Spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3 follow.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a huge hit in a way that no other Dungeons & Dragons video game ever was. Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro and the current D&D license holder, would obviously love to capitalize on the game’s runaway success. Larian Studios decided not to make any more Baldur’s Gate games, though, so the folks at Wizards need to turn elsewhere to capitalize on its popularity. That means spinoffs, and likely lots of them.
We’ve already seen characters from the game turn up in official D&D RPG products. Karlach and Minsc grace the cover of Heroes of Faerûn, for example, with Astarion and Shadowheart joining them in official artwork within the book. Astarion got his own digital product, and the alternate cover of the Monster Manual features a mind flayer who is very recognizable to players who made it to Act Three of the game.
But those are all cameos. Beyond the boundaries of the rulebooks lie the spin-off products that feature these popular characters’ personalities, the aspects of them that fans fell in love with them. Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion comes out this month, Karlach is getting a comic book, and the game as a whole is getting an HBO spinoff series. But how will these complex and multifaceted characters translate to other media?
Larian created a very rich story with Baldur’s Gate 3, and part of that is that the characters people meet in Act One are only facades or surface impressions of who they really are. As the game goes on, you discover that they run much deeper, but only if you get their initial masks to drop. How will that sort of depth translate into spinoff stories where the corporate owners of the brand will want the characters to be as recognizable and marketable as possible?
Let’s take a look at what Wizards of the Coast has done with this sort of thing in the past and what it might mean for the future.
Minsc, Boo, and the Legends of Baldur’s Gate
We’ve seen how Wizards of the Coast handles characters from the Baldur’s Gate franchise, at least to an extent, with Legends of Baldur’s Gate, a comic book line that kicked off several miniseries beginning in 2015. In that comic, we discover that Minsc, one of the most popular companions from Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2, was turned into a statue many decades ago.
A wild magic surge restores Minsc to his true self, and he immediately jumps back into action with barely any acknowledgement that he has been trapped in stone for over a century.
Writer Jim Zub handles Minsc’s voice with ease, bringing us the same good-hearted good that Jim Cummings voiced in the games. However, as lovable as Minsc is, he is a fairly flat character. The character made it into the games as a nod to Cameron Tofer’s D&D character from the early 90s, who got knocked out in almost every fight and eventually picked up an animal companion named Boo so he could have something to do in combats after Minsc went down.
The original Baldur’s Gate had dozens of joinable NPCs to fill out a six-person party, with most of them having only a few lines of dialogue. Thus, most of them were broadly-drawn characters whose personality could be distilled into a few simple adjectives: a murderous halfling, a despondent and sarcastic elf, or, in Minsc’s case, a zealous warrior with massive head trauma.
When Baldur’s Gate 2 rolled around, the cast of NPCs, although still large, shrunk so that each companion could have more dialogue and development. Minsc goes through a major loss and some serious situations, but even so he remains largely the person he always was. He grapples with grief, but the grief doesn’t really change him. The end of his character arc is finding a new companion to protect, restoring his sense of self. He doesn’t reach a new place through his character development, but rather returns to where he was originally.
In those games, Minsc is a supporting character. In a series where he becomes the star, the logical thing to do would be to give him an arc that changes him. And, to an extent, Jim Zub does this. However, by 2015 Minsc had gone from being a jokey side character to a part of the D&D brand. So while a story can give hints of character development, the corporate nature of his character means that he can’t really change. If he does, he becomes less recognizable to casual fans, and thus less marketable.
In Frost Giant’s Fury, for example, Minsc has to deal with really foreign territory: he and his companions lost a fight against the vampire Strahd von Zarovich and were banished from his domain. Not only did he not kick evil’s butt, he and his companions were thoroughly thrashed and then tossed into a frozen wasteland. At first, Minsc takes this very hard.
As in Baldur’s Gate 2, however, Minsc doesn’t learn anything or change in a dramatic way. By the end of the story, he gets his mojo back by fighting some evil giants and winning instead of losing.
The pattern continues for as long as the comics last: Minsc is allowed to go through hardships, but the conclusion is always a character reset. Perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than in the Infernal Tides miniseries, which happens not long before the events of Baldur’s Gate 3. In that comic, Minsc loses his memory after coming in contact with the waters of the River Styx. Not himself for a portion of the story, he eventually returns to his goofy butt-kicking persona when he faces the archdevil Zariel and realizes that his core self is a guy who fights evil no matter what.
