Baldur’s Gate is part of a setting several decades older than the game franchise of the same name. It was an official setting of D&D a decade before the first game. In the sense of a ROLEPLAYING game, fidelity to the source material is paramount.

The original games were developed at the end of the life cycle of the edition they used for the mechanics. The ruleset got a major revision the same year BG2 was released. There have been several major editions since. Edition warring aside, no one can argue that the Forgotten Realms played in 5th edition isn’t the same Forgotten Realms played in AD&D 2E. The tone and continued narrative of the setting is the key feature in maintaining the soul of a property, not mechanical fidelity.

The game respects the official canon of the Forgotten Realms, including the canonical ending to BG2 where Gorion’s Ward rejected divinity and eventually led to Bhaal’s revival. Characters from the original series return as companions for BG3, with stories acknowledging the Bhaalspawn crisis. One of the origin playthroughs is the exact same story as the first Baldur’s Gate.

If your only complaint is lack of real time with pause then I reckon it’s you who isn’t the real Baldur’s Gate fan.

Yes because mechanical fidelity is the lowest priority in continuing the series. Continuation of the story and tonal fidelity matter a lot more. The Fallout series went from a turn based 2.5D isometric RPG to a real time action RPG, and one of the best instalments in the series follows the latter formula.

Same IP; returning characters from the original series; revisiting important locations from the original series; uses a D&D ruleset for resolution; expands upon the story of the Bhaalspawn crisis over a century after the incident, especially via the ::: spoiler spoiler Dark Urge storyline. :::

All of this is apparent through playing the game.

I definitely get the fever dream vibes. Especially early in his career, Lovecraft reported that some of his short stories were transcripts of his own dreams, written while not yet fully awake in order to keep the dream in his mind. I think perhaps this combined with his relative inexperience in writing contributed to his earlier stories being much shorter and often less coherent. I've often had amazing dreams that don't hold up against reflection in the cold light of day.

A common theme shared by this week's stories are vengeance; a cruel adversary who finds their comeuppance via disturbing and poetic means. I've looked up the background to these stories in preparation for this post and I notice that by 1919, Lovecraft had introduced himself to the works of Lord Dunsany. The text in these tales which have been referred to as Lovecraft's "dunsanian tales" is filled with references and nods to the fiction of Dunsany, who also wrote short stories based on the world of dreams.

In The Doom that Came to Sarnath we see another departure from a common trope of Lovecraft's stories, of disconnected gods mostly unaware or uncaring of the affairs of humans and other mere mortals. Though we are left with some questions unanswered, it is my interpretation that Bokrug, the patron god of the moon folk who dwelt in Ib, is the one who enacts vengeance on the people of Sarnath, on the 1000th anniversary of the razing of Ib.

At the time of the vengeance, the lore of the razing the city of Ib is long lost to all but the priesthood, and the annual celebration is little more than a ritual. Importantly, none of the noted deaths of the people of Sarnath are a consequence of violence; every single person was scared to death. This paints a picture of a patient and powerful entity, and an understanding of human psychology. Bokrug does not immediately stage a counter-assault and it does not use violence. Instead it secures the future of its followers by ensuring that the razing of Sarnath is never forgotten.

In The Cats of Ulthar we see plenty of ancient Egyptian imagery. The caravan paints humans with animal heads on the sides of their carts; the imagery of a disc in the space between horns is repeatedly used; and cats are referred to as the cousin of the Sphinx, "and he speaks her language, but he is more ancient that the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten".

Upon his kitten being slaughtered, a little boy in the caravan utters a prayer and the caravan leaves. The following night, all of the cats of Ulthar have gone missing. There are dubious and contradicting reports that the caravaneers stole the cats, and that the cats were seen oddly encircling the house of the cat slayers, with one suggesting that the cat killers have somehow hypnotised the cats. In the morning the cats have miraculously returned, and all look fatter. Indeed, for many days the cats refuse food.

After a week with no news from the house of the cat killers, an investigating party wanders over only to find the clean picked bones of its two residents. The discovery is so chilling that the villagers pass a law that in Ulthar no man may kill a cat.

