Not Baldur's Gate novels. The Baldur's Gate takes place within the Forgotten Realms books which is stated upon the games box it came in and on its manual. You can easily google them up or check out your local Bookstore. They ar every popular Fantasy books. They follow tidbits of the game but not enough to call it cannon to the books. Its plagurism to follow ones work exactly.
Though the game does follow the AD&D Baldur's Gate adventure book which came from the game, almost 100% exactly. But its very rare these days to find that book. Try rogue traders to find one.
I am slightly ashamed to admit this, but I have re-read the Baldur's Gate novelization ten times. It's just so deliciously hilaribad, like when you do dramatic readings of My Immortal with your friends. ...I need to get some friends together and do a dramatic reading of the BG novelization. That would be the best thing ever. Ahahaha.
...I'm sorry. I just...I really have a soft spot for reading really terrible literature and then making fun of it.
Indeed I agree with Chow. Knew this even when the game first was out. The game wasnt like th ebooks. Thankfully i have most fo the series and the volumes within Baldur's gate dont even follow the story the same. I really proved that to LadyRhian and she got so flamed about me saying the game and the books werent exactly the same. Sadly I get banned for speaking the truth but thought id say that as I was right all along and had my right to fight back about it. If the game and the books were the same, Wed have seen Gorion get shot in the eyeball with an arrow instead of meeting Sarevok which cannonly the arrow killed Gorion, plus we dont see Abdel meet the two mercenaries he killed out of rage (similar to Brage) but met two assassins trying to kill him in Candlekeep. To LadyRhian and Kazumian(sp) if you are going to flame someone and falsely get them banned for speaking the truth,I suggest you guys back up your evidence next time. Again thanks Chow for bringing up the truth. Must hurt does it LadyRhian? You should be stripped of your moderator status for flaming me and telling me the game was like the books when it was not
Thank you Chow for bringing this up again. I hope this will give Kasumian (sp) and LadyRhian a chance to aplogize for the issues THEY caused those few months ago when I was right about what I stated the game is NOT exactly based on the books and its considered plagurism to follow an authors work exactly. Hopefully this can get my account back for I KNEW i wasnt flaming anyone ever on here especially abouty this topic written in the drow race topic!!! Alot of people including Tanthalas seem to take things judgingly the wrong way. But everyones different in the world. Some poeple just explain things more evidently and stricter but hopefully next time people will think before they try to make topics with others and not accuse them of false evidence when I had proved months ago.
Yeah, read the books, wished I hadn't. Completely unfaithful to the game on levels you didn't think were possible. Sellsword? More like Smellsbored. Hah. Hahah. Haaah.
It's what happens when The Hulk becomes a Bhaalspawn. You have been waylaid by enemies, and must gather your neckveins before venturing forth!
Indeed I agree with Chow. Knew this even when the game first was out. The game wasnt like th ebooks. Thankfully i have most fo the series and the volumes within Baldur's gate dont even follow the story the same. I really proved that to LadyRhian and she got so flamed about me saying the game and the books werent exactly the same. Sadly I get banned for speaking the truth but thought id say that as I was right all along and had my right to fight back about it. If the game and the books were the same, Wed have seen Gorion get shot in the eyeball with an arrow instead of meeting Sarevok which cannonly the arrow killed Gorion, plus we dont see Abdel meet the two mercenaries he killed out of rage (similar to Brage) but met two assassins trying to kill him in Candlekeep. To LadyRhian and Kazumian(sp) if you are going to flame someone and falsely get them banned for speaking the truth,I suggest you guys back up your evidence next time. Again thanks Chow for bringing up the truth. Must hurt does it LadyRhian? You should be stripped of your moderator status for flaming me and telling me the game was like the books when it was not
Thank you Chow for bringing this up again. I hope this will give Kasumian (sp) and LadyRhian a chance to aplogize for the issues THEY caused those few months ago when I was right about what I stated the game is NOT exactly based on the books and its considered plagurism to follow an authors work exactly. Hopefully this can get my account back for I KNEW i wasnt flaming anyone ever on here especially abouty this topic written in the drow race topic!!! Alot of people including Tanthalas seem to take things judgingly the wrong way. But everyones different in the world. Some poeple just explain things more evidently and stricter but hopefully next time people will think before they try to make topics with others and not accuse them of false evidence when I had proved months ago.
You just talking abouty the topic written in the drow race topic ?
Ah, Okay, so you dislike what they did with the gods, not necessarily the Spellplague itself. Meh, hopefully 5e will atone for 4e's sins.
That's a tall order. The problem with the Spellplague isn't so much what happened in setting(though I have my issues with that too) as what it did to the setting as far as running a game goes. They destroyed/merged most of the gods, altered the landscape (erasing entire nations in the process), and moved the timeline forward by a century.
