OCD Roleplaying (Interesting and weird play habits)

So....here we are, years since the game came out and yet it is still one of my go-to games when I want a great, immersive RPG to play. Even with all the next-gen uber games around I am always drawn back into frantic sessions of Arcanum, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate Tutu and PS:T every few months.

Steering back to the actual reason for this post: I was wondering who here has their own interesting/weird little habits when Roleplaying the game.

One of mine was during a playthrough that originally started as a "cheat" save: After a long weekend playing Evil Genius, I decided to play a sort of cheesy "evil" wizard. I would try at all opportunities to avoid fighting, preferring to talk my way through while keeping up a self serving agenda. It all sounds pretty normal so far right?

Here comes the OCD-Roleplaying aspect: When I would be forced into battle I would simply Dominate the enemy/enemies then teleport to the "Lair of the Bogaroth" on the Isle of Thanatos.

I would make them invisible, tell them to wait in the middle of the room the Bogaroth was in then drop the Domination, cast Stasis and stand to the side dropping their invisibility. Each time letting my "Pet Bogaroth" tear them to pieces. Interestingly I got all the way through the game until the Void without a single actual kill on record :roll:

Another "passive" wizard playthrough involved going through most of the game invisible and using Dominate and the Back Off command to avoid killing enemies, roleplaying it as the domination (charm animal for critters) doubling as a mind-wipe to justify them not attacking me afterwards.

A strange habit I find I fall into most often (even on playthroughs where I am not roleplaying at all) is to always switch to walking. Its tedious and a little insane but I just can't help it. Constantly running in the game feels so unnatural to the point of actually bothering me. :/

So...a little of my madness shared, anyone else have some similar interesting Roleplays or weird OCD habits when playing?

 

I'm not sure if it qualifies as OCD, but I've only completed Arcanum once. I usually get to the point of having everything wrapped up, and ready to go to the Void... and that's precisely when I lose interest, and find a different game to play. On probably 20+ replays, that's nearly precisely what happens. I'm still trying to work up the energy to go back and finish a game with my 3 int half ogre.

 

I tend to hoard useless items for roleplaying reasons. Those can include a compass and a looking glass for an adventurer, a pocket watch and cologne for a gentleman or absinthe and poison for a rogue. It's stronger than me.

I also carry items which I know I will never use because my characters don't know they will never use them because how could they damnit. Mysterious, Gem, Whysper's Gem and those "...groth" gears from the Bessie Toone mine fall in this category. I also refuse to dispose of the matchbox from the Roseborough Inn and Preston Radcliffe's passport before I learn what is to be learned from them, with every single one of my characters (except that one who didn't give a damn about anything and sold it to William Radcliffe and then killed him on the instant because hey, why not).

My last mage (hm, no, wait, actually make that "every single one I ever played") carried a set of cut gems on him because they are pretty and shiny and because they have to have something magickal about them, right? Mostly because of the shiny and pretty part, though. Oh, and each of his mage followers carried his own set as well, OBVIOUSLY.

My first mage = first character was even worse when it came to that. he actually didn't sell a single gem in the game. Instead, whenever he found a gem, he teleported back to (no, I won't tell you where, hands of my treasure) and stashed them safely in a chest. Dozens and hundreds of pretty, pretty gems.

My good characters refuse to sell Geoffrey the gem of Malachi Rench and carry it for most of the game to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. They finally are released from this burden in the Bangellian Deeps when they can destroy it in the Bangellian Furnace. My evil characters do something similar (what with the carrying for the whole game and destroying it in the Furnace) only with items important for other people (Jungle Dunne package, Bessie Toone's mine deed, etc), because they are dicks.

A thing some of my characters do is destroying each pagan god altar after they are done with it to prevent any other people from getting the blessings which are rightfully their and their only.

An OCD that I defeated (well, decreased) recently was the fact that my mages refused to use any Fatigue Restorers. They insisted on being self-sufficient and using such potions was beneath them while advancing time to regain fatigue they considered cheating. Sadly, for my first character (the chest-o-gems guy), investing a single character in a physical stat was a disgrace for a mage as well, and since he was an elf, this meant low constitution -> a heal rate of 2 fatigue points per 10 seconds -> taking few minute long breaks in dungeons to regain his fatigue.