There is little ambiguity in what occurred here: the cats, bolstered by the power to which the boy prayed, are responsible for killing and consuming the two cat killers. Again this is evidence of the existence of patient patron deities who will enact brutal and unusual vengeance in order to ensure the survival of their favoured species. Considering also the reverent description of cats given in the first paragraph, this hints at mysteries in our world to which we as a whole remain clueless. This is actually a very common motif in Lovecraft's writing; that there are many secrets in our world to which mankind are ignorant. In other works he writes on how we are in fact blissfully ignorant, for the revelation of our position in reality will either cause us to go mad or regress to the ignorant safety of another dark age. Brilliant and chilling stuff.

Maybe there should be a piece that tells a story beyond "nyah, I'm evil!"

Any manner of wizard should really have a personal ritual site, allowing them to bask and practice at astrologically appropriate times. Sacrifices on the equinoxes to ensure a bountiful summer and a mild winter; Fires on the solstices in appreciation of said summer/winter; charge under the waxing moon in anticipation of a particularly challenging ritual; dampen troublesome magical side effects under the waning moon; clear your mind under the new moon; channel power of the full moon into your key rituals.

With larger groups I tend to stick to less mechanically complex games.

Most OSR games can be run on the fly with any number of players. I had a fixed group of 9 run through Keep on the Borderlands, with 1 or two extras jumping in for a session here or there.

My absolute favourite is Savage Worlds. It'ss great as the maths isn't tight and "balancing" an encounter is just a matter of throwing in more mooks, throw in a wild card per 2 or 3 players. It can fit to any setting, though I strongly recommend Deadlands.

My close second favourite is Call of Cthulhu, which I've run with 8 players. There's not a combat focus so sessions are unlikely to get bogged down, and even then, most combat actions are a simple contested roll. Investigations tend to resolve as people splitting into pairs and following different leads; two go archiving at the library, two visit a sanitarium patient, two head over to the local paper to see if any stories have been published or even blocked by an editor, two stake out points of interest.

The Crew - Mission Deep Sea - card game with a simple trick taking mechanic. Difficulty is very modular as you decide a difficulty level before each game. Difficulty is decided by the numbers of missions taken and the relative complexity of those missions (this is all explained on the mission cards). Missions are based on which tricks you win, with simple rules like "I win no 1's" or "I win at least 3 9's".

Hanabi - Card playing game where you don't know your own hand. You describe aspects of each others hands (colours of cards, numbers on cards). Your goal is to place a pile of the cards 1,2,3,4,5 in each of 5 colours. Don't play with mathematicians.

I make a deliberate attempt to not sealion,

::: spoiler spoiler "Where is the evidence for that opinion?"

"But doesn’t [x] really mean [y]?"

"What about [other issue]—how do you explain that?"

"What’s wrong with a polite question?"

"I’m just trying to engage in civil debate."

This series of questions may seem like a well-intentioned search for answers. It’s not—it’s a simplified example of a rhetorical strategy called sealioning. Sealioning is an intentional, combative performance of cluelessness. Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target’s patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the “sea lion” may seem innocent, they’re intended maliciously and have harmful consequences.:::

Amy Johnson, The Multiple Harms of Sea Lions :::

You're sealioning in this very thread; you're just feigning ignorance and exploiting the fact that a term originating from a webcomic isn't well defined. Here you are incessantly replying in multiple comment chains, asking asinine rhetorical questions, insisting you just want an open discussion, and making sure to explicitly mention how civil you have remained. The only point of contention is that you're asking rhetorical questions instead of asking for evidence.

It's abundantly clear what you're doing. I've given my points, you've countered. It's in a public forum that others can access and make their own judgment. My standard for engaging discussion doesn't include chasing comment chains and rebutting throwaway remarks only to have them slightly rephrased or framed in a flimsy example. I will not engage with you after this comment.

That's fine. I stick by my philosophy that stooping to someone else's level makes you no better. I'm not in this to change minds; this isn't some /r/changemyview substitute. I'm offering examples which I find make him a bad choice for mod, and it's up to individuals to assess whether those posted examples are acceptable conduct for a moderator.

Have a good I agree it's too much time; I'm also getting too many notifications while overleaf is open. Have a good one.

My entire argument on burggit...

Your argument was that an unsavoury instance was against hosting your personal flavour of unsavoury content; hence you felt the need to browbeat instead of simply finding a better instance.

This appears to be your main method of "engagement" in discussion: incessantly hammer on your point, making persistent bad-faith invitations to "debate," then when you rile up the user to the point of them flaming you, you claim that you're remaining civil. It's called sealioning, it's a common enough trolling phenomenon that there exists an often cited web-comic about it..

