Divinity What makes a "Baldur's Gate" to you?

[Curratum]

AD&D ruleset is a child of its own time and, as such, it is plagued by dysfunctional rules and flawed design decisions.

There is no best ruleset, only the one with flaws in sections you dont care as much.

This is EXACTLY it! High five!

 

[S.torch]

Desolate Dancer

If I understand your post correctly, "Balance" and "Streamlining" brought 3rd ed., 3.5, Pathfinder upon us?

It wasn't the creator of Dungeon and Dragons itself that said that the beginning of the decline was the 3rd edition?

 

[NJClaw]

All this bitching about the flaws of the old editions, like they make BG/2 a less enjoyable game somehow retroactively, just makes me itch to fire up Pathfinder Kingmaker right now. You poor saps.

But I am not saying that. I still play BG both because i love the atmosphere and because I enjoy the ruleset. With all the bitching about 5e I am not trying to shit on BG 1&2, I am just trying to convince others to give 5e as a BG3 system a chance.

AD&D ruleset is a child of its own time and, as such, it is plagued by dysfunctional rules and flawed design decisions.

There is no best ruleset, only the one with flaws in sections you dont care as much.

I absolutely agree. There are features of 3.x and 5e that are objectively flawed and, all considered, I think that 2e is far more functional than 3.x, even if I still prefer 3.x over 2e.

 

[Citizen]

* Elminster is an ancient super-wizard who's all shriveled and bearded and yet gets to score with the hottest chicks in the world, who are all so attached to him and how awesome he is that when he's believed dead they can do NOTHING but weep and be lost in sorrow.

*Elminster had to spend years of his life transformed into a hot girl and having a lesbian relationship as part of his training.

* Spellfire was a novel by Greenwood about a young woman given an awesome magical power. The result of her using this power was blasting her own clothes off, constantly leaving her naked and sweaty.

* The goddess Eilistrae is super-good and requires her priestesses to dance naked while worshipping her.

* In any supplement written by greenwood, there is exact information on where in each featured town, village or city one can find the festhall. For reference, festhalls are brothels. Many said books includes [Volo] rating the festhalls in-character, implying he's been trying out the wares all over.

* The Simbul is the most powerful female spellcaster in the realms. She's a white-haired knockout who hates clothes and frequently tears out of them in fits of passion. She also likes transforming into animals and run wild, naked.

Ed Greenwood's shit in D&D was always hysterical and full of his fetishes, mostly bondage, transformation (gender changing), and other such stuff.

There were tonnes of Gender Change items in the magic items books apart from the illustrious Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity, like the Dryad Cordial which makes a male go to sleep and gradually turns them into a totally hot chick.

It's mentioned that matriarchs for fun rape the shit out of the other female drow under them, a lot of times with strap-ons or other tools (yes it's canon that the drow discovered how to invent rubber, they also invented gunpowder and a few other things but that's another story), and there's one text that mentions a matriarch who would use magic to grow an extra appendage to make it so when she abused her subjects she still got some pleasure out of intruding upon their most private of locations.

Where did you get these bg3 design docs?

 

[DraQ]

Gotta get that 18/00, bro.

BG1's was one of the shittiest chargens in existence, second maybe to Skyrim (and only because Skyrim literally didn't have any - I don't count cosmetic customization as chargen here).
It takes special kind of mental enfeeblement to come up with what amounts to rolling for point buy (AKA the worst of both worlds, though it's kind of a pattern with BG - see RTWP) and downright mental mutilation to defend that system, enjoy it and consider it good.

 

[Hamster]

Baldur's Gate never needed a sequel. It was done with Throne of Baal and needs to be left alone.

If we are going to compare BG3 to previous installments, i think we should probably do it not as sequel to original, but as two separate attempts at capturing the "feeling" of fantasy adventure.

