Vichan posted:Yep, he's gone forever. what the heck. I guess he's lucky to be out of this LP tho. Minsc's lines confronting Irenicus at the end are so good though... also yeah the shadow weave is a Shar joint
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2021 22:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 14:10 |
|
|
I'd love to point out what's wrong with Sandrah's bullshit but that would involve informing myself about what Sandrah's bullshit is first and  i am just so very very tired of her
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2021 22:22
|
|
|
fun science fact of the day: anti-matter and dark matter are two different things!  trying to apply modern physics concepts to a d&d setting is a dumb idea from the outset, but sandrah pulls it off with as much love and care as she shows the pre-existing forgotten realms lore
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2021 23:29
|
|
|
The weave does not work that way! As others have pointed out, there is no 'dark weave' in forgotten realms lore. There is the shadow weave, a knock off version made by Shar that mimicked the proper weave, but that just drawing from the same original source of power, just in a different way, given that it collapsed when mystra died for the umpteenth time. The weave is also not some underlying facet of matter and reality, just magic. Divine spells are still weave magic channeled through a God, but it isn't anything like what is depicted there. The weave has been repeatedly disrupted and/or broken without destroying the fundamentals of reality. The idea that the realms would not exist without the weave is weird, given that toril (the forgotten realms planet) has a twin planet abeir that does not have the weave where people can actively go via portals. Fun forgotten realms fact, weird mystra poo poo is the cutoff point for most major changes as a result of edition changes. 1st edition transferred to 2nd edition with the time of troubles, 2nd transferred to 3rd with mystra settling into the job and the introduction of the shadow weave. 3rd to 4th was the spell plague with mystra dying again, and 4th to 5th had her coming back and things going back to normalish. Want to drastically change the rules? Shank mystra.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2021 23:54
|
|
|
Caros posted:The weave does not work that way! Since when has Roxanne let little things like established facts of the setting get in the way of Sandrah demolishing foolish religious people with FACTS and LOGIC?
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 00:02
|
|
|
Viconia is cool, you should do evil things together and romance her
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 00:41
|
|
|
She literally wrote Minsc off like an actor whose contract hadn't been renewed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:41
|
|
|
Not a loving word about Aerie either. At LEAST she should have disabled the ability for him to take Aerie or Nalia as his witch!
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 02:39
|
|
|
Hypocrisy posted:I want to make fun of Szass Tam the Half-Lich trying to become god of the Dark Weave but I am pretty sure I watched a movie about some evil wizard trying to open the dark dimension so I have lost that right. Garlic Junior?
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 03:28
|
|
|
Been idly skimming through this over the last few days and have been bemusedly horrified by just what this modder has done to BG on the whole and FR lore in general, but this latest absurdity with Szass Tam somehow still manages to reach a new level of silliness. She brings in one of the top active villains in the Realms - who's actually NOT very active yet at this point in time - and just has him randomly involved in a nonsense plot that's not something he'd be involved with ever? Even shifting the context to the actual Shadow Weave doesn't have it make any more sense, as Tam's a normal Weave user. At this point I'm dreading her adding Netherese content and seeing whatever horror show she makes of that. "Here's Ioulaum building a laser cannon to blow up the moon, go stop him." I say active villains because, for those unfamiliar with FR lore, Tam's actually fairly low on the list of most powerful mages but basically all the ones above him are either pretty content with pursuing obscure objectives that don't necessarily involve conquering the world, or else are locked in a cold war with opposite numbers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 04:14
|
|
|
I think the duergar changing into giants is meant to mimic one of their innate abilities; duergar can cast an enlarge spell on themselves that makes them bigger and tougher. The frost giant sprite is probably the closest representation, since a quadruple-sized duergar sprite would a.) look like pickled rear end in a top hat, and b.) might not even be possible with current modding tools anyway. Agreed on Aerie, her 24/7 pissing and moaning turned me off right from the first time I played this game. She didn't even need Roxanne's help to be annoying, although the latter was happy to oblige anyway and make it even more insufferable. Has Sandrah slept with her yet? I can't specifically recall, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that she has. As for Chloe, she's downright tolerable here. It sounds like playing a female PC turns it all to  , but playing as a dude seems to have sidestepped the worst of it. My sympathies on avoiding the dogshit, Vichan, I know you tried really hard and I commend your effort.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 04:47