Co-existing in a space isn't an open invitation for you to repeatedly argue the same point past a persons point of comfort, for the sake of your personal definition of "debate". When it's clear the debate has run its course and the person is clearly being emotionally effected, if you persist then you're acting in bad faith.

That's a bad faith interpretation of my comment. Note that I did not link to every single instance of him being against defederation, as the issue isn't him stating an opinion. The problem is the sarcastic and aggressive way in which he chooses to interact with other users; sarcastically calling for defederation from lemmy.world because he saw a racist meme, and stating that he's up at 3am losing sleep because he loves arguing with idiots.

If you are being flamed, you report. Stooping to their level makes you no better.

Here he is actively flaming/trolling in Main Community and Agora. He even states he's willingly losing sleep because he likes arguing so much. Just because the person you're disagreeing with is being salty doesn't mean you have a free ticket to stoop to that level. It's not moderator-worthy conduct.

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/282908

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/291136

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/291609

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/303830

Yea @imaqtpie, Yea @annegreen, Yea @Seraph089.

From account history they have good engagement.

Nay @Apytele, Nay @sweetholymosiah.

Limited engagement. Can't really comment on them yet.

Nay @goat, Nay @difficult_bit_1339.

Actively enshittening Agora and flame warring since its inception. @goat is evidently some manner of troll and "controversy" isn't a selling point for moderation. This is an alt for his burggit account; he's butted heads with admins over there because not allowing gore isn't "free".

Ah. Are you aware of Mage: the Ascension and Mage: the Awakening? Both World of Darkness books; mechanically crunchy with a strong focus on magic as a solution to all situations. Looking at established systems that have already done something similar can help with ideas.

For a slightly different spin, I just picked up the Black Sword Hack yesterday. In terms of combat items, there are actual listed combat items but it's all fluff really; every weapon is d6 damage. Maybe that would be another thing that interests you: weapons are abstracted to the point of players being able to buy/find "a weapon" which gives you a basic action.

I tend to focus on products which go against certain "maxims" of play; having alternatives to some of the more strict rules inherited from Gygax offers insight into the philosophy behind certain rules and whether such rules are actually fun at the table.

The Black Hack is my go-to book for this purpose: distances are relative, consumables are abstracted to the usage die, experience is based on stories told and not treasure dragged back to town, and all of the dice rolling can be made by players if the GM so chooses. Such a free system allows for easier hacking; You don't need to compare relative power of classes when determining how much XP your homebrew needs in order to level up.

For supplements and splatbooks, I particularly like Wonder & Wickedness and Marvels & Malisons as magic supplements. It's easy as hell to slap together a sorcerer class from these two books and staple it onto the Black Hack. My favourite setting books are Ultraviolet Grasslands and Hot Springs Island; both offer perfect sandbox adventures for the Black Hack. Both offer some manner of departure from the traditional tropes of TSR adventures. I have had to modify some aspects of the latter, such as the ::: spoiler spoiler miscarriage statuette, which I revised as a fertility amulet.; if worn one way up you're guaranteed fertility, the other way you're guaranteed not to fall pregnant. :::

There are a stupid number of blogs and zines that I could namedrop, but the one I find myself agreeing with the most is The Alexandrian.

Some of my favourite systems are light on combat rules or feature combat as some kind of fail state. If you're leveling a shotgun at an ancient void-dweller that may or may not be immune to conventional weaponry, you've messed up somewhere. Maybe the better plan is to douse the floorboards in lamp oil, smash a lit lantern, and run.

Would I play a game with no combat items? Absolutely. I'd love a game that invests as much pagespace into intrigue or stealth systems as some D&D-like systems invest into combat.

I just go for completed series nowadays. It's just not worth the time ranting and actively waiting for the completion of certain series. I've made a conscious decision not to start on Rothfuss's trilogy until he finishes the final book.

I also find that recently I go for books with more mature themes; not gore- and sex-fests where everyone is morally grey for the sake of it, but stuff like Robin Hobb's books which explore feminism through a fantasy lens, or stories with characters who confront their flaws rather than being some ideal version of a character archetype.

The same for me. One of my favourite settings.

I'm currently listening to TItus Groan by Mervyn Peake, after struggling to find it in book shops.

I'm using XigXag as it's not Amazon owned and it doesn't require a subscription. Really great app, though it is mobile only and I'm not sure if it's available outside the UK.