What is the worst batch of companions in an RPG?

[Manny V]

I just noticed this ****** Matt Mercer has painted fingernails.


What the absolute soy-fuelled low-T **** is happening to men?

noticed the same **** with Criken, a Youtuber/Streamer

the guy has always been a bit of a beta **** and he lives in fuckin LA lmao, but it immediately makes you assume he's a ******

[roldet]

LMAO, i thought last pic was some ****** art from some obscure blog but NO it is design for this Amazon animated show by Critical Role;

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26453092/

[Rand]

Mine were Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.
I wanted NONE of them in my party.

[Stack of Turtles]

Dorian was surprisingly not annoying despite being gay.

That's true. It's a shame his personal quest is literally "my daddy wanted to try conversion therapy on me to cure my gayness." Otherwise he's much more reasonable and less insufferable mage companion than Vivienne.
Also, give him a gangster (as in 30s-40s mobster) moustache and he doesn't even look that gay.

I know this is old but since it wound up in front of my anyway, I can't help but say, you made the guy into Frederico Mercurio and you think it makes him look less gay????

[Oyster Sauce]

Mine were Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.
I wanted NONE of them in my party.

I'll never get over WOTR having two active serial killers as companions

[Finarfin]

Uhhhh the Avowed ones sucked quite alot. Surprisingly the Outer Worlds 2 companions were not AS bad as the first game's companions.

Also @logincrash watch https://www.youtube.com/@WeDoAIStuff/videos
last time I watched it was entertaining.

[Valter]

Pathfinder WotR is full of unlikeable alphabet snowflakes.

There are like fifteen potential companions, and only two of them aren't insufferable twats.

And the one straight white woman is a serial killer

[Classix]

Pathfinder Kingmaker. I always make my own companions for my parties when I can out of my brother and family friends. Plus, the blonde Paladin chick Valeri ( 9 INT ) had lower INT than the Barbarian broad Amiri (10 INT ) lol...what? Just dumb. I have to get around to that all Pally/Cleric party at some point.

[J1M]

I just noticed this ****** Matt Mercer has painted fingernails.


What the absolute soy-fuelled low-T **** is happening to men?

noticed the same **** with Criken, a Youtuber/Streamer

the guy has always been a bit of a beta **** and he lives in fuckin LA lmao, but it immediately makes you assume he's a ******

When I see this, I just assume it is like male feminists cloaking themselves in deniability, except via ***** clothing. Something that makes it harder to out them as creepy sexual predators.

[Havitner]

F3a5lmxXEAABtdj.jpeg

[Brother Michael]

Remarkable that the characters in the top image are more visually distinct from each other than the bottom.

[rusty_shackleford]

Upon finding out about how popular coffee shop(& similar) fanfiction is, a lot of games with bad writing began to make a LOT more sense.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Coffee_Shop_AU

[maidenhaver]

Upon finding out about how popular coffee shop(& similar) fanfiction is, a lot of games with bad writing began to make a LOT more sense.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Coffee_Shop_AU

Is this the trope where 4/10s believe they're 10/10s, because their girl coworkers give them over-confidence?

Nevermind, its like that 2010 capeshit youtube show with batman and superman at a coffee shop talking about other movies.

[Rand]

Mine were Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.
I wanted NONE of them in my party.

I'll never get over WOTR having two active serial killers as companions

"...I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's pretty weird that it happened twice."

[Rand]

I think I figured out how to describe what the problem is with almost all modern game companions.

In the olden days, an actual writer would come up with an interesting character.
Let's take Minsc. He's essentially a standard warrior with one motivation and a bunch of amusing quirks.
His one motivation, in BG (1), is to rescue his sorceress companion.
Otherwise, he's just a bunch of interesting shouts and a few conversation interjections.
You can see this same sort of general design across many companions going across decades until about 10 years ago.
Some were fleshed out more than others and some were more integrated into the plot, but they were background characters and were there to provide the player with interest/amusement.
They never stole the spotlight and they rarely did more than leave the party if the player did something utterly against their motivations.

Now we have modern companions. They aren't created to amuse the player. They're created to fit a specific role despite the player.
They're created to make the author feel... something. Like they did a "good" thing. I'd call it that they think they did something virtuous, but it isn't. It's more like "correct".
Often they can be seen to be there because the author wanted to make a special snowflake with an "interesting" story, making the companion quests essentially mandatory for the player to complete. See the BG3 companions, or anything from Nu-Obsidian.
But the especially bad ones are there to represent the things the author thinks everyone else needs to see and accept. They often lecture or attempt to shame the player for not picking the right things.
They very often talk AT the player through the game. To "teach" (preach, really) and judge, based on the author's often strange and corrupt ideology.
The worst of these, which fortunately had the greatest backlash, is Taash (or Traash) from the last corruption of Dragon Age.
It does EVERYTHING for the writer's satisfaction, and the player is given no choice but to accept it. Dissent is not allowed. Even the other game NPCs are forced to acquiesce to the author's little pet's insanity.
And you also have NO CHOICE but to accept them in your party. Avowed did the same. Take these companions and you MUST use two. No choice. We spent a lot of time on them and you will appreciate them and their ideology, pleb.

