When I got our review build of Baldur's Gate 3 a week ago, one of the first things I said to myself was to carve some time out to work on the multiplayer impressions of the RPG. And while I'm hard at work on our review (expect another review-in-progress update this week), getting a multiplayer game has been less than successful.
One of the hallmarks of any D&D campaign is the inability of the party to actually meet up and play through a session. There are countless memes out there on the internet poking fun at this universal phenomenon, and it's not something cleared up by the advent of online sessions either.
Personally, I'm running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that kicked off in June. Guess how many sessions we've had?
One.
Scheduling conflicts. Life happens to all of us. Recently, it has felt like life has smacked me in the face with the broadside of a Githyanki Greatsword, but this is something that all of us deal with.
So it was no surprise that when I proposed to my friends a group playthrough, we've yet to actually set a date to sit down and start our adventure. The first thing said to me by a friend of mine was that he was "interested" but "may struggle to find time."
An Owlbear-sized adventure
Part of the anxiety of finding the time to play Baldur's Gate 3 with friends, (and D&D in general) is that these adventures are massive affairs. Getting through a single campaign can mean weeks, months, and in some cases, years at a table, carving out the time week in and week out.
Baldur's Gate 3 promises to be no exception to that rule. With over 170 hours of cutscenes in the RPG, and a campaign with a dizzying amount of endings, there is a lot to uncover in a playthrough. Finding the time to power through that together, especially with how busy life can be, is hard.
Couple this with the fact that we are all also playing single-player campaigns and the math gets trickier: do I spend time with the game I've already invested hours in, or do I take time away from that to play a brand new adventure with friends? The choice, for some, might be difficult.
Fun with friends
However, multiplayer RPGs can present some of the most memorable moments in gaming. We all have a story we tell about something we did while in a group, whether it be charging into a boss fully unprepared, Leroy Jenkins-style, or setting our friends ablaze on "accident."
It's a major reason why many of us have loved MMORPGs for so long - that social connection in a game world. The shared stories we can all tell by that single connection that binds us all together. Baldur's Gate 3's multiplayer promises that for me, I feel.
I think back to some of the playthroughs we did with Divinity: Original Sin 2 and how we still in our group text thread chat about the time we had in Rivellon. Yet despite the fun we had in those initial sessions, we always fell short of meeting up and actually finishing these games. The same can be said of our ill-fated attempt to play the original Baldur's Gate as a group to lead into BG3 last year.
It created incredible moments, such as my incredibly high friend launching the wrong version of the game and just not understanding why we were all laughing hysterically. We also wiped before ever getting to meet Imoen...making it less than halfway around Candlekeep before Shank decided to piss off the wrong guard.
These are stories I chuckle at over the years since they've happened, and I can't wait till we can create more memories in Faerun once again, assuming we can gather the party and venture forth.
Baldur's Gate 3 offers a realistic Dungeons and Dragons experience, for sure. I'm just not sure the scheduling conflicts was the one I really wanted.
