Sometimes games are hilarious, even if unintentionally. Playing Baldur’s Gate 3, I managed to make three savings throws in a row (DC 10, 15, 20) without being cursed by the Necromancy of Thay….and the game crashed as I try to stuff the book into a storage backpack.
Last night, I had encountered coffins while exploring an apothecary’s cellar, and lo and behold behind a secret passage I found some coffins! Thinking it must be vampires, I swapped one of my party mates for our resident vampire and went to investigate thinking he might offer some insight or gain som inspiration. Nah, it wasn’t vampires.
Skeleton leapt out of the box and soon a whole bunch of skelemen go running around triggering coffins and marching around like some kind of romanized dragur and I’m like what the fuck. And then I found the contents of the last coffin, which included a rock with “Nut Buster” scratched on it in claw marks, a dagger named the poo scraper that has clearly seen worse things than the abyss, and a skull named friend that was creatively used for a Cast Away reference. Then after a visit to a magic mirror full of riddles, and maybe a Harry Potter reference, I found the necromancer’s lab. Complete with a very Necronomicon inspired book behind a locked and trapped door, and looked it up on the wiki. Apparently you read it and get a perm boon or cursed for like fifty rolls or something.
At that point, I said screw it and decided to go to bed. Because I’m not such a fool as to ignore an obvious Evil Dead reference after what happened with the skeletons! And turns out, after a bit more of questing this morning it was worth while to go battle the spider to get the key to the book. Because who doesn’t want to fight teleporting, poison spewing spiders the size of Grog and their matriarch the size of a semi who summons swarms of spiders the size of small dogs!?! But compared to when I found their lair on my way to the goblin camp the first time, it was more “What the fuck did we just fight through” and less sucidal thanks to the level progression.
Having taken a lunch break and time to do other things, I eventually headed back to my various quest antics. And decided as I start wrapping up for the night to make a save point and try the book. When the game crashed, I laughed. When it asked to verify files because it crashed so hard, I really, really laughed 😀 😀 😀