There’s an experience I used to have as a kid that you don’t get in the modern age. Video games would come in a box with a cartridge or a disc inside, alongside a game manual. Whenever I bought a new game I’d sit in the car or the train home reading every inch of the manual, getting myself excited for the game to come.
The Baldur’s Gate Manual
Five drinks will usually do it… though it helps put me in a
Dialogue between Volo and Elminster – from the Baldur’s Gate Manual
philosophic frame of mind. –Volo
No comment… –Elminster
The strongest of these memories is as strong as the memory I have reading the original manual for Baldur’s Gate. After a few pages of how to play the game, the book was filled with lore and background for the world you are about to enter. It’s one of the greatest experiences I’ve had with a game before I’ve even installed it!
While I had the disc spinning in my CD player, slowly copying files to my hard drive, I held the manual in my hands and consumed everything. Each page gave snippets of information, getting you excited about exploring the Sword Coast.
One of my favourite parts of the manual are the notes by Volo and Elminster, who keep giving jabs at each other. It’s a fun part of the manual that prepares you for the humour in the game.
Worldbuilding
There’s a list of cities and towns, each with subsections detailing the main locations in each. By the time you start the game, you’ll already know the major watering holes and inns in Baldur’s Gate, and even be aware of more out of the way towns like Gullykin.
Then we get a list of the major organisations in the world of Faerun. From the Harpers to the Iron Throne, you will know a little about the politics of the Sword Coast and the surrounding area. As anyone who’s played the game already knows, politics play an important role in the story making this useful information to have.
A cast of characters is next, and all of these characters are major players from the Forgotten Realms setting. Of course, many of these characters play less of a role in the story, but knowing who they are adds depth to the world, and more excitement when you actually meet them in game.
What’s great about this is that the manual doesn’t place any emphasis on which information will be the most important. Whether a bar in Beregost or Baldur’s Gate, Elminster or Ulruant, the Iron Throne or the Harpers, they’re all listed as just a part of the world.
This makes exploring the game a lot more immersive, as their importance in the game is simply how important they are to your main character. Elminster is a major player in the Forgotten Realms setting, but he only plays a small part in the Baldur’s Gate story.
Even as someone unfamiliar with the setting, this manual lets you go in knowing that this story is just one of many stories that occur in the Forgotten Realms. Other players, other games, other campaigns, they all exist out there at the same time.
The final parts of this section detail the various monsters and animals that you might encounter during the game, as well as the system of time in the Forgotten Realms.
Rules and Tables
The final, and most detailed part of the manual gives a primer on the rules for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2nd. Edition. This was the most popular system at the time, so was the system the game used. This section also highlights the differences between the game and the pen-and-paper game, so that those familiar with it already would know what to expect.
But the thing I loved about this part were all of the tables for the many situations in the game. It revealed how much detail they had put in, and I couldn’t be more excited to dig and and start playing with these systems.
The Game
After finishing reading the manual, the game was installed and ready to play. I loaded up the game and I saw the words.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Friedrich Neitzsche
And I was already hooked.
Archive
The digitial manual that comes with the game these days isn’t the same manual that the game originally came with. It explains how to play the game, taking into account the changes in the different versions. It does its job well, but it lacks the worldbuilding and creative writing of the original.
Thankfully the original manual is preserved on archive.org, so if you still want to read it today, you can find it there.