 

I collect gems too. I'm also obsessed with even numbers, so I tend to not sell them for extra cash unless I have an odd number of emeralds (or whatever) so that my total can be even again if I sell one. And I have a hard time parting with rubies or black diamonds just because I might want to do all the offerings some day.

Additionally, Magnus and Sogg have to carry the gems. It feels weird if somebody else in my party has some of them.

I always have Sogg carry that first "... groth" sprocket around for the whole game. I'm not really sure why.

I carry around a lot of spare weapons I end up not using much, if at all. Just because they might come in handy some day. I'm really bad about making sure I get Ellumyn's Bow even if nobody in my party can get much use out of it, for example. Just because I might decide to invest a couple of points in Bow at some later stage (which I haven't done often enough to justify this habit).

 

Ah yes...carrying around useless items seems to be a major thing methinks.

I am also guilty of hoarding random stuff for no apparent reason. After getting a shovel I always keep it with Sogg or Chukka (a man of my stature can't be seen carrying such tools. That is what I keep these oafs around for)

I also tend to have followers carry items that might have personal/sentimental/emotional meaning to them, Virgil holds on to Joachim's Note/Telegram/Book, Loghaire wears a pair of Wheel Clan Specs and only uses Harrow as a weapon, Jormund keeps Wrath's poisoned cup, etc.

Also on one of my "Archmage" files I collect and keep powerful artifacts in my mansion. The main chest in the bedroom is where I store cursed items lest they fall into the wrong hands. I have no idea how many hours I have sunk into that character just scouring the land and hoarding anything of magickal value.

Ah joy :lol:

 

I hoard a lot of stuff in Arcanum, but mostly because I don't know which items I'll need later and which I won't. Once I have a whole lot of one item, I sell most (or all) of that type of item to make room in the storage containers I use. I use the 3 chests in the Shrouded Hills Inn as well as the 3 chests in the Shrouded Hills Bank. Yes, I always rob the bank when I play... first I agree to Jacob Bens' quest, then Doc Roberts' quest, then I fulfill Doc Roberts' quest, then I fulfill Jacob Bens' quest. If you use Prowling and Unlocking Cantrip at night you can unlock the bank, the back room of the bank, and 2 of the 3 chests in the bank... the 3rd chest is unlocked by reading Jacob Bens' note because it is the combination safe. I like to fulfill as many quests as possible and get that green color. Having to botch Delores Beston's quest to get the blessing from Madame Toussade is one of the few exceptions to my rule of always doing quests I am assigned. And for quests I don't want to do (like destroying bridge materials, killing Gilbert Bates, etc.) I avoid getting those assigned in the first place. However the Delores Beston one I have to get in order to get the Gypsy Blessing.

Usually after a few cities (after doing everything in Shrouded Hills, Dernholm, and Black Root, and midway through Tarant) I start to get dissatisfied with something I've done in the game and get an urge to start over from the beginning because of some minor detail of something that didn't go the way I wanted. I've tried getting around this by having multiple saves along the way, but usually I eventually get to the point where I want to change my whole approach to how I've played the game. This is also why I hoard items. A few of the times I started over from the beginning it was because I had foolishly disposed of important, unique items. Now I keep everything unless I am sure that it is an item you can get multiple copies of, just to be sure I don't lose anything. I also make sure to have every possible follower join me, and to avoid losing any of them if possible (for instance, to get and keep Dante, you have to ask him to join you before convincing the Mayor of Black Root to rejoin Cumbria, and then you have to have him wait while you talk to Praetor of your success so that you are not stuck leaving him there with Praetor and can keep him as a follower). Apparently Thorvald Two Stones and Murgo can no longer be permanent followers thanks to the Unofficial Arcanum Patch, which I have the latest XMas 2009 version of. And my widescreen monitor, which is 1920x1080, cannot properly display 800x600 for some odd reason, probably since I went for a cheap model, so I play with the high-resolution patch and play in the native resolution of 1920x1080 of my monitor. The graphics look very nice at this resolution, and I can see a whole lot at once.

