Worldstate 5: The Randomized Runs
Did you know that the Veilguard bundle you can buy on BioWare's merch site includes a (massive) d12 with all of the dialogue symbols on it? I learned this when my friend ( @vashothmages ) bought the bundle, and we both said: "Wouldn't it be fun to play a run of Veilguard where you rolled this die for all of your dialogue and flipped a coin or something for all of your big decisions?" And that is what we did. I enjoyed the (at the time incomplete) Veilguard random run so much that I decided to create a whole worldstate of random runs, and that has led us here. Before I show you the characters, let me give you the rules:
All dialogue decisions are made by the roll of a dice (either the dialogue die from the Veilguard bundle or a random number generator). Any story decisions that happen outside of dialogue are decided with a random number generator or a coin flip, depending on how many options there are. Main quest order (when relevant) is decided via coin flip or random number generator. Side quests can be done in whatever order as to not drive yourself crazy.
All character creation is randomized via random number generator when possible. When there are sliders involved, flip a coin to decide if you go all the way to the low end or all the way to the high end.
All gifts that are not companion locked are randomized (only relevant in Origins, since DA2 and DATV only have companion locked gifts and DAI doesn't have gifts at all).
Which companions are brought to a quest is decided via random number generator (rule only introduced after Origins because I cheesed a lot of companion loss this way and it felt cheap).
All quests can be done as long as they appear in the journal, including if the character turns the quest down but it shows up in the journal anyways. You are allowed to cheese picking up a quest by talking to the quest giver multiple times if you really want to.
The only non-randomized aspect of the game is character leveling, because we do want this to be at least somewhat playable.
Alright, now lets introduce our characters.
dwarf | he/him (cis) | straight | 27 | rogue, assassin and duelist | alive
Feran got a nice long post on my main when I first started these runs, which you can find here if you're interested. However, I'll boil it down here. Feran's final party makeup was Alistair, Morrigan, Leliana, Wynne, Sten, and Oghren. Alistair hated his ass from extremely early on but everyone else's opinions on him varied from neutral-positive to very positive. Zevran and the dog were never recruited (Zevran was killed after hearing out his offer, the dog was cured at Ostagar but not recruited on the road. The beginning of the end with Alistair.) and Shale was recruited but left after Feran sided with Branka and failed to lie about it afterwards. Feran sided with the mages, sided with Branka and crowned Bhelen (THANK GOD), killed Isolde to save Connor, did not poison the urn, and sided with the Dalish in that order. At some point during Orzammar, Feran triggered the romance with Morrigan (still not quite sure what I said that did that) and managed to not only keep that romance going to its completion but managed to not accidentally romance Leliana at the same time. As for Denerim, Feran was originally deadset on Alistair being king, but when it came time to kill Loghain he suddenly faltered and couldn't bring himself to do it. Alistair still killed him, but when asked who should be king, Feran totally changed his mind and crowned Anora, perhaps as a moment of cold comfort for Anora after what he let happen to her father. Feran did the dark ritual with Morrigan himself and he firmly established that he would be looking for Morrigan post-game, which did get me to buy Witch Hunt. He found her but failed to convince her to stay with him, instead sharing one final kiss with her before she went through the eluvian. I don't quite know what he gets up to past that point but I know that I like him a lot.
human | he/him (cis) | gay | 25-32 | rogue, assassin and duelist | alive
And here we see the "randomized character creator" at it's worst because holy shit. This is "Garrett" Hawke and yes the quotes are an important part of the name. When I was making him, I decided I didn't want to use the same naming strategy I'd used for Feran (just using the default name the game gave me) because Garrett and Marian Hawke are basically characters in their own right. So I instead took all of the human names from the first three games, regardless of gender, and put them into a randomizer wheel to determine what this Hawke's name would be. I created this terrible Hawke, rolled the wheel, and his name... was still Garrett. After all that hard work. Hence why I named him "Garrett" instead. As for the many screenshots, as you can see he looks truly horrible in the prologue. So horrible I wasn't sure if I would be able to look at him the whole game when I first made him. So I made a rule: after every major timeskip, I would go to the Black Emporium and roll for new hair and facial hair, with the rule that I couldn't reuse any across the playthrough. This was absolutely the right move because my god you can't be wearing those braids white baby. I employed the same strategy when I remade him in Inquisition, where I tried to match his face as close to his DA2 appearance as I could but then randomized his hair, beard, and blood streaks.
