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Friday Fun Thread for October 7, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I got the current CRPG humble bundle https://www.humblebundle.com/games/rpg-legends-baldurs-gate-beyond-bundle

and I am wondering what my playthrough priority will be (if I manage to not pile of shame the majority of games :/ )

Included games:

  • Pathfinder WOTR

  • Neverwintern Nights Complete

  • BG 2 enhanced Complete (also Dragonspear)

  • BG 1 enhanced

  • Planescape Torment enhanced

  • Icewind Dale enhanced

I think my favourite of those is the old planescape, but I also played this the most times already in my lifetime. Any fellow CRPG-enjoyers here? Whats your favourite? Any moderately unknown CRPGs you can recommend?

I'll recommend the OG Boomer's Gate. What many people enjoy about it is the companion characters you recruit and experiencing their stories while balancing their personalities to keep them happy. I'll admit I've never experienced that; I always make 6 custom characters and play the game with them. For me the enjoyment is purely in the well-written story and the amazing combat system.

It runs off of 2nd Edition AD&D, which is a really cool system and will have some interesting differences for players of modern D&D/CRPGs. Most of the differences are in how spellcasters work. For example, spellcasters use Vancian magic, which means they prepare spells in advance and can only use each spell as many times per day as they prepared that spell. For example, if your wizard knows 5 1st-level spells and 4 2nd-level spells but can only prepare 4 slots of 1st level spells and 2 slots of 2nd level spells, you must allocate a spell to each specific slot. Want to cast sleep more than once per day? Better prepare it multiple times. This is really cool and will satisfy that Batman fantasy. It's a lot for a new RPG player to learn, but an experienced player will really enjoy the system.

The other big difference is how casters scale. They're incredibly weak and fragile early. Most of the time they're slinging terrible darts terribly since they can only cast 2 spells at 1st level. They scale incredibly though - if you play the same wizard from Baldur's Gate 1 to the end of Throne of Bhaal in BG2 you'll watch them go from a weakling who will die to a stiff breeze to a reality-warping demigod. Newer editions try to balance casters to martials at all stages of the game, so playing a game where this is very much not the case is a nice change.

I'd recommend playing Baldur's Gate 1 then importing/remaking your squad in Baldur's Gate 2. Throne of Bhaal is an excellent finale to the series. Play Icewind Dale if you really love the combat system of Baldur's Gate, because there's very little story in that game, just lots of encounters. Ironically I liked the encounters in BG much better, but it's still good content.

I'm strongly recommending against using all custom characters - the pre-written ones are amazing and interact in many ways, so far IMO unsurpassed and are really not that bad stat wise for you munchkins, with some like e.g. Edwin actively cheating - he has a unremovable amulet that gives him extra spells per level.

but an experienced player will really enjoy the system

It's really noteworthy how much more complex the casting system is compared to later games. There's something like a hundred spells, with majority being useful.