They can't let anything go untainted.
Overwatch, whatever you think of it, had the (original) characters designed to be appealing to most (though this changed later on).
Contrast this with Concord. Those characters only appealed to ideology. Aesthetically, they were all repulsive. You would only like them if you were a zealot follower of the exact ideology of the creator. And even then not liking them aesthetically, only through the ideological lens of "this is the correct thing".

[rusty_shackleford]

bg1/2 companions were based upon tabletop characters no different than modern rpg companions, the only difference is the people making the games are now FOIDs and *******

[Rand]

bg1/2 companions were based upon tabletop characters no different than modern rpg companions, the only difference is the people making the games are now FOIDs and *******

No.
How did you come to such a wrong conclusion?

Not the modern authors being sick degenerates, the other part where you think there's no difference in intent and execution.

[rusty_shackleford]

bg1/2 companions were based upon tabletop characters no different than modern rpg companions, the only difference is the people making the games are now FOIDs and *******

No.
How did you come to such a wrong conclusion?

You didn't know that?

[Rand]

bg1/2 companions were based upon tabletop characters no different than modern rpg companions, the only difference is the people making the games are now FOIDs and *******

No.
How did you come to such a wrong conclusion?

You didn't know that?

I don't know it because it's dumb and wrong Rusty.
Think again. You didn't do a good job with that yet.

[Oyster Sauce]

Minsc is trounced by all BG3 companions even when they try to gay rape you

[rusty_shackleford]

No.
How did you come to such a wrong conclusion?

You didn't know that?

I don't know it because it's dumb and wrong Rusty.
Think again. You didn't do a good job with that yet.

https://www.shacknews.com/article/10347 ... etail-view

While several designers wrote dialogue and quests for companions, the names of the companions as well as certain traits came from characters Ohlen’s friends had played in his old campaigns. "One of the Beamdog founders, Cameron Tofer, his character's name was Minsc,” Ohlen said. “[Cameron] was new to D&D, and a ranger, and a player who didn't take things seriously."

[Rand]

https://www.shacknews.com/article/10347 ... etail-view

While several designers wrote dialogue and quests for companions, the names of the companions as well as certain traits came from characters Ohlen’s friends had played in his old campaigns. "One of the Beamdog founders, Cameron Tofer, his character's name was Minsc,” Ohlen said. “[Cameron] was new to D&D, and a ranger, and a player who didn't take things seriously."

Rusty, whatever you're talking about, it's AT BEST tangental to my point, and it's more like unrelated except in the general theme.
I can't even meaningfully engage with it because it's apples and... not oranges. Toadstools.

[rusty_shackleford]

Minsc is trounced by all BG3 companions even when they try to gay rape you

He originally was one of the first companions to join you, they moved him way later for whatever reason. I was able to force him to spawn in the early access

[Rand]

Rusty has found a new Rustyposting mode

So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

[Acrux]

Shouldn't Minsc be around 100 years old in BG3?

[rusty_shackleford]

Shouldn't Minsc be around 100 years old in BG3?

He spends a century petrified

https://www.shacknews.com/article/10347 ... etail-view

While several designers wrote dialogue and quests for companions, the names of the companions as well as certain traits came from characters Ohlen’s friends had played in his old campaigns. "One of the Beamdog founders, Cameron Tofer, his character's name was Minsc,” Ohlen said. “[Cameron] was new to D&D, and a ranger, and a player who didn't take things seriously."

Rusty, whatever you're talking about, it's AT BEST tangental to my point, and it's more like unrelated except in the general theme.
I can't even meaningfully engage with it because it's apples and... not oranges. Toadstools.

Just admit you were wrong and move on

[Rand]

Just admit you were wrong and move on

there's nothing to admit.
You're channeling Karl Pilkington.

► Show Spoiler

► Show Spoiler

I can't speak to your irrelevancies based on my thesis.

[rusty_shackleford]

"it's not based on tabletop"
it is
"it's not!"
it is, here's the developers saying so
"well I didn't actually mean that"

…uh, ok

[Rand]

"it's not based on tabletop"
it is
"it's not!"
it is, here's the developers saying so
"well I didn't actually mean that"

…uh, ok

Go on and have your own conversation.
None of what you posted has any point or bearing on what I was saying in reference to the ideas I was exploring.

Me: "Yellow light has a wavelength range of approximately 570 to 580 nanometers in the visible spectrum."
You: "Bananas are yellow. Except when they're green or black. But the main ones you think of as the trope are yellow."
Me: "Uh, why would you bring any of that up?. That's not relevant."
You: "So you don't like bananas? Or... you don't believe in them?!? Bananas are real!"

[TKVNC]

They're almost all terrible.

It's a better question to ask, which ones are good.