I'm overall quite pleased with this epic. I had Melissan pegged as an archvillain from the first time she opened her mouth (though I had her identity wrong--thought she was a Bhaalspawn half-gold-dragon or something trying to wipe all the rest of us out on some self-righteous crusade thing). Liked the stronghold in hell. The end wrap-up bios of the PCs were a nice touch.

The things that made me want to throw my monitor out the window, though:

1) Why did you never have the option to truly release an NPC??? If you want to give Sarevok a chance, you have to leave one of your friends stranded in Hell and then eventually DESTROY them. Would it have been that hard to code in a "no, return to your home" option? Tethyr's not *that* far away from Amn!

2) I wish the programmers had recorded different action comments for the characters whose alignments had changed. They did change Chaotic Anomen's to stop talking about the Order, thank goodness, but why does Lawful Good Anomen keep making the same obnoxious comments he ever did even though his story arc has turned him into a much nicer person? Why don't Viconia's comments change, or Sarevok's?

3) I wish the finale bios of the NPCs had been a little more flexible. Anomen's, Sarevok's, and Viconia's really should have had alternatives for their different possible alignments. Keldorn should have had different ones depending on whether he'd thrown his wife in jail or not. I don't think two different paragraphs would have been too much to ask for.

And what was WITH the depressing bios for Cernd and Viconia? The game designers just don't like those guys, or what? I feel like after you've nursed a character all the way through the epic they deserve a happier ending than "then they died and their family died and everything was awful, ha ha."

4) Aerie's pregnancy. Good God. I realize that I'm not exactly their target audience, and am one of probably six players of this game who have actually ever *been* pregant, but this was the STUPIDEST DAMN PLOT I HAVE EVER SEEN IN A CRPG. A two-week gestation period. A woman who assures you "if I wear loose robes, no one will ever know until it's time for me to give birth." (Ok, sometimes this works for high school kids none of whose friends have ever even seen a pregnant woman before, but in real life, people are whispering about you at the water cooler before the first trimester is over, no joke.) An invincible infant ("If I put him in a cradleboard, fireballs won't hurt him!") A thoroughly ridiculous birth scene ("Wait! Stop! I think the baby's coming! Look! There he is! Isn't he cute?" This is the most retarded story I've seen since GRADE SCHOOL. My intelligence is *still* insulted!

Just wanted to vent here; not too many of my real-life friends would "get" it... (-:

LOL...
I couldn't agree more withe the Aerie pregnancy. It really is one of the most *****iest parts of the game.
Who would go and make kids when you have a Demogorgon to battle and than strap the kid on the back. No matter if mommy slips on a banana peel and falls on the very same back :D

*BIG SPOILER*
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I was really pissed at the Viconia ending, who the hell does Lloth think she is? She DARES to mess with my Viccy?! At the levels my gang was at me, Korgan, and Minsc would have headed down into hell and boot that spider ***** over every square inch of the planes.

Solution, ignore their character endings and create your own. Better that way.

Agreed on the Aerie pregnancy. Aren't elven pregnancies supposed to last ~ 18 months? She shouldn't have been out of the morning sickness phase before the game ends!

It takes white mice longer to gestate than it takes Aerie. *rolls eyes*

I actually kind of liked most of those finale bios. Viconia's distressed me somewhat, but it didn't actually say how LONG it was before she was killed... everyone dies eventually, and she did have kids and do all this other stuff first. So I guess I could interpret it as we lived a good long life together, then she finally died, and, of course, I dusted off the old "Demonweb Pits" module and whooped some spider ass over it. *wink*

Cernd's was the really worst one. It would be very hard to get attached to Cernd in this game what with the way the writers are constantly dumping on him. I think one of them was the child of a really nasty divorce or something, the way they won't let up on him for divorcing his wife...

Thumbs up, Big B :)

I agree on Aerie's pregnancy. WAYYYYYY to unrealistic !
But I liked both Cernd's and Viconia's endings. Tragedies are much more touching as happy endings. Don't you remember movies with a tragic ending much longer than those with a happy one ? Ike, for exmaple, "The Crow" or the classic "Romeo and Juliet" ?

Sure, and I accepted friends dying or betraying me in the course of the game for just that reason. A tragedy in a POSTSCRIPT, though, is just stupid. You successfully navigate the romance with Viconia, and you keep Cernd alive to the end. Only to get handed lame-ass postscripts that "Oh, and afterwards they died anyway. Ha ha!"

Khalid and Dynaheir had been buds of mine. I was cool with their tragic endings because it was actually part of the story. Same with Yoshimo betraying me. But you can't finish a story and then put "PS, the characters died miserable deaths a few years later." That's not even part of the story, you don't get to see it unfold, you have no chance to affect it. Such postscripts should at least be neutral (like Edwin's or Korgan's), not downright nasty. As any good GM knows, if you're going to visit evil on a character, you at least owe it to them to do it onscreen. Imagine finishing a good campaign, having taken both the good and bad therein, and then afterwards while you're hanging around having pizza the GM casually says "Oh, and by the way your character dies of syphilis before the next campaign, better get yourself a new one!"

