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Note: I have received Angela’s specific permission to use her name and images I’ve captured during our playthroughs in my blog posts.

Another note: I originally wrote this as one long essay. As with playthrough 13, I’ve split it into multiple posts to hopefully make it easier to read.

This Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough did not take place in isolation. It connects with several other posts in my BG3 series.

So you don’t have to click through and re-read a bunch of my previous posts, I’ll go over the basics:

• Angela is a friend of mine. I’ve known her for about 15 years. Among other qualities, I regard her as a better video-game player than I am.

  

• As I got into playing BG3, Angela expressed some interest in the game, and in playing multiplayer with me. At the time she hinted she’d be interested in this, multiplayer games between PC users (like Angela) and Mac or PS5 users (like me) were not yet possible.

  

• When I play BG3, I’ve formed the habit of recruiting three hirelings, whom I dubbed the Three Protectors, to cast protection spells on my party.

  

• In order to encourage Angela to play BG3, in my playthrough 8 I named the Three Protectors after Angela’s online handle, Angela Karmawings: Angela, Karma, and Wings.

  

• Something strange happened during that playthrough. The hireling named Angela became so important to my perception of the story that, against all reason and against the design of the game, I made her the protagonist of the story.

  

• At that point, I started to distinguish between the fictional and physical Angelas by calling the first one Arctic Druid Angela and the second Real Angela. I continued that custom in subsequent blog posts.

  

• Real Angela confirmed that it was okay to refer to her to as “Real Angela,” and I therefore shall continue to do so in past, present, and future blog posts. Apparently she does not mind being non-fictional.

  

• Eventually Larian enabled cross-play between PC users and Mac users, and later between PC users and PS5 (and Xbox) users. It therefore became possible for Real Angela and I to play BG3 together.

  

• She requested that her first playthrough be with me alongside her, acting as her guide through the game.

  

• As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, I maintain a record of my BG3 playthroughs by number. Real Angela suggested that our playthrough together should be playthrough 14. I countered by saying that it was really Real Angela’s playthrough 1. Her compromise was to call it playthrough 1/14.

  

Therefore this is my write-up of playthrough 1/14. As I write this, Real Angela is crafting a write-up of her own. I’ve offered to host her write-up on this site, but as I type these words she has not made a decision on where it might appear.

Real Angela had some experience with D&D, and remembers those rules better than I remembered D&D when I started to play BG3. She had a good idea of the kind of character she’d like to play. The logic behind this was simple: She likes to bash things up-close.

I wanted to assume a complementary role to a fighter. BG3, at least in a first playthrough, is best played with a party of four. In this case, Real Angela would control two characters and I’d control the other two. She didn’t want to deal with the complexity of playing a Rogue or a spellcaster.

I have a fondness for stealth game-play; Real Angela allows that she doesn’t have the patience for it. That’s why I played a Rogue. I’d handle the sneaky stuff with my main character, and partner with a spellcaster.

Fey, in turn, would partner with a fighter-type that was easier and more fun for Real Angela to play.

That would give us a party with two melee fighters, one ranged attacker (Bellandria), and one spellcaster. It’s a proven combination in D&D and would work well in BG3.

What I saw

I mentioned this in an earlier post, but it bears repeating: Playing BG3 alongside Real Angela was like playing the game for the first time. I had a chance to revisit the story while listening to her reaction to cutscenes and tough decisions.

I did my best to restrict myself to being a guide, and not a decision-maker. All the major decisions were hers. I tried not to spoil things for her, and when she asked me for the consequences of a given decision, I would often be enigmatic (to her occasional frustration).

In my first few playthroughs, there was much that I missed. I guided her to those locations or situations, again without trying to tell her what to do or how to do it.

Did I do Real Angela any favors? In the end, she had the “best” playthrough she might have had, given the nature of her choices (which I’ll discuss below). However, she lost the joy of discovery. In her own words, any future playthroughs would not be as good as 1/14, because she’d already seen the best that the game had to offer.

Or did she?

Well, first of all, I withheld something. There are at least two locations that I did not show her. They’re not crucial, but they are interesting. If Real Angela is reading these words, she’s now determined to find where they are. And I’m not going to give her any hints!

Second of all, I find that there’s a joy in navigating the myriad storylines that the game offers. That’s what kept me through 14 playthroughs, and I think will keep me returning for a least two more.

For what it’s worth, playthrough 1/14 was not Real Angela’s last playthrough. She’s started on her second one. Because she invites me to participate part of the time, we’re labeling this one playthrough 2/14.5; that is, Real Angela’s second playthrough and a partial playthrough for me.

Perhaps I spoiled nothing for her. I enjoy repeated playthroughs of the game, experiencing something new in the story each time. It appears that Real Angela does as well.

Mission success!

What Real Angela saw

If Real Angela reads this, she had an immediate reaction to one of the things I wrote above. Let’s address this now:

I didn’t show her everything. But she found things that I’d never seen before. I saw the results of some story decisions that I’d never seen.

Real Angela is much more aggressive than I am in exploring nooks and crannies.

She compulsively looted everything, until the weight of her inventory became too much to manage. She then relaxed her looting to follow my own item weight rule: only pick up an item if its weight×10 is less than its gold value.

She was also aggressive about selling magic items that she didn’t see an immediate use for. For example, I’d explain “that item is meant for a paladin”; she’d say that we didn’t have a paladin in our party and sell it (even though I advised her not to). Later, when she did want to try playing a paladin, she didn’t have the items that would make the build work.

A key example of this was the Vest of Soul Rejuvenation. She bought it… or thought she had… or had she put it in Karlach’s inventory… or had she kept it… or had she put it in her camp chest? We hunted for it and couldn’t find it. Because of her pattern of selling all the magic items that didn’t seem immediately useful, we could never be sure if she’d sold it to some other vendor we’d met, or if the game had “eaten” it due to a program bug.

She asked me to include the following statement in this blog post:

Real Angela was often frustrating to play with because she has the patience of a toddler and pulled a Leroy Jenkins before I finished my sentence.

I don’t remember that being true as far as combat was concerned. But I did observe its validity when it came to sale of magic items. By the end of the game we had more gold than we could spend on anything useful, but perhaps lost some interesting gear opportunities because she’d forgotten how she’d disposed of a particular item.

Real Angela knew D&D, but BG3‘s implementation of that system is not the same. Also, when she played D&D, she always played fighter types to avoid the complexity of playing a spellcaster. I don’t blame her for that approach; I’d done the same thing when I played D&D. However, it meant that she was unfamiliar with BG3 spellcasting and roguery, just as I’d been when I started.

In other words, in addition to acting as her guide for the story, I acted as her guide for the system. She caught on quickly (re: she’s a better gamer than I am), and soon was complaining about the bizarre mechanics of shooting a bow versus throwing a spear, just as I do.

This is a multi-part essay. Here are links to all the parts:

• Part 1 – Fey and Bellandria
• Part 2 – Characters
• Part 3 – Hugs and Doggies
• Part 4 – Approvals and Interruptions
• Part 5 – Problems and Plans