A Tale From The Sword Coast (Storied Playthrough)
MikaelAngelo
Member Posts: 6
Greetings and salutations my fellow Bhaalspawn. My name is Mikael and I'm a long time lurker who has finally mustered the courage to make an account. I played Baldur's Gate as a child, but could never fully grasp and appreciate the beauty of the game, or the world it's set in. Now that I am an adult however, I have come to love the game even more. The Forgotten Realms universe is one of the most vast and multifaceted known to the game world (in my humble opinion anyway) and something I've always wanted to do is immerse myself and leave my mark on it, however small of a mark it may be. Therefore, I have decided to create my own telling of the Bhaalspawn saga as I see it. I think the game gives us a remarkable framework for telling our own story. My hope is that I can write my own telling that lives up to the amazingness that is Baldur's Gate, and that you enjoy reading it of course! So let's dive in, shall we?
1. The game will be played at "Core Rules" difficulty. It may go higher, but never lower. My hope is that it gives enough of a challenge that strategy is important, but not too difficult that I'm locked into "cookie cutter" tactics. I hope that many of the bigger, harder fights are both fun, fluid, and difficult enough to give me cool fight scenes from which to write.
2. Death is permanent (with a few exceptions). Death is an integral part of the game, and should affect the story as such, so if a character dies, that's it (Exceptions are the "canon party"; Imoen, Khalied, Jaheira, Dynaheir, Minsc. These five I've flagged as "essential" to the story and cannot die. To a lesser extent, is anyone who makes an appearance in Baldur's Gate 2, Viconia and Edwin in particular. However, the stipulation with these non-essential characters is that if they die [game wise] they will be written in as fatally wounded, and have to be removed from the party, not to make a re-appearance until the events of SoA.)
3. Imoen must be in the party at all times. I personally love Imoen as a character, regardless of how much flak she gets, so I've decided to make her quintessential to the story more than any other character. Plus I think she's funny and I wish she was my wife.
4. All companions (except Imoen) are only allowed to be in the party for one chapter prior to chapter 6, this includes "canon" party members. I've toyed with this idea a bit, and I think it will lead to a more diverse cast and a more multifaceted story. Personally, I believe there are other happenings in the Sword Coast outside of what the main character and Imoen encounter. My hope is that by having this particular rule will lend itself to the more liberal side of story telling. I kind of had this idea that for some side quests, while (in game) the MC and Imoen are present, maybe (in the story) they are not. I'm still on the fence about it, but for now I'm rolling with it. Chapter 6, after Candlekeep, is where I feel the story dips and allows the player to really explore the world before going on towards the final fight.
5. All parts of the story must be done in the daylight hours (exceptions being "time sensitive" encounters. Example being escaping Candlekeep dungeon, or chasing Sarevok). My hope is that by only traveling and exploring during the daylight means I eat up "game time". I have always thought that the journey to stop Sarevok was one that spanned many months, if not a year or two. While I could easily take a liberal license with the time, I want to use the game time as a sort of basis for the timeline. This rule is to help make the timeline ore lengthy.
Those are all the rules I have in my head so far, but I have a feeling I may want to add another one or two later. Again, the purpose of these rules is not to make the game any more difficult per say, but rather to give me a much more dynamic story. Of course, Any rules you guys think would help me reach that end I would love to hear!
The biggest thing however, and something I believe will prove interesting, is that the story is going to be written by Imoen. It will be in the third person, but Imoen will be the "author" per say. This idea popped into my head while I was rolling stats for the protagonist prior to writing this post. My thought was that she wrote the story after the end of the journey. Something I want to include is possible diary entries and second-hand tellings of events that happened to which she and the protagonist were not present for, as well as side notes of facts about the story during the course of writing.
The last thing I feel I should mention at this point in time is that, for the sake of storytelling, I probably will be taking liberal license with some aspects of the story. Stuff like dialogues, actions, sometimes location, and general character interactions, also stuff like item abilities or powers. I don't want to drastically change the characteristics of people and objects, but I do want to expand on the to give a more colorful interpretation of the story.
Thats all I have for now! I hope to be updating this Playthrough at minimum once a week, with each updating being at least half a game chapters worth of story. Tomorrow after work I will be posting the protagonist as well as the Prologue part of the story. I look forward to reading all your comments and criticisms in the coming days.
See you later, Bhaalspawn.
