Hello! Hi, how’s it going. So I’m writing this with the Google Docs editor. It’s kinda sweet. Only thing that sucks about it that it only displays one page, whereas OpenOffice had two pages side by side. So now I’m haunted by all the unused space on the sides of my page. Woe be to the 1080p

So I played Dragon Age II. And I beat Dragon Age II. Short review: it’s aight. Long review: you’re not getting one! I was tired of that game by the end of my 40 hour game in a way that DA:O took 160 hours to achieve. That’s as much commentary as you can expect.

But during and after, I had the itch. The CRPG itch. I wanted to play an actual, old school, balls to the dungeon walls CRPG. Something like Neverwinter Nights, or Baldur’s Gate! So I installed Planescape. After pirating it like six times and never once playing it, I bought Planescape: Torment off GoG sometime around Christmas when it was five bucks. Now that I’ve made a financial commitment, I feel it’s finally time to sate my curiosity. And, to motivate me, I’m going to blindly follow at the heels of his majesty @Video_Game_King and make a kinda-sorta Let’s Play out of it. Which I’ve never done, so it’ll be an adventure for all of us. No capture equipment means that you won't be given the pleasure of listening to my soothing, erotic voice giving commentary on the game. Instead this old style game will be given the old style treatment of a screencap let's play!

I spent too much time making that banner.

Remember how I said this would be a screen shot let’s play? Well, the thing is, I already have a few hours of the game under me and I decided to do this just now as of this writing. So this update is going to be an introductory/metagame post with a few stock images and no screencaps.

So first thing I did was install a whole clusterfun of mods to make the game look pretty and work better. They are here.

The beginning of Planescape, for me, was a series of false starts. First I made my character, played for ten minutes, then restarted because my stats sucked. That’s the kind of game, berks. More on that later. Then I played for an hour, killed a dude, followed a guide for a bit. Then I said “yo fuck guides” and reloaded until right before I killed that dude and went down a kind of different direction.

So I’m going to cop to the fact that I totally did read a “beginner’s guide” of sorts. It is here. But otherwise this playthrough is going to be totally raw, dawg! I will be relying on my wits and my charisma score to see me through this game unscathed.

You start the game making your character. This only means setting your stats. Not class, not sex, not alignment, not looks, and mostly important not your name. You start as a male, true neutral fighter and remain one until you train out of it. The stats are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma, Wisdom, and Intelligence. I have no idea what each individual stat does in terms of dice rolls, because I have never played ADnD, which is the license this game uses. I don’t know how awesome or shit ADnD is. All I know is Thac0 is a scary phrase. For perspective, I grew up with 3.5 and now prefer 4E. Kinda hoping they get their online shit together for 5E.

What I can tell you is that, in this particular game, wisdom, intelligence and charisma all open up dialog choices, and wisdom gives an experience bonus. As well as some other shit but FUCK THE METAGAME! I’m not here to know everything before I play it! Except for the stuff I’m going to explain in the next few paragraphs.

If you’ve heard of Planescape, it’s probably been about two, related thing: the writing, and the stat importance. Now, from what I understand, in most RPGs you want to max either strength, constitution or, at least in 3.5, dexterity, with intelligence being for wizards, wisdom being for certain classes and saving throws, and charisma for *snrk.* Well, in this case it’s the opposite. Int, Cha, and Wis are the core important stats with constitution having its own special role. Strength and dexterity, from what I can tell, are only useful for fighters and rogues. I don’t know if this is an ADnD thing, but it’s not something I expect from any RPG. Yeah, you’ll get games that let you talk your way out of some encounters if you have a high speech stat, but from what I can tell you can not only do that to most of them in Planescape, you also get as much experience if not more for doing so. That’s some swag stuff right there.

My build (thanks gamefaqs!)

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 10

Constitution: 10

Wisdom: 18

Intellect: 17

Charisma: 13

I’m going to spec Mage as soon as I can. Apparently, ADnD only had three classes, mage thief fighter. Also, I’m going to be evil. Because I’ve heard that this is one of the few games that lets you actually be evil and pull some rank shit. I won’t be killing indiscriminately (killing quest givers never seemed a good idea), though, so expect a Neutral Evil outcome.

So I think that’s it for this one. If I had been taking caps this entire time I would go into detail about what actually happens in the first hour or so, but I didn’t and I doubt a summary would have done much for your enjoyment. Also, I can’t remember in great detail what it is I did. Expect a synopsis and less bullshit next time! If I do this. Which I probably will because I want to play this game but I need something to motivate me before I get bored and start playing some mindless action game. I don't want that. Except I kinda do, which is the problem. Ahhh!