Other than preparation for and then hosting a Pathfinder Second Edition one-shot, I spent my entire weekend playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I was finally able to play it in more than drips and drabs (which, for me, meant an hour or two at a time, since I won’t bother to turn my computer on for anything else). I wound up starting a new game with two friends and then taking this large chunk of time to wrap up loose ends, finish map exploration, and, in the wee hours of the morning, finish the main quest points of Act 1. I rescued Halsin, helped the Tieflings, dealt with a swamp witch, got to absolutely wreck some weaker enemies with my brand new level 5 abilities (still haven’t cast Fireball, though, since I mismanaged Wyll’s spell slots and forgot to short rest before the next fight), and prepared myself for an underground adventure. After this, I’m moving into entirely new territory (I never did the Underdark stuff in Early Access) and I’m excited to play chunks of the game I’ve never encountered before.
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Baldur’s Gate 3 Still Has Plenty Of Surprises After All That Early Access
I, like many other people, started diving into Baldur’s Gate 3 today. I’d already played a bunch while it was in Early Access, despite normally avoiding paying for games before they’re fully released and avoiding doing testing work that I’m not getting paid for (though, obviously, some exceptions apply since I’ve helped out friends with projects in the past). I actually bought it way back in early 2021, because there was a big media push for it and it was on sale. Or I had a coupon of some kind. Maybe a voucher? I don’t remember that period terribly well, on account of early 2021 including one of my worst insomnia boughts since high school, so I’m not sure how I got it for fifteen dollars, only that I’ve got a receipt that says I paid fifteen dollars plus tax for it. I remember thinking that it was probably not going to be that cheap at any time prior to a special sale the winter holiday period after it came out, so I might as well get it then and never play it. Then one of my friends also got it and we played it a bunch together. Not a whole lot, maybe twenty hours total, but enough that I was genuinely excited for the game’s release and fairly confident in my ability to zip through the early parts of the game after replaying them so many times with my friend.
Continue readingSaying Farewell To My Last Dungeons & Dragons Campaign
It took us three sessions, a total of about ten hours, to wrap up my last remaining Dungeons and Dragons campaign, but we did it. I got to deliver final lines, talk about the world the heroes built, and finally close the loop on themes I’ve been building for years. It was a hefty, emotional moment for the four of us, as we said our goodbyes to the characters and the world they had saved, that left me choked up. Even if we struggled to meet regularly and it took us two years to get to where we were before we started to wrap things up, we’d still invested a lot of time and thought in our characters. It would have been nice if everyone could have been there, at the end, but sometimes people fall by the wayside and there’s no bringing them back. I just find it interesting that it was the players who learned this lesson instead of the characters (who managed to bring back a friendly NPC using a True Resurrection spell after they’d failed to bring them back during our first year with a pair of raise dead rituals gone wrong).
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