Gameplay
I feel it best to start here, to give you all an idea of how I want to go about creating this telling. This won't be my first Playthrough, and I've done a lot of research on the game since I started playing again, both with the Wiki and various forums (chief amongst them this one, love you guys and gals here at Beamdog). While I do have a certain amount of headcanon about the story floating around in my brain, I do want to incorporate a certain amount of randomness into the mix. I've decided on a few rules, while not specifically to make the game more challenging, to give myself a more interesting Playthrough from which I draw my source material. I hope that this leads to a more dynamic and 'living' telling of the story. The rules are as follows;1. The game will be played at "Core Rules" difficulty. It may go higher, but never lower. My hope is that it gives enough of a challenge that strategy is important, but not too difficult that I'm locked into "cookie cutter" tactics. I hope that many of the bigger, harder fights are both fun, fluid, and difficult enough to give me cool fight scenes from which to write.
2. Death is permanent (with a few exceptions). Death is an integral part of the game, and should affect the story as such, so if a character dies, that's it (Exceptions are the "canon party"; Imoen, Khalied, Jaheira, Dynaheir, Minsc. These five I've flagged as "essential" to the story and cannot die. To a lesser extent, is anyone who makes an appearance in Baldur's Gate 2, Viconia and Edwin in particular. However, the stipulation with these non-essential characters is that if they die [game wise] they will be written in as fatally wounded, and have to be removed from the party, not to make a re-appearance until the events of SoA.)
3. Imoen must be in the party at all times. I personally love Imoen as a character, regardless of how much flak she gets, so I've decided to make her quintessential to the story more than any other character. Plus I think she's funny and I wish she was my wife.
4. All companions (except Imoen) are only allowed to be in the party for one chapter prior to chapter 6, this includes "canon" party members. I've toyed with this idea a bit, and I think it will lead to a more diverse cast and a more multifaceted story. Personally, I believe there are other happenings in the Sword Coast outside of what the main character and Imoen encounter. My hope is that by having this particular rule will lend itself to the more liberal side of story telling. I kind of had this idea that for some side quests, while (in game) the MC and Imoen are present, maybe (in the story) they are not. I'm still on the fence about it, but for now I'm rolling with it. Chapter 6, after Candlekeep, is where I feel the story dips and allows the player to really explore the world before going on towards the final fight.
5. All parts of the story must be done in the daylight hours (exceptions being "time sensitive" encounters. Example being escaping Candlekeep dungeon, or chasing Sarevok). My hope is that by only traveling and exploring during the daylight means I eat up "game time". I have always thought that the journey to stop Sarevok was one that spanned many months, if not a year or two. While I could easily take a liberal license with the time, I want to use the game time as a sort of basis for the timeline. This rule is to help make the timeline ore lengthy.
Those are all the rules I have in my head so far, but I have a feeling I may want to add another one or two later. Again, the purpose of these rules is not to make the game any more difficult per say, but rather to give me a much more dynamic story. Of course, Any rules you guys think would help me reach that end I would love to hear!
Storytelling
Now this is what the Playthrough is really about! Baldur's Gate as a game gives us a fantastic framework for which to tell our stories, but leaves enough room for liberal licensing, and in my opinion, encourages it! For now, my story will only focus on the first game and it's expansion (I have yet to purchase BG2EE sadly) but I do hope to continue the tale again in the future. As far as the flow of the story goes, I want to hold true to the basic framework the game gives us, but I do also want it to be interesting and unique. I've also already stated that I have some headcanon floating around, and I hope to incorporate that into the story, but I'll keep it to myself for now, as to not spoil anything. Despite that, there is still a lot I don't know, and much of the story will depend on the path the game takes for me. I have a general destination, but not the path which I will take. I feel it's best this way, and gives for a more exciting story.The biggest thing however, and something I believe will prove interesting, is that the story is going to be written by Imoen. It will be in the third person, but Imoen will be the "author" per say. This idea popped into my head while I was rolling stats for the protagonist prior to writing this post. My thought was that she wrote the story after the end of the journey. Something I want to include is possible diary entries and second-hand tellings of events that happened to which she and the protagonist were not present for, as well as side notes of facts about the story during the course of writing.
The last thing I feel I should mention at this point in time is that, for the sake of storytelling, I probably will be taking liberal license with some aspects of the story. Stuff like dialogues, actions, sometimes location, and general character interactions, also stuff like item abilities or powers. I don't want to drastically change the characteristics of people and objects, but I do want to expand on the to give a more colorful interpretation of the story.
Thats all I have for now! I hope to be updating this Playthrough at minimum once a week, with each updating being at least half a game chapters worth of story. Tomorrow after work I will be posting the protagonist as well as the Prologue part of the story. I look forward to reading all your comments and criticisms in the coming days.
See you later, Bhaalspawn.
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