The_Baffled_King

You're welcome! I'm glad my post was useful to you, and thank you for saying that it was. I mean, let's be honest, if it's taken from a seventeenth-century poet then it's gonna sound a bit weird...

This is not a zero-sum game. If you are in fact right that I'm condescending, then that doesn't mean that your post was not. If you want to shoot the messenger, then you are welcome to do so (I'm not going to argue with you about me, or about my post), but even dead messengers sometimes carry worthwhile messages.

Then don't.

Hah! I can't be 100% that you're not having a little fun with me but, even if you are, I thought it was pretty funny anyway As you're the OP for the query, and I didn't edit away my offer on page 2 (although I have now)... hearken unto mine royal wisdom, o lowly subject! Greenhorn has nailed it already. Perhaps he should be king, now? Umm, I don't know any of Helm's mottos or dogmas, but I know he's also referred to as The Watcher, so I'm sure that this is a saying of Helm's worshippers and followers used in the Forgotten Realms. But... I'll go out in style, with a little more detail for y'all. The archaic phrasing of the string is the kind of English that can potentially put anyone off, but it's undoubtedly more difficult for non-native speakers. So... if you aren't a native English speaker (and I see your location) then you have a good excuse; if you are a native English speaker then you still have an excuse anyway It means this: If a person stands, waits, and watches carefully, then they are also serving a purpose. As the saying is Helmite, and Helm is The Watcher, the purpose being served is Helm's purpose. Helm is known for being an impartial god of protection, so the unspoken part of the motto is that by waiting and watching carefully, Helmites will intervene only when appropriate, and their intervention will serve what is lawful and just. So, a town guard observing this motto will step in at exactly the right time: not too soon, which might be abusing their authority; not too late, because if the guard always waits until the law is broken, then somebody will already have been hurt. And... there's also a second bonus part of my answer. The D&D designers who created Helm almost certainly adapted the motto from the famous final line of a sonnet by John Milton, a seventeenth-century poet (I've read some Milton a long time ago, but I don't mind admitting that I had to resort to the internet to check this). Alright! Out on a high note.

I'm afraid not. Definition taken from a long-established American dictionary: "Significantly large" e.g. "$10,000 is a goodly reward to offer for a missing wedding ring" (Only because the quoted post, in its entirety, was the very first thing I saw when using the Content I Posted In function)

God help me. Not only am I posting in a thread entitled "The civil thread about racism and fantasy worlds", but I am also going to defend subtledoctor. As for why, well, if I'm going to invest any time posting here about matters not directly related to Baldur's Gate, then I guess I shouldn't duck the most important of debates. Secondly - and this is directed at InThePineways - on the basis of your posts in temnix's topic here, I suspect you're doing yourself a disservice in this thread. I completely agree that this has become a massive problem in the modern world, driven to a large extent by social media. The noble goal of making people accountable for harmful and offensive behaviour has been hijacked and has degenerated, at times, into an avalanche of hatred. So alienating are these witch hunts - as you so accurately describe them - to those who are not part of the in-group that they are self-evidently counterproductive for the very cause that the mob claims to champion. Moreover, the level of cruelty displayed by many members of the mob to their target reveals the hollowness in their claims to be virtuous defenders of justice, and the amount of damage done to individual targets is often staggeringly disproportionate to whatever it was their target may have done wrong. However... that doesn't mean that everyone who takes offence at something relating to a characteristic that they don't possess is indulging in theatre. If they are themselves literally offended, that is not an inherently illegitimate reaction; equally, if they speak up on the basis of offence that may be caused to others, that can be a wholly virtuous act, even if it does happen to align with the mores of the in-group to which they belong. Also, I'd be surprised if subtledoctor's skin colour is known to you beyond a doubt. I don't know whether your analysis of the science is correct. I'm not going to read it to find out, but that's only because I'm not going to express a view on the matter. I will say only that, in principle, I agree that ignoring facts and science because it is inconvenient is bad whoever does it. Certainly, liberals who do so should take a good look in the mirror the next time they mock creationists for the departure of the latter from scientific principles (I am an atheist, and very socially liberal). I suspect that you don't fully stand behind your words. If I was to say that Bob down the road from me was animating a cartoon film featuring sex scenes between an adult and a child of 10 then, fiction or no fiction, I'm guessing you wouldn't support its dissemination. And what if exploration of ideas of that nature through fiction can be a pathway leading to the enactment of said ideas (it's my tentative understanding that this is true)? The difficulty, perhaps, is that people who are morally upright and sufficiently strong of mind to be relatively unaffected by certain material can sometimes overlook its potential for harm when in the possession of people very different to them. With all that out of the way, I largely agree with the above. I fail to see how any benefit of posting the image, or keeping the image, outweighs its drawbacks. The fact is that the preservation of what is important for society requires a delicate balancing act between competing interests - even the rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights must sometimes be weighed against each other. InThePineways, the reason I began my post by highlighting the areas in which I agree with you is because I think you have elevated subtledoctor into the avatar of a trend that you disagree with, then taken aim at that avatar, rather than at his post (that doesn't mean I think you have to agree with him, or with me).

