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Well met, fellow community members!

I hope to make this thread the go-to place for story-writing discussion and input from series veterans and new fans alike. Having beaten the Bhaalspawn saga and played at least one BG spin-off (it was one of the Dark Alliance entries but my memory is slightly fuzzy right now) I will try to shed some light on what the previous games have done right and where they may have gone wrong as far as character development or the writing in general. Naturally, opinions should not be passed off as facts so please chime in with your impressions after reading mine.

1) Lack of character development in the series
This may sound harsh but I feel that your party members in BG could have used more dialogue, more cutscenes and more character-related quests. Sure, there are a variety of characters to choose from, which is a great thing given the amount of different classes and alignments in DnD. However, it is obvious that budget constraints set in at some point and the player was starved of meaningful interaction with their party members for much of the campaign once they ran out of lines to interject. That is to say nothing of the relationships between your companions. I would far rather choose from a smaller pool of potential companions, each of whom will be consequential to the main story and work on their personalities as you further progress in the game. Their interactions with each other and with you should be a major driver of immersion. In short, make *them* the main characters instead of the player-made one because although I like the story shining a spotlight on your character (in other words, me), it's the other (pre-made) characters that make a story memorable for obvious reasons.

2) Rushed romance, i.e. speed-dating
One of the reasons why BG's romances usually fall flat for me is that they are rushed to the point where the tentative relationship with your love interest reaches a climax before you're even midway through the game. I believe it would feel much more rewarding to delay key events in a romance until the very end. As far as sex scenes go, I generally view them as a waste of money and a way to restrict your product from a fairly large share of the gaming market needlessly (see ESRB ratings). I'm not sure anyone plays video games for such explicit content but at any rate, I think the money is better spent on more quests, more items, an extra dungeon etc. Of course, that is assuming there will be such interactions in the upcoming game.

3) Characters are locked to a certain alignment
I know this is a DnD thing but there is a glimmer of hope in me still that the rules can be bent with regards to character alignment. Being able to replay the game with a different alignment and observing your party members as they turn into a pack of vile monsters.. err a party of gallant heroes would be a major selling point for me. Provided that the characters are well-written instead of being reduced to memes or stereotypes.

Well, those are just my two cents. Looking forward to hearing you out on what BG3's writing ought to focus on!

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Your #2 isn't so much a "writing" thing as a simple design choice. If what you want is more spaced out romance dialogues, all it takes is a few lines of code to check for story progression before triggering dialogues/events, combined with longer timers between dialogues/events. You're not saying anything about the actual quality of the writing in the games you've played.

Same for #3, it's more a game mechanics than writing. Basically you want a mechanics that allows party members to change their alignment over the course of the game? So they can never hate you and leave you? Far as I can tell, we don't simply "change". From good to evil or vice versa. It'd take major life events for such changes. I suppose we can do such a thing for one or two select companions like in BG2, sure, but for everyone? Otherwise, how do you propose we implement this kind of mechanics? Are you suggesting that we should be able to "mold" anyone's nature simply by having them follow us? Would people simply change from good to evil or vice versa just because they're tagging along with an evil or good character? Chances are what they'd do is they hate you and leave you.

Despite the topic title, you're not "suggesting" much. You're mostly stating what you like or dislike.

Last edited by Try2Handing; 18/09/19 07:45 PM.

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Re. alignment, and saying up front that I have always disliked the D&D alignment system, to me being evil should not necessarily mean such a companion will automatically leave the party just because the party as a whole is good. An evil-aligned person can and should still feel that they want to remain in the party if they feel the party is continuing to serve their interests, interests that include staying alive in a world that is hostile to you. The system is rather simplistic and superficial if all that it is is to say: if you're "good" and I'm "evil" then I'm outta' here. Peoples' motivations are always way more complex than that. And writing characters with complex, complicated, deep motivations *is* about the quality of the writing.

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Originally Posted by Try2Handing
Your #2 isn't so much a "writing" thing as a simple design choice. If what you want is more spaced out romance dialogues, all it takes is a few lines of code to check for story progression before triggering dialogues/events, combined with longer timers between dialogues/events. You're not saying anything about the actual quality of the writing in the games you've played.

