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April 24, 2024, 01:30:12 PM

we're back, baby

Book Talk Split off here: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=17635.0

Quoting WUA for new page:

Quote

I dunno as I'd call the inside flaps bonus content. Anyway, I actually played some BG2 tonight. Update forthcoming tomorrow, in all likelihood. Nythrax demands respect for his authoritah, the cool kids meet some people almost as cool as themselves (and then kill them), and some benevolent servants of nature get butchered.

We got back to Castle Nythrax without serious incident. The majordomo wanted to talk about something, but we were all beyond beat so I brushed him off and we piled into our beds. Half a day later we were rested up and ready to listen to whatever new bullshit was presenting itself.

Seems there's this wild-haired priest of Tempus named Bolumir, who's turned up looking for a job. Word has gotten around that we're lacking any manner of clergy, and apparently this dude had been wandering for a long time after being run out of his old church over some undisclosed drama. I was just like "You weren't fiddling with the kiddies were you?" but the dude just laughed and told us how he clubbed the local mayor over the head with a beer mug after he was caught banging said mayor's wife. Seemed like a pretty cool guy.

Now Tempus wouldn't really be my first choice of a deity for my people to worship, but as a crazy-assed (and more-or-less morally neutral) war god, he's not that bad of a choice either. I doubt a real proper evil deity would fly around here anyway. So overall, I was inclined to give the dude a shot.

But no, Vaere is about ready to completely flip shit. Tempus nothing, she figures our peons should follow her own god, Talos. I'm just like yeah, what, are you gonna sit here in the castle and preach while the rest of us are out fighting? Then she tells me how the temple of Talos in Athkatla would certainly send someone out if we asked.

Bullshit, I tell her. Talos is the god of storms and REBELLION. I'm not leaving one of his clerics here unsupervised in my castle for weeks at a time, so they can get up to who-knows-what while we're gone. Naturally that started her going "What if it was me? What, you don't trust me? Bla bla bla!" and having a complete fucking conniption in general. Then Mordak makes some smartass comment about medicine again and Kor snorts.

Look, I'm patient with my friends, you know? But I've taken just about enough shit from people lately. "SHUT. THE FUCK. UP." I bellow, as I whip out my sword to swark the table in half. Everyone freezes. Not even Lilarcor moaning and bitching about being used like a common axe broke the tableau.

"You!" I point my sword at the new cleric. "You're hired, go find the chapel!"

"You!" I point at Vaere next. "Won't say shit about it! Nobody here worships Talos but you!"

"And you!" I wheel around to point at Kor and Mordak. "I will buy any sort of medicine and anything else I want for anyone I want. I will paint this place mother fucking pastel pink and donate all the money to orphans if I decide that's just what I fucking feel like doing, and you will either suck that shit up and like it or just plain leave. Quietly."

Then one last turn to take in the entire room. "All of you will respect my god damned authority, or you'll get the hell off my land before sunset." Nobody moved. Garrette looked bored. Lex looked amused. Kor gave me the "Damn bro!" look but nobody said anything. Mordak looked like a kicked puppy and Vaere was trying not to cry. The new cleric had already made himself scarce and the majordomo was pointedly studying some parchments.

I kinda felt bad for blowing my stack at Vaere. Really she's the most dependable of the lot, it's just that she happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back. But I was stoic. She should have known better than to give me shit like that in front of the help.

Anyway, I told them all to pack up their shit, because we were heading out to Athkatla to sell Firkraag's loot. Once that's done, I might take us back to Windspear Hills to try and find the tomb that Samia broad told us about. After that, it'll probably be time to break into Spellhold and catch Irenicus in his cell for a little one-on-one quality time. I haven't forgotten about my Two Hundred Thousand Mother Fucking Gold, not by a long shot.

---

Well for once we got in and out of Athkatla without anything stupid happening. We unloaded the fancy bow, and the paladin sword, and all that other shit at the Coronet, our very favorite tavern/pawnbroker. (Mostly because Alexia can steal back anything we decide we want.) We even stopped for a couple drinks without any random assassins or retarded patrons trying to attack us. I think we've built up enough of a rep that people know better.

Everyone was still kinda quiet too, and I was just taking in the overall air of sanity for once. Then Kor kills his beer in one long swill, looks somberly around the table, and suddenly starts belch-talking. "Ny-- thrax-- yelled-- at-- me-- I'm-- so-- sad-- and-- my-- name-- is-- raaaalph!" Garrette just did the one-raised-eyebrow thing, but Mordak started laughing uproariously. Lex squealed, grabbed Vaere, and they ran off to a table of their own.