|
|
Lord Koth posted:
Doesn't he show up in some EE quest for Neera in BG2 or ToB too? does tam have Melisande's sprite here
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 05:04
|
|
|
He shows up in Neera's ToB quest and might actually be the single worst thing about the enhanced editions.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 10:17
|
|
|
Chapter XCVIII - Your poor bard will starve now, my morning dove. How can these lips touch any food now that removes the sweet taste you gave to them. We start today with something that's been a long time coming.  Good riddance. We've seen all her Sandrah content so there's no reason to keep her around. This leaves us with an empty party slot, who should we f-  Uh-oh.  ...Something tells me we're not going to make any headway with quests today.  I figured I'd add Yoshimo so I could confirm whether he interacts with Sandrah or not. The guide says no but it's lied to me before. That leaves one slot.  Could it be...?  Yep. Xan's back, baby! Now we'll see about freeing Viconia.  Not getting off to a good start...  I didn't realise weapon restriction had an actual in-game reason. Can Viconia literally not pick up a katana for fear of being struck down?  The Balthis estate, notable for having no role in vanilla BG2 whatsoever. It was supposed to be connected to a cut Haer'Dalis quest.  Aha, we're getting closer to the truth..  Before continuing on we have to take a little detour to the graveyard catacombs. (We'll explore the graveyard soon, not to worry)  In vanilla BG2 she just attacks you but we can get on her good side thanks to BG2: Unfinished Business.  chhhhclclclcl...  On our way to the sewers we run into this guy again, we previously met him in Waterdeep.  He doesn't have anything interesting to sell but we can sell key items to him, I managed to sell Balduran's logbook for 15000gp!  The sword is useless to us, we might as well bring it to Pai'Na.  She also gives us a spider figurine but I already got one from the dragon in the Stormhorn Mountains. Thanks, Sandrah Saga!  I don't know why I never gave the Xan mod the time of day before, he seems alright. Anyway, back to freeing Viconia.  She's having a really bad time, we've got to get her out quick.  All that's left is to track down the real culprits, time to go back to the graveyard catacombs!  Said spider web structure is where Pai'Na is.  What a terrible portrait for a drow.  Die a hamstery death!   Contrary to what it says here this armor doesn't dissolve in daylight, score!  We also find the Drow katana that'll prove Viconia's innocence!  Hooray!  Not now, Chloe. We're off to set Viconia free!  And just like that everything's back to normal.   Yoshimo had nothing to say as expected so he'll be put on ice until it's time to go to Spellhold.  Why would've thought that Chloe spoke drow?  I really enjoyed these stories the first time I romanced her.  D'aww. And with that we've gone through most of Viconia's Sandrah content, we might invite her back later so I've dumped her in the Balthis estate.  Xan also leaves us here, he's been too silent.  Jaheira and Anomen make a return. Since we're at the Copper Coronet we might as well take a nap.  Let's be honest, we all knew this was coming.   The morning after brings us another hint from Haer'Dalis, I can't wait to see how this pans out.  Jaheira's night was a bit less pleasant.   Ah, Anomen's quest that can only be resolved by romancing him, we meet again. Let's just go to the government district so we can get this over with.   Since I'm modded up to the gills we get sidetracked, of course.   We don't have the time for this now but I'm afraid to say it for fear of breaking the quest.  We'll pick her up as soon as we're done with Anomen.    We're choosing the good option here, of course.  Christ, Cor is such an rear end. Anomen's got nothing on him.  Yes, Sandrah. It is very wise for you to suggest something that Anomen already suggested. How could we ever have any hope of finishing this game without our trusted counsellor?   Well, that's that then.   Sandrah shuts Anomen down for making a valid point.  I think it might be best for him to keep away from us for now, Isra can take his place.  She has a unique item, sweet!  Christ, 90% of these dialogues are just people complimenting Sandrah on how amazing she is. I don't think I've ever seen a worse Mary Sue.  A lot of these vanilla dialogues are new to me. Did I just forget about them?   She was probably supposed to say this after leaving the Jysstev and stumbling on the corpses of Rana's attackers. That being said, let's track those sons of bitches down right now.    No love lost between these two.  *sigh* Back to the Government District.  Who would've guessed that this didn't work out?  ...Do people just hang out outside in order to offer alternate solutions? That's quite a racket considering how unhelpful the Cowled Wizards are.  Don't worry, we won't be long.    Told you.  And just like that we're being asked to leave. Sheesh.  Welcome to the group, Isra! Be prepared to get kicked out constantly, there's a lot of other people we haven't even gotten to yet. Next time we'll see if we can't get ourselves a stronghold. Vichan fucked around with this message at 11:49 on Nov 7, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 17:48