I want to quote my old post on this matter:

I have no problem with the game itself, i am unironically 100% down to poping some moles and enjoying some retarded jokes in Divinity: Ego Illithidis. But completely unnecessary franchise necromancy bugs me. Why use Baldur's Gate name for a game that has almost nothing in common with it? People today barely even remember BG, why not make Vox Machina the Official Video Game instead?

And it's not even about rtwp and perspective for me. What i always loved about Infinity Engine games is how they elevated mediocre source material with excellent art direction. Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were my first and for a long time only exposure to Forgotten Realms, and for years afterwards i was puzzled by people disliking FR because how awesome it felt in those games. Yeah, later i read the source books and understood why it's shit, but Infinity Engine games made it look like an amazing setting. It just pains to me to imagine locations from Baldur's Gate remade in cheesy and generic wow-style art direction of Larian.

Larian can probably make a great game, possible even an epic one, with amazing combat and vast interactive world. But it will never be able to have art directon that elevates the source material like Icewind Dale did. DivOS2 has pleasant visuals that create a very comfy and warm feeling, but those games were fucking BEAUTIFUL.

I really like these words of wisdom by Shadenuat:

What is classic fantasy and why it affects us in way it does is eternal debate, which would lead to Tolkien and what is Tolkien and so on.

But if you want to see what was lost in transition seek no further than Larian's own franchise, Divinity. Just compare the look and feel of Divinity 1 to newest ones and you will see.

In a world where you start from nautiloid burned by 3 dragons as vampire or exploding wizard there is no place for peasants and soldiers, no place for childhood rogue friends with 1 gp daggers, or +2 swords or defeating kobolds giving any satisfaction. And there is no place for you.

This is exactly it.
Hey, DivOS2 is one one my favourite games of all time, and i will probably also enjoy going on a ridiculously over the top high level adventure with plane hopping on Nautiloid and other insane shit in BG3. But i don't expect Larian to ever capture the feeling of playing through an interactive fantasy novel set in world you can actually believe in.

 

[Razzoriel]

Problem is Tolkien waa heavily influenced by catholicism, and nearly every modern dev is an atheist. 80's/90's was roughly even.

 

[octavius]

Problem is Tolkien waa heavily influenced by catholicism, and nearly every modern dev is an atheist. 80's/90's was roughly even.

He was more influenced by the Finnish mythology and Beowulf, and his pantheon of gods (except Iluvatar himself) were more like Greek or Norse gods.
Even though is works were ultimately grounded in catholism, the catholic influence was far more subtle.

 

[Elex]

I agree that 2e is outdated and full of holdovers that needed to be updated. But not all progress is good and sometimes you end up with Pintos that explode.

5e is the result of Mike Mearl's particular bugbears: he hates miniatures, hates combat, and hates dealing with complex spells or magic items. He's a pure storyfag who somehow ended up in charge of one of the premier combat RPGs in existence and proceeded to turn it first into a lame-ass board game (4e) and now a dumbass game of 'lets pretend.'

5e is designed to be played with 5x5 grids
90% of 5e rules are about combat.
5e is full of complex magic items (artifacts and similar stuff)

no idea wtf are you smoking.

also mike mearls is the franchise creative director of 5e.
The lead designer of 5e the one that approve every single rule is jeremy crawford the man that tweet around how to read the rules.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Gotta get that 18/00, bro.

BG1's was one of the shittiest chargens in existence, second maybe to Skyrim (and only because Skyrim didn't have any - I don't count cosmetic customization as chargen here).
It takes special kind of mental enfeeblement to come up with what amounts to rolling for point buy (AKA the worst of both worlds, though it's kind of a pattern with BG - see RTWP) and downright mental mutilation to defend that system, enjoy it and consider it good.

Yeah, next to Darklands, Realms of Arkania, Daggerfall, Fallout, Wizardry 8 or even Arcanum, Baldur's Gate was a disgrace in that regard. Not to mention that these games were quick to drop items that neutralized many chargen choices (like those 18 Charisma items that tend to appear pretty early, which are there as a fuck you for those how made high CHA characters).