Well, it was you who mentioned having not "paid too much attention to this", so I cited that as a possible explanation. I won't speculate on any other possibilities. Regardless of the reason, you have created a "quote" to summarize discussion that is not representative the breadth of what has been said in this thread, much less what my comment about inaccurate information was directed at, and then you have used your "quote" as evidence that what I said about inaccurate information was wrong. Faced with the actual words used in this thread by other people, and with a numeric analysis taken from the game files, you resort to an emoji with rolling eyes. If this thread had occurred in a commercial context - in which I was a game developer pitching BG:OW, and the other posters were game developers who are working/have worked on Infinity Engine content for commercial release - I would have an arguable case for defamation and/or malicious falsehood against those who claim that there is a large amount of vanilla content in BG city that references (or is otherwise dependent upon) the events of the earlier Chapters, particularly if those claims are not subsequently retracted. This is obviously not a commerical context, and I am plainly not going to sue anybody, but the parallel is a perfectly sensible one - and I have alluded to this problem, albeit without the parallel, in this thread already (here). Given that Graion Dilach was prepared to concede that he "expected worse numbers" (thanks again to him for that), I struggle to see why you felt the need to make the post that you made earlier on this page. If paying less attention means that you won't be replying, then I'm 100% on board with that.

There were only a few very short posts to consider, but I'll help you out by quoting them, with underlining added for emphasis: (The current thread) (The current thread) (From this earlier thread, which was asking pretty much the same thing as the current one) I am not holding any of the above posters to the literal meaning of their words. However, even allowing for imprecise use of language in casual conversation, it is inarguable that all of these posts convey a very clear meaning that a lot of the vanilla content in BG city references, or is otherwise dependent upon, events of the earlier Chapters. If I simply said "actually, that's not the case", then who would be believed? A person with a "modder" tag, or a person with a "member" tag? A person with thousands of posts, or a person with less than 200? Without more, I would certainly assume that the person with a "modder" tag and/or the person with thousands of posts is correct. So that is why I posted the numbers, which make it crystal clear that the information in the above posts about vanilla content was inaccurate: (As I explained, these numbers refer to creatures that "(a) are in areas reached via the bridge in Wyrm's Crossing; (b) are in areas reachable in Chapter 5; (c) are not in the Iron Throne tower; and (d) have unique .cre resrefs attached"; (e) presumably have dialogue files; and (f) are area actors, are joinable NPCs, or are Scar) So... a figure very close to 12/170 for creatures with unique dialogue, and 5/34 for generic creatures (and rumors) with shared dialogue files - and the shared dialogue files contain many randomly-chosen dialogue states that are not problematic before Chapter 5. This is an open and shut case. Perhaps the problem is that - to use your own words - you "haven’t paid too much attention to this".

