Family matters in BG2 ***SPOILERS***

[Ankhesenpaaten]

This may sound dumb but how about a pc who would have her party stand at one end of the temple district and then go near the kid, conjur a monster and have it force attack and kill her.

I mean there are all sorts of ways to kill off npcs in a game without doing it with your own hands exactly. And I do like to indulge in different roleplaying styles. I like to be good sometimes and I like to be kind of bad sometimes. It is really great to have options. But like I said above I may be too chicken to hurt Gavin that way.

[CaraKaze]

No possibility that the PC can't adopt Lanie herself? If Gavin's claiming her anyway, and the PC is with Gavin...

 

Or is this the thread for the evil festival?

[Ajnos]

No possibility that the PC can't adopt Lanie herself? If Gavin's claiming her anyway, and the PC is with Gavin...

 

Although, her mother might, you know, love her or something. And not want to just go away or give her up so completely. Which makes me wonder what Miranda would do for money without Lanie? Will Gavin need to support the mother of his child until... well, whenever?

Edited May 21, 2007 by Ajnos

[berelinde]

No, this thread isn't all about evil roleplaying options, but about discussing possibilities for BG2, good or evil.

 

About the PC adopting Lanie herself, and about Miranda's role in this, all I can say it that this is getting into serious spoiler territory. I will say that Miranda does love Lanie in her way, and she does have ideas about what she'd like to do in the future. Even in the unmodified game, it is clear that Miranda has made her living off the charity of men. There is every indication that she's been doing this for quite some time. As she and Lanie age, it will become harder and harder for her to use that ruse successfully, and Miranda is not stupid.

 

If you'd like to see how that facet plays out, the dialogue is written. I won't post it here, but I will send it via PM.

[Kulyok]

One more suggestion - of the opposite nature, this time.

 

When Miranda found out that she was pregnant, she didn't get together with the real father of the girl. Instead, she slept with Gavin and told him a lie - that Gavin was Lanie's father. Which might be a pretty horrible thing to some. But, on the other hand, it is a really beautiful sign of trust - to deliver him her daughter, to trust him enough to become a good father, and to acknowledge that he, while not being a biological parent, is a decent enough man to bring the girl up.

 

Looking from this angle, there might be a possibility of redemption for her - a possibility that might be worth exploring. What if she eventually feels true, real remorse for her behavior, for her subsequent cheating and her neglest of her only daughter, and becomes a better person? A child raised together builds a bond between two people - a bond not easily broken. What if it could be reforged again, so that Gavin would be able to forgive her, and she - him? First for the sake of the girl, perhaps, and then - for their own sakes.

 

I think it could be a truly beautiful ending of this story - only one of the possible endings, of course.

[berelinde]

No.

 

We've talked about this before, privately, and I do not appreciate having this topic raised on a public forum.

 

Dumbledore stays dead.

 

There will be no reconcilliation. She will not go from a chronic and possibly pathological liar to a saint. Not in my mod, anyway. If somebody else wants to write the Miranda, Martyr of the Temple District mod, that's their business.

 

No one could possibly believe that Miranda lied to Gavin because she saw the goodness in him, trusted him, and wished he *were* the father of her child. Not when it is so much more credible to think that she simply took advantage of Gavin's inexperience and youthful gullibility. Is it so inconceivable to think that somebody who would extort priests on the streets, in the presence of her daughter, would speak untruths elsewhere in her life, if it served her advantage? Is there any indication that even Miranda knows who the father of her child really is?

 

There was no bond of raising a child together. There were only two completely incompatible people trying to raise a child without killing each other.

[Kulyok]

Untrue - I never raised this particular idea before neither in private nor in public, since the thought of Miranda trusting Gavin entered my mind only this evening. I am sorry, but I do feel the need to clarify this.

 

That's certainly up to you. However, I've just finished "Evermeet - Island of Elves(Elaine Cunningham)" - where the author felt she had to depict the lawful wife of the king in the worst way possible, without any redeeming qualities whatsoever, so that the other woman(who got the man in the end) looked like a saint in comparison. It wasn't pretty.