 

[DraQ]

Baldur's Gate never needed a sequel. It was done with Throne of Baal and needs to be left alone.

True enough. More so even BG1's sequel shouldn't have been called BG2.

If we are going to compare BG3 to previous installments, i think we should probably do it not as sequel to original, but as two separate attempts at capturing the "feeling" of fantasy adventure.

It will therefore be extra ironic if BG3 ends up more deserving of its title than BG2 despite not really being a sequel. It will, after all, feature Baldur's Gate.

Larian can probably make a great game, possible even an epic one, with amazing combat and vast interactive world. But it will never be able to have art directon that elevates the source material like Icewind Dale did. DivOS2 has pleasant visuals that create a very comfy and warm feeling, but those games were fucking BEAUTIFUL.
(...)
Hey, DivOS2 is one one my favourite games of all time, and i will probably also enjoy going on a ridiculously over the top high level adventure with plane hopping on Nautiloid and other insane shit in BG3. But i don't expect Larian to ever capture the feeling of playing through an interactive fantasy novel set in world you can actually believe in.

Larian isn't half bad with art direction, their only game where it was shit was WoW, I mean DOS1 (and even there it sometimes ended surprisingly well looking) and DOS2 seems to draw some nice inspirations.

 

[mondblut]

In 2020 we are playing 5e instead of 2e for the same reasons that we are driving teslas instead of real cars.

Fixed. And as for the reasons: millenial hipsters, duh.

 

[Dyspaire]

From what I've noticed, 'Dex prefers AD&D 2nd followed by D&D 3.0/.5/.75 followed by 5th followed by 4th. At least, the posters whom I considered to be monocled do.

5th is streamlined shit, imo.

I have yet to fool around with 5th ed., but yes, I would otherwise agree with your ranking order.

As has been alluded to by others here, the reason so many of us have a deep fondness for 2nd ed. is the very reason that's it's just a little weird. It's absolutely not perfect, and that's what makes it great.

Goddamn I miss the oldschool fantasy art from the 80s and 90s.
You forgot to mention Clyde Caldwell, too.

Are there even any younger artists who follow those kinds of styles? All I see are too clean digital artworks that don't evoke the same atmosphere.

Yes, you're right. His name slipped my mind. He definitely deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the two I did remember. Thanks for bringing him up.

It's the one thing Deadfire did better than anything else. For all it's flaws, the Deadfire engine is the closest thing I've ever seen to a Caldwell/Elmore/Parkinson painting brought to life. (Honorable mention to ToEE.)

And I honestly don't know if there are any young artists working in that semi-photorealistic style these days. There must be, I suppose. It's a shame that a generation raised on the cheap-and-easy anime artstyle don't know any better.

(And yes, I know there are exceptions to that rule within anime. But anime looks the way it does precisely because it is cheap and easy in comparison to the infinitely more detailed painterly style of the three artists mentioned above.

Spoiler

Sneaking into all the houses in Beregost and robbing them blind. Oh fuck, spiders!

Serious answer: Baldur's Gate leaves the door open to the rogues in your party causing trouble because they're being mischievous and greedy. WoW actually accomplished this, as well (see: Payo Classic beta highlights), and even managed to pit party members against in each other in a sort of metagame. Having a little something for several player types to roleplay without it all being about whether you deal your damage from the front, back, or magically is what I think BG successfully ported into CRPG format from the tabletop sessions.

Thanks for posting this bit of music. Instant flashbacks to so many wonderful moments. How many times have I sat in front of a glowing monitor in a darkened room over the last 20+ years, heard this bit of music, and thought to myself, "Oh my god this is so much fun."


This is my favorite thread on the Codex in months for some reason. As Lilura alluded to earlier here, there are people who post here hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly like myself whom I've followed along with for years, who I know have been into this crazy hobby for nearly as long as I have.