Same for #3, it's more a game mechanics than writing. Basically you want a mechanics that allows party members to change their alignment over the course of the game? So they can never hate you and leave you? Far as I can tell, we don't simply "change". From good to evil or vice versa. It'd take major life events for such changes. I suppose we can do such a thing for one or two select companions like in BG2, sure, but for everyone? Otherwise, how do you propose we implement this kind of mechanics? Are you suggesting that we should be able to "mold" anyone's nature simply by having them follow us? Would people simply change from good to evil or vice versa just because they're tagging along with an evil or good character? Chances are what they'd do is they hate you and leave you.

Despite the topic title, you're not "suggesting" much. You're mostly stating what you like or dislike.

No, it's not about timers or spacing out the dialogues. It's about adding more dialogue and cutscenes than there were in the previous games. As for #3, the writing is supposed to reflect the change in mechanics. In a way, the characters' fates would be inextricably intertwined with those of the main character. Major life events occurring in the lives in the characters would be a fine addition to BG3 in my view. That aside, I do believe your nit-picking is uncalled-for. I wasn't going to write a 1000-word essay laying out my vision for the story from start to finish anyway and I'm not going to play your little semantics game.

EDIT: Imoen is the protagonists' sibling in the BG saga so not all companions have to be people you pick up at the tavern or on the street who will leave your party at the drop of a hat. I'm sure that's who you meant though.

Originally Posted by kanisatha
Re. alignment, and saying up front that I have always disliked the D&D alignment system, to me being evil should not necessarily mean such a companion will automatically leave the party just because the party as a whole is good. An evil-aligned person can and should still feel that they want to remain in the party if they feel the party is continuing to serve their interests, interests that include staying alive in a world that is hostile to you. The system is rather simplistic and superficial if all that it is is to say: if you're "good" and I'm "evil" then I'm outta' here. Peoples' motivations are always way more complex than that. And writing characters with complex, complicated, deep motivations *is* about the quality of the writing.

Thank you, sir.


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Nit-picking? I didn't even have to. You *really* don't want me to nit-pick, trust me. Reading your post once and anyone can see that you're not really *suggesting* anything. Much. You're simply *implying* that you want "more dialogues and more banters", which is what everyone wants, pretty much. No you don't have to write a "1000-word" essay, but another paragraph or two detailing some actual *suggestions* would be fine.

Originally Posted by korotama
No, it's not about timers or spacing out the dialogues.

Yet that is exactly what you said: romances were rushed, and that it would be better to DELAY key events. You didn't say "there are too few events and I want more." You only clarified it just now with your second post.

You see my point? Despite your thread title and the hope that this will be "the go-to place for story-writing discussion", you're not really suggesting anything concrete. You left plenty of room for people like me to misinterpret you. Aside from the implication that you want more dialogues and banters, your first post doesn't exactly offer ideas or inspiration for others to follow up.

And believe it or not, I'm not even trying to be hostile. All I was suggesting is, your topic could use some fleshing out. Sometimes you just have to point out something is bad in the hope that people will improve. If you resent me for this, that is fine too.

Last edited by Try2Handing; 19/09/19 06:12 AM. Reason: Quoted wrong person again oof

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Man i hope alignment gets taken seirously again.

Im sick of the murky grey blob or moral relativism.
Alignments are a good thing. In a fantasy world, good and evil can be clearly defined things. Im tired of the game of thrones school of "its like... relative maaaaan".

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Originally Posted by Try2Handing
Nit-picking? I didn't even have to. You *really* don't want me to nit-pick, trust me. Reading your post once and anyone can see that you're not really *suggesting* anything. Much. You're simply *implying* that you want "more dialogues and more banters", which is what everyone wants, pretty much. No you don't have to write a "1000-word" essay, but another paragraph or two detailing some actual *suggestions* would be fine.

Originally Posted by korotama
No, it's not about timers or spacing out the dialogues.

Yet that is exactly what you said: romances were rushed, and that it would be better to DELAY key events. You didn't say "there are too few events and I want more." You only clarified it just now with your second post.

You see my point? Despite your thread title and the hope that this will be "the go-to place for story-writing discussion", you're not really suggesting anything concrete. You left plenty of room for people like me to misinterpret you. Aside from the implication that you want more dialogues and banters, your first post doesn't exactly offer ideas or inspiration for others to follow up.

And believe it or not, I'm not even trying to be hostile. All I was suggesting is, your topic could use some fleshing out. Sometimes you just have to point out something is bad in the hope that people will improve. If you resent me for this, that is fine too.

For the love of God, stop hurling abuse at me. I do not want your non-apology apology, I just want you to get off my thread and let others speak. Thank you kindly.