Still, I have this obsessive urge to start the game over from the beginning whenever I get anywhere remotely close to halfway through the game. I also unlock everything that is locked, using Unlocking Cantrip to make it permanent. And I am kind of obsessed with getting all the NPCs in the game to have very good reactions to me. I change my character's race all the time just because, like for instance when I go near Half-Orc or Orc thieves I am a Half-Orc, when I visit Dark Elven burial grounds I am an Elf, when I insult people I am a Gnome, etc. The only race I don't go around as is Dwarf because of the terrible spell penalty. And I change my gender as well, just so I can get things like "Wellington's Delight". I do a lot of weird things in this game. I use every possible type of cheat, all combined, from Virgil's Cheat Menu to Arcanum Edit 1.8 to the Troika Cheat Mode Enabler to the Follower Editor. I've played this game like 100 times, only rarely getting as far as the Isle of Despair, and pretty much always quitting soon after that on the few occasions that I got that far. I think I have a mental block against actually playing this game to completion and winning it. I have had this game almost a decade and I always find some excuse to start over from the beginning whenever I get close to halfway through. The most recent time I started over, it was because I was upset that Madam Lil kept saying my character was ugly even if I put full points into beauty... apparently Madam Lil remembered that my character had been ugly when they first met, or something. I was playing the previous game with all stats maximized except for beauty, which was at its minimum of 1. This time, I have all stats maximized to at least 20, sometimes some of them higher depending on my race at the time. I want to be able to go to Madam Lil as an attractive female character and get some work as a prostitute myself. And then once that is over my character will switch back to male, and probably have beauty decreased down to 1 and I'll turn myself into an full-blooded Orc for good measure. I've decided my next mission should be to get Chukka as a follower, and then personally order Chukka to kill Gilbert Bates as a test of his loyalty to me. Also when I do end up beating the game, I want to get all the really good slides, so that means doing everything perfectly, at least as far as things that affect the final ending are concerned. I wonder if fixing Shrouded Hills' steam engine with the "...groth" sprocket prevents Jongle Dunne from turning lead into gold in the final ending, if I managed to get him his package first before I gave the constable the piece to fix the town's steam engine. I need to make sure I am a God in the ending, somehow. I wonder how all the endings work... but in the meantime, I need to sort out which items you can buy from shopkeepers and which are unique and irreplaceable, because it is hard to fit everything.

And what do I need the unique items for anyway? Once I read "Joachim's Note to Virgil", as an example, can I just throw it away and still have whatever benefit there is from reading it? Or do you have to keep some of these notes and thingies you get? Because even if I don't need to keep any of this stuff, I'll hoard it anyway, just in case. You never know when the note with the combination to the Shrouded Hills Bank safe might come in handy for something else in some later quest, after all... maybe that half-ogre guard on the Isle of Despair who likes to read things would want to read it. Who knows? Anything is possible in the land of Arcanum. Maybe with enough points in persuasion, I can convince Darian Maug and Pollock to put aside their differences and conquer the city of Tarant together... and then, the world! Maybe Cedric Appleby could come out with the iEngine, a sleek miniature steam engine 10 times as powerful as Gilbert Bates' and 100 times as expensive, and everyone would rush out and buy one, only to have to buy a new one when Cedric Appleby's iEngine 2 comes out. Maybe the Empire from Final Fantasy 6 will invade the world of Arcanum under the crazy leadership of Kefka, and use Magitek Armor to shatter the delusions the people of Arcanum have about magick and technology being incompatible. I haven't gotten that far in the game, so any of those things might happen; I don't know yet. Maybe Drog Black Tooth actually added a cameo appearance of himself into the game in Stillwater, where he is an ogre who wants to eat a poor innocent halfling, I mean hobbit, named Bilbo Baggins, until I, the wizard Gandalf, show up... OK now I am just confused.

 

That last paragraph totally blew my mind....though IIRC Drog Blacktooth the Ogre is actually in the game. Not sure if he is added as a cameo from Drog's UAP but seeing as how he doesn't seem to like to add things I would hazard a guess and say it is a vanilla game encounter and Drog got his name from there. (Someone go ahead and correct me if I am wrong)

I have a similar problem. Thats why I now keep my "Doctor Manhattan" file around as a backup save for when I want to experiement (Alignment at 0, every skill at 5 and mastered, maxed stats, all spells and all tech as well as every single schematic learned, 0 kills, all map markers unlocked, etc.)

