For me the lack of voice acting isn’t a detriment. Far from it. I much prefer the walls of text to cinematic stuffs.

Have yet to play it but Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous does have some similar themes. If you haven’t looked at it already give it a glance.

The answer: worker rights and employment protections.

I would bet all the pieces to make a better communication suite than discord are there. They just need to be put together into a package and marketed well.

An alternative for me is pretty much useless if it’s not an alternative for my groups. Those I use discord with. It is more likely we migrate to a corporate solution than a foss one.

Convenient, easy to use, large user base, one point registration for multiple communities, tends to simply just work.

But is it the best? Nah. And their increased monetisation drives are annoying.

I don’t know how much to read between the lines, but one can read Hasbro is to blame. Praise for WotC and the DnD team. Nothing for Hasbro…

Played a good bit of Kingmaker and while not as refined as WotR I think is very similar. I agree with you that the DoS chaos can be a bit monotone and is too much. But I’d take that over the environmental flatness of other cRPGs.

Stray Gods, a roleplaying musical. More of an interactive musical than something with deep gameplay features. Kinda like a point-and-klick but you choose where the musical number goes. Inbetween the numbers there is a whole slew of talking to folks, investigating scenes etc.

Would have passed over it as it was far from my regular cup of tea. So I’m glad I “stumbled” into Overly Sarcastic Productions critique of it. May be the Detail Diatribe of theirs I’ve been the most glued to. And then I needed to play it myself.

As I barely have managed to squeeze in 5-10 hours of gaming per week this winter season the thought of spending 300+ hours in a single game is overwhelmingly daunting. A year with a single game. Ugh…

My best gaming experience this last year was with a short game that I knocked out in a weekend. Got a good satisfying experience and a conclusion to it. Git me rethinking things.

Working on it… Cleared tutorial island for the second time, took a breather and now its been a couple of weeks. Sigh. Soon I will have lost the feel for the run and start over.

I think Pathfinder is as bad of a match for Larian as DnD mechanically speaking. Compare the sheer battlefield joy and chaos of DoS to the austere strictness in BG3. And Pathfinder is in the same vein. Better I think it would be if Larian picks up a setting fitting their humour and shenanigans. Heard good things about Discworld.

II know things doesn’t scale but I would love a AA cRPG at BG3 standard but a fifth of the length. Then I may actually finish it. 20-30h experience would be just great.

The Lusty Argonian Maid wants to have a talk with you.

Wonder how many furries that short story awoke…

Unionizing. Voice actors’ union can say no work will be done with studios using ai voices. Similarly to what writers guild is doing towards Hollywood.

Collective pressure and bargaining works.

Will it work 100%? Nope. But it will work well enough.

I wish I could be excited for this, started looking into it and encountered “Long Rest”. And my heart fell. I just can’t be bothered with it. It messes with pace, rythm and creates a 5 minute adventuring day.

The Divinity: Original Sins and Pillars of Eternity (especially the second one) shows it is possible to make satisfying tactical games where “encounter resources” regenerate between each encounter. But the long rest us a DnD staple and I would have been surprised if it was gone.