Baldur’s Gate 3 – Playthrough 11 – A Hireling’s Destiny

As I've mentioned before, this series of Baldur's Gate 3 posts are primarily intended to be annotated photo essays. That means taking photos. I knew how to take screenshots and video captures on my PS5, but I didn't know how to transfer them to my computer until I got a Playstation Plus account. I got the account…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 – Playthrough 11 – Romancing a Wizard

As I've mentioned in my previous BG3 posts, one of the goals of my playthroughs is to see what it's like to enter into a relationship with each of the available romancable characters. Of course, this allows me to see all the available sex scenes in the game. The relationship goal for this playthrough was Gale. In…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 – Playthrough 11 – Zapper Disaster

The "Zapper Disaster" turned out to be the defining moment of playthrough 11. In order to describe it, I have to break with my practice in these write-ups: I have to discuss some system-related stuff earlier than I would otherwise prefer. In my playthrough 10 write-up, I said I'd save the D&D-based details until the end. I…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 – Playthrough 11 – Break it down

I'm taking a different approach with this Baldur's Gate 3 write-up. As with my playthrough 10 write-up, my goal is to make things easier for whoever might be reading it. This time, I'm breaking the write-up into smaller individual blog posts. I've typically written one long post per playthrough. My goal, as with my massive post on…

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A Klingon correction

I have a social media presence on Facebook, Bluesky (@acorn.garden), and Mastodon (@wgseligman@pagan.plus). Because my ego knows no bounds, I posted the following on all three: My review of ta' puq mach has just been published on Amazon. I was a bit surprised they accepted it. (For those of you whose Klingon is rusty, ta' puq mach…

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So it goes

When someone shares word of a death on Facebook, I will occasionally respond "So it goes." What does that mean? In a couple of Kurt Vonnegut's books (most notably Slaughterhouse-Five), there's an alien race called the Tralfamadorians. They perceive time differently. They see the past, present, and future all at once. When someone dies, they say "So…

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Kickin’ Wiccan is no more

I received an email via the Acorn Garden website inquiring about Kickin' Wiccan, the pagan jewelry shop I set up through Shapeways. Even though I was no longer marketing my items through Etsy, I still received occasional orders through the Shapeways shop page. The reason why the prospective buyer contacted me through my Wicca page is that…

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BG3 – Barding it 2: Electric Boogaloo

In my previous post on creating the Bard instrumental ensembles in Baldur's Gate 3, I had a misleading statement: It’s almost impossible to get all six instruments to play at once within the main game. [...] In the main adventure, even if you have all four of your party members with the Musical Instrument skill, you’d need…

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BG3 – Barding it

CW: There are videos in this post that include rapid movement in a video game. If you have vertigo or a similar reaction to visual media, the videos may be disorienting. Since this essay is about the audio, you can close your eyes or look away while the videos play and still understand what's going on. TL;DR:…

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News Sources

The following essay repeats material that I originally posted on Facebook. For years, I subscribed on-line to both the New York Times and the Washington Post. I rarely read any given article past the headlines, but I thought it was important to support high-quality journalism. I looked on it as an act of charity, the way I…

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