That way whenever I get bored of what I'm currently doing I just wipe out all saves in the Arcanum save folder and copy the backup save into it again.

 

Yes Drog Black Tooth is the name of an Ogre who lives in a cave just outside Stillwater, and one of the quests in the game is to rescue a Halfling who gets kidnapped by Drog Black Tooth. You have to kill Drog Black Tooth to rescue the Halfling, unless you can figure out some other way to keep the Halfling alive long enough to escape. I suppose you could Mind Control Drog Black Tooth long enough for the Halfling to escape, then turn off Mind Control right before leaving the cave, if you really didn't want to kill him. Anyway, you know the Drog Black Tooth character who made the patches? Well his character is based on the Ogre Drog Black Tooth who tried to eat that Halfling. That's why it's better when he posts as Elder Joachim, because at least Elder Joachim isn't some giant monstrous brute who likes to eat poor innocent Halflings. However, Virgil had it right when he told Elder Joachim "Your powers are weak, old man." There's even a neat video of Virgil confronting Elder Joachim at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1AOzOUbbFU . And I was joking about Drog Black Tooth being added by the patch... Drog Black Tooth was right there as a nasty Ogre in the original vanilla Arcanum by Troika. If you must know where my name "Bob" comes from, it is short for my full name J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and you can do an Internet search for J.R. "Bob" Dobbs if you are interested in finding out more about me, but really everything you need to know is in the following picture, which I use as my portrait in Arcanum (scaled down, of course):

 

You're not Bob. I'm Bob.

 

Besides hoarding stuff and being guardian of all things moral I have nothing more to contribute to this thread.
Instead, I'll just state how great this Bob guy is.
Bob is a great guy and I like him.

 

I hoard gems, coal, and metal shavings with nearly every character I play. I've made schematics to make these things useful in the game, but that
s really just metagaming to clear my inventory of otherwise useless garbage.

 

Costume is one OCD quirk of mine, including carrying useless props like a pocket watch.

Punishing the wicked in imaginary ways is another thing I obsess over. Like turning Farkhus into a tiny air elemental slave who is doomed to act as my cupboard for all eternity. Or turning the cruel gnome into a tiny sheep, doomed to be the Worthless Mutt's bitch.

I love making an entrance by floating in to a scene as Body of Air, then morphing into a hooded figure walking (not running) purposefully. I hum the star wars Imperial March when I do this.

And of course I love re-starting again and again and again.

 

I love to whack off to the madam lil's girls and their dialogue.

 

......all hail "Bob"

I thought I was the only one that did that...minus the Imperial March.

I did have a "ghost character" that I was obsessed with being in Body of Air form and using Invisibility all the time. I would only drop the invisibility then the Body of Air a few seconds before talking to someone in my hooded robes.

Thankfully it became so tedious that around the time I was heading to Tulla I restarted the game and have not done had the same obsession since

 

One of my characters was a melee fighter with some magic, and he carried a sword, an axe, a hammer and a Kite Sword, the latter of which I always used for the finishing blow on Molochean Hand assassins, as a sort of "offer to the gods."

I've also did the wooden ring what's-it (keep a wooden ring equipped for the entire game, it contains the character's soul).

 

Watched one of the highlander movies, think it was the last or something where the main guy ends up dying. Anyway in a scene the bad guy wore a black robe with what looked similar to the arcane greatsword. So that was my character.

 

Muro - what do you do if you know your character is about to go somewhere and be attacked by things he has no chance against. Your character doesn't know, so what's stopping him marching into the BMC without any potions or Golem-appropriate weapons?

 

Arcanum generally isn't a difficult game even on hard, so obeying the "be prepared for all possible situations" rule is usually enough.

A prudent character of mine expects the world to be a dangerous place. He doesn't acquire means of dealing with golems because he knows he will encounter them particularly in the BMC mines but because - living in a world where weapons are breakable - he wishes to be prepared for fighting when his main weapon gets destroyed whenever he will be force to do so.

Sometimes he turns up to be wrong and encounters an enemy he cannot defeat. Running from this devastatingly powerful foe and returning later with superior skill and gear is an option then.

 

That used to happen a lot to me but I got irritated and I just rushed till the end, couldn't stand not finishing the damn thing so many times.