Although I only post here once in a blue moon, I read the Codex every day, and I know I'm not alone in that pattern of contribution. It's nice to see some of the voices I really respect posting their considered thoughts here.

If Larian had any sense, they would take a good, long look at this thread and start over. Wishful thinking, I know.

I remember perhaps 10 or so years ago the actor Nathan Fillion (Capt. Malcolm Reynolds to those who know) was quoted as saying that if he won the $250 million dollar Powerball lottery, he would buy the rights to Firefly outright, and then crank out original stories in that universe until he was too old to do it any more.

If I was in a similar position, I would buy the rights to the Solasta: Crown of the Magister engine from Tactical Adventures, hire the team from Ceres Games (Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen developers) to implement the AD&D 2nd ed. ruleset in a true turn-based grognard fashion, and then of course hire MCA or someone similar to oversee the implementation of whatever long, involved epic storyline they felt like telling within the Forgotten Realms.

(Plus, of course, the tools necessary for all of us to tell our own original stories with relative ease inside the mythic engine I just described.)


Look at me, dreaming the impossible dream.

Again, this is a great thread, and Larian are fools not to listen to the ideas and opinions being posted herein.

 

[Humanophage]

Campaign tone has to be epic high fantasy

Power fantasy itemisation

I strongly disagree that these two are features of Baldur's Gate 1. Its tone is low- to mid-level fantasy, which makes it rather unique. It is genuinely annoying that pretty much all fantasy has to be epic in scope, even if it's dark fantasy. Why must everything degenerate into dragons, demons, and power metal?

The items are also mostly quite tame, such that finding a non-magic full plate armour is an event.

Another fairly unique thing is that the companions are abundant and non-obligatory. Later Bioware games force companions onto you because they have all the trashy expensive voiced dialogues. It would be good if there could be about 15 joinable NPCs, but with more fleshed out personalities than in BG1.

 

[mondblut]

From what I've noticed, 'Dex prefers AD&D 2nd followed by D&D 3.0/.5/.75 followed by 5th followed by 4th. At least, the posters whom I considered to be monocled do.

5th is streamlined shit, imo.

I have yet to fool around with 5th ed., but yes, I would otherwise agree with your ranking order.

As has been alluded to by others here, the reason so many of us have a deep fondness for 2nd ed. is the very reason that's it's just a little weird. It's absolutely not perfect, and that's what makes it great.

1st edition was there to sell adventure modules.
2nd edition was there to sell splatbooks and campaign settings.
3rd edition was there to sell minis and dungeon tiles.
4th edition was there to sell boxed boardgames.
5th edition is there to earn a cut from camwhores fooling around with dice on twitch and youtube.

Even if 5e is mechanically a decent system, it really goes out of the way to appear even more unlikeable than 4e for any person of class and taste.

 

[Razzoriel]

From what I've noticed, 'Dex prefers AD&D 2nd followed by D&D 3.0/.5/.75 followed by 5th followed by 4th. At least, the posters whom I considered to be monocled do.

5th is streamlined shit, imo.

I have yet to fool around with 5th ed., but yes, I would otherwise agree with your ranking order.

As has been alluded to by others here, the reason so many of us have a deep fondness for 2nd ed. is the very reason that's it's just a little weird. It's absolutely not perfect, and that's what makes it great.

1st edition was there to sell adventure modules.
2nd edition was there to sell splatbooks and campaign settings.
3rd edition was there to sell minis and dungeon tiles.
4th edition was there to sell boxed boardgames.
5th edition is there to earn a cut from camwhores fooling around with dice on twitch and youtube.

Even if 5e is mechanically a decent system, it really goes out of the way to appear even more unlikeable than 4e for any person of class and taste.

Ditch your Tesla and get your Cadillac.

 

[catfood]

If I had to pick one D&D rule set to play right our of the box that would be 5e. But why would anyone play D&D when OSR exists?

 

[DraQ]

You forgot the option: Abuse the engine in many unexpected ways, aka "cheese"

A BG title without cheese is not BG.