[berelinde]

Possibly not this particular phrasing, but variations on the same theme. The answer is still the same. I am not going to cannonize Miranda.

 

She isn't getting demonized, either. She comes out of it looking a lot better than she did earlier. I, personally, think that you can almost see the woman she could have been, or the girl she was, before her own desperation forced her to sell her integrity.

 

So why won't I go the rest of the way with her? Because there is no going back. Innocence can only be lost once.

 

With Miranda, she shows no signs of wanting to change her behavior. In the unmodified game, she seems to have been using the same trick for years. She's still using it, but with less success (or at least we're shown nothing but a failure). She shows the PC that she will continue to use it, even if the PC has seen her try it with Nirkhas. There is every indication she'll still be trying it, long after the Bhaalspawn saga draws to a close. I'm not changing that.

 

***News section***

It's clear that the only way I'm going to be able to stop dancing around the answer to this is to post the dialogue, with the appropriate spoiler warnings. This will have to wait until I get home this evening.

 

Not everyone is going to like it. As I have said before, I already know that not everyone is going to like Gavin, and of those that do like him, not everyone is going to want to romance him.

 

There are always things that players would rewrite about someone else's NPC. Gavin will be no different. I've tried to allow the player a lot more flexibility in adapting the mod to his or her playing style than many NPCs, but I can only go so far. No matter how you play the mod, though, Gavin will still be Gavin.

[berelinde]

Oh, and I'm renaming this thread and opening another BG2 suggestions thread. I've got enough material on Gavin's relationship with Lanie and Miranda to keep me busy for quite some time.

[Guest Martha]

Heya!

 

I'm originally a slightly too addicted Xan-fan but recently realised that awwwww there's another character I can try to romance throughout BG1 and for BG2-SOA. Sounded sweet to me, so I decided to download him and Angie (short for Angela, he sounded like someone who'd like to date an angel) and he recently got engaged.

 

But back to topic: Shouldn't we all thank people like Gavin? I mean, if you think about the story... A good man decides to adopt his (ex) lover's child, knowing that it's not his own... sound familiar? Gorion would be proud of your actions.

 

What I wanted to ask... for the good char players among us who get jealous of a little girl - can't you just avoid the temple district if you really, really don't want to meet her? Yes it's a bit inconvenient but I can't recall a single essential quest -as in needed for finishing the game- in the temple district.

 

It does seem slightly unfair for pc to have to go "yay you wanna look after a kid that's not your own but insist that we take care that I don't get pregnant - wait who do you want a family with?" - but my good little elven ranger (I only recently played a Lathander-priestess or she'd have been just like him) is most likely happy. My good characters always want to adopt Risa (the little girl the Lathander-priest tries to sell you in the graveyard district) so she doesn't have to go with the Paladin whose quota for bringing up children to adult life is worse than your own. My characters quite generally want to adopt children here and there and everywhere so I'm quite glad they usually can't.

 

Anyway, love the mod so far. He did talk a heck of a lot at first, but he's mellowed a little.

 

Funny fact - I have Xan with me (though it broke my heart to tell him no) and when Gavin popped the question Xan immediately afterwards started one of his -in-famous "we're dooooomed" talks.

[berelinde]

If you avoid the Temple District long enough, Gavin will leave the party and go on his own. Also, his dialogues, friendship or romance, won't start until the business with Lanie is resolved.

 

I hated being so heavy-handed, I really did, but with a character that has a history with existing game NPCs, I could not have written the mod without knowing how, where, and most importantly, when Gavin would meet the ghosts from his past.

 

One of the things I really, really wanted to do was to give the PC the opportunity to dispose of Lanie in ways Gavin might not approve of. I wanted to give the choice of having Lanie assassinated, selling her into slavery, or arranging her adoption by a wealthy merchant. The only thing that prevented it was time. I ran out of it. I was returning to work after an extended period of unemployment and I knew that I would have no time to mod anymore. I had to cut content. Maybe one of these days, I'll restore it.

