Hello, CHARNAMES, hopeless doomsayers, traitorous pirates and other assorted queer fellas! Be welcome to the grand opening of the Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 Fic Archive!

The purpose of this blog is very simple: to archive and categorise as many fics for the Original Saga as possible. I will not reupload anyone's fics here, unless asked to do so by the fic's author. I'll merely be posting/reblogging links to off-site fanfics for the Original Saga, as well as reblogging any Original Saga fics posted on tumblr proper.

As a fan of the first two games, I've found that, after the release of the most recent installment, it's become terribly difficult to find fics for BG1 and BG2 in Archive of our Own. The third game has the lion's share of the "Baldur's Gate" tag in AO3, and even if one attempts to filter out all content related to it, many, many fics still slip through the cracks.

I've reached out to the AO3 tag wranglers to request an organisational split of the tag. Unfortunately, said request was refused. Although I respect the tag wranglers and all their hard work, I must say I disagree with that decision and continue to believe the Original Saga fandom would benefit from an unique space to share, host and archive their fic—hence my making this blog, which I am calling "the second best thing." In lieu of our own tag, we might as well just have a blog dedicated to compiling & archiving Original Saga fics!

This blog is just getting off the ground, and is still very much a WIP, but I intend to (eventually) have a robust tag system & a masterlist of fics with a filtering option. Until then, if you, too, are a fan of the Original Saga & you'd like to help me set this blog up, here are some things you can help with that I would greatly appreciate!

submit links to fics (yours or someone else's) via ask or submissions box

reply to this post with links to fics (yours or someone else's)

mention this blog in posts featuring Original Saga fics (be they full fics posted on tumblr or links to external sites such as AO3 or ff.net)

tag any new posts featuring Original Saga fics with the #ogbgfic tag (I say "new" because I think that any posts you edit to include this tag still wouldn't show up in a search)

reblog this post to share with any followers of yours who might be interested

... or let me know if a blog like this already exists! 😅 wouldn't want to waste time replicating something that's already being done, haha.

If you choose to send a submission, do feel free to take a look at the submission FAQ... or, well, "FAQ"... to get an idea of what is and isn't allowed. (Spoiler alert: most things are allowed! Just don't send anything AI-generated, & exercise your own common sense in regards to whether a fic counts as a BG1/BG2 fic or not).

One look at Gale and people already know, oh, this dude is gonna be my spellcaster — maybe do crowd control and damage spells but is gonna be real squishy. Shadowheart? Cleric with armor so she's probably a healing tank (even though healing is probably the least powerful thing she could do). Astarion? Practically a must-have in your party if you can't reliably pick locks yourself. Karlach? Damage sponge berserker. Lae'zel? She can easily do the most damage in a playthrough, but otherwise it wouldn't be wrong to just use her to hold the line while your caster does damage. Her niche is melee fighter and while not the wall Karlach (or a druid) would be, one look at her and you know how she could slot into your playstyle.

Even a non-RPG enthusiast will know to put Lae'zel upfront while keeping Gale at the back. You can modify their builds so that Lae'zel does ranged damage and Gale is a close combat specialist, but there is nevertheless an effective, albeit cliche, way to build them that is intuitive to most people.

What about Wyll, though? He has a sword, so is he a melee fighter meant to be placed on the front lines? He's a spellcasting class, so is he meant to occupy the same niche as Gale? Is he meant to support the primary damage dealers with buffs and crowd control? He's even wearing generic padded armor, so you're not even sure if light armor is supposed to be his optimal line of equipment or if that was just what was available.

And I'm not entirely faulting Larian for not communicating what a warlock is supposed to do. Hells, a lot of D&D players don't know how to build warlocks and primarily chose the class for roleplaying reasons. Travis Willingham from Critical Role notoriously got bogged down playing Fjord as a warlock because sessions would just be him casting Eldritch Blast over and over again. That's the one warlock archetype that D&D players are familiar with — Shotgun Eldritch Blaster — and Wyll clearly isn't meant to be that. He's not called the Eldritch Blaster of Frontiers and his special quest weapons (the Infernal Rapier, mainly) does nothing for an Eldritch Blast build.

That is not to say Wyll can't be built into a beast. But it takes more effort and research on the player's part to discern which of these many class options create a synergistic playstyle and what items are best-in-slot for him.

Because people see Wyll and can't immediately slot him into a playstyle box, they leave him at camp. Because he's left at camp, they never hear his dialogue. Because they never hear his dialogue, they aren't as invested in him.