Swen is a man of many cheeses.

 

[DraQ]

1st edition was there to sell adventure modules.
2nd edition was there to sell splatbooks and campaign settings.
3rd edition was there to sell minis and dungeon tiles.
4th edition was there to sell to WOWtards.

Fixed.

And 5th edition seems to be there to not earn a cut from those who've seen 4th and were unimpressed.
Not this kind of cut though, the kind you need stitches for.

 

[Tom Baker's Arse]

Problem is Tolkien waa heavily influenced by catholicism, and nearly every modern dev is an atheist. 80's/90's was roughly even.

He was more influenced by the Finnish mythology and Beowulf, and his pantheon of gods (except Iluvatar himself) were more like Greek or Norse gods.
Even though is works were ultimately grounded in catholism, the catholic influence was far more subtle.

Tolkien himself stated repeatedly over the years that his works had no Christian influence / grounding, despite the fact that for years people had been saying the opposite. What is a fact, and what octavius touched upon was Toikien was indeed influenced by the Norse and Finnish languages, from a philological standpoint. I wholeheartedly agree with the Beowulf point, as it was a great influencer in the world-building that went into The Hobbit and the LOTR as well.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I strongly disagree that these two are features of Baldur's Gate 1

I agree with your points but the poll title is intentionally phrased ""Baldur's Gate" line of games".

 

[octavius]

Problem is Tolkien waa heavily influenced by catholicism, and nearly every modern dev is an atheist. 80's/90's was roughly even.

He was more influenced by the Finnish mythology and Beowulf, and his pantheon of gods (except Iluvatar himself) were more like Greek or Norse gods.
Even though is works were ultimately grounded in catholism, the catholic influence was far more subtle.

Tolkien himself stated repeatedly over the years that his works had no Christian influence / grounding, despite the fact that for years people had been saying the opposite. What is a fact, and what octavius touched upon was Toikien was indeed influenced by the Norse and Finnish languages, from a philological standpoint. I wholeheartedly agree with the Beowulf point, as it was a great influencer in the world-building that went into The Hobbit and the LOTR as well.

Tolkien himself said that

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

But the "northern spirit" and the "pagan" influences still shine through much stronger IMO, despite Gandalf's Resurrection and the Providence of Gollum falling into the pit of Mount Doom just as he had finally got back his Precious.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

But the "northern spirit" and the "pagan" influences still shine through much stronger IMO, despite Gandalf's Resurrection and the Providence of Gollum falling into the pit of Mount Doom just as he had finally got back his Precious.

From an Orthodox perspective (though I presume that it applies to traditional Catholic theology as well), paganism developed as a result of man's natural revelation of God in His creation, so it was not demonic or what not, just misguided. Just as in the case of the Jews when Christ came not to abolish, but to fulfill the law through the supernatural revelation of His embodiment; paganism was baptized by the Christian faith and its influences are an integral part of European Christian heritage. From this perspective, to contrast Christian and supposedly pagan influences in Tolkien's writings is a false dichotomy. The work of Tolkien is fully Christian AND with strong influences from native folk tales and what not.

 

[mondblut]

1st edition was there to sell adventure modules.
2nd edition was there to sell splatbooks and campaign settings.
3rd edition was there to sell minis and dungeon tiles.
4th edition was there to sell to WOWtards.

Fixed.

And 5th edition seems to be there to not earn a cut from those who've seen 4th and were unimpressed.
Not this kind of cut though, the kind you need stitches for.

I'd take WOWtards over "critical role", frankly. Normies are the worst.

 

[Elex]

Fixed.

And 5th edition seems to be there to not earn a cut from those who've seen 4th and were unimpressed.
Not this kind of cut though, the kind you need stitches for.

It’s curious that in 2015-2020 the 5e success is based on selling books, PHB (player handbook) is always on amazon bestsellers.

the success also come from wotc decision of release less books each year: that make the game more accessible for new players.