Wow, I haven’t written a blog entry in a little while! A while longer than I meant to wait, anyway.
It’s not for lack of stuff to talk about. I had a really nice summer trip! My partner and I went on a really interesting scenic edu-tainment train ride through the woods, we tie-dyed a bunch of shirts, I ironed prints onto a few, I ran a one-shot Werewolf: the Apocalypse module about were-rats for my partner and their sister (said module, or pieces of it, may or may not get cleaned-up and shared on this site in the future…)
Also I smoked a lot of weed and enjoyed the outdoors. I explored the area more thoroughly and with greater confidence than I had in the past. Walking in the mountains is invigorating, and I was near enough to the coast that the sea breeze always cleared heatwaves out in a timely fashion.
I think I’ll probably always associate “Jig of Life” with that uphill-downhill walks by those steep cliffs, and “Hello Earth” with my sudden discovery of a tree-mounted Marian shrine bathed in morning light, along with her pride-flag-waving neighbor.
There was a lot on my mind but in a really good way. I felt really chill.
This made for some whiplash getting back to where I live, in the middle of a massive heat-wave which is only just now beginning to surrender to the rains. Dry 110F temps for weeks on end is being swapped for flash floods and 90-100F temps – sometimes it almost gets down to 80 in the coolest part of the night. Despite the rising humidity, I’m in favor of this change. I like to be outside in the evening when those sudden rains hit.
That change in scenery has kind of made it harder to handle other, unrelated bumps in the road. Regular life stressors, y’know. Family arguments. Tedious errands. Sickness. Oh God, knock on wood, I’m currently crossing my fingers that I’m not coming down with some flu or cold or COVID. At time of writing, I’m pretty sore.
You know what all this was conducive to? Me suddenly getting into A Song of Ice and Fire, via the Roy Dotrice audiobooks. It’s been a grounding and gratifying new thing in my life, seriously.
Now of all the little asides I keep going on about, ASOIAF is possibly the most blog-worthy subject of them all. It even segues beautifully from all my floating thoughts about the natural world, about climate angst, family, religious tension, religious harmony, dark fantasy…
But this is not an ASOIAF blog post. Maybe another day. Hopefully. Who knows, that selfsame blog post might be when I go on a passionate nerd rant about Werewolf: the Apocalypse – storylines about wargs and worship of the Old Gods are possibly my favorites, after all.
Anyway, if ever, it’ll have to be after I finish the rest of the books, I only recently finished book three. As a matter of fact, finishing up A Storm of Swords and getting to a point where I could take my mind out of book-mode was the final barrier I had to pass before I could allow myself to start playing Baldur’s Gate 3.
Have you heard of Baldur’s Gate 3? You have to have heard about Baldur’s Gate 3. EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT BALDUR’S GATE 3!
I was so excited about the discovery that one computer in my possession could run it, as long as I cleared almost everything out of the hard drive. So I have my main laptop where I make art and socialize, and I have my BG3 machine. I toyed around in character creation, got used to the mechanics in the tutorial and even a bit of the early game, and then decided on a character that I’d take through the story. There he waited for me to power through the last little stretch of aSoS. I was listening to Tyrion’s trial at the grocery store, and I was nearly delirious by the time Lady Stoneheart reared her head.
I was so excited that I wrote down the tenets of my Paladin Oath of choice and taped them on the wall above my computer. At the LGBT group meeting I went to the day before I got started, I walked up a gal there with a D20 on her t shirt and was like, “You hear about this game? Are you playing it? I’m gonna get to play it soon!”. I kept glancing at a picture of my Character-to-be that I had saved to my phone. Yeah I’m a dweeb IRL but you could’ve long since guessed that.
I don’t have to tell you Baldur’s Gate 3 it’s amazing. But I will. It’s amazing. It’s a game I didn’t know I need, that I didn’t dare wish for. I can’t believe how good it is!
Understand that I am not even a Dungeons & Dragons guy. Never have been, apart from enjoying some niche supplemental guide books as a kid. No hate if it's your thing, but its lore doesn’t really speak to me. Any time I’ve almost joined in on a campaign, the plans fell through or I just wasn’t hooked by the DM or the story they offered. Not enough to invest my time in it.
Basically what I'm saying is that I'm really impressed that I AM hooked and I AM willing to invest my time. A lot of it.
I don’t use Steam so I can only give an estimate, but I’ve sunk around 45 hours into BG3. More actually, definitely more, because that only accounts for the one campaign, and the save-file counter likely only began running after I got out of the character creation menu.
Maybe BG3 is at an odd sort of advantage for me, because ASOIAF is not the worst way to whet one’s appetite for a game like this. Fantasy with a gritty, gross-out streak, dark themes, etc. There's also the fact that I rarely get to play a game like this while it's still new, so that's exciting too.
Anyway, this game is so absorbing, and so, so, so good. I have complaints obviously, like anyone else, but nothing drastic, nothing overly distracting. Maybe I’ll change my tune when the hype wears off, or I run into some truly awful bugs, but I can forgive a lot if the meat of an RPG is good enough. You’d know that just by knowing I’m a massive fan of VtM: Bloodlines.
My approach to this game kinda reminds me of the way I first got into Bloodlines, actually. I was warned not to play a Malkavian as my first vampire, but I did anyway, and had a lovely time and could parse the story just fine. I was warned not to play the Dark Urge as my first Tav, but I did it anyway, and as upsetting as it can get at times, I don’t regret it. I’m really feeling good about my choices.
Another similarity is that in my first couple VtM:B runs, I had a mindset of “Be good enough at social skills to discover interesting dialogue, be good enough at dishing out melee damage to brute-force tough situations.”
These two desires made Paladin a very tempting choice of character class, and so I decided to lean into that. I made a Paladin who follows the Oath of the Ancients, and his name is Gahault the Green! A Dragonborn knight who heals the sick and defends the weak. But as I said, I also picked the Dark Urge origin, so despite all his Paladin vows, he would be tempted, and sometimes forced to do terrible and violent things.
Just the premise alone was exciting. And still is. I’m not done with the game yet! Currently I am very very early in Act 2 (out of 3). I know only the barest hints about what the Dark Urge actually is, and I haven’t even shared a kiss with my love interest of choice!
I took a few days’ break because I was gaming so hard and knew I needed to remind myself how to show restraint, not lose track of obligations, etc. Now that I’m about to open the floodgates again, seemed like a good time to crack open my blog and ramble to my heart’s content.
Here is where I might have liked to go on and on and on about my character, about the personality that has emerged through gameplay, about what he’s up to, and how cute the dragonborn look, but I’d like to wrap this up. Maybe I’ll write a character profile or a blog post with more thoughts on the game and my choices, or maybe you’ll be left in suspense forever. Maybe I'll never post again. Then you'd really have have no choice but to confront me irl to know my thoughts about furry OCs and video games...!!!
I have just a few free hours before I have to start on dinner/evening chores, and I can't deny my craving for more Baldur's Gate any longer.