Yes, I agree. However, Awachi's comments, and Gorion's - and indeed your own - demonstrate that there are roleplaying reasons to go to BG city early on, even if nothing in the vanilla game was changed. Anyway, I'm sorry but I'm taking a pass on any further discussion within this thread of the points that you've raised. It's already clear why I posted in this thread in the first place, and I then answered Jebarkas' question insofar as it applied to me, but I don't want to debate non-technical considerations relating to an "Open the Gates" mod at all, and I don't want to debate the merits of BG:OW in a thread about an "Open the Gates" mod. Sure, but my initial concern was about the continuing proliferation of inaccurate information about the vanilla game that is likely to dissuade players from installing such a project (so I'm grateful to Graion Dilach for acknowledging my post). My comments in the last paragraph of my previous post point out that I'm aware of the potential for incompatibility or inconsistency with other mods but, if the worst comes to the worst, a player can choose which mod they prefer - but there should be a level playing field.

Because the idea of anybody on the internet asking (in good faith) "are you a 13 year old girl" just seemed so funny that I couldn't resist making the comment, and the rest of the post was necessary to get to that point. The logic is sound, because the chain of events was basically: (1) [Temnix] "you people make ... NPC written for 13 year-old girls"; (2) [The Artisan] "I wear the title with pride"; (3) [me, paraphrased] "blah blah ... I think social norms created through gender stereotyping are bad ... but I don't want to engage with something that's otherwise not appropriate for me solely on the basis that said "something" combats social norms created through gender stereotyping ... punchline.".

I think that's totally fair, and I hope I didn't give any impression that I thought otherwise. I just wondered if there was another point you were putting to me! I'll just move along.

Oh, opening up the Candlekeep Catacombs like that is a really, really interesting idea! It's food for thought, certainly. Allowing access to Nashkel Mines via the cave entrance was something I'd already thought of and was planning on including as an optional tweak in the mod I'm planning on making. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not interested in making a mod or a component designed only for the purpose of allowing early access to BG city - if that was what had attracted me to IE modding, then I think I probably would have made that mod by now. What I am interested in making is a more substantial mod that allows for Chapters 1-6 to be completed in any order, which would allow early access to BG city by default. Such a mod would necessarily adapt some parts of the vanilla content to make it available ahead of time, whereas this thread is just about hiding out-of-place content. I call this proposed mod "Baldur's Gate: Open World" (BG:OW). If you have any questions about it, then I'll briefly answer them if asked in this thread (I don't recommend reading the thread from the beginning; it took a few tangents, and my conception of what I wanted to do changed within the thread, not to mention the 11 months since). Note that I haven't yet released any mods, so please feel free to take that into account when deciding if it's worth your time to ask about BG:OW. It goes without saying that the above mod would introduce more potential incompatibilities with other mods than a more limited "Open the Gates" mod. In recognition of that fact, a modder might take the approach "don't make BG:OW", or a player might take the approach "don't install BG:OW". However, it also goes without saying that these are not the only reasonable approaches that modders, or players, might take.

I'd be happy if more 13 year old girls played games. I'd also be happy if more 13 year old girls felt that their gender wasn't a barrier to pursuing a career in engineering. However, I'm not likely to be happy playing CRPG content pitched at 13 year old girls, and I'm not likely to be happy crossing a bridge built to specifications set by 13 year old girls. My objections about 13 year old girls are in no way gender-based, because I'm also unlikely to be happy playing CRPG content pitched at 13 year old boys, and I'm also unlikely to be happy crossing a bridge built to specifications set by 13 year old boys. So, if any modders out there are deliberately creating content pitched at 13 year olds, or deliberately creating content pitched at a specific gender, I'd be most grateful if they highlighted that fact in the readme for the mods in question. I mean, it's not as though I can go around asking anyone who recommends a mod if they're a 13 year old girl, just so I can take that fact into account when determining the weight to place on their recommendation - that kind of question is somewhat vulnerable to misinterpretation...