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Originally Posted by Sordak
Man i hope alignment gets taken seirously again.

Im sick of the murky grey blob or moral relativism.
Alignments are a good thing. In a fantasy world, good and evil can be clearly defined things. Im tired of the game of thrones school of "its like... relative maaaaan".

That is a fair point in that alignment should translate into tangible consequences for your character in the game. I have no beef with that. I haven't seen Game of Thrones so I can't comment on whether its writing is up to par or not. While I don't know how many classes 5E DnD has, I'm sure coming up with a full class roster for Good, Neutral and Evil alignment paths would be monumental work. Unless they stop short of providing you with alternatives based on your alignment (for example, the only mage is an Evil character). If they can pull off variety without sacrificing character development I will be astonished. To be fair, there are twenty-ish writers working on BG3 as we speak. Perhaps the budget is big enough to accommodate variety.

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Originally Posted by Sordak
Man i hope alignment gets taken seirously again.

Im sick of the murky grey blob or moral relativism.
Alignments are a good thing. In a fantasy world, good and evil can be clearly defined things. Im tired of the game of thrones school of "its like... relative maaaaan".


DnD do have a full alignment spectrum, majority of them being some part of the grey area, ranging from neutral good, to neutral evil. The only "clean" alignments are Lawful good, True Neutral and Chaotic Evil.

Me for example, tends to play chaotic neutral archetypes in anygame, and in retrospect seem to prefer characters of that type too.

I believe this mirrors what Try2Handing was trying to explain quite nicely. It's a statement of opinions and personal preferences, which is perfectly fine in its own rights, but it doesn't do much as suggestions. If you try to think from an outside perspective looking in, with the mind of a developer, there's no particular constructive ideas to extract from me, nor similar posts.

-----

When it comes to alignments in the games, you'd first need to deconstruct how they work in the old games and what worked and what didn't, then that needs to be translated into how it could be iterated upon to be made better, with clear and tangible suggestions as to what could be done differently to the things that didn't work, how, and what that means for the rest of the game.

I, for example, would suggest that it could be done similarly to the old KoTOR games, that you don't select this yourself, and that rather your actions in the game and dialogue choices, and political influences affects your character's alignment bar. I enjoyed that back then and thought it worked well, as it wasn't just some label that was arbitrarily chosen, but part of the actual gameplay and helped make it feel like choices and actions mattered a bit more by being that way.

-----

Now, the part of my post that's separated into the box of dashes, is more towards what I believe Try2Handing was trying to express. Good criticism is not just saying what's bad or what you like, but providing an alternative (a suggestion) approach or idea with a thought out presentation to how it could potentially be better.

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@The_Composer: Fair enough, but I wouldn't rush to that guy's defense so quickly. His posts were tinged with hostility and contributed nothing to the thread. If he had addressed me the way you do things would have taken a starkly different turn, wouldn't they? The goal of my thread was to have everyone chime in on the writing for the Bhaalspawn saga. Now, not all of my post boils down to personal preference. Could we take Aerie for example? She starts off as a fragile little elf and as you slowly progress in the main quest she becomes stronger. At one point she says she's going to be strong from that point onward. She can also become your girlfriend. The problem is, I'm in the Underdark right now and her character has stopped developing and there are probably over 30, maybe 40 hours of gameplay left if you factor in ToB. She just plateaus and only makes trifle remarks about the surroundings or your actions going forward. With all due respect, I believe a developer can extract a suggestion from that example.

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Yes my #1 alignment gripe in the BG games was always about Viconia. The kind of "evil" that she was was something that should have allowed for her to be a part of a good-aligned party. But it is extremely difficult, not to mention a management pain in the ass, to try and keep her. The worst part is that by the end of the saga she can have evolved to being a more neutral character, but of course it is too late at that point because you never get to keep her in your party (as a good party) in the first place. So it's a classic catch-22: she needs to evolve to be part of a good party, but she needs to be in your good-aligned party in order to evolve. You can't win either way.

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Nah.
You just need to stop thinking about Roleplaying games the way you do.
Alignments are fine as they are, tho CN should be defined better, as it is i ban it on my tables because its just a justificaiton to go "its what my character would do".

Playing PAladins without a strong enforcement of alignment is literaly pointless.

