As per title, have you guys been doing anything special for New Year's, or have a review or recommendation?
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Absolutely. For the the enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate, they added a trans NPC who exists purely to tell you they're trans.
They then called everyone who turned their noses up at this bigots.
I don't think they pulled similar horseshit with NWN, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
The funniest goddamned part of that saga was that you can only be a tranny in D&D if you are the laziest piece of shit imaginable.
If you're doing Rules as Written ^TM, you can get a cursed Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity that forcibly changes your sex when equipped. As a cursed item, it's sale value is 0, so you can technically get it from any mage store using the standard sales tables for free.
If you're intent on actually playing the game like some sort of nerd incel, you can just get a Wizard to Polymorph you into the other sex.
Anything else is just "look at me! I'm TRAAAAAAAANNNNSSSSS" virtue signaling.
Preach on, m'man - I've been saying this ever since they started that shit with the trans insert NPC. DMs have been using the Girdle as a player trap (no pun intended) for years, so it's painfully obvious that anyone in a D&D world that would potentially want to be the opposite sex could be the opposite sex with relative ease once one of those was located. Anything else that is presented as "trans" in a D&D-based fantasy world is just a player with a fetish that they don't want to admit to, virtue signaling it up for oppression points.
I've noticed that with many other games. Where it's fantasy or so futuristic that they could roleplay as someone who actually changed sex, but it's clear they don't want that. They just to virtue signal. They want to play as non-passing queer freaks who flaunt their mental illnesses and fetishes and get praised for it.
At least, that's what woke, pandering corporations would have us believe.
I own BG:EE, BG2:EE, Planescape: EE, and NWN:EE.
Beamdog also had Minsc (probably the most popular character from Baldur's Gates 1+2) with a new #GamerGate!!!@!# voice line "Actually, it's about ethics in heroic adventuring."
Trent Oster is a huge lefty feminist type, and their new characters are kind of all SJW tropes (Bisexual male orc, quirky magic elf girl, etc). Their one original creation, a game that comes between BG1 and BG2, was pretty widely panned for shitty writing. I haven't played it.
See breathless headlines like "Vitriol and harassment hit developers of new Baldur's Gate expansion" (Polygon). "Its writer, Amber Scott, is the latest woman working in gaming to face online harassment and insults. Her Twitter feed today features multiple insults and threats, as well as some messages of support"
Beamdog has also been pretty widely panned for introducing bugs, taking forever to patch known and game-breaking bugs, and rolling out patches months apart for Mac, PC, iOS, Android, etc.
Having said that, I wrote in about how I felt Minsc's line was not true to the character and was unnecessary politicization of the game. Trent Oster personally wrote me back and said they goofed, and were planning to remove the voice line...and they did. Their patches and games are all in a good place now. [I bought Siege of Dragonspear after that, but I have yet to play it.]
The two people who I personally think were responsibly for some of the shittiest of the new characters and the weakest of the weak writing -- Dee Pennyway and Amber Scott -- both left Beamdog in 2016 and neither seem to be working in the industry anymore, if that tells you anything.
So, despite some rough spots, I think Beamdog is a pretty OK company.
That's a really great synopsis, thanks. Yeah I never really checked out their stuff with the BG games but can definitely remember some of those rumblings now that you mention it.