What videogames have you been playing? version 1.22: What's with that plural?
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Hygro
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Beat Tears of the Kingdom. Put in over 200 hours, more than even Elden Ring. Super duper duper fun.
I've played a few more games of Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate, which is chess, but you play the black king, a bad and unpleasant ruler, and you have no other pieces, but do have a royal shotgun. Each round, you get to choose a set of one card that improves your abilities, and one that improves white's abilities. For example, you might want to choose Nightbane, a sword that improves your melee abilities, but if your opponent would get the Red Book, which lets their bishops move (but not capture) horizontally and vertically as well as diagonally, and you've already given them a bunch of bishop boosts, it might be wise to choose the other set instead.
I suppose I should also mention that your royal shotgun can fire at range, and white's pieces have a set number of hitpoints (3-8, usually), whereas the primary danger to you is being checkmated. Thanks to the dynamic rules, there are also some creative ways to get out of a checkmate, as well as a creative way to snatch checkmate from the jaws of not even being in check, so it's only the final one that ends the game.
The secondary danger to you are your own royal grenades. I'm pretty sure that in the games where I've used royal grenades, I've lost to their explosions more than I've lost to checkmate or won. Proceed cautiously.
It's a fun game. You have to know the rules of chess and it helps a bit to not be a novice at chess, but the rules are much more dynamic. I find I like the melee abilities, but when I let my shotgun's range reach the negative numbers, it proved to be a mistake.
---
Back in CKII...
The "Lord of Mosul" did not last much longer after the last update. In his quest for the Philosopher's Stone and immortality, he wound up losing his life. How ironic.
His 9-year-old son, Mozaffar II, took over, and has proven to be a good and virtuous ruler. After uniting the last of the lands of Niniveh, he formed the Kingdom of Assyria in 904, 1515 years after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Pro tip, create all the duchies you can right before creating the kingdom so they are de jure part of it.
With that task complete, he next set about forming a Nestorian secret society, which was his focus for the next 20 years, with side jaunts of conquering most of Georgia and Byzantine Trebizond (both while Georgia/Byzantium were fighting civil wars, of course). Finally, on his 40th birthday in 924, he revealed the big surprise - 50 leading nobles, courtiers, mayors, and even imams were secretly Nestorian, and Assyria was now a Nestorian state. The coup went remarkably smoothly. The few remaining Sunni vassals were either persuaded to convert with a bag of silver, or surrendered their lands without a fight.
With the faith revealed, he turned to his other passion - accumulating knowledge and building monuments. He restored the House of Wisdom, which has seen great investments in the late 700s and early 800s, but had suffered some damage around 825 and had never been fully restored, and once it was restored, added many wings to it. Simultaneously, he commissioned his successor to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Mausoleum of Mozaffar in Irbil. If his was to be a great dynasty, it deserved to be commemorated in the most grand way.
Finally, he sought to secure his name, and that of the Barmakid dynasty, for history. If all he did was found a kingdom and restore and expand a great library and start making a great tomb for his dynasty, would that really be enough? No, not necessarily. He decided that the way to secure his name in the history books was to borrow a favorite technique of Alexander the Great - found a bunch of cities, and name them after himself. Alexandrias everywhere, later Caesareas everywhere, he would make it so there were Mozaffareas everywhere. If only it weren't so expensive to found cities... but he would persevere. It helped that Assyria was already richer than Byzantium or Arabia, thanks in part to its control of Silk Road trade routes.
But before he could found a Mozaffarea in every province, the age of jihads started. The Shias declared a jihad for Anatolia, which appeared to have dubious prospects, but the Sunnis launched a jihad for Arabia - remember, the former Caliph was now Yazidi, and more and more of the Islamic heartland was converting. Sixty, seventy years on from the great conversion of 865, it had been looking more and more like the Yazidis had the moment, and while they hadn't converted the Hedjaz yet, a serious challenge appeared unlikely.
Now there was a serious challenge.
The Uyammads, once more in charge of the Caliphate, albeit the Caliphate of Asturias, were leading the jihad. Umayyad versus Abbasid again, in force, in the 930s. On paper the Abbasids had more troops, but countless lesser emirs and sheikhs brought their entire levies in support of the Umayyads, as well as the recently-converted Kanem Bornu state. Mozaffar II watched from Assyria with interest. Was it better to root for the rival he knew in the hopes the next jihad would also be for Arabia, or was it better to jump in while the Abbasids were distracted and take some of their land? Decisions, decisions...