The next morning we started the long-ass trudge back out to Windspear Hills. Only I think we took a wrong turn at the last minute, because while we were in the right general area, we were staring at this big rough stone pedestal thing built into a pool of water. Garrette tells us he thinks this is where those dryads, the ones Irenicus kept as sex slaves, wanted us to take their acorns. He has a better memory for that sort of shit than me.

Mind you the acorns are sitting in a drawer in my bedroom at Castle Nythrax, so I'm debating whether we should turn all the way back to get them and try to run some sort of scam. But then it's all made moot when the... the... pixie queen or what the fuck ever comes roaring up to us screaming "You killed them! It's bad enough he fucked them but you killed them! Rargh!" So much for that idea.

She starts casting spells, a couple of sirines poof out of nowhere to start shooting arrows, some giant bears run out of the woods to join in, and suddenly it's a giant 'cool kids versus nature' all-out brawl. Except nature never wins these little scuffles, does it? How many druids and dryads and whatever else have we sliced up since we left Candlekeep?

This one doesn't go any differently. Lilarcor goes "Woo! Toss a coin in that fountain!" as the pixie queen's head goes flying off, and I can hear a bear screaming as it's filled with poison bolts and spells going off behind me. Kor hit this one sirine so hard it split from one shoulder to the opposite hip.

We pilfered some gems and the pixie queen's magic dagger made from an iron golem, but on the whole they didn't have much loot. Whatever. Stomping assholes like this is it's own reward. Now I can toss those acorns in the fire when we get home.

We sorted out our location and got ourselves to Firkraag's fortress without having to fight anything worse than a few orcs, and delved back inside. There were still some hobgoblins scattered around with enough spirit left to fight, but by and large the defenses were just as broken as we left them.

We got up to where Samia wanted us to explore the tomb, but we didn't see any sign of her. Not that we cared. There were only two ways to go, and one was the way we had went last time, so figuring out where the tomb was didn't require much thought.

There were a lot of false doors with boobytraps on them, but Gar's gotten so good at this sort of shit that he can spot them from a mile away. The halls themselves were devoid of monsters, but man did we have to kill a lot of genies.

See, getting into the actual burial chamber requires you to have the old king's funeral mask. Except the mask was broken up into like six pieces and scattered about the tomb. Why they did that instead of, you know, burying him in it is beyond me.

Anyway yeah, each of these pieces is protected by a guardian. Dungeoneering 101 stuff. You're not going to find the six widgets that form the macguffin just lying around. These guardians consisted of five genies and a beholder. Which sounds tough, but since the pieces were scattered we were only fighting them one at a time. People who whoop a red dragon's ass in it's own lair do not sweat a beholder or a genie. We chopped them down easily enough.

So with all six pieces in hand Mordak manages to cobble the complete mask back together. Then he sneaks up behind Garrette, who's keeping watch, like he's going to drop it over his head. Gar is just like "Bad idea." without even turning around. So Mordak shrugs and drops it on his own head, and starts marching toward the center chamber like he owns the place.

Then starts hopping around like a god damned idiot, because apparently he's being attacked by something invisible that the mask allows him to see. Mind you, the rest of us can't see shit. Whatever invisibility this thing has can't even be dispelled.

So me and Kor just sort of piled forward and tackled the air in front of him, and beat the shit out of something invisible until it quit moving. All the while Mordak is dancing around in that idiotic mask yelling directions. "No, left! You're punching it in the ass! Look out for it's foot!"

With that out of the way, we got ourselves into the burial chamber, opened up the crypt itself, and found... a magical sword.

A magical sword that helps you kill dragons.

Gee, that might have come in handy a couple days ago. I think we did something in the wrong order here. Oh well, fuck it. I had Kor pack it away in case we come across another dragon someday. We also found an enchanted dragonscale shield that we gave to Vaere, since she's the only one who uses a shield.

Better than nothing, but the best was yet to come.

We turn to leave, and there's Samia. And her five best friends. With their weapons drawn. She's just like "Academics my ass, I just wanted you suckers to take the beating for us! Now hand over the shit!"

You have to understand, after fucking so many people over it's always sorta cute when someone else tries to do it to us. Oh it's a lot less amusing when they actually succeed (Irenicus! Two Hundred Thousand Mother Fucking Gold! RAR!) but it's fun watching people try.

I saluted her for being a real doublecrossing bitch, a woman after my own heart. Then we rushed them. By now I don't even need to call out any orders, everyone knows what's expected. Gar and Lex keep the spellcasters too full of arrows to get any spells off, Mordak casts things like Confusion and Emotion to fuck with their cohesiveness, followed by direct damage spells, and me, Kor, and Vaere go for the leader.

They put up an okay fight, but nothing amazing, and we murdered the shit out of them. Sadly their equipment was all worse than our own, but we threw it on the pile of shit to be sold. Everyone was feeling pretty chipper about it.

