Greetings simians!

SassyGoldElf

I mean that lovingly I promise... *coughs* ANYWAY Hello from New England! Thought I'd post an introduction. It's wordy sorry, I'm like that.

Honestly I'm really behind, but I have to say I had no idea there were so many other fans of this game. I always kind of figured most people were over it. Less than a month ago I found out not only had BG been redone, but it was on the iPad. I ended up getting it for my PC too, because really it's kind of a pain on the iPad and for someone who's played it a million times, the lack of cheats and customization is rather tedious.

I doubt I'll ever tire of the Baldur's Gate series. I played them back in... let's see, vanilla BG1 I started playing in 2000 I think. All I know is that 3E was just announced or was about to be announced within a couple months. My now-ex boyfriend's friend brought it over and they installed it on my computer. I never planned to play it myself. I liked fantasy stuff and had since grade-school, but D&D was of no interest to me. Well the boyfriend was at work one day and I was bored, so I revved it up and hours later I crossed a certain little bridge in Nashkel and there went my life as I knew it. From there I slowly entered the tabletop D&D world, and loved it up until my group in 2010 decided they only wanted to play 4E. It was bad enough they didn't like the Realms at all, but that was the last straw.

It's hard to find decent groups around here. Most are either full or meet on days I can't make it, etc etc. So I'm really glad to have BG back. At least it's something. It's great to see new people coming into a game that's so old, and to see that there really is a very large fanbase for these classic games. I'm excited to be here and meet people! Well met, friends~!

Tl;dr Thrilled to find fellow fans!
Also 4E can kiss my arse and then die in a fire ♥~

meagloth

Hulooo, welcome.
I like The iPad thingamajig.
It lets me play bg on the iPad. If you get bored solo a jester with a 75 roll.

LadyRhian

Did you mean… Simians? "Simeon" is a name. When Edwin calls people "Simians", he is comparing them to Apes.

SassyGoldElf

@LadyRhian Yes, I know it means apes. I'm bad at spelling due to years of laziness on the internet, but that does not automatically make me an idiot. But thanks for the correction, to think how many people laughed but didn't point it out is rather embarrassing to say the least.

CrevsDaak

SassyGoldElf said:

Also 4E can kiss my arse and then die in a fire ♥~

Yeah, 2E FOR VICTORY AND HONOR RAAAAAGH!!!!

SassyGoldElf

@meagloth That sounds both amusing and terrifying. Altogether, tempting. XD

CrevsDaak said:

SassyGoldElf said:

Also 4E can kiss my arse and then die in a fire ♥~

Yeah, 2E FOR VICTORY AND HONOR RAAAAAGH!!!!

I'm a 3E player myself, having been a late bloomer to the tabletops my only exposure to the 2E rules is through BG. It seems as though it was more limited, but without having played it firsthand I cannot say. Anything is better than that watered-down pile of crap they call 4E. The stupid powers, and don't even get me started on the abbreviated alignment system. Ugh, it doesn't even FEEL like D&D anymore!

CrevsDaak

3E is fine, but I like 2E better, but I have to say Sub-races are nice, and in 4E, the maddest thing is that you can play as demons, Elves get another APR.... Everybody is OP, and in the game they are selling, you don't tend to pass lvl10.

CrevsDaak

They've said something about a 5E like the 2 and 3E were.
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/21602/d-d-5th-edition-2014#latest

Time4Tiddy

4e lost me the second they retconned tieflings. They went from being limited only by your imagination to being a completely standardized race (and horribly ugly).

SassyGoldElf

@CrevsDaak My biggest thing with 4E I think was the stupid powers with their dumb names. It was basically like playing a mage regardless of what class you were playing. It took all the creativity out of your actions by making everything all overdone and flowery. In the old days, you could just say "I shoot it with my bow" and add flavor text as you saw fit. In 4E you had to go "I Split the Tree" or some other stupid sounding nonsense.

And I need to stop before my sanity flies out the window and I commence a full-scale madwoman's rant.

@Time4Tiddy RIGHT?! To me, tieflings added just the right little spice of Planescape to a game (a setting which sadly I've only ever been able to sample through Torment). They were a reminder of how far the possibilities really stretched. Now they're just cliche-looking devil things that really don't feel like anything special, surreal or otherworldly to me.

LadyRhian

@SassyGoldElf They did the same with Aasimar. From "anything goes" to "Bog standard" in two edition changes. I recall helping someone create a Aasimar Paladin with green skin, blue hair and a number of other physical changes. Now, they are all blonde cover models. Because Good is always pretty and evil is always UG-LEE.