|
|
|
This one's probably another slog to get through, it was quite the chore on my end as well. I originally wanted to cover both variations of Anomen's quest but decided against it after playing through both of them: 
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 17:51
|
|
|
As with Chloe, the weird stuff for Xan requires that you be a woman. Did you love The Complete Book of Elves? Because Xan's modder sure does.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 18:02
|
|
|
Vichan posted:This one's probably another slog to get through, it was quite the chore on my end as well. I originally wanted to cover both variations of Anomen's quest but decided against it after playing through both of them: It was nice to see a decent chunk of plot, at least. Even if Sandrah did immediately ruin it, because of course she did. Cythereal posted:As with Chloe, the weird stuff for Xan requires that you be a woman. I'm surprised we haven't encountered any gay male romance options amongst all these mods (that one glitch with Coran notwithstanding).
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 18:11
|
|
|
Black Robe posted:I'm surprised we haven't encountered any gay male romance options amongst all these mods (that one glitch with Coran notwithstanding). I know that queer men absolutely did exist in the modding community back in my time, but of the two I knew as actual people, one never made a gay male romance mod - and he was actually hired by Beamdog and worked on the Enhanced Editions professionally. He was way more interested in the technical side of things and worked on a lot of item/rule/tweak mods and whatnot. The other was... a very weird dude who made very weird mods (Colors of Infinity is the only one I can think of, and it's a very strange little mod) and was eventually booted from SHS for sexually harassing people.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 18:27
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I know that queer men absolutely did exist in the modding community back in my time, but of the two I knew as actual people, one never made a gay male romance mod - and he was actually hired by Beamdog and worked on the Enhanced Editions professionally. He was way more interested in the technical side of things and worked on a lot of item/rule/tweak mods and whatnot. The other was... a very weird dude who made very weird mods (Colors of Infinity is the only one I can think of, and it's a very strange little mod) and was eventually booted from SHS for sexually harassing people. Eh, wouldn't need to be a gay man making it, plenty of women write gay erotica/produce yaoi content. Just seems odd we're running into so many lesbian/bisexual women (albeit mostly turned by Sandrah specifically and thus probably canonically straight) but no men interested in Vichan.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 18:45
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:As with Chloe, the weird stuff for Xan requires that you be a woman. Mechanically or the lore?
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 18:49
|
|
|
Black Robe posted:Eh, wouldn't need to be a gay man making it, plenty of women write gay erotica/produce yaoi content. Just seems odd we're running into so many lesbian/bisexual women (albeit mostly turned by Sandrah specifically and thus probably canonically straight) but no men interested in Vichan. Valid - and Chloe and the Imoen Romance were both written by men. Chloe also shares Sandrah's property of turning women into lesbians for her. Of the female characters we've met so far in the LP, Valerie is the only other character who comes to mind as being explicitly written as a lesbian. I've heard that Isra is a bi romance, but I've never played with that mod so I can't speak for certain. I know of two more queer women mods, Sarah who can romance the PC, and Auren Aseph who romances Nalia. When I wrote Valerie, I concluded that I wouldn't write any NPC-NPC romances for her because I didn't interpret any of the Bioware women (at least, not any that Valerie would be interested in) as queer. There are no queer characters in the original Baldur's Gate game. The EEs added Dorn, who's a bisexual man, and Hexxat, who's a lesbian. Hypocrisy posted:Mechanically or the lore? The lore.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 18:50
|
|
|
The whole "Clerics can't use katanas" was an actual thing: the reason on clerics no being able to use bladed weapons came from legends of warrior-priests such as Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who was said to use a mace not to drop blood. It's mostly bullshit and latter editions gave clerics access to bladed weapons sucha s daggers, but it was an actual thing they put in D&D but of course Sandrah gameifyies it. Also, real funny how that Sandrah/Anomen was clearly intended to make you side with Sandrah but instead it makes Anomen look like the only sensible person in the party.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 18:53
|
|
|
the hanzo steel of a drow katana? drow weapons dissolve on the surface tho...