I suppose I should also mention that your royal shotgun can fire at range, and white's pieces have a set number of hitpoints (3-8, usually), whereas the primary danger to you is being checkmated. Thanks to the dynamic rules, there are also some creative ways to get out of a checkmate, as well as a creative way to snatch checkmate from the jaws of not even being in check, so it's only the final one that ends the game.
The secondary danger to you are your own royal grenades. I'm pretty sure that in the games where I've used royal grenades, I've lost to their explosions more than I've lost to checkmate or won. Proceed cautiously.
It's a fun game. You have to know the rules of chess and it helps a bit to not be a novice at chess, but the rules are much more dynamic. I find I like the melee abilities, but when I let my shotgun's range reach the negative numbers, it proved to be a mistake.
---
Back in CKII...
The "Lord of Mosul" did not last much longer after the last update. In his quest for the Philosopher's Stone and immortality, he wound up losing his life. How ironic.
His 9-year-old son, Mozaffar II, took over, and has proven to be a good and virtuous ruler. After uniting the last of the lands of Niniveh, he formed the Kingdom of Assyria in 904, 1515 years after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Pro tip, create all the duchies you can right before creating the kingdom so they are de jure part of it.
With that task complete, he next set about forming a Nestorian secret society, which was his focus for the next 20 years, with side jaunts of conquering most of Georgia and Byzantine Trebizond (both while Georgia/Byzantium were fighting civil wars, of course). Finally, on his 40th birthday in 924, he revealed the big surprise - 50 leading nobles, courtiers, mayors, and even imams were secretly Nestorian, and Assyria was now a Nestorian state. The coup went remarkably smoothly. The few remaining Sunni vassals were either persuaded to convert with a bag of silver, or surrendered their lands without a fight.
With the faith revealed, he turned to his other passion - accumulating knowledge and building monuments. He restored the House of Wisdom, which has seen great investments in the late 700s and early 800s, but had suffered some damage around 825 and had never been fully restored, and once it was restored, added many wings to it. Simultaneously, he commissioned his successor to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Mausoleum of Mozaffar in Irbil. If his was to be a great dynasty, it deserved to be commemorated in the most grand way.
Finally, he sought to secure his name, and that of the Barmakid dynasty, for history. If all he did was found a kingdom and restore and expand a great library and start making a great tomb for his dynasty, would that really be enough? No, not necessarily. He decided that the way to secure his name in the history books was to borrow a favorite technique of Alexander the Great - found a bunch of cities, and name them after himself. Alexandrias everywhere, later Caesareas everywhere, he would make it so there were Mozaffareas everywhere. If only it weren't so expensive to found cities... but he would persevere. It helped that Assyria was already richer than Byzantium or Arabia, thanks in part to its control of Silk Road trade routes.
But before he could found a Mozaffarea in every province, the age of jihads started. The Shias declared a jihad for Anatolia, which appeared to have dubious prospects, but the Sunnis launched a jihad for Arabia - remember, the former Caliph was now Yazidi, and more and more of the Islamic heartland was converting. Sixty, seventy years on from the great conversion of 865, it had been looking more and more like the Yazidis had the moment, and while they hadn't converted the Hedjaz yet, a serious challenge appeared unlikely.
Now there was a serious challenge.
The Uyammads, once more in charge of the Caliphate, albeit the Caliphate of Asturias, were leading the jihad. Umayyad versus Abbasid again, in force, in the 930s. On paper the Abbasids had more troops, but countless lesser emirs and sheikhs brought their entire levies in support of the Umayyads, as well as the recently-converted Kanem Bornu state. Mozaffar II watched from Assyria with interest. Was it better to root for the rival he knew in the hopes the next jihad would also be for Arabia, or was it better to jump in while the Abbasids were distracted and take some of their land? Decisions, decisions...
Spoiler :
EgonSpengler
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It occurred to me last night that I haven't even thought about Baldur's Gate 3 in like a week. I certainly can't say it isn't a good game. So why am I not playing it? 
Thorgalaeg
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Probably getting older. (You not the gameIt occurred to me last night that I haven't even thought about Baldur's Gate 3 in like a week. I certainly can't say it isn't a good game. So why am I not playing it?
)
PhroX
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It occurred to me last night that I haven't even thought about Baldur's Gate 3 in like a week. I certainly can't say it isn't a good game. So why am I not playing it?
I know the feeling. I can be thoroughly enjoying a game, then suddenly lose the urge to play it.