It's time for another Castle-to-Athkatla run to catch up on the news and sell loot, I think. Then it's time to go after Irenicus. I wouldn't have dawdled this long, but it was some pretty fucking productive dawdling. We've made like sixty grand, replaced all our stolen gear with better shit, and oh yeah, claimed our own castle.

Thanky. ^_^

More soon. I look forward to having some actual plot to parse instead of a collage of sidequests.

Great stuff. This so much deserves to become an audiobook read by Vin Diesel with the voice of Riddick. DRILLING AND MANLINESS

Man, the game gets lame from this point.

Before or after the Underdark?

After multiple chapters of hype about how super-hard it is to get to Spellhold, I get spirited to the island by midnight ship and discover... a thriving port city?! I paid 15k gold for passage to a place that's open to the public?! At least I have a reason (fraud) to want to kill Bodhi now.

Oh but getting to the village isn't the same as getting into Spellhold. No, breaking into Spellhold must be the epic part. I plucked aimlessly at the edges of sidequests about rescuing poor downtrodden whores and pickpockets, then had some guy with the key to the front door pretty much run up and impale himself on my sword.

With that entire block of content rendered moot, I killed a few quest characters for laughs and marched up to the front door of Spellhold and started kicking the shit out of stuff. But I gotta tell you, after the whole Firkraag thing I am just not feeling like another two-day long dungeon crawl.

This is WAY more on rails than BG1, with a lot more tedium. I've never played through BG2 before, and I gotta tell you, BG1 was lots better.

The whole Spellhold bit sucks, the Underdark makes it cool again and it turns crap when you escape the Underdark again.

I had forgotten how bloody big BG2 actually was.

Are you going to be continuing on into the Throne of Baal? Will we possibly see Nythrax ascending to take his rightful place in the pantheon of Evil gods? The only problem being that while it would be an appropriately awesome ending ToB does continue the downward spiral of story telling.

Oh I'll keep plugging away.

"Meandering plot exposition dialogue!"

1) GENERIC RESPONSE
2) REPHRASING OF #1
3) MARGE WHERE IS THE ANY KEY?

Taking another break from this. Don't know how long. BG2 isn't a very fun game. Thank you to everyone who has been reading and leaving me comments. I appreciate them more than is healthy.

Quote from: WindupAtheist on August 14, 2009, 11:00:07 AM

Everyone was still kinda quiet too, and I was just taking in the overall air of sanity for once. Then Kor kills his beer in one long swill, looks somberly around the table, and suddenly starts belch-talking. "Ny-- thrax-- yelled-- at-- me-- I'm-- so-- sad-- and-- my-- name-- is-- raaaalph!" Garrette just did the one-raised-eyebrow thing, but Mordak started laughing uproariously. Lex squealed, grabbed Vaere, and they ran off to a table of their own.

I am loath to say this, but harsh words & a smashed table may not be enough to quell the stupidity lurking in your goons' pointy little heads.

Moving right along, I've been putting some more thought into Kor & Mor's eventual fates:

My plan is to suspend them upside down in giant glass vats of alchemically refined lamp oil. First inject Kor & Mor's stomachs with potions of water breathing via tubes surgically implanted in their abdomens. Fasten glass goldfish bowls over their heads. (Piranhas and/or electric eels are optional) Drive jagged hooks on chains through their ankles. Haul your mouthy servitors up over the transparent vats by the chains. Slowly lower them into the oil. Stop once their feet are six inches above the surface of the oil line. Ignite the oil. Once the flames burn away their worthless hides, slowly raise them out of the oil. That way, you can control how quickly their flesh is crisped off. BTW, if Mordak looks like he's about to expire, just pump some potions of extra healing into his gut. Heck, with enough potions we can let them linger for as long as you like.

evil

You don't have to kill them, but you should both make an example of them & tamp out any lingering questions over how Castle Nythrax is ruled.

Lastly if you need a war wizard, I can perform spell duty as well as supply all the potions, glassware, hoists, chains, & various other sundries needed to keep order.

Grin

BTW in all seriousness I wish more CRPGs gave players more nuanced ways to play evil characters than just snarky dialogue & mindlessly kill stuff. Your path to domination is pretty cool.

We look forward to more when the stars are right. Cthulu

If Nythrax didn't really like his friends he wouldn't have kept them around for this long. Almost everyone is more trouble than they're worth, they just muddle through and succeed despite themselves by virtue of being the craziest assholes in a world almost entirely made up of crazy assholes.

Anyway, I took another poke and the meandering endless dungeon full of "Don't be stupid, look me up on the internet!" puzzles chased me off again. I have an idea for something else, something a bit more lightweight but possibly still fun.

