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 I first decided to play Baldur’s Gate 3 earlier this year, it was for a number of reasons. It had been a while since I played a solid video game. I was coming out of a mental health spiral and felt like I had some energy to put into fun again. But mostly, it was because…
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…
The other characters When I play BG3, I play a role. In my first playthrough, I played Jank Halversen, a stereotypical slimy Bard. Assuming a role other than myself comes naturally to me, from years of playing table-top role-playing games, LARPs, and working at the NY Ren Faire. That's why I can indulge in the silly fantasy…
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…