EgonSpengler
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Well, that's definitely true.Probably getting older. (You not the game
You might be onto something, though. It might just be that I played D&D for like 30 years. I've read reviews of BG3 that rave about how much freedom the game gives you to do whatever you want, and and I'm like, "Well, (tabletop) D&D always did that. You're telling me the PC games are only now catching up to where D&D was 40 years ago? Okay, that's cool, I guess. Progress is good."
I kinda had a similar reaction to The Last of Us initially. The tv series, not the game. It's basically a patchwork quilt of movies and shows I'd seen over the years, but somehow that show really got its hooks into me anyway, just by being really good. I'm not sure why Baldur's Gate 3 hasn't. Oh well. I can never anticipate these things. That's why I stopped paying full price for games in the first place.
Right, I was enjoying it while I was playing it, and then I just sorta forgot about it. And now that I've been reminded, I'm not exactly itching to get home to play it some more. Just not enough hours in the day/week, I guess.
Thorgalaeg
Deity
BG3 hooked me for 5 days or so, the time to pass first and second act and get to the city. Then walked around the city a bit while thinking ohhhh, this is beautiful! Look how many NPCs, look how much detailed it is! And I forgot completely about the game.
It was more about the challenge of overcoming the frustration of not being able to see Baldur's Gate in a Baldur's Gate game than the game itself.
(Btw, just found a mod to disable the four characters limitation, maybe I will give it another chance
)
It was more about the challenge of overcoming the frustration of not being able to see Baldur's Gate in a Baldur's Gate game than the game itself.
(Btw, just found a mod to disable the four characters limitation, maybe I will give it another chance
)
Last edited:
Farm Boy
run boy run
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No THAC0.
bene_legionary
Searching for the daguerrotype of God
First run with the Zoltan cruiser was a victory, this thing is pretty OP. Had some trouble at the start because I relied too much on the super shields and then realised that after the super shields are gone the cruiser was a bit of a glass cannon – but the super shields are still solid. Also realised early on that zoltan manning things like piloting are wasted potential due to unutilised power for systems. I didn't get a new crew member until sector 3, though. FTL was really generous at the start and gave me Flak MK1 and Charge Laser MK2 although I stuck with just pwning people with the halberd beam and then if shields got higher I used the flak or Leto missiles to knock them down; Charge L. didn't see any use until I was able to get weapons level high enough. Rest of the run was a breeze, although first stage of the flagship I saw a bit of damage I got through it, and second stage I wiped the flagship out easily.
There was this one moment after the second stage of the flagship where my pilot was repairing the O2 and I had something like 8% oxygen and everyone was on about 8/100 health, she repaired it so I quickly sent her out the other way from the medbay to wait for the oxygen to fill back up in the oxygen room, then I immediately forgot and sent her to the medbay... through the oxygen room without oxygen. So she died on the doorstep of the medbay. I wasn't happy at having to shuffle around my crew around to lose that very nice 51% dodge chance I had with her.
The third stage was more dire. After getting through the super shields, the flagship sent its entire crew upon me and also put mind control on my zoltan manning the engines. Soon, my dodge chance went to zero, the defense drone MK2 was out of commission for 10 seconds and I kept getting hit by missiles. As soon as I could I got the drone back online to deal with some of the missiles but this drone must have been defective because it was doing worse than a MK1 drone. Anyway, my hull points were quite low, but fires had destroyed the shield room in the flagship and I saw an opening. My halberd beam knocked a bunch of hull out of the flagship, dropping it to only two points. I just had to wait for my charge laser to hit two laser charges, and for both lasers to hit. And they did hit... but at the same time, the flagship fired three missiles at me. One missed, one was shot down, one hit. And the Adjudicator went dark.
But hey, the Rebel Flagship's gone now, so we saved the day anyway : ) Pyrrhus would be proud.
There was this one moment after the second stage of the flagship where my pilot was repairing the O2 and I had something like 8% oxygen and everyone was on about 8/100 health, she repaired it so I quickly sent her out the other way from the medbay to wait for the oxygen to fill back up in the oxygen room, then I immediately forgot and sent her to the medbay... through the oxygen room without oxygen. So she died on the doorstep of the medbay. I wasn't happy at having to shuffle around my crew around to lose that very nice 51% dodge chance I had with her.
