Baldur’s Gate is part of a setting several decades older than the game franchise of the same name. It was an official setting of D&D a decade before the first game. In the sense of a ROLEPLAYING game, fidelity to the source material is paramount.

The original games were developed at the end of the life cycle of the edition they used for the mechanics. The ruleset got a major revision the same year BG2 was released. There have been several major editions since. Edition warring aside, no one can argue that the Forgotten Realms played in 5th edition isn’t the same Forgotten Realms played in AD&D 2E. The tone and continued narrative of the setting is the key feature in maintaining the soul of a property, not mechanical fidelity.

The game respects the official canon of the Forgotten Realms, including the canonical ending to BG2 where Gorion’s Ward rejected divinity and eventually led to Bhaal’s revival. Characters from the original series return as companions for BG3, with stories acknowledging the Bhaalspawn crisis. One of the origin playthroughs is the exact same story as the first Baldur’s Gate.

If your only complaint is lack of real time with pause then I reckon it’s you who isn’t the real Baldur’s Gate fan.

Yes because mechanical fidelity is the lowest priority in continuing the series. Continuation of the story and tonal fidelity matter a lot more. The Fallout series went from a turn based 2.5D isometric RPG to a real time action RPG, and one of the best instalments in the series follows the latter formula.

Same IP; returning characters from the original series; revisiting important locations from the original series; uses a D&D ruleset for resolution; expands upon the story of the Bhaalspawn crisis over a century after the incident, especially via the

All of this is apparent through playing the game.

The Crew - Mission Deep Sea - card game with a simple trick taking mechanic. Difficulty is very modular as you decide a difficulty level before each game. Difficulty is decided by the numbers of missions taken and the relative complexity of those missions (this is all explained on the mission cards). Missions are based on which tricks you win, with simple rules like “I win no 1’s” or “I win at least 3 9’s”.

Hanabi - Card playing game where you don’t know your own hand. You describe aspects of each others hands (colours of cards, numbers on cards). Your goal is to place a pile of the cards 1,2,3,4,5 in each of 5 colours. Don’t play with mathematicians.

Why would you vote for it to be unrestricted? They’ve only unprivated due to the threats. Stick to Lemmy.

Ah. Are you aware of Mage: the Ascension and Mage: the Awakening? Both World of Darkness books; mechanically crunchy with a strong focus on magic as a solution to all situations. Looking at established systems that have already done something similar can help with ideas.

For a slightly different spin, I just picked up the Black Sword Hack yesterday. In terms of combat items, there are actual listed combat items but it’s all fluff really; every weapon is d6 damage. Maybe that would be another thing that interests you: weapons are abstracted to the point of players being able to buy/find “a weapon” which gives you a basic action.

Some of my favourite systems are light on combat rules or feature combat as some kind of fail state. If you’re leveling a shotgun at an ancient void-dweller that may or may not be immune to conventional weaponry, you’ve messed up somewhere. Maybe the better plan is to douse the floorboards in lamp oil, smash a lit lantern, and run.

Would I play a game with no combat items? Absolutely. I’d love a game that invests as much pagespace into intrigue or stealth systems as some D&D-like systems invest into combat.

I’m looking for community engagement without the homogenised superculture. I’d like to be able to discuss books on a small book community without someone jumping in with “I also choose this guy’s dead wife” or “not my proudest fap” because it’s a low effort way of garnering meta-points. I also like the lack of an account-based point system.

So far Lemmy is delivering and so I’m engaging here a lot more actively than I ever did on Reddit.

The site defaults to sorting by active posts. There are options for hot, new, and top over the past day. I tend to sort by new.

Managed to play Arkham Horror twice in one week, though missed playing War of the Ring with my partner.

Wednesday was an 11 hour Arkham Horror marathon due to 2 friends moving away. Four of us took the day off. We attempted the two-party Dream Eaters campaign with two groups of 3. The awake team blitzed through their scenarios while the dreamers struggled through theirs (having already played the other way, the dream scenarios are more complex). This resulted in the awake team waiting 30 mins - 1 hour per scenario for the dreamers to finish. We finished at the end of scenario 3 as we were so exhausted.

Saturday was my Path to Carcosa group, which proved to be a lot more fun, probably because we weren’t trying to cram a whole campaign into one day. Completed scenario 3 before the final agenda came up. Our seeker is ridiculous at hoovering clues.

People have already mentioned my two suggestions: 4E DMG2 and The Lazy Dungeon Master. This isn’t a specific book recommendation