Maybe I'll Play a Game
06 Oct 2020It’s not like I need a justification, but a justification makes it more fun!
I downloaded Baldur’s Gate 2 and I’m going to play it. It’s one of my favourite games and it would be better if I played the first Baldur’s Gate first, but I don’t have a license so what the heck I’m just going to jump in.
I read the (Boss Fight Books Baldur’s Gate 2 book by Matt Bell)[https://bossfightbooks.com/products/baldurs-gate-ii-by-matt-bell] a few weeks back. I remember a few things as a result of that, but honestly most of the specifics are lost to me right now. I conflate it with Planescape: Torment quite a bit. For example Minsk, which one is he in? I’m pretty sure not this one.
This game is about becoming a god, or further adventures in godhood? The fact that I can pull this much is entirely because I read the book, though at the time I played it I was reasonably well versed in the Forgotten Realms. I never really played many campaigns there, my group was primarily Rifts but I read several of the early Drizzt books and lots of source books and many, many games.
Anyway, I’m going to write about it as I play every now and then. I like writing and I like video games and hey at least this gives me something to do and think about.
I fancy myself a game developer of sorts. Not really I guess, outside of a few partial projects here and there but I think about game design a lot. I’m a game designer like I’m a writer or a musician or a cyclist. Aspirationally. So I’m going to use this as an excuse to think with intention about games. Maybe. I mean either that or I just made another entry in the typical collection of intent-to-write posts.
One effort I’m going to be making in my writing is to be really lazy about it. By that I am trying to just write without second guessing myself too much. A long time ago, Joel Spolsky wrote about the weight of defending writing against an internet full of uncharitable interpretations and I’ve never had anything even resembling his platform and still feel that pressure keenly.
So, the standard disclaimer* on everything I write here is that not only am I not trying to talk anyone into agreeing with the things I say, I’m not even certain whether or not I do. I’m processing, and for some reason or another I process better when I put things into writing or say them out loud. I guess that’s probably not that unusual a thing, communicating ideas (well, attempting to I suppose) to others changes our relation to them.
Anyway, now it’s time for me to mark this published and start actually playing. I hope I’m inclined to write more about this, or really anything else, sometime later.
Edit, approximately 40 minutes later: I can’t get the fucking thing to work. I even followed random forum steps to update the version of the emulator and nope, that ain’t it. So I guess this isn’t what’s happening after all.
- I’ve long thought “Standard Disclaimer” is a good name for a blog