Yesterday, I told Real Angela that I was going to have an extended afternoon-to-evening game session with J, M, and A. (As an aside, they all knew each other from game events like the masquerade party I threw in 2019.) She asked the obvious question, "What are you going to play?" I explained that I couldn't answer.…
This is an unusual post for me. I'm writing a second essay about a game I did not like: Expedition 33. When I wrote my earlier essay, I was filled with inchoate rage. I was angry at the game and its designers. I designated some of the lead designers in the credits and wished different horrible fates…
Three years ago I posted a text message exchange I had with a friend on secrecy and privacy in Wicca. I recently had another exchange with that same friend. Here it is, with some edits to preserve their privacy and to keep me from rambling a bit too much. Me: *Sigh* No Acorn Garden today. Only one…
Four years ago today, two teeny kittens chose to share their lives with me. There's been a shift in their behavior over the past year. They've become less social with each other. I understand that this is normal for cats as they grow older. The principle issue that has emerged in the past year is their increasing…
Let's not get confused about the identity of the new blogger on the Argothald Journal. Over the years I've occasionally talked with people about sharing my blogging platform with others. Real Angela is the first to accept the offer. Although her first post is about a Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough, I put no restrictions on what she…
When we get to the end of a game, I often forget to take photos for this series of blog posts. Last week we played Apothebakery. It was a lot of fun, but I don't have any pictures of it. Last night we played two games, both by allplay. They seem to emphasize small, short, inexpensive games.…
While doing some bookkeeping work associated with my Baldur's Gate 3 blog posts, I came across a prediction from a cultural ethnologist. Background that you'll already know if you read any of my BG3 posts in the past year: back in playthrough 8, I named a hireling after a friend of mine. The hireling was Arctic Druid…
Multiplayer technical problems Playthrough 1/14 was marked with a number of technical problems. I hope that by going over them, I can spare you from the same difficulties in your own multiplayer BG3 playthroughs. Here's the TL;DR version, if you want to skip this section and move on to the next: According to Larian, and our own…
Approval One major issue with our multiplayer stories was with approval. Every non-player character has an approval rating of the protagonist. What we learned in this playthrough is that each player character in multiplayer BG3 has a separate approval rating. By far the biggest adjustments of a character's approval come during the cutscenes. A cutscene will involve…
Scratch Real Angela loves dogs. One of her closest and dearest friends is Hodor, a floppy dog who's mostly folds. As we approached the location where a player could meet Scratch for the first time, I went into all-out overly-dramatic mode: "This is it. The most important quest in the game. Nothing is more important, not even…