#was fun to try and work in other systems that aren't 5e! and I love WFRP (been in a few games; with one going on 4ish years!) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sampirism · 9 months

Text

Sorry but I'm cackling about some of the reception to Astarion's arc. I can't keep this to myself after reading youtube and reddit comments. I haven't delved into the Tumblr discourse on this yet and I'm working off of memory of clips I've seen, sorry if the quotes aren't fully accurate-- BG3 spoilers specific to Astarion's ending(s)

There is a particular subset of people who insist that Ascended Astarion is the correct path because ritual rejection Astarion is, and this is verbatim what I've read: "weak, feeble, a docile puppy" which I am losing it a little bit over. Among other things. I should have collected screenshots!

I'm not here to convince you that you can't like this ending, because you have every right to prefer Ascended Astarion, but to say that, objectively, he isn't evil or that this is a "better version of him" is morally bananas. You can have your evil boyfriend, it's okay! But a world domination goal is not often sought by those outside the evil alignment! (You could argue that 5e lore explicitly states vampires are lawful evil, but I personally don't vibe with locked-in alignments WRT classes and creatures and BG3 itself doesn't even have an alignment system)

Furthermore, there is the... insistence that this is a more or equally romantic route? "He still loves you! He calls you all these pet names! He says he loves you!" Baby, he does this because he literally sees you as a pet. You don't get to ascend beyond spawn (sorry, "consort") and **he is literally using the same manipulative voice he used on you when he admitted those were moments he was manipulating you** You can get a dialogue where he will willingly say I love you as a lie. When you ask him if he'd ever use compulsion the way Cazador did, he doesn't say no, he says he won't have to because you will be so obedient. There's a Wisdom check to reveal he sees you as degrading yourself when you ask to be turned.

Please, enjoy your vampire lord boyfriend, but don't act like the text implies that this is best for him or that he sees you as an equal. This is what he says when you say "I think we should break up" after killing the Netherbrain

Also, I know we're discoursing a fictional elf here, but when it comes to ritual-rejected Astarion, its certainly... eyebrow-raising to see people calling a character who broke the cycle of abuse as "weak" and "miserable" because he's a little nicer now, cried after killing his abuser, and he can't walk in the sun :sob:

sincerely, fellow Astarion enjoyer.... Enjoy what you enjoy (without harming anyone!) Have fun with the darker aspects fiction has to offer!!! Embrace evil if you want to!!!!! Just don't try to convince me that killing 7000 people for unlimited power is the morally superior option

#astarion based word salad #talking about morals in video games again :(#baldurs gate 3 spoilers #bg3 spoilers #“i am the most powerful” you are level 12 sit down

119 notes · View notes

bardkin · 4 months

Text

need to fling some downer ttrpg group thoughts out into the ether.

really stuck in a rut, just in general, and like... it's the usual. hate work, feel shitty, co-workers turning my existence and mistakes into jokes, can't do much of anything about it.

only upside right now is my big online roleplay group has started back up, i'm involved in a monthly-ish online dnd game with out-of-state friends, and in-person friends are open to learning pathfinder 2e.

sounds great! why am i not nearly as excited as i should be !!!

i don't think i'm a good fit for my in-person group, when it comes to tabletop rpgs. out-of-state group is more of a balance when it comes to combat and narrative, tho they lean a little more combat thus far.

in-person group could do nothing but crunchy dungeon crawls and be more than happy. and yeah, combat's fun, but i like story - a lot. and barely any of them really seem to, or they at least could comfortably live without it.

so i know how pathfinder is going to end up, after a while. we can maybe get one session of roleplay bullshit before they start wanting to hit stuff with abilities. & like, fair to 'em i guess, but i'm personally kind of over heavily combat-focused stuff. like i said - balanced is nice. it just felt like a lot of previous sessions we'd done in dnd 5e were Mostly aimed at combat, or Getting To combat, with just a bit of inter-party fuckery in between violence-oriented shenanigans. mostly interrogating enemies that we saved for info gathering, double-crossing a group, shit like that.

their characters aren't Bland or Just Stats & A Class by any means, they're... it's the difference between a Paragraph of Biography vs a Page of Biography. like, it doesn't seem like much at first blush, but comparing concepts between all of us always... feels really imbalanced. and i always feel kind of ashamed and embarrassed for putting more than three to five sentences worth of thought into my PCs.

i wanna possibly bring up something like Kids On Bikes (and hacks/homebrews of it so we can fuck around in all kinds of settings & scenarios), but i really doubt they'd go for it. "never know till you ask" etc etc, my rsd is already flaring at the thought of them not liking the idea. i'll get around to it, i just have to be ready to take the hit & be further disappointed.

i just know they'd most likely turn it down. there is a chance they'd say "sure, let's give it a shot" but that feels slim & i'm also not sure what the fuck i'd do from there. i'm so expectant that they'll turn down the idea if/when i ask. that's Probably the anxiety talking, but it's a high likelyhood due to my observation of play styles. (i don't even wanna think of how they'd react to me asking if they wanted to try something like Wanderhome. i can just hear "what's the point [if i can't hit stuff & see big numbers go up]?") i really doubt any of them would be willing to get even close to the level of character roleplay that i'd love to engage with & put forth.

like. i'm not asking for crit role levels of Grown Theater Kid Actor roleplay. i'm not even asking for like... acting specifically. i think i just kinda want a game where the characters have a bit more to them, & we have pre-game discussions about what directions we want the story to go. not just "we all separately make our characters, only really share our info with dm, & provide an introductory sentence about our pc on game day."

it's not currently possible for me to make other in-person friends, let alone find ones that would want to play narrative-driven ttrpg systems.

so i'm just kind of stuck & feeling bad about it.

0 notes