Catch up with our characters over on YouTube by looking for Malts and Meeples and meet the characters and experience our early adventure.

Our Characters

Just a quick reminder on who we have:

Nina the Tiefling Bard who generally just wants a great story. But she wants to hear about them and not be taking part in them so much. But she has gumption to deal with what comes up.

Kaerok a stoic half elf (I believe) monk who generally is pretty straightforward but not mean in who he is.

Shadowheart is the character who has caught Nina’s eye so she’s paired up with Nina in the adventuring group.

Karlach the character who now Kaerok is going to be taking an interest in. But right now it’s been Laezel and Wyll who have been traveling with Kaerok, especially for the story points when we meet with Karlach.

Streaming for Baldur’s Gate 3

We are going to be streaming every Friday (or most Fridays) at 9 PM Central for about two hours. So it is going to take a while but that is the fun of the game to explore everything, make new choices and see how the story unfolds. The best way to know when we go live is to subscribe to the Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. You can find that here. And then click on that notification bell.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here

Join us every Friday, or most Fridays, from 9 PM central time to 11 PM central. Actual hours may vary, but we’ll try and keep it around two hours. You can always find us over on the Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. Subscribe to the channel and click that notification bell to know when we go live. You can do that here.

Meet the Characters

Nina – Nina is a tiefling bard who just want to enjoy life. She was on the road prior to getting snatched up in the Nautiloid. So not from Baldur’s Gate originally she’s travelled through there multiple times with a mentor or for a show or festival. She doesn’t really call anywhere home, but that’s okay because it’s more exciting to go on an adventure. She’s an optimist, but if push comes to shove, she’s going to side with the tieflings.

Kaerok – Kristen’s character so I’m going to write up less. But he’s a more stoic character who is focused on the business that needs to be taken care of. That serious nature serves him well with his disciplines.

If you’ve missed any of the previous videos, catch up here. Note that there are technological issues in this one. Mainly that it drops a few times and there are a few videos and once it drops once it keeps dropping. So those are cut-up and not that great. But we appreciate everyone who is checking out the stream. And I plan on trying to improve our audio so we’re a bit louder, so right now you just need to crank it.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here

Streaming Schedule and Issues

The plan is to stream every Friday evening on this, generally starting around 9 PM Central, though that time is going to be flexible because it depends on our kid. And we might also stream other nights as well. So be aware that it’s just going to pop up when it pops up.

And you’ll also see that chunks are missing. Right now the computer that we’re using keeps on dropping wi-fi connection. When it’s connected it’s working great, when not, it happens randomly. And there is no good reason for it, as far as I can tell. I can reconnect no issues, it might just be the machine itself is going to struggle. We have another machine that we can try as well, and the possibility to hardwire that one into the internet to avoid the issue. So next stream might start even slightly later than normal but with that fix in place.

Meet the Baldur’s Gate 3 Adventuring Party

So let’s meet the party as it stands thus far. We might go back and tweak and replay some, TBD, because of a choice that we made. But let’s talk about the party.

I play Nina a Tiefling bard. We went with the two character classes who aren’t party members in Baldur’s Gate 3. Bard being one where if you play Durge it’ll be in the party so you can play with them. But there isn’t an option for it across the game even then. So let’s play around with that one.

My wife is playing Kaerok a half elf or elf, I forget which, monk. Another character that there is no companion who is a monk. This one there is no way to work in a character like that. So if you want to play with a monk, you need to play one on your own.

No plan to spoil who we are romancing. That will unfold as we play our characters. But we both have a plan/idea where we think it makes sense for our characters to go.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here

Locke & Key follows a family who is moving back into the families home after tragedy has struck them. Rendell, their father, has passed away so Nina picks up and takes the kids from Seattle to Mattheson, Massachusetts. None of the kids, except the youngest, Bode, are excited to be there. But when Bode hears a voice in the well house talking back to him when he makes his voice echo, it’s clear that this isn’t a normal house. Soon Tyler and Kinsey are drawn into the crazy world that the house holds with many magical keys and Echo, the voice from the well who has gotten out. What does Echo want and why can’t their mother, Nina, remember anything about the keys?

Let me quickly give my thoughts on the show and then I’ll go into more depth. There might be some spoilers later on, but I’m going to try and keep them to a minimum. I really liked this show, even though it isn’t as dark and horrific as the first trade paperback, there’s definitely a very interesting and creepy story behind it. And that was enough for me, plus Joe Hill did the work on it to keep it in the spirit of the books, but not have to go fully dark. However, because of that it has much more of a YA feel to it, so if you’re a huge fan of the comics, know that before you jump in. There are a few things that stand out to me for the show.

The first thing is the acting. Most of the time, you have a cast that is mainly teen age (though teen in acting can be early 20’s) or kid actors, the acting will end up being suspect. However, in Locke & Key they do an amazing job. The actor who plays Bode, Jackson Robert Scott, does a great job. Bode is supposed to be a wide eyed 8-10 year old in the show, and you can really see that in the acting. He does a very good job of portraying an innocence and sincerity to his acting. And I won’t go into it a ton with the other actors, but the actors portraying Kinsey and Tyler, Emilia Jones and Connor Jessup respectively, do really good work as well. There are shifts in their acting as you get to see more of their character and as their characters change that are really well done. Even the adult acting is well done and it doesn’t just feel like so many YA stories where there’s a group of teens and no adults believe them and then the adults are wrong.

Another thing is that while this leans into horror tropes and supernatural elements that could seem cliche, it does a good job of keeping them different. When we were watching through it, it felt to Kristen and myself like several things we’ve seen or played before, Haven, Life is Strange, Oxenfree, and more, but it still felt unique. The element of the keys and how they work is really well done. And you can see where Joe Hill is borrowing form the work that his father has done before, but in a very respectful and well done way. I got numerous callbacks to IT in the show, and I appreciated that. It’s really that none of the tropes it used felt out of place or felt like they were forced in there because it’s horror or anything like that, it just flowed naturally.

Let’s talk a bit more about the story before I wrap up here. Like I said, the story is not going to be as heavily horror focused, which I’m fine with. While I love some good horror, there’s something whimsical about the keys that lends itself not just to horror but to this more fantastical element as well, and the show leans into that some more. As things unfold, there is definitely more horror and violence, but there’s also a sense of fantasy or magic to the story. Like I said previously as well, it doesn’t fall into the storytelling tropes of YA where the kids are smart and the adults are dumb and don’t believe the kids. It avoids some of that by a nifty plot device that they explain but also by just having the kids do their own thing. They use the grief of Rendell’s death and Nina’s reaction to it to drive some of why Kinsey and Tyler don’t bring as much to her as well, which I think is well done. And Bode is just too Bode to think about that.

So, I’ve said that I like the show, but would I recommend it to everyone? I’d lean towards no. It still has horror elements, so some people aren’t going to love that as much. Kristen actually stopped watching part ways through episode one because of some of the creepy stuff that was going on. But in the middle of the season, it hit more of that fantasy and whimsy, so I stopped and we rewatched it because I knew that she’d like it. So there’s definitely a piece where if people aren’t horror fans they’ll enjoy it as well, and like myself, Kristen and I are waiting for, hoping for, a second season to come out. Definitely an interesting show and if the trailer seems interesting, they do a good job and it’s worth checking out.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.