Yes, the Ranger makes sense as a Good-only class (or the true-class version certainly does). The failing I mentioned didn't lie in making Rangers a Good-only class; the failing was either (a) not making an additional class of warrior woodsmen/women who aren't required to be Good; (b) not replacing the Ranger with a class of warrior woodsmen/women who aren't required to be Good; or (c) not designing the vanilla Ranger as a Good-only kit belonging to a class of warrior woodsmen/women that weren't required to be Good. The calculus changes once Rangers have been released into the wild, so to speak. The makers of D&D had the resources to satisfactorily adjust their class or classes of warrior woodsmen/women while respecting their original concept of the Good Ranger; whether or not they did so is not within my knowledge. However, while tweaking the Ranger class in the BG games is worthwhile as a relatively low-effort way of creating a class of warrior woodsmen/women that aren't required to be Good, it isn't all upside. It's a defensible choice, but to me it sits awkwardly in the established system of class groups (fighter-thieves, of course, can use helmets). Oddly, although the same can be said of removing large shields as an option, it doesn't bother me so much. Maybe it's because it already seems like something that could sensibly reserved for true-class warriors only (so none for priests or multi-class warriors)? From a non-technical perspective, I like that you're stretching to chainmail rather than drawing the line at non-metallic. Anyway, the Cateran is an interesting idea, and it seems like it will be decent in practice regardless of whether all of its features are ones I would retain.

Colour me unsurprised. Aside from pointing out the existence of these mods, I'm not sure if there was any other point you wanted to make.

And calling it Evil, surely..? The description is attractive, and the kit looks interesting. I've always thought it a failing of the games that your warrior woodsmen/women had to be Good. I got the impression that this requirement exists because D&D Rangers were derived from Tolkien's Dúnedain, but I don't know my D&D history particularly well, so perhaps that isn't the case. Anyway, seeing as we have Rangers that are notably Good, it's potentially interesting to make a counterpoint kit that is notably Evil, and you seem to have an idea that can fit that bill. Just wanna say that I agree with you on the bit I've underlined, but it doesn't seem like a good reason to stop a specific kit from wearing helmets - certainly not if you're pitching the kit as an Evil alternative to an existing class and kit that is able to wear helmets.

Quick question: would this be for an evil ranger, specifically, or for any non-good ranger? I imagine that an evil-only kit might be more interesting, but probably less widely used.

Speaking as someone equally unfamiliar with fantasy bounty hunting, I think the point appears to be a good one! On it's face, it's more plausible to the average CRPG player than some of the other plot-related shenanigans that Bioware pull. Also, 1/1 Gorions agree with you: "... All that is certain is that we will be far safer on the move. Perhaps the woods might offer some secluded security, or perhaps the city of Baldur's Gate would offer cover amidst its teeming throngs of people. I do not know where we shall end up, but I have a few friends here and there. Hmm, I will think on this." Pretty much - at least for the vanilla content.

For me, the starting point is that Green Slime already gives a load of visual feedback that its attack is a poison attack (as mentioned in the OP). I think that making an attack disease-based to bring it in line with D&D lore would be a lot more attractive if the devs hadn't already given the attack a different non-generic quality. Also, I always thought that giving an uncurable instant-death attack to a 65xp monster was a spectacularly horrible idea on Bioware's part (and the fact that it doesn't appear until Chapter 5 doesn't change much). That doesn't automatically translate to dev error, but it does raise the suspicion in my mind. So, I'm +1 for this change being a fix, and also +1 for it generally due to the improvement on the game design (in my opinion).