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 19:17
|
|
|
I know I have seen those Jaheira/Haer'dalis banters before. I think exactly once. They've always been there, but presumably one mod or another fixes whatever byzantine mechanic decides when to fire banters. My last playthrough I heard two specific banters at least three times each, while other party members never fired a single one.Cythereal posted:There are no queer characters in the original Baldur's Gate game. The EEs added Dorn, who's a bisexual man, and Hexxat, who's a lesbian. Glint from SoD is also a gay male romance option.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 19:20
|
|
|
I'm surprised you don't have... Oversight, I think? There's a mod component somewhere that lets you finish Anomen's sidequest no matter what. I don't know which solution it goes for. For those who don't know, who actually committed the murder depends on which way you sway Anomen. This was a very unpopular decision and I didn't like it at the time, but I honestly understand it now. They wanted it to be a choice between "He did the wrong thing and suffered for it" and "He did the right thing, but it's not that simple, sometimes poo poo goes wrong anyway." If the guy had done it, he'd feel justified in doing the wrong thing. If the guy hadn't done it, doing the right thing would have been rewarded in a really simple way. I think it lands even better after SoD with a good-aligned protagonist. You do the right thing and suffer, so can he. Or you can do the wrong thing and suffer as well. Sometimes things just suck and you have to make the best of it. Cythereal posted:I know that queer men absolutely did exist in the modding community back in my time, but of the two I knew as actual people, one never made a gay male romance mod - and he was actually hired by Beamdog and worked on the Enhanced Editions professionally. He was way more interested in the technical side of things and worked on a lot of item/rule/tweak mods and whatnot. The other was... a very weird dude who made very weird mods (Colors of Infinity is the only one I can think of, and it's a very strange little mod) and was eventually booted from SHS for sexually harassing people. Oh geez, Colors of Infinity... Isn't that a series of mods, like Innershade? I hate to hear he's a piece of poo poo, I installed those mods out of curiosity. I guess if I never touched anything made by creeps, I wouldn't read/play anything, but it still sucks. Cythereal posted:As with Chloe, the weird stuff for Xan requires that you be a woman. I don't know much about that supplement, but how does it get weird? I know there's some... weird poo poo around the Moonblade and Bodhi later, but are we talking deep weird or...? People seem to love that romance for some reason, but you know how the internet is. Can never tell if it's weird or not by that
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 02:05
|
|
|
I'm still disappointed by the lack of magic in this fantasy setting. Murder mysteries can have so many fun solutions! Magical lie detection! Just straight up asking the victim! Any kind of scrying or divination! No, too much work to implement that, just go out asking questions in person  Ramc posted:drow weapons dissolve on the surface tho... They do surface raids sometimes so they presumably have some less disintegration-prone equipment that's intended for that sort of thing as well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 12:36
|
|
|
"so in this quest do we ever get a dramatic confrontation between Viconia and her sister?" "lmao"
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 13:06
|
|
|
Midnight Voyager posted:
If it's like the Kivan romance, it's lots of "my shining gem", "my soul's heart", and loads of gratuitous Elvish.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 16:32
|
|
|
Fighting Trousers posted:If it's like the Kivan romance, it's lots of "my shining gem", "my soul's heart", and loads of gratuitous Elvish. Also apparently elves have an unconscious racial hive mind. The writer of the Xan romance was also the lady who wrote the genocidal race-supremacist elf druid in the IWD2 NPC Project.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 16:37
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Also apparently elves have an unconscious racial hive mind. ...this thread has introduced me to so many brand new sentences I hope never to encounter again.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 21:36
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:The other was... a very weird dude who made very weird mods (Colors of Infinity is the only one I can think of, and it's a very strange little mod) and was eventually booted from SHS for sexually harassing people. I love how almost every one of your stories about the modding community has got a story about harassment/problematic behaviour associated with it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 21:38
|
|
|