This means that (if you stuck to canon) all previous setting material became worthless, most NPCs are dead, and any campaign you might have been running is now over. People complained about the Time of Troubles, but that was nothing in comparison to what the loons in charge of 4E did. To make matters worse, they didn't even really try to replace it with anything. They just decimated the setting and called it good.
I, and many others, simply ignored 4E Forgotten Realms. I'm not abandoning all of my old material and notes just because WotC says I should. Apparently WotC is going to continue moving forward with their Sundering storyline. I won't be. They only way they can regain me as a paying customer is to support multiple eras of play. To be fair, WotC said that they will be doing exactly that, so we'll just see how things go.
Says who? The truth is whatever the majority accepts as truth And as far as I know the majority would rather pretend that the books never existed
Especially when it comes to small details like heliocentrism, existence of atoms, bacteria etc
C'mon man. Truth might be many things but DEFINITELY what most people believe in is NOT a good truth-marker.
And yes, i know we talk about BG canon, nothing else.
Actually no, I'm not talking only about BG canon It applies to everything. Examples - a few hundred years ago the earth was flat. A few decades ago the atom was the smallest thing in the universe. And don't even get me started on history...
@ScarsUnseen I guess i just have a soft spot for 4e seeing as it introduced me to tabletop D&D (I played NWN and BG2 before, but never truly understood the rules). That being said, I prefer 2e AD&D (Ravenloft ftw).
Actually no, I'm not talking only about BG canon It applies to everything. Examples - a few hundred years ago the earth was flat. A few decades ago the atom was the smallest thing in the universe. And don't even get me started on history...
Interesting fact of the day: Europeans thinking the Earth was flat into the fifteenth century is itself a myth! Nobody really thought Columbus was going to sail of the edge. That was made up by a nineteenth century novelist named Washington Irving. Educated people at the time of Columbus knew very well that the Earth was a sphere, and had know this for many centuries. (See also: Aristotle.)
Usually I'm against burning books, because books are holy to me, but I would like to purchase a copy of every BG novel right now, make a campfire out of them and roast some marshmallows over it, which I won't eat but also throw into the fire, because I fear that the evil essence of the books could taint my soul.
I, and many others, simply ignored 4E Forgotten Realms. I'm not abandoning all of my old material and notes just because WotC says I should. Apparently WotC is going to continue moving forward with their Sundering storyline. I won't be. They only way they can regain me as a paying customer is to support multiple eras of play. To be fair, WotC said that they will be doing exactly that, so we'll just see how things go.
I ignore 3e Forgotten Realms too. You know why? Because our games are in 2e.
Personally, I think what sucks the most about the Spellplague is that it completely nuked the Shining South. You know, the best place in the entire setting? All those halflings and wizards and whatever? Yup, gone.
It wasn't too long ago (in the broad scope of things) that I ignored the Forgotten Realms entirely. I was brought up on Greyhawk.
I think I somehow came around during the time between the BG1 release and the IWD release, when I snagged a copy of R.A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale trilogy because I felt like I should learn more about this upstart white-haired munchkin I cheaped to death for the nice loot in BG1.
i just assumed this thread was about allen iverson
At the risk of being the guy who missed the joke, I think you mean Paul Pierce. Iverson was "The Answer".
Or did you know that, and that was the point, in which case I've just crushed all the comedy out of your joke? Was it a joke inside a joke? I probably just stepped all over your joke. Sorry.
I'm not sure I understand the issue here. It's almost universally agreed among BG fans that the novels were terrible. And it's a simple statement of fact that the Forgotten Realms timelines that you can find online use the novels as their reference for trying to place the Bhaalspawn Wars on the timeline. They usually name the winning Bhaalspawn "Abdel". And they (the timelines) and other sources I can find make no mention of his actually becoming a god, so it seems to be presumed that he chose to remain mortal.
What exactly is in dispute? I guess maybe it's that the word "canon" is so loosely defined in reference to the game that you can argue about it. We speak about the "canon" party of Charname, Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, and Dynaheir. But isn't that just based on the characters chosen for the starter dungeon in SoA?
Then we speak about a "canon" story for the game, but there's really not one, as has been pointed out. The timelines do use the novels as "canon", but the Bhaalspawn wars are barely mentioned, usually warranting one line of explanation on the timeline, squeezed in right between the Time of Troubles entries and the next big event.
So I guess I'm not seeing why it's such a big deal. Are we just entertaining ourselves here by having a little "nerdfight" about nothing much?
The horrible writing aside, they didn't even get the source material right. The author could've just novelized their playthrough of Baldur's Gate, and it would've likely been awesome (if childishly written).
Instead...I don't even know how you can do what was done....have a name and 1 sentence summery of each character (lacking any of THE clearly stated traits of said characters) and make up the rest as you go using a 1 paragraph plot synopsis to decide how it begins and ends.
And I've already said my piece on how I regard 4th Ed, over in the Worshipping a Dead Power thread.