In addition to the comments in this thread, I've seen sentiments like those quoted above expressed elsewhere, and I really don't know why this view is widespread. It isn't consistent with my general impression; more importantly, when I ran the numbers, I found that my general impression was broadly accurate. I have literally no investment whatsoever in being right about this for its own sake. However, I might end up releasing a mod that allows early access to BG city, and threads that overemphasise the difficulties of early access to BG city are really not in the interests of that mod. So, that's the reason for my post - I'll now continue with it. Before the update to v2.6, I checked for actors that (a) are in areas reached via the bridge in Wyrm's Crossing; (b) are in areas reachable in Chapter 5; (c) are not in the Iron Throne tower; and (d) have unique .cre resrefs attached. I arrived at a figure of 185, excluding a few oddities and irrelevances*. There are few creatures not appearing as area actors that both have dialogue and also conform to points (a) - (d), and I'll highlight only the most important: Quayle, Tiax, Alora, Skie, and Scar. This leaves 190 creatures. Of these 190 creatures, some have no dialogue, so they're just padding the numbers. 11 examples stand out: the 5 unnamed Sewerfolk, 4 of the group of 5 Ogre Mages, and the unique Greater Basillisk and Mustard Jelly that are linked to quests. Proceeding with a broad-brush estimate that there are 9 others, that leaves 170 creatures. Eyeballing my list of 170 creatures, I found only 12 with dialogue that doesn't make much sense before some of the events of Chapters 0-4 have taken place: Scar (Wyrm's Crossing and BG S) Elminster (BG E) Husam (BG E, Thieves' Guild - volunteers info about the Iron Throne) Entillus Fulsom (BG S - a Harper who volunteers info about the Iron Throne, but will attack low-rep parties instead) Mick Feelie (BG E - messenger, bringing news of the liberation of the Nashkel mines) Ocellis (BG NW - commoner who mentions that the Grand Dukes are debating declaring war) Gorpel Hind (BG NW, Helm and Cloak - leader of the adventurers at the bar) Zorl (BG S, Merchants' League Estate - hidden unless Aldeth Sashenstar is helped in Cloakwood; his letters are more out of place than his dialogue) Marek (BG NE - Iron Throne assassin, partnered with Lothander) Lothander (BG NE - Iron Throne assassin, partnered with Marek) Larze (BG NE, Blushing Mermaid - ogre bounty hunter) Ogre Mage (BG S, Generic building - leader of 5 Ogre Mage bounty hunters) 12 out of 170 is just 7%, or 1 per master area (including the sewers). There may be a few more such creatures, but nowhere near enough to change the trend. The numbers above don't include generic creatures that share dialogue files, the most prominent of which are as follows: male commoners (7), female commoners (4), male "fat" commoners (1), female "fat" commoners (1), noblemen (3), noblewomen (2), boys (2), girls (3), beggars (1), and courtesans (9). There are also rumors to consider (1). Note that the bracketed figures, which add up to 34, refer to the number of different dialogue files used by these unnamed generic creatures or by BG city rumors. Of these 34 dialogue files, only five contain dialogue states that are problematic before Chapter 5. I guess that the rumor dialogues for BG city were copied in part from earlier in the game because, like the earlier rumor dialogues, you won't get rumors about the liberation of the Nashkel mines unless Mulahey is dead. [Edit] The two BG city rumors regarding the Iron Throne share the problem that I describe in the following paragraph. [/Edit] That leaves four files. Of the four remaining files, the two for noblemen and noblewomen are not problematic in terms of their text, but 1/4 and 1/6 of their respective randomly-chosen dialogue states create journal quest entries for "Investigating the Iron Throne", which is a bit premature before Chapter 5. This necessitates adding a second textless transition without a journal entry, and adding mutually exclusive response triggers to the original transition and the added transition, which doesn't seem too difficult to me. This leaves only the two files for the most frequently-encountered male and female commoners (which are admittedly the most frequently-encountered creatures overall). Generic male commoners have 3/11 randomly-chosen dialogue states that reference events of Chapters 0-4; generic female commoners have 2/9 randomly-chosen dialogue states of this type. This requires a little more work to fix than the nobles' dialogue, but I'm sure modders will agree that it would not be too taxing in the grand scheme of things. However, I'm not disagreeing with the above. If one is concerned about the storyline, early access to BG city is its own mod rather than a tweak. I'm not disagreeing with the above, either. Potential conflicts with mod content is a matter that depends on the mods one has installed. *the oddity is a single misplaced Beregost commoner; the irrelvances are nameless NPCs with multiple different .cre resrefs that share dialogue, but which count among their number certain .cre resrefs that are used only once.