Vichan posted:I love how almost every one of your stories about the modding community has got a story about harassment/problematic behaviour associated with it. To be fair, there were a number of people I could mention just as "They were smart, reasonable, friendly people." But that doesn't make for interesting/compelling/horrifying/amusing stories. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 22:02
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:To be fair, there were a number of people I could mention just as "They were smart, reasonable, friendly people." The bar for being memorable as a good person is pretty high. The bar for being memorable as a bad person is a race to see who can get further under it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 22:17
|
|
|
Vichan posted:
I'm gonna go back to this, because it's bugging me in particular. It's insane how that's some of the most reasonable mod dialog for Anomen I've heard, and she's trying to make him sound like an rear end in a top hat. There was just the GERM of a reasonable conversation there. She could have even explained like a person as smart as she pretends to be could, and it could have even ended amicably. "You don't expect the god of the forest to make animals only do good, so why would you expect the goddess of magic to do the same with the Weave? That's the domain of other deities... like Helm! The world needs Mystra to guard the weave, just like the world needs Helm to bring to justice those who use it for ill purposes. I serve Mystra because she is the goddess who protects the gifts that I use. My morality is all my own." There, I fixed it. You even end up with a character who has a disconnect between the deity they (supposedly) worship and their decision-making in general. And it's more coherent than a weird pseudoatheist cleric.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 23:25
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Also apparently elves have an unconscious racial hive mind. I don't think that's true actually. She wrote IWD NPC. It was the other elf-obsessed Kivan writer who did IWD2 NPC. IWDNPC Project is very classic fantasy while IWD2 NPC is a real trip. There's not a lot of queer romance mods in the community. Kaeloree who Cythereal mentioned did Arath, and Miss Feullie (who is/was really nice) did Faren - both bisexual, though both lean toward the damaged playboy archetype. She also did Nathaniel who's exclusively gay but does come off a bit more ... fanficy. (He's very emotionally fragile & a lot of his content is about helping him overcome homophobia in his past). I'm sorry to hear the stuff about Lava 
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 23:33
|
|
|
That's definitely a more reasoned, nuanced, dialogue, but this version makes Anomen the reasonable person and has Sandrah shutting down a fair point by calling it bigotry while also refusing to consider it because it came from a dude she hates because he worships the wrong god. The former is impressive, and the latter is preferable to Sandrah making herself the hero by writing everyone else as sycophants even dumber than her.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 23:35
|
|
|
GiantRockFromSpace posted:The bar for being memorable as a good person is pretty high. And to be fair, I made more than my share of lovely comments, too. I used to be good friends with a modder - her screen name escapes me now, but she made Sarah and Auren Aseph among others. She and her girlfriend used to be friends I chatted with a lot, until I said a lot of very hurtful things. I didn't intend them to be hurtful, but I grew up in an environment that shaped me in ways I didn't realize at the time, and I held beliefs consciously and unconsciously that were hateful, bigoted, and cruel. I look back on that time in my life with deep regret, and it was the pain I caused others, and the loss of people I'd sincerely thought of as my friends, that lead me to seriously reevaluate a lot of stuff in my life and move away from a lot of things and people I'd been raised up in. I like to think I'm a better person now, and I think most left-wing people who knew me then and now would agree, but there's no undoing the pain and hurt I caused back then. Probably as much as anything why I dropped out of the modding community, to be honest. Too confused and ashamed to be a part of that community anymore.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 23:35
|
|
|
I wonder how Sandrah handles it if you date someone she doesn't like? I can't imagine she likes Dorn either, probably not Hexxat. At the very least, you can have Anomen in your party, so surely it's possible.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2021 03:29
|
|
|
vilkacis posted:They do surface raids sometimes so they presumably have some less disintegration-prone equipment that's intended for that sort of thing as well. Its the sunlight that does it, so they generally raid at night. Also lol yeah that well known drow weapon, the katana.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2021 04:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 14:10 |
|
|
I really need to see Sandrah in Ust Natha
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2021 14:37
|
|
