone and it was the little things, like in the previous books whenever someone would cast a spell the authors would often describe how they would grab different reagents out of their robes needed to cast the spell and it nice flavor and consistent. Whereas in Athan's book, people are just whipping spells all willy nilly, without a thought for the way it was described in the other books. There were several really glaring inconsistencies like that in the book. The other one that sticks out to me a huge glaring plot hole was that an important character (whose name I forget) in an earlier book had been using darkness in the plane of shadow to teleport around and he was taken care of by someone by magically gluing a brightly glowing gem on him as he went to the plane of shadow, trapping him there since he needed darkness to move about. And in Athans' book, he just rocks up again, no explanation how he got back, oh and he's a Shadow Dragon now because why not? Like, all of the books were written by different authors and they all had their little quirky differences, because obviously. Like I remember the author of the first book is clearly a fan of fencing and talked about it in a lot of details and a lot of that was dropped in later books but that's okay. They always seemed to have a lot of consistency in the way things happened and worked, until everything was really glaringly different and odd when Phil Athans' book starts. It's been ages since I've read them so I don't really remember much else about that book in particular other than I really remember not liking it and now I realise it's by the guy who wrote the BG novelisation? I reckon he might just be a total hack, I seem to recall that in each of the spider queen books it described the writing positions that each author held and Athan's definitely had a more senior position than the others, like he was an editor or some high up at WotC guy in some way, so I reckon he might just have been in a position to write a lot of dreck and not much oversight. But as I said, it 's been years, this is old, old history, and who really cares anymore... Zeniel fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Mar 30, 2023 |
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Mar 30, 2023 14:17
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I had one major quibble with the War of the Spider Queen sextet, but it's so major to the plot of the collection that I don't want to bring it up.
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Mar 30, 2023 14:19
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Phil Athans' own Forgotten Realms trilogy that he got to do all by himself is "okay what if Atlas Shrugged but it's in Faerun and it's about a canal instead of trains" so you can take it from there
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Mar 30, 2023 14:25
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Max Wilco posted:Again, my point of this isn't to slam the fan-novel, but it occurred to me from reading it and the official novel that if you were to sit down and try to adapt these games, how would you do it? What party members do you include in the cast, and which do you reject? Do you try to cover one of the side-quests from the game, or craft something new that makes for better pacing? Should the main character be a fighter? A wizard? A thief? If you were tasked with writing an adaptation of BG, how would you plot it out? Consider if you had just played it for the first time, and hadn't used all the party member or opted not to do certain quests. You want to hit all the major story beats from the game without adding too much bloat. Probably run the "canon" party of Imoen, Khalid, Jaheira, Minsc and Dynaheir to allow an easy set-up for BG2. Fighter is an alright fit, throw some backstory about training with Hull and the other guards to explain it. I'd be tempted to skip the whole Gnoll Stronghold stuff with Dynaheir, maybe rescue her directly from Edwin instead (and set him up as a known rear end in a top hat for BG2 Thieves Guild content.) Could probably chop one step out of the Nashkel-Bandits-Cloakwood progression too to tighten things up a bit. Keep sidequesting to a minimum, the main quest doesn't leave a lot of room for it really. In BG2 you can nod to some sidequests in Chapter 2 (gotta get that coin) but working for the Thieves Guild is going to be more plot relevant, I wouldn't go off adventuring in the Windspear/Umar Hills or Trademeet, or go anywhere near strongholds in general. Jaheira and Minsc stay, YoshImoen is obvious, add two others if you like (you probably want a wizard of some sort for Cowled shenanigans.) I'm a fan of the Aerie/Haer'Dalis duo, Minsc gets a new witch and you can do the love triangle/quadrilateral thing if you really want to. Maybe skip the plane-hopping recruitment for simplicity's sake. I'd probably consider killing Haer'Dalis off at the end of BG2, leaving space for Sarevok in ToB.
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Mar 30, 2023 14:53
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Hi all, was pointed to this thread since I got the itch to play through some of my back catalogue. In the process of reinstalling Baldur's gate I got huge nostalgia (it installed Heat.net and Gamespy.com links and played a Descent 3 trailer) but...it didn't work so good. Headed to GoG, saw the expanded edition was like $5 Canadian, as was BG2, so I got both. I played back BG until I wandered into a higher leveled area and got autosaved and stuck, so I still have a lot to enjoy, it will be like playing for the first time. I never played BG2 before. I also plan to finally finish Planescape: Torment and not get faction locked out of progression. Who wrote games like that anyway? After all these, I have Morrowind Diamond waiting. Just removed its plastic wrapper last night in fact. Good at collecting games, bad at playing them. But now I have more time so, away we go! Expect some stupid newbie questions from me in coming weeks.
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Mar 30, 2023 15:18
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I'm not sure how you can lock your self out of progressing the story in PS:T. Do you remember where you got stuck at?
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Mar 30, 2023 15:20
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Slashrat posted:I'm not sure how you can lock your self out of progressing the story in PS:T. Do you remember where you got stuck at? it was iirc the Godsmen, where I needed to enter some back room in the Foundry but it was locked to me for...reasons, I think related to previous factions that I had joined or interacted with or whatever.
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Mar 30, 2023 15:27
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Arivia posted:Phil Athans' own Forgotten Realms trilogy that he got to do all by himself is "okay what if Atlas Shrugged but it's in Faerun and it's about a canal instead of trains" so you can take it from there I assume that you mean the Watercourse Trilogy. I haven't read those, and given that Atlas Shrugged is the Worst Book Ever Written, I don't think that I shall. Slashrat posted:I'm not sure how you can lock your self out of progressing the story in PS:T. Me either
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Mar 30, 2023 21:16
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Holy poo poo can't believe this thread is still around. I just got access to my GOG account and discovered I have Baldurs Gate Enhanced, Baldurs gate 2, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale 2. Really thinking of firing one of these up. Although I'm not sure if I can play them because their 32bit windows games.
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Mar 31, 2023 02:28
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They work just fine even on Windows 11.
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Mar 31, 2023 02:56
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cheesetriangles posted:They work just fine even on Windows 11. Oh good. Yeah I wasn't sure if they would work on Windows 11. I'll download Baldur's Gate Enhanced edition and install it and see if I can play it. edit: Huh apparently I have Siege of Dragonspear as well.
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Mar 31, 2023 03:19
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