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Originally Posted by kanisatha
Yes my #1 alignment gripe in the BG games was always about Viconia. The kind of "evil" that she was was something that should have allowed for her to be a part of a good-aligned party. But it is extremely difficult, not to mention a management pain in the ass, to try and keep her. The worst part is that by the end of the saga she can have evolved to being a more neutral character, but of course it is too late at that point because you never get to keep her in your party (as a good party) in the first place. So it's a classic catch-22: she needs to evolve to be part of a good party, but she needs to be in your good-aligned party in order to evolve. You can't win either way.


I've managed to keep Viconia in my good aligned party even up to Throne of Bhaal believe it or not, I just don't invite characters that will become hostile towards her, and I balance out my reputation. It's not impossible, but it is not easy either. Personally, I don't see how evil aligned main characters would tolerate having her in their group. The only kind of person who would welcome her is someone who isn't bigoted and willing to trust someone despite their race and racial background, and those personality traits usually fit a good aligned character. Besides, while romancing her, Viconia progressively learns how to trust, and I don't see how she can learn to trust someone from an evil aligned main character because evil aligned characters generally trust no one but themselves.

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Originally Posted by The Composer
Originally Posted by Sordak
Man i hope alignment gets taken seirously again.

Im sick of the murky grey blob or moral relativism.
Alignments are a good thing. In a fantasy world, good and evil can be clearly defined things. Im tired of the game of thrones school of "its like... relative maaaaan".


DnD do have a full alignment spectrum, majority of them being some part of the grey area, ranging from neutral good, to neutral evil. The only "clean" alignments are Lawful good, True Neutral and Chaotic Evil.

Me for example, tends to play chaotic neutral archetypes in anygame, and in retrospect seem to prefer characters of that type too.
-----

When it comes to alignments in the games, you'd first need to deconstruct how they work in the old games and what worked and what didn't, then that needs to be translated into how it could be iterated upon to be made better, with clear and tangible suggestions as to what could be done differently to the things that didn't work, how, and what that means for the rest of the game.

I, for example, would suggest that it could be done similarly to the old KoTOR games, that you don't select this yourself, and that rather your actions in the game and dialogue choices, and political influences affects your character's alignment bar. I enjoyed that back then and thought it worked well, as it wasn't just some label that was arbitrarily chosen, but part of the actual gameplay and helped make it feel like choices and actions mattered a bit more by being that way.



I embrace moral relativism in the real world, but in the D&D world, it is not the case. Good, Evil, chaos, and Law are forces of nature itself. Real forces, like the laws of physics. Gods are aligned to them. Creatures are bounded to it. When you change your alignment you change a part of yourself, the part that is imprinted in your character sheet. Your moral standpoint could determine your profession and class, or even the spells allowed to you. If you are a paladin you lose your powers. There are spells that target alignments, for protection or to harm creatures.

In the real world, you cannot develop a missile that targets only unlawful husbands and evil dictators and leave innocent people unharmed, but in Faerun you can.

From a game perspective, alignment is an RP choice but also a game mechanic, so in D&D is as real and tangible as gravity.
What would be interesting is that you could change the alignment of your characters, like in NWN or P: K games because of your actions, but you have to choose a alignment to start with because spells and class choices depend on it.

The problem with the alignment in BG2 was in part because it was static, unchangeable for the most part of the game (you can only change it in hell). You had the "reputation mechanic" but it has its flaws and does not reflect all the alignment variations.( BG logic: So, you are a merchant and cames a man with a terrible reputation, wearing armor of silver dragon scales drenched in fresh blood, a cape made by dead dryads, widely known as a man who eats babies for breakfast and kills grannies that look at him funny. His eyes glint with hate while he instinctively touches the hilt of his infamous weapon The Blackrazor, eager to put it to work. So the merchant decides to charge him a double prize for his goods. What could go wrong?).

There were characters that can change the alignment due to personal choices and character development, like Anomen or Viconia. It would be great to see that in BG3

In the Kotor games, already mentioned, you can influence some of your companions to slowly change their views to align with yours. In the end, you have a party with similar goals. Of course in Kotor2 it requires work and patience, and not all companions can or will change (Kreia for instance). There is even a prestige class that inspires your followers to turn into the dark/light side in a more extreme way: the ones that like your views of the world became more attuned to it, the ones that oppose that became more extreme against them.


Originally Posted by Sordak
Nah.
You just need to stop thinking about Roleplaying games the way you do.
Alignments are fine as they are, tho CN should be defined better, as it is i ban it on my tables because its just a justificaiton to go "its what my character would do".