Yeah, well (again)... but have you never been told by your GM when asking him for a friend (NPC or PC whose player left the group) "I go and investigate what happened to XY" and he says (where goes my grammar !?!?) "You find out he's dead." ??
Actually I liked Cernd's, just because he couldn't change his fate, he again failed his family by putting nature in the first place. (And I remember this thing about the great oak that stands now in the place where the battle between Ashdale and Cernd took place.)
Well, it is a matter of taste and opinion. Some like this stuff, some don't.

Is there a way to read all the end stories? I've only seen 5 of them, and would like to see the rest too without having to play through the game with Anomen, Cernd and other loosers.

thanks,

I can think of a couple of times when I've had GMs kill off characters off-screen for no real reason when it wasn't part of the story, yes, but they were all when I was in high school and they weren't exactly what I'd call high-quality dungeonmasters or writers. Every good GM I've had has killed off well-liked characters only while we were actually playing or as part of an active storyline we were going to get to pursue.

In "The Crow" or "Titanic" or the other movies you mention, the tragedies were part of the script, and the characters got ample chance to react to them. How lame would it have been if after the boy sacrificed himself to save the girl in Titanic, the romantic music came up, and then you got a text-over saying "But then she was hit by a car and killed two days later. The end"?

I see your point, kind of. I just don't expect everyone to live happily ever after. If you really care about the characters then it is disappointing, but I don't have a problem with it.
Things don't always work out for the best.

Doomfarer, you have a ToB endings FAQ here at Sorcerers'...

You can see all the endings also at www.gambanshee.net (http://www.gambanshee.net) (net ? com ? not sure), and, of course, somewhere around here.

Strange how people react to off screen events.
As a DM I once killed off some members of a players family as a war rolled through his homeland and he went apesh*t, even though they were 'only' part of his Bio, so I learned to handle these things gently.

In ToB I was glad to see a happy resolution of Jans love triangle.

You thought that was a happy ending? *shudders* He killed Lissa's husband and took her for himself! (This after she had specifically chosen to go back to him and begged Jan to stay out of it.) That stupid ending turned him into as much of a bullying gangster as the first husband. Someone needs to send Nalia to get that poor girl to House of Ruth...

Anyway, Erran, you're quite right, it's the off-screenness that's the problem. One of the great appeals of role-playing is the ability to be part of the story. Yanking the story away from the players only to foist unhappy endings on them lets a lot of the air out of that appeal. I've got nothing against tragedy, but I do feel quite strongly that anyone who's put in the effort to create and play a real character deserves to have any tragedy happen where he has a chance to see it and react to it. There's nothing more infuriating than trying to role-play and suddenly being told "By the way, your girlfriend dropped dead offscreen and you got over her two years later." If Vicky was supposed to die, she should have died during the story where the player could grieve and avenge her himself. That would have saddened people, I'm sure, but not infuriated them as much as being slapped with a "after you sacrificed your divinity to be with her, turned out she died anyway. Tough luck there, mate!" after the fact.

[This message has been edited by tjekanefir (edited October 05, 2001).]

Well, tjekanefir, I agree with most of your points. However, one thing to consider, just because you/your PC gets to be a deity with eternal life, doesn't mean that you can convey that eternal life on someone else, even your main squeeze. So, I would expect all of the mere mortals to eventually die... Bhaalspawns, however, must eventually face the fact that, unless they are irreparably non-resurrectable, they will outlive everyone they ever knew. So, the endings are understandable from that viewpoint, if not satisfying.

I avoided the "sorry pal you have to die when I leave here" scenario by dropping keldorn off with the "soon to be rescued" merchant, armed to the teeth and enough gems to buy a castle (and a nymph's cloak for the honey when he gets home).


-mario

That's a good idea, Mario! I tried to leave someone on top of Watcher's Keep, with the rationale that I knew you could reach Amn from there, but it only gave me the option of sending them back to the pocket plane. I'll try dumping them off in other areas next time. Call me silly if you will, but I just hate leaving characters I like to their death!

well at least Edwin(a)got a cool final bio:D

I thought most of the final biographies were fine. It is somewhat depressing the Viconia's life seems more tragic if you are in it, but then she does warn you during the romance that its doomed.

The Aerie pregnancy is obviously unrealistic, but so is going from level 1 to level 31 in less than a year. An invulnerable baby is no worse than an invulnerable Boo or familiar, IMHO.

The things that really piss me off are when you are given no real choice about doing bad things. In SoA, the classic example was Firkraag's quest. Anyone with half a brain was highly suspicious of his story, yet there is no way you can avoid killing Ajantis (who was one of my BG1 companions!!!). The ambush by the Tethyrian soldiers in ToB is almost as bad. I could forgive the Queen of Tethyr for sentencing me to death for no reason. But I won't forgive her for sending those hapless soldiers out to die.

Aloha
Vormaerin