The third stage was more dire. After getting through the super shields, the flagship sent its entire crew upon me and also put mind control on my zoltan manning the engines. Soon, my dodge chance went to zero, the defense drone MK2 was out of commission for 10 seconds and I kept getting hit by missiles. As soon as I could I got the drone back online to deal with some of the missiles but this drone must have been defective because it was doing worse than a MK1 drone. Anyway, my hull points were quite low, but fires had destroyed the shield room in the flagship and I saw an opening. My halberd beam knocked a bunch of hull out of the flagship, dropping it to only two points. I just had to wait for my charge laser to hit two laser charges, and for both lasers to hit. And they did hit... but at the same time, the flagship fired three missiles at me. One missed, one was shot down, one hit. And the Adjudicator went dark.
But hey, the Rebel Flagship's gone now, so we saved the day anyway : ) Pyrrhus would be proud.
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EgonSpengler
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Yeah, if I had one complaint about BG3, it would be having to manage which 3 characters to bring with you. I don't know if letting you bring more people would mess up the balance of the combat encounters, but I probably wouldn't care that much. I think the one place it might have an impact is in the game's replayability. I think you're meant to have a different experience in the company of different characters. But if getting as much out of the game in a single playthrough is what you want, I don't really see why you shouldn't be allowed to have a big party. And being restricted to four feels strangely artificial, like you're choosing to leave behind people you know will be important and/or useful. I remember when I was DMing the tabletop game, I allowed my players to hire people to set up and manage a camp for them, somewhere nearby, while they went into the 'dungeon.' Once they had some money, they'd have a horse groom, a cook, a couple of guards, etc. But the people left behind at the camp were never 'adventurers' where you'd be saying, "Remind me again why we're not bringing the amazon with the two-handed sword to the goblin fort with us?"(Btw, just found a mod to disable the four characters limitation, maybe I will give it another chance
I have read that some of your companions will leave if you make a decision that really grinds their gears, but so far, I haven't found that. It might make more sense if they turned up the volume on that a bit. For example, Lae'Zel doesn't seem in any rush to do the thing she asked me to do, like a week ago, and that I've been completely blowing off. Maybe she could just say "If you're not going to help me [do that thing] right away, I'll just go do it myself. See you when I see you." I haven't used Gale at all, because my character is a wizard and I don't see the use of having 2 of us in a party of only 4; I don't really know why he's still hanging around. Doesn't he have a life? If replayability is a big concern, they could have some of the potential-companions be really mutually exclusive, in their goals or personalities. A Paladin might simply refuse to be around Astarion for example, whether that was the player's character or another potential companion. Or they might just try to kill each other and you'd have to decide which one to side with.
So, yeah, a mod that just lets you bring them all with you might be the simplest solution, provided it doesn't totally break something important down the road (I mean narratively, not just introducing a bug, although that'd be bad, too).
Thorgalaeg
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Yes, it probably will break something at some point, but I keep an unmoded save for such case. For now my main interest is to blow up things with many fireballs.
You can recruit up to 12 hirelings as well as the companions. That'd make your camp really overcrowded.
You can respec companions even changing their class, everything except their race and backstory. Trouble is Gale's backstory wouldn't really fit any other class.
You can respec companions even changing their class, everything except their race and backstory. Trouble is Gale's backstory wouldn't really fit any other class.
EgonSpengler
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Yeah, I saw that you could hire people and respec when I spoke to whatsisname. I didn't bother to look closely at them, though, so I don't know what the hirelings really do for you. I didn't realize you could respec companions. I've been tempted to give Shadowheart a level in Rogue the next time we level up, just so they can unlock doors and disarm traps for me, and then I wouldn't ever need Astarion.
I quite like Astarion but once hes got his rogue subclass I'll probably multiclass him. I've changed Shadowheart to a war cleric, but I think oath of vengeance paladin would also fit her. Trickster is the cleric subclass I like least.
I think this is unfair. The game is firmly set in the D&D Faerun universe and closely copies D&D 5e rules. 5e isn't much like 2nd edition D&D which is what BG1 &2 were made for.
I have my problems with BG3 but these mostly relate to its trying too hard to be a TTRPG when its actually a videogame.
The new BG is mostly exploring and fighting but I guess the cutscenes make better YT clips. I think there are more cutscenes but a lot of them ( like kicking the squirrel) are pretty inconsequential.
EgonSpengler
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I just read over lunch that if you respec your companions, they get different quotes, during combat and such. Someone discovered this when they respec'd Karlach as a Monk, which sounds fun. Now that this possibility has been revealed to me, I'm theorizing about how I would re-roll every character to create The Perfect Team.
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