Playing PAladins without a strong enforcement of alignment is literaly pointless.


@Sordak, I also take care when a player came with a CN character, as well as most GM, unless is a known veteran player. They tend to behave erratically, like start dancing in the middle of a fight, try to woo the zombie who tries to kill you, insult the lord of the city, etc... which is not bad itself if you do it once or twice, but if you constantly hamper the progress of your party it could be tiresome, for the players and the GM. And as you said, more times than a dozen, that happens because the character is CN and "does as he pleases". Bonus if it is a CN bard. And you do not really have to play it that way. Many people do it right, but when they do not, they usually ruin your game.

And about paladins, I agree. The Paizo devs addressed this in the pathfinder 2.0 Paladin makeover (now champions). You are still a good character, but also you are forced to follow the Tenets of your class and your god or the DM could strip your powers. It is similar to the "fallen paladin" but they created specific tenets instead of general ones so it is not as obscure as before.
All champions of good alignment follow these tenets.
-You must never perform acts anathema to your deity or willingly commit an evil act, such as murder, torture, or the casting of an evil spell.
-You must never knowingly harm an innocent, or allow immediate harm to one through inaction when you know you could reasonably prevent it. This tenet doesn’t force you to take action against possible harm to innocents at an indefinite time in the future or to sacrifice your life to protect them.

And also every god has tenets of their own: Torag’s champions can’t show mercy to enemies of their people, so you will never be a Redemeer, etc.

Last edited by _Vic_; 19/09/19 09:11 PM.
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Originally Posted by _Vic_


I embrace moral relativism in the real world, but in the D&D world, it is not the case. Good, Evil, chaos, and Law are forces of nature itself. Real forces, like the laws of physics. Gods are aligned to them. Creatures are bounded to it. When you change your alignment you change a part of yourself, the part that is imprinted in your character sheet. Your moral standpoint could determine your profession and class, or even the spells allowed to you. If you are a paladin you lose your powers. There are spells that target alignments, for protection or to harm creatures.

In the real world, you cannot develop a missile that targets only unlawful husbands and evil dictators and leave innocent people unharmed, but in Faerun you can.

From a game perspective, alignment is an RP choice but also a game mechanic, so in D&D is as real and tangible as gravity.
What would be interesting is that you could change the alignment of your characters, like in NWN or P: K games because of your actions, but you have to choose a alignment to start with because spells and class choices depend on it.


Your post illustrates perfectly why alignment change makes a terrific story-telling device that could be framed either as a plot twist or as an extra layer of depth for a particular character. It also has consequences from a gameplay point of view. Others have pointed out that trying to write the story in the form of a journey where you navigate a moral gray zone has been done to death (there is truth to that) so I agree that the writing should be in keeping with the almost palpable presence of Good, Evil, Law and Chaos. Let's say it adds more wiggle room for the writers to come up with more than just a half-baked story for a video game adaptation of DnD.

There's one more thing I just thought of. BG has a few FMV clips which give it a distinct flair and my only wish is that there had been more. An FMV can set the mood, introduce an important character or add weight to a conversation (some will argue BG has too many in-engine cutscenes). I'm not sure they're even called that anymore though. I guess it has taken a back seat to other video encoding formats in the meantime. Of course, how would you go about rendering the player character who stores a lot of parameters upon creation and can potentially yield thousands of different builds? Perhaps a first-person perspective would be helpful, which brings me to my final point. Having lots of throw-away characters makes it hard to establish an immersive narrative and write a well-thought-out story. I recently beat Siege of Dragonspear and while I was fairly impressed with the resolution of the plot, I never tried using any of the new characters. Frankly, I think there are too many companions now. Planescape: Torment has a cult following and to my understanding it does not have a plethora of characters (haven't got very far into the game yet as I'm still on my first IWD2 run).

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Originally Posted by BladeDancer
Originally Posted by kanisatha
Yes my #1 alignment gripe in the BG games was always about Viconia. The kind of "evil" that she was was something that should have allowed for her to be a part of a good-aligned party. But it is extremely difficult, not to mention a management pain in the ass, to try and keep her. The worst part is that by the end of the saga she can have evolved to being a more neutral character, but of course it is too late at that point because you never get to keep her in your party (as a good party) in the first place. So it's a classic catch-22: she needs to evolve to be part of a good party, but she needs to be in your good-aligned party in order to evolve. You can't win either way.