As for his actual gameplay, "Garrett" did not recruit Fenris but otherwise recruited the rest of the party with no issue (except Sebastian but that's because I don't own his DLC). "Garrett" immediately established himself as a real asshole and a primarily red leaning Hawke, though he was sort of all over the place which made developing his initial personality quite difficult and resulted in joking about the lyrium in his armor (why did he have that he is a rogue) giving him a mild case of lyrium poisoning, which is why he was acting so weird. When it came time to go to the deep roads, I rolled to see who I'd be bringing along with Varric and rolled Bethany and Aveline. I was distraught but I powered through and watched my sister die in the deep roads. After this, "Garrett" suddenly got really, really Andrastian for a little bit, but seemed to be slowly coming around to the mage cause after a decently pro-templar act 1. Isabela left at the end of act 2, since she didn't have high enough friendship or rivalry to come back, so that means we're down to 4 party members already. In act 3, "Garrett" suddenly became extremely pro-mage and also really into Anders. I couldn't actually get the romance to trigger this late in the game but something was clearly happening so I decided that Garrett had accidentally fallen in love with Anders during perhaps the worst time to do it. It was also at this point that Merrill showed up at my house to tell me about how "Garrett" was "too good to be with someone like [her]" which was the most baffling shit in the world because he'd flirted with her ONCE??? IN ACT ONE????? He immediately turned her down, which fueled the only-in-my-head Anders-mance beautifully. Come The Last Straw, "Garrett" sided with the mages but kicked Anders out of the party. He'd also accidentally done the perfect storm steps to make Aveline leave when he sided with the mages, so up until Anders asked to rejoin the party right before the Orsino fight (“Garrett” said yes), "Garrett" had a two rogue no healer party for the whole endgame. Good job buddy.
dwarf | she/her (cis) | lesbian | 38 | rogue, assassin | alive
Since we started this worldstate with Veilguard, Malika was originally created in that game and a few decisions were pre-picked for her. When it came time to actually play Inquisition, I decided to forgo randomizing the character creator to attempt to match her to her Veilguard appearance as closely as possible (it did not go well as you can tell, I did switch her hair to Harding's hairstyle later but I don't have any screenshots) but to disregard the decisions we'd said she made, partially because the only one we remembered was that she'd romanced Blackwall and partially because trying to make those decisions would take all the fun out of it. So, what did she actually do?
Well, first things first, she refused to recruit half the cast. Of the first four companions you can recruit, she only picked up Blackwall. After doing COJ, she kicked Cole out of the Inquisition too. However, she did recruit Dorian, which was a blessing and a half because I'd decided this would be my hard mode file too for some reason and I needed all the mage help I could get. This meant she was running around with 5 companions total and during this time she was managing to roll flirt options with just about everyone. She got firmly rejected by Cullen while still at Haven due to being a dwarf, but things were looking good for her chances with Blackwall and Cassandra. Or, well, things would've been looking good with Cassandra if BioWare could see the truth, but Malika seemed very determined nonetheless. After arriving at Skyhold, she fumbled the last flirt you need with Blackwall to trigger his interest conversation and progress the romance but she didn't fumble it with Cassandra, which meant I got to see Cassandra's exceedingly unconvincing "I'm not gay" cutscene for the first time. Despite this rejection and the fact that Malika then pursued a brief fling with Harding, she remained terribly hung up on Cassandra for the rest of the game. Malika allowed Celene to die and put Gaspard on the throne and banished the Wardens, INCLUDING BLACKWALL WHICH WAS JUST AWESOME FOR ME. Anyways, she continued on with her terrible party makeup and decided to drink from the Well of Sorrows which is perhaps the most baffling choice out of all of this but I am obsessed with it. During Trespasser, she maintained the Inquisition under Divine Cassandra's purview and vowed to stop Solas. Yes, she was still hung up on Cassandra.
The current explanation for how she ends up with Blackwall in the end, which may stand to change, is that somehow, somewhere, Blackwall is encouraged by someone or something to do his "killing myself for the greater good" thing from Revelations post-Trespasser. Malika happens to be in Orlais when it happens and realizes that, with Varric in Kirkwall, Dorian in Tevinter, Solas doing what Solas does, and Cassandra on the Sunburst Throne, she really doesn't have any friends or close connections anymore. She still works with Cassandra, Cullen, Josephine, and Leliana, but it's distinctly different and they all have obligations and other loved ones that take them away from her regularly. She is, once again, and in no small part due to her own actions, on her own. So she looks at Blackwall, who she believed she couldn't trust to stick by her with what happened with the Wardens, realizes he wasn't even a Warden and had stuck by her anyways and listened when she said to leave, and goes "I can't let him die." I don't think she even uses the Inquisition's remaining power to get him out at first, she just prison breaks him and makes it work from there. The two of them aren't in love, Malika is both a lesbian and never really over Cassandra, and to be honest this worldstate's Blackwall reads really gay but that's not the point of this. But they are married because they both sort of feel like they had to be, eventually, because there was no other way they could have someone Forever and they do really love and care for each other.