Throughout the tie-in media, Minsc doesn’t have a character arc but rather a character circle. Some challenges cause him to doubt himself, but by the end of the story he returns to who he is…which just happens to be the most marketable version of the character.
But that works for Minsc, who began as a joke character. He became far more beloved than his creators likely expected, largely because of his good heart, but he was ultimately never meant to have hidden depths. What happens when Baldur’s Gate media touches upon someone with a much deeper and darker personality?
The Challenges of Astarion
First up on the table is Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion, a prequel that delves into the past of everyone’s favorite pale elf.
Who is Astarion? When you meet him in Baldur’s Gate 3, he’s a manipulative vampire spawn with a flamboyant personality whose every sentence seems to be a flirt or an innuendo. That’s who he appears to be throughout Act One of the game, and that’s the version most folks know. But that part of the character is a lie.
By the second and third acts of the game, the mask slips and you see someone who has been abused for two centuries. Under his master’s heel he had to sleep in a kennel, had infernal runes carved into his back, and was magically compelled to use his body to lure innocent victims to his master’s mansion. He’s not a promiscuous hedonist. In fact, if you follow his romantic plot you discover that his initial sex scene in Act One was a calculated move to find someone strong who could protect him from his master.
Astarion’s story is very much about abuse and bodily autonomy. He was abused physically, emotionally, and sexually. Since becoming a vampire, he has never had a choice in how to use his body–physical intimacy isn’t something he seeks out but rather a tool he has been forced to use. One of the major turning points in the game comes when a drow offers you a powerful elixir that can be yours on one condition: she wants Astarion to bite her.
The player might not realize it during this dialogue, but this is the first time in hundreds of years that Astarion has expressed a desire to make his own choices with his body. And if you pressure him into drinking the drow’s blood anyway, it leaves him with more scars.
Astarion is a survivor of abuse. Although he is a vampire in a magical setting, his story feels very real to a lot of people who recognize the trauma running through it. Astarion’s voice actor Neil Newbon acknowledged this during his acceptance speech at the Golden Joystick Awards in 2023, noting that the character has helped so many people work through their own personal traumas.
That’s very heavy stuff. While Astarion’s glibness and popularity seem to make him an obvious candidate for a spinoff story, it’s stepping into delicate territory. A lot of people feel very connected to this character for very personal and serious reasons. That naturally means that any adaptations in other media will also feel very personal…and a poor one might well feel like a betrayal.
The novel by T. Kingfisher is a prequel in the “romantasy” genre. At first blush, doing a prequel might seem like a safe hedge on the part of Wizards of the Coast–they don’t have to commit to a canon ending to Baldur’s Gate 3 and keep Astarion to his Act One persona, where he is at his most marketable. But perhaps unnoticed by the people who assigned this novel is the fact that doing a prequel means telling a story about an abuse survivor while they are currently going through that abuse. If you get into Astarion’s head, it means getting underneath his mask…and the mask is the part that Wizards of the Coast is trying to market.
I don’t have any final judgment on Kingfisher’s novel because it isn’t out yet and I don’t have access to an advanced copy. There are a couple of excerpts out there, one of which shows that Kingfisher seems quite at home with writing Astarion’s sarcastic wit. Another excerpt catches my interest partly for some interesting world-building and partly due to the description of Astarion’s feelings as he drinks blood from a pigeon:
“Blood ran down his throat, thin and hot, stronger than whiskey, smoother than wine. It pulsed over his tongue as the pigeon’s heart beat frantically, the wings still trembling as the bird tried mindlessly to escape. Astarion gave himself over to a rush of sensation that made the best orgasm of his life seem banal by comparison.”
That last line in particular makes me cringe a bit. First, as a writer I just don’t like describing something as “like an orgasm, but better,” largely because that’s so nebulous that it’s basically saying “the goodest good that ever gooded.” More significantly, I’m not keen to seeing Astarion compare anything to sexual pleasure considering all the factors I mentioned above. For him at that point in his life, sex isn’t a pleasure; it’s a tool he uses unwillingly because his master forces him to.
None of the above is meant to disparage Kingfisher’s novel, which again I have not read. It is meant to illustrate that writing Astarion is a tough line to walk. Moreover, the marketable “fun” character that Wizards of the Coast likely wants on display isn’t really there–it’s a mask that covers up years of trauma.