 

By the way, unless you install the romance conflict component from Crossmod Banter Pack, Gavin will completely ignore your relationship with Xan. Heck, if you install the "romance cheats" component of Gavin, he won't even complain about Anomen.

[Guest Martha]

Ah, I should clarify, I'm still in BG1 for now (just preparing to go back to BG after Candlekeep, Xan told Gavin Angie's probably going to doom him, his daughter and everyone else around) - and Gavin and Xan had quite nice chats on how Gavin is doomed to leave Angie grieving when he's gone and such. In BG1 they do seem to notice each other...

 

I didn't know he's summoned to the temple district or anything, I just thought that gamewise you'd miss out on a lot of quests but it's not like someone in the graveyard or such whom you couldn't plotwise avoid.

 

What I did think is that it's kinda evil that he basically tells you "nah, we won't have kids -yet-" (which must grief my little elf as she probably goes on thinking 'well my half-elven children will barely make it to adulthood till you die if we wait until after we saved the world for good') but unless you'd mind I could still write her pregnant in a fanfic that is based on your wonderful mod. If ever I do feel that she needs to tell. For now Anya asks to tell of her romance with evil-evil-evil break-up Xan. (I'm useless re modding, I fear, so writing fanfic is the only thing I can do to be creative about this except for giving silly names to my dialog screenshots.)

 

Anyway. I really enjoy this. I *love* mods that interact with each other so Xan-Gavin made me quite happy despite breaking my heart. (I was lucky, Xan was being a bastard when finding out that Angie is a Bhaalspawn...)

 

Well I shall hope and cheer for you having more time to mod -especially for TOB- though not for unfortunate reasons. Let's say... because you're bored while you're on holiday or have a long weekend off or something.

[Martha]

Ai, it won't let me edit. But I so wanted to say:

 

"Have you given any thought to what you'll do when your quest is over?"

"None of your business."

 

Is one of the sweetest options I didn't take because I thought he might take offense seeing how they're engaged and all that.

[Guest Guest_Jarl_*]

I also want to say that this was always intended to be a deal-breaker conversation for Gavin. Not everyone will like how it's handled, and not everyone will like Gavin after the conversation plays out. But it's important to his character that it stay the way it is, since this very conversation was the reason he exists in the Forgotten Realms at all.

 

Gavin was a PnP character for 28 years. I knew him well. The first time I saw that exchange between Miranda, Nirkhas, and Lanie, the thought that followed "OMG! That woman just tried to give away her own kid!" was "That really was a pathetic lie. I wonder who would have fallen for it?" The obvious answer was "Gavin." And he did claim Lanie as his own, by virtue of Miranda's own words, or as it was then, the assertion that she was carrying his child. Gavin's thought process: "You have said you carry my child, so the child you carry is mine. She is my daughter, I am her father. End of argument."

 

I know I'm 4 years late to this particular conversation, but I really am very curious why you set this conversation up as a dealbreaker explicitly. I really like Gavin as a character, and I honestly don't understand why non-evil NPCs like Jaheira treat Gavin so harshly for not "revealing his secret" as though having a family is somehow shameful. Dismissing him for his "gullibility" is something I could see a particularly ruthless PC doing, but he's treated irrationally badly at various points by NPCs for the crime of having a life outside adventuring. There's an unpleasant thread throughout all of these conversations that seems to be trying to imply that Gavin really does deserve scorn and poor treatment for being a good person; I am honestly curious why this undertone is present every time his family is discussed, and why he basically expects to be thrown out when he confesses that he has a daughter as though there were something wrong with that.

[berelinde]

Nobody blames him for having a daughter. Or at least it's been a while since I've heard anybody rant about how all potential love interests should have been saving themselves since birth on the off-chance that they will oneday meet the PC. The part that most non-evil aligned characters object to is that Gavin is out adventuring while he has a very young daughter at home. He conceals the fact that he has a daughter not because he's ashamed of his past (although there are certainly aspects of it he regrets), but because he is desperate for coin and believes that no one is going to hire him once they learn that he has family responsibilities. And many people do view withholding the truth as a lie.