Heh, I find it bizarre how you can write all this truly awesome story and yet get chased away by puzzles that are actually damned easy to solve. Most everyone I know who likes one of those likes the other.

Once you get through spellhold (pretty easy really) you're railroaded through the Sahuagin city and then you get the freedom to bounce around and do the Underdark areas in whatever order you want.

I also just realized Nythrax and Co. never visited the Five Flagons in Athkatla's bridge district, and never solved the skinner murders. Not sure if you didn't play those, or just didn't find them interesting enough to mention, but when you get back to Athkatla try to find time to do them if you haven't, I think they might be quite amusing with your party of crazies. Oh yeah, and the Twisted Rune and Temple sewers. Twisted Rune is one of those things you don't get any hints to (partially removed quest line, there's several places where there are hints but they're disjointed and disconnected). Keep a rogue stone in your inventory and check all doors, Mordak will thank you for it. Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

Just in case there was any doubt, this thread/story/fanfic/whatever rules hard and is totally awesome. Dude.

Screenshots from Fable of people getting punched in the dick are not awesome.

Just saying, is all.

Quote from: Koyasha on August 23, 2009, 03:38:44 AM

I've been thinking about this since you posted it.

The puzzles are simple enough, but I don't care about them. They're completely arbitrary and divorced from the rest of the game, so I'd rather just spoiler my way through than even bother seriously reading and thinking about them. The entire dungeon is completely arbitrary and divorced from the rest of the game. All of the dungeons are. I blame the game's pen-and-paper roots, because it's like a guy comes out and says "Pardon me while I murder any sense of narrative urgency, because it's time to do an Official Dungeons & Dragons(tm) Brand Dungeon!"

So I wander around, I fight some vampire guy for some reason, but I need a wooden stake to finish him off. I can't kill him any other way ever. But I don't have a stake or any clue as to where I should go to get one. I don't even know why I should particularly care about finishing this random vampire except that this is an Official Dungeons & Dragons(tm) Brand Dungeon so I know I had better do it if I know what's good for me. Otherwise three hours from now I'll probably find out that I didn't get the Widget of Door Opening that you get for killing him (or whatever) and I need to backtrack.

Then I come into another room and there's a statue that wants to ask me riddles. No special reason for it to be there. It just is. I have no reason to even bother with it, except again I know they bothered to put it there so I'm supposed to want to solve it. Then I find some crazy insta-death trap that I have to figure out how to defeat. Then bla bla bla bla bla.

It's all a bunch of dreadfully tedious horsecrap that I have to muddle through in order to be allowed to get back to the real game. Except as time goes by, I realize that this pretty much IS the game, and the stuff I like is just fluff to keep me moving between Official Dungeons & Dragons(tm) Brand Dungeons.

It's something that Bioware and the genre as a whole have long since left behind for the most part, but that doesn't help me as I'm playing it.

Well the point of the dungeon beneath Spellhold is to prove that you are sane and therefore don't belong in Spellhold anymore. Hence the riddles and whatnot. Should pick up a lot once you get through the place and into the next major area.

I think the point of the dungeon beneath spellhold is simply to kill people. If I remember right some of the automated thingies even stated that specifically, one of them saying he doesn't think the point was to cure people at all.

And I see your point about those things feeling mostly separate from the rest of the game. I would probably like them as-is, and I remember even back then commenting that they should be harder, because I liked them for being puzzles and such. But thinking about it, why I liked them didn't have anything to do with the rest of the game at all. Like the huge bunch of kobolds or whatever around the big glowy stone, and so on. Just kind of a big 'huh?' thing. Kinda makes me think about why I liked certain parts of those games.

I find it interesting that you don't like BG2 so much. I thought it was much better in every way than the first game. I thought BG1 was an awesome game as well, just thought they did even better with BG2.

Baldur's Gate 1 felt very much like you were playing through the story while 2 (while a richer game itself) felt much more like you got shifted from plot exposition to plot exposition via puzzle dungeons. The decision to make the second chapter effectively "Go do side quests for a while, main storyline will wait," was what started that feeling for me. Could be a totally different reason to WUA but that's why I'd agree with him on it.

You are sorely missed.

I think it is definitely fair to say that BG2 is a less fun game to play a fully-created-by-you party in than BG1. A lot of the value for me is tied up in the NPCs and the stuff that goes on with them, and really that is where they took the biggest steps forward from BG1 in terms of gaming "tech".

This is now my favorite write up of a "Let's Play". My previous favorite was a hilarious version of Neverwinter Nights 2 that I found at the Order of the Stick forums: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88169

I'll probably get a copy of the book as well. Well done, sir.