SassyGoldElf

@LadyRhian I never had any Aasimar characters but I did consider them to be just as unique and intriguing as tieflings. I tend towards rogues and rangers and neutral or evil characters, so alas I never had any interest in playing one. But yeah, now they look like they walked off the cover of every cheap romance novel ever. *sighs* I remember when the texts specifically read, "no two tieflings are the same". Well that went right out the window, didn't it?

I'm so distraught over what they did to the Realms too. I prayed and prayed they wouldn't bring that garbage into my precious Faerun, but good old Greenwood decided to follow in the steps of George Lucas and destroy his greatest creation. Hopefully they'll patch it back up with 5E now that they have caught so much flak from everyone.

The ironic thing is? My favorite thing about the Realms is what destroyed my favorite thing about the Realms. *coughs*RedWizards*coughs* Ah well, the Haunted Lands trilogy really is awesome. Re-reading it right now actually. It never fails to amaze me how that lich can be so utterly.... charming.

LadyRhian

@SassyGoldElf It wasn't Ed Greenwood- he sold them the Realms back in 2e, so he didn't really have a choice- he tried to put the best face on it, but I don't think he was happy with what they did. A lot of it came down to to the people who played in the Realms complaining because there are numerous powerful characters like Elminster, the Symbul, Khelben Arunsun and so on, the idea somehow being that these characters should be taking care of the threats to the Realms, not PCs (or something), or why are their threats to the Realms if these characters exist? Some players want to be the powers that save the world, and Wizards of the Coast's insistence on having a "Realms-shaking event" every year or two led to threat creep (because every threat has to be greater than the one before, or the players can't get invested in them), and an attempt to "fix" the Realms by nerfing the most powerful good characters so that PCs could move into the spots thus vacated. I don't mind having powerful characters. But- I also like the idea of more powerful characters to keep others on the straight and narrow, too. You probably feel the same. But yeah, destroying the Realms just never sat right with me. And for what? Another "Realms-shaking event"? I don't think that's a good reason to do so, and it just felt cheap. The Realms is not a comic book and you don't need to have these constant crossover events that are a threat to the Realms just to promote interest in your product. I think the best event so far in the Realms was the Horde event- Where the Horde invades, and Azoun of Cormyr gathered up an army to go fight it.

It wasn't an overpowered event- it was based on something in the real world, and it shook up the world in a good way-introducing the Oriental Adventures classes and the Eastern part of the world to the Realms. It was more a political thing than a power thing, and I loved it. The Avatar Trilogy changed editions from 1e to 2, and the biggest thing was the elimination of Assassins as a class- thus the death of their god, Myrkul. It also introduced wild magic areas and wild mages, along with Elementalist mages, song, geometer mages and artificers. But it wasn't a stunningly huge change just to change things.

ShapiroKeatsDarkMage

Also 4E can kiss my arse and then die in a fire ♥~

THIRD EDITION FOREVER!

Time4Tiddy

SassyGoldElf said:

@LadyRhian I never had any Aasimar characters but I did consider them to be just as unique and intriguing as tieflings. I tend towards rogues and rangers and neutral or evil characters, so alas I never had any interest in playing one. But yeah, now they look like they walked off the cover of every cheap romance novel ever. *sighs* I remember when the texts specifically read, "no two tieflings are the same". Well that went right out the window, didn't it?

Well just look at some of the most unique and interesting characters in the DnD CRPGs: Annah, Haer'Dalis, Valen, Neeshka. I don't know that they ever had an Aasimar companion, maybe Kaelyn the Dove? Regardless, both Tieflings and Aasimar made the Realms much more exciting, and now they are just basically a cult of inbred humans.

SassyGoldElf

LadyRhian said:

@SassyGoldElf It wasn't Ed Greenwood- he sold them the Realms back in 2e, so he didn't really have a choice- he tried to put the best face on it, but I don't think he was happy with what they did.

Okay that's a relief. I don't know if it's because I got into tabletop too late to know anything much about AD&D and 2E, or if it's just because to me FR is D&D, but I always imagined Greenwood as one of the head people sitting at Wizards pulling all the strings. A fool notion, I know. I spend far too much time in my own little world and not enough time paying attention to how reality actually works.
In any case I idolize him for the world he created and should have known he had better sense than that. It certainly makes more sense now, thinking in terms of them saying "hey we made all these shit changes for D&D and we want you to help us make them work in Forgotten Realms go do it ok thanks bye".