In short, Astarion is not Minsc. His character arc needs to be more than a circle back to where he began, because that’s where we all want him to get away from.
The Case of Karlach
If there’s a character who is well-suited to the same circular character progression as Minsc, you would think it would be Karlach. She’s one of the most lovable characters in the game and remains positive even when faced with her certain doom. Surely this is a character that audiences will never tire of, even if she doesn’t change significantly in various spinoff stories…right?
Of course you know that I’m not going to answer “yes” to that rhetorical question. Karlach is in the Minsc vein, but only superficially. She is a big strong barbarian lady who swears like a sailor and wears her heart on her sleeve, but she is also impermanent. Minsc is always Minsc, but Karlach is only Karlach for the moment. Her very character arc is about living in the here and now…and that moment can’t be the same as the one she lives in during Baldur’s Gate 3.
Karlach lived a dark life in the decade prior to Baldur’s Gate 3. Sold to the archdevil Zariel by her employer, she admits that she did some despicable things to survive in the Nine Hells. Those deeds remain a mystery during the game, but we do know that she is willing to consume soul coins–items which contain actual tortured souls–for power.
Karlach’s pressing concern in Baldur’s Gate 3 is that the infernal engine Zariel put in place of her heart is melting down. She knows she has only two options: go back to the Hells, which she never wants to do, or die on her own terms. While the player has some effect on what ultimately happens to her, she spends most of the game resolved to do the latter. From Karlach’s point of view, she has no future, and her past is filled with too many horrors to look back upon. For that reason, she must live only in the present moment.
Baldur’s Gate 3, though, is a fleeting story in the long tapestry of the Forgotten Realms. The game takes place over the course of two or three months, almost all of which are spent with the immediate need to remove a mind flayer parasite from your head before it kills you. Setting a story during that time is challenging unless you relegate it to small vignettes–not something really suitable for a comic book series.
There are, of course, very interesting ideas to explore in both Karlach’s past and present. But they require something that Wizards of the Coast may be unwilling to embrace: change.
Do you set the story during Karlach’s time in the Hells? If so, we’re going to have to see some of those terrible acts that the Karlach we know only alludes to. Moreover, we have to see someone less pleasant and hopeful. The Karlach of the past is a soldier drafted into an eternal war who has no real friends and no way out of her predicament. She couldn’t even use a shoulder to cry on if someone gave it to her, because her infernal engine prevents her from touching other people.
What if you set the story after Baldur’s Gate 3, though? You would have to explain why Karlach is able to survive outside of the Hells without her infernal engine melting down, but that’s doable. There’s a ton of fertile ground for storytelling there, but it still requires her to be different than the version we see in the game. That Karlach has hope. She has the knowledge that there is a tomorrow, and a tomorrow after that. She can make plans if she wants to. She can touch people and form relationships. There’s actually a lot of great story potential there, but it all requires Karlach to move forward rather than sticking to the character we see in the game.
Unlike Minsc, Karlach’s personality is not frozen in amber. More than anyone else in Baldur’s Gate 3, she is shaped by the immediate circumstances around her. Putting her in new and challenging situations is good storytelling with a lot of potential. I just hope that nobody on the corporate end tries to kneecap the creative team by telling them to stick with what is most marketable.
Art versus Business
None of this is to imply that I am against spinoff stories to Baldur’s Gate 3, be it as a novel, comic book, or TV series. The game is so good that I want to see more of it and its characters. The concern, as always, is whether the business side of things can avoid messing too much with the art.
These characters became so beloved because of their depth. Their flaws, foibles, and most importantly their development over the course of the story made them feel alive to millions of players. The game also told serious stories and took them seriously–Astarion’s struggles with his trauma and Karlach’s coping with the fantasy equivalent of a terminal disease resonated with many fans because they told very personal stories.
That kind of writing makes for great fiction, but it doesn’t create the type of characters that can be perpetually slapped on book covers and included in web shorts to promote a brand. Telling a good story with the Baldur’s Gate 3 cast means progressing them forward and continuing to explore some uncomfortable themes. I hope that Wizards of the Coast gives their creative teams latitude to do that rather than presenting a shallower, more marketable version of their stories.
Featured Image: Eleonor Piteira