Yes, I agree, but it's in a roundabout way. His dialogue and the related journal entry focus on pollution. One of the two dialogue states where he doesn't just call you sarcastic bastards includes the sentence "Well if you're a bunch of heroes, maybe you could find out who's been dumping all their waste in the lakes 'round here". So, I see the intent as "go to Peldvale (where there are lakes, with washed up barrels on the shores), find out that Peldvale is bandit central, find Raiken (if in Chapter 3)". The problem is that the farmer appears in an area without lakes, and his dialogue is pretty much useless to anyone who doesn't already know where the Wood of Sharp Teeth is. While I don't agree with the criticism in the OP about farmer Wilton's placement, I think the farmer in Wyrm's Crossing is a terrible restoration.

@LichDiet I'd like to offer a view from an alternative perspective, albeit one that's very similar to the views already expressed (on the parts where it overlaps with them). The alternative perspective is: played oBG1 and TotSC over the course of a year or so in something like 2000-2001; picked up the EEs mid-2020; used the BG wiki as my primary source of information initially; picked up NearInfinity in Sep 2020 and increasingly reduced my usage of the BG wiki in favour of NI; joined G3 in Sep 2020 and posted 119 times since then; is not a modder; has a bunch of partly-implemented mod ideas that may or may not ever see the light of day as mods; is not "G3 folks" (see: my posting history). Re. Baldur's Extended World To be fair, it's more of a "Roxanne vs. anyone with any interest in mods who knows enough that they (a) understand the problems she causes; and/or (b) disagree with her behaviour on ethical grounds. The situation as it stands is very, very one-sided, and I agree with everything that's already been said by "G3 folks". Re. My Experience of the BG Wiki First, thanks for your work on the BG wiki! I find it particularly useful for highlighting changes between the base game, the expansions, and the EEs. There are also other circumstances in which I still use the wiki in preference to NearInfinity. One of the things that turned me off the wiki was this: coupled with the fact that the average user often has little regard for the version they're playing or for whether the feature they refer to is or is not added by a mod. Some of you plainly know your stuff, but the comments illustrate how bad things would get if the average user became a contributor. Re. Mods on the BG Wiki Am I right in thinking that the wiki doesn't have a page about mods? I checked again, and I get nothing when searching for "Mod", "Mods", or "Modding". I think a page along those lines would help. That page could include, or mention and link to additional pages containing, an explanation of the different types of mods: fix packs; restoration of cut content; miscellaneous tweaks; small quest mods; large quest mods; tactics mods; kit mods; item mods; spell mods; rule tweak mods; mod-added NPCs; og NPC mods; and a few others that I've no doubt missed. For each type of mod, it might not be too controversial to identify and briefly refer to a single representative example of that type of mod. Then, if you want to do this: you could consider bulk-adding to every single article a very brief section (2 lines) that mentions mods and links to that hypothetical page about mods that I mentioned. I hope the above provides some food for thought.

Yes, that's something I value. I just thought I'd doublecheck that you weren't in the "get me to Baldur's Gate early - I don't care what the NPCs say" camp.

That random farmer who mentions the dumping of waste really bugged me. His comments have nothing to do with any quest, and the Wood of Sharp Teeth isn't a specific area on the world map. In the D&D world in which Baldur's Gate is set, the Wood of Sharp Teeth is a large area roughly six times the size of the Cloakwood that's located east of the coast way trade routes. So, anywhere that is both north and east of Beregost is either part of the Wood of the Sharp Teeth or located on its outskirts. The only thing I can think of that the dialogue might have been intended to refer to is the washed up barrels in the lakes in Peldvale. Aside from farmer Wilton, the only UB encounter I can think of that can give an item and a journal entry, but which doesn't have its own separate component, is Corianna the ranger in the Beregost Temple area (south west east corner of the map).

Agreed 100%. What do you mean by "in a non-breaking way"? In a non-modded game, I'm fairly certain that nothing breaks in a mechanical sense unless you go through the Chapter 5 to Chapter 6 transition (the conversation with Duke Eltan having successfully investigated the Iron Throne) without first advancing to Chapter 5.