I've managed to keep Viconia in my good aligned party even up to Throne of Bhaal believe it or not, I just don't invite characters that will become hostile towards her, and I balance out my reputation. It's not impossible, but it is not easy either. Personally, I don't see how evil aligned main characters would tolerate having her in their group. The only kind of person who would welcome her is someone who isn't bigoted and willing to trust someone despite their race and racial background, and those personality traits usually fit a good aligned character. Besides, while romancing her, Viconia progressively learns how to trust, and I don't see how she can learn to trust someone from an evil aligned main character because evil aligned characters generally trust no one but themselves.

I completely agree. She should actually be an ideal fit with a good-aligned party. And I always feel really sorry for her and want to have her in my party. But those party management convolutions you have to go through to keep her while also holding onto some other key companions just gets too tedious for me. And as I've posted on the Beamdog forum, instead of messing around with some of the other companions, if there was one companion they could've made some small adjustments to that would've made a meaningful difference to the games, it should have been Viconia because overall she was one of the most interesting companions from an RP perspective. A huge missed opportunity IMO.

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I think one area that needs to be nailed is roleplaying immersion. I tend to always play a good character with varying levels of lawful/lawlessness. Having as many dialogue options to address every situation as your character would is what Baldur's Gate 2, as well as Fallout 2, nailed, and made me feel like the Bhaalspawn and Chosen One were memorable characters with their own identity.
BG3 should allow options for all alignments to address situations appropriately. I think that's hardest with a good character, since players have a variety of things that they may or may not find morally objectionable. Though I think there should be options to be very manipulative and cruel for evil and chaotic players. Going off of Divinity Original Sin 2 all quests should have satisfying conclusions that have options for both good and evil characters - which was one thing that was most noticeable about that game in terms of flaws. I say that having a good character is harder for developers because if you're playing and fully immersed in your character being a paragon who always tries to protect innocents, if a quest just does not let you try and get a happy outcome without your character showing a reaction that makes sense then that breaks the immersion, and if that happens even once it can have a major effect on someones' enjoyment of the game even if the game excels in all other areas.

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The alignment system in BG2 was a joke and only existed because the devs thought it was needed in a D&D game, I think we can all agree on that. DOS 2 hero/villain tag thing was equally pointless and dumb. There was almost never a good reason to be evil.
In a good RPG, you need to be able to play a morally grey character one who has no issues using people for nothing else but their own personal gain and that don't care whether their actions are good or evil. Which of course means enabling players to do evil things from racketeering to treason but leave the stupid evil options out of the game there is no good reason for your character to be able to slaughter every single thing on Faerun. Also please allow me to talk with monsters, murderers and Psychopaths. I hate it when you meet interesting evil characters and the only option I have is to kill them. Let the player decide what do they want to do with them.
And especially do not ignore the neutral options, not every conflict needs a clear resolution, make it possible to play someone who wants to bring balance t this world, I don't think any other RPG even tried that sadly.


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Now that Bhaal is back from the dead (unless I misunderstood the past plot dumps) I'm looking forward to seeing him reprise his role as an important entity in the lore. Maybe even fight him at some point or another. If memory serves me, a tentative setting for Baldur's Gate III that never came to fruition was to be high-level DnD with the Bhaalspawn (who had just ascended to godhood) battling much of Faerun's pantheon. Is atheism even a thing in the Forgotten Realms and if so, what are the ramifications of adhering to such values? Does the alignment system come from the deities themselves or is it a standalone feature of DnD?

Last edited by korotama; 21/09/19 01:18 PM.
Joined: May 2019
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veteran
Joined: May 2019
Originally Posted by Hawke
there is no good reason for your character to be able to slaughter every single thing on Faerun.

Indeed! Especially with there also not being ANY negative consequences for you.

I don't care how powerful you and your party are, there is no way you can just go about killing people, or even stealing from people, and not have everyone in town and all the guards and eventually the whole army of that kingdom come after you and put you down. So this is my gripe with the evil side of things. I absolutely agree players should have the freedom to do things as they wish. But they cannot and should not expect the setting's very nature to be suspended to allow them to have this freedom. If the setting is essentially a "good" favoring setting, which the Forgotten Realms most certainly is (with the exception of certain specific locations such as Thay or Zhentil Keep), then wanton killing of innocent people should generate a massive negative reaction against you.

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