Yeah, read the books, wished I hadn't. Completely unfaithful to the game on levels you didn't think were possible. Sellsword? More like Smellsbored. Hah. Hahah. Haaah.
It's what happens when The Hulk becomes a Bhaalspawn. You have been waylaid by enemies, and must gather your neckveins before venturing forth!
I have never read the novels, though at one point I considered it. This right here pretty much sums up everything I read on the Forgotton Realms wiki and everything I have heard about the novels. I do agree with @LadyEibhilinRhett, reading it dramatically with friends sounds rather enjoyable (though I have never done that in the past, perhaps if I ever did I would pick and choose extra 'veiny' scenes.)
Also, I don't see Khalid cheating on Jaheira. He is just too cool to do that IMO.
WHOOPS SPOILERS I SPOILED SOME OF THE AWESOME NOVEL PLOT SPOILERS SPOILERS. Let me put that in a spoiler tag.
In the novel, for some stupid reason Khalid cheats on Jaheira, and Jaheira falls for Abdel while married to Khalid. He is too cowardly to even consider that IMO...
The BG novels, in my opinion, were disgraceful. I actually burned them. You might think that's a facetious joke, but it really isn't. I burned them both.
You fool! There was a third! You let it escape!
Now we are all doomed…
I critted my will save reading the second book, and I still failed. Why a rational, sane-minded human being would ever delve deeper and purchase the third is beyond me. However, the third book is by a different author altogether, so somebody else will have to let me know if ToB is worth burning, too. Hope they stocked up on potions of clarity.
Comments
Though the game does follow the AD&D Baldur's Gate adventure book which came from the game, almost 100% exactly. But its very rare these days to find that book. Try rogue traders to find one.
...I need to get some friends together and do a dramatic reading of the BG novelization. That would be the best thing ever. Ahahaha.
...I'm sorry. I just...I really have a soft spot for reading really terrible literature and then making fun of it.
Tl;dr after about the 3rd sentence.
It's what happens when The Hulk becomes a Bhaalspawn. You have been waylaid by enemies, and must gather your neckveins before venturing forth!
What the hell man, people are DYING out there.
This means that (if you stuck to canon) all previous setting material became worthless, most NPCs are dead, and any campaign you might have been running is now over. People complained about the Time of Troubles, but that was nothing in comparison to what the loons in charge of 4E did. To make matters worse, they didn't even really try to replace it with anything. They just decimated the setting and called it good.
I, and many others, simply ignored 4E Forgotten Realms. I'm not abandoning all of my old material and notes just because WotC says I should. Apparently WotC is going to continue moving forward with their Sundering storyline. I won't be. They only way they can regain me as a paying customer is to support multiple eras of play. To be fair, WotC said that they will be doing exactly that, so we'll just see how things go.
It applies to everything. Examples - a few hundred years ago the earth was flat. A few decades ago the atom was the smallest thing in the universe. And don't even get me started on history...
Personally, I think what sucks the most about the Spellplague is that it completely nuked the Shining South. You know, the best place in the entire setting? All those halflings and wizards and whatever? Yup, gone.
I think I somehow came around during the time between the BG1 release and the IWD release, when I snagged a copy of R.A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale trilogy because I felt like I should learn more about this upstart white-haired munchkin I cheaped to death for the nice loot in BG1.
Or did you know that, and that was the point, in which case I've just crushed all the comedy out of your joke? Was it a joke inside a joke? I probably just stepped all over your joke. Sorry.
What exactly is in dispute? I guess maybe it's that the word "canon" is so loosely defined in reference to the game that you can argue about it. We speak about the "canon" party of Charname, Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, and Dynaheir. But isn't that just based on the characters chosen for the starter dungeon in SoA?
Then we speak about a "canon" story for the game, but there's really not one, as has been pointed out. The timelines do use the novels as "canon", but the Bhaalspawn wars are barely mentioned, usually warranting one line of explanation on the timeline, squeezed in right between the Time of Troubles entries and the next big event.
So I guess I'm not seeing why it's such a big deal. Are we just entertaining ourselves here by having a little "nerdfight" about nothing much?
But who cares, they didn't cost Wizards nearly as much money as the Spellplague did.
Instead...I don't even know how you can do what was done....have a name and 1 sentence summery of each character (lacking any of THE clearly stated traits of said characters) and make up the rest as you go using a 1 paragraph plot synopsis to decide how it begins and ends.
And I've already said my piece on how I regard 4th Ed, over in the Worshipping a Dead Power thread.
Also, I don't see Khalid cheating on Jaheira. He is just too cool to do that IMO.
WHOOPS SPOILERS I SPOILED SOME OF THE AWESOME NOVEL PLOT SPOILERS SPOILERS. Let me put that in a spoiler tag.
I tell that to myself every day.
Post that in Youtube and you'll become a legend worhshipped by thousands