qunari | he/him (non-binary) | pan | late 40s-early 50s | rogue, saboteur | alive
And finally we meet Issala, the one who started it all. Issala is not quite Tal-Vashoth and not quite full fledged Qunari. You know how Taash describes Shathaan as “so Qunari she left when they weren’t doing it right”? That’s what Issala did too. He was once a scout for the Ben-Hassrath, then a Lord of Fortune, but he and Isabela were constantly butting heads, which eventually led to Issala leaving the Lords and doing freelance mercenary work. This is how he eventually found himself in Nevarra, where he was recruited to the Mourn Watch. This was our best attempt to reconcile the insane amount of Lords tattoos Issala has with the whole "not being a Lord of Fortune" thing if you're wondering. Upon joining the Veilguard, Issala found himself in a room full of very pretty people with very little ability to voice this fact. Which is to say we were constantly rolling to flirt but almost never when there were actual flirt options available. Except, that is, with Harding, who he did eventually romance. We did nearly get a Davrin romance, though.
Issala saved Treviso, choosing to prioritize the civilian population instead of the potential crimes of the Venatori. However, in the wake of the violence in Minrathous, he turned his attention away from the Crows and towards the Shadow Dragons except when the Crows absolutely needed him. Which is to say, Veilguard also introduced a new rule that I hadn't mentioned earlier, mostly because we didn't decide on it until post-city choice. It made me a bit sad that I could not have the worst possible party available in this game, since all of the companions are required and none of them will leave unless they die. So I came up with a fun new rule to microdose on terrible party makeup. We rolled a die to decide how many stars each faction would be capped at (the Crows, Veil Jumpers, and Wardens are capped at 1 and the others are capped at 3), making it more likely for their missions to fail during the endgame. We were also always going to randomly assign companions to these endgame missions. While we cannot get the bad ending this way (the bad ending requires everyone to die, which requires the kidnapped companion to not be HOTV so she can die to the blight, and we will be completing all HOTV quests), it was still possible to get pretty close with this set up. However, due to the fact that we decided on this late and all of the factions that were supposed to be capped at 1 star are also story factions, they unfortunately all ended up at 2 stars. But still not max! When we do this again it will be less jank, I promise.
Anyways, as time went on, Issala found himself becoming particularly close with Taash, connecting with them both because of and in spite of their very different relationships to the Qun. He encouraged Taash to pursue their Qunari heritage in the end, and we're throwing around idea of how Issala can end up back in the Qun post-game as they pursue Taash's mission regarding the Antaam and their role as a firebreather. As for our other companions, he helped Harding reconnect with the Titans' anger, suggested Bellara destroy the archive, returned the griffons to the Wardens with Davrin, told Neve to protect Dock Town no matter the cost, helped Lucanis reconcile with Spite and put Illario in jail, and encouraged Emmrich to pursue lichdom (despite having no idea how to deal with EITHER option due to. Y'know. The Qun.)
When the time came for Tearstone, however, the nature of the random runs finally truly caught up to us. The unthinkable happened. Issala sent Harding to lead the forward party and she sacrificed herself to save him and the mission. Absolute nightmare. Neve was also sent to dismantle the wards, which was obviously not helping the guilt in that moment. In the Regret Prison and the wake of it, Issala was picking the uncharacteristically angry options, with Solas, about Solas, about Elgar'nan, you get the deal. However, very notably, he picked one sad option in the conversation with Solas during the final climb, admitting that he really, deep down wanted Solas' help to be something real. Because Solas was Varric's friend, and Varric believed in Issala in a way no one else ever really had. And also because Issala seemingly desperately wanted a DreadRook thing to happen, we rolled so many flirts with him man. In the finale, Issala chose to let that anger run wild and fought Solas to tie him to the Veil. And no one else died. There were a lot of times it could've happened, Lucanis was particularly in danger, but they all made it. Thank you Harding for your sacrifice, which the dice deemed enough for one run.
And that's where the random runs wrap up! For now... We had a great time with this, and now that we've ironed out the rules a bit more (the Veilguard rules will change a bit more from what's detailed in this post, to make it both more feasible and a bit messier! And we're also going to try and stream it on Twitch, if anyone's interested in following along. Signing off on this worldstate, though. What a great time.
