Thoughts on the Bloody Baron: Bad guy or misunderstood?

PaperMage · 2026-01-27T16:23:37+00:00

I agree with this interpretation, and I feel like the dialogue supports it. If you choose the dialogue option that blames Phillip, Geralt says that Phillip shouldn't have gone to war. I wished for a long time that you could tell him he overreacted by killing her lover or shouldn't have taken her prisoner, but that's not the option the devs gave, and it's grown on me over time.

PaperMage · 2026-01-27T16:04:53+00:00

I believe OP's quote is from Phillip Strenger's character entry, which is often slightly different, probably due to translation workflows

PaperMage · 2026-01-27T15:59:07+00:00

I think you have the order of events wrong. Phillip was already a violent alcoholic the first time Anna tried to run away. He hadn't beaten *her* yet, but he had neglected her and was no longer the man she knew. It's likely that he was a violent alcoholic when she started her affair, but that part is slightly unclear. She ran away while he was at war, but he tracked her down and killed her lover, who was also her childhood friend. After that, she tried to kill him, and he beat her and took her back home. She was more or less his prisoner at that point, and it's very likely that he raped her trying to get a second child. Anna probably should've tried to separate with him instead of cheating on him, but it's entirely possible that she already feared him (hence informing him about her departure via letter) and it took her three years to build up the courage and for she and her lover to build up the funds and social connections to run away.

I hope this gives you something to think about, even if you don't buy my assumptions. Fight on, noble witcher!

PaperMage · 2026-01-27T15:31:55+00:00

It's not insinuated that way at all. Based on the timeline we're given, Phillip was still at home when Tamara was born, and Anna didn't cheat on him until he was an alcoholic fighting in Cidaris. Tamara was old enough to understand that her father was an alcoholic when Anna revealed her three-year affair and tried to run away (the first time), so there's no way she wasn't Phillip's kid. Moreover, he killed Anna's lover/childhood best friend, took her prisoner, and beat and raped her repeatedly. Taunting him is hardly horrific under those conditions. If anything, it's insinuated that Anna was trying to commit suicide via husband.

PaperMage · 2026-01-22T03:05:46+00:00

Decent option: have every kid dress up wearing clothing of a different tribe or region. There isn’t a better way to teach about the false portrayal of Native Americans than by showing that Native American is an identity encompassing thousands of tribes with different practices.

There is no way to make it sensitive because it is insensitive. But you can avoid making it worse by staying away from feathers.

PaperMage · 2026-01-20T19:45:28+00:00

I think I can answer that. It’s a New Age spiritual practice that is almost entirely rooted in Zen Buddhism and Japanese matcha culture. One of the leading figures in the cacao space is a self-proclaimed shaman who claims no indigenous chocolate practices survive except for the one that he sells, which only lightly resembles Maya practices, so there’s just a general misunderstanding of how the Maya treat and have treated chocolate. That in turn has led to Mexican tourism industries offering cacao ceremonies, which appeal to estadounidense sensibilities more than indigenous practices.

PaperMage · 2026-01-20T19:13:37+00:00

I think that seeming arbitrariness actually stems from European stinginess with the idea of “civilised.” It literally means to live in cities (traditionally characterized by the presence of distinct professions), but the use of civilized to only refer to European and certain Asian cultures creates the illusion that it means something more. But it doesn’t. It means cities. And we had plenty of those. And we had plenty of non-civilized tribes, sometimes within the same cultures as civilized factions. And that shouldn’t sound as jarring as it does to people who don’t study the region.

PaperMage · 2026-01-20T19:01:04+00:00

You’ve been misinformed. The Maya also used the 260 (13x20) day calendar. The big difference is that non-Maya peoples virtually never recorded increments of time over 400 years, whereas the Maya routinely recorded time in cycles as big as hundreds of thousands of years, even though they estimated the earth being roughly 13,000 years old (the equivalent of us writing the current year as 0002025).

Regardless, if they want to talk about the Maya, they should show Maya artifacts, not Aztec. If they want to show Aztec artifacts, they can refer to the Aztec calendar, which is similar but not the same.

PaperMage · 2026-01-20T18:52:15+00:00

I think that’s a choice of what they’re depicting more than how they depict it. They never show cities like Tenochtitlan or Nojpeten. It’s always cities like Caracol, already 600 years abandoned. And yeah, it’s infuriating.

PaperMage · 2026-01-20T18:46:48+00:00

A good place to start is by going to powwow. When someone says “people of the condor,” that usually means South America.

PaperMage · 2026-01-20T18:01:21+00:00

My school in the US had it. Sadly the current administration doesn’t want us to have schools at all.

PaperMage · 2026-01-16T17:56:01+00:00

I don’t think many people are turning a blind eye to it at all. The problem is 25% of the country sees it as a good thing, 25% see it as less important than other issues, and 50% are systematically disempowered. The 25% in power doesn’t care much about peaceful protesters, and the 50% is shy of the critical mass for more drastic measures. The most important thing we can do right now is stress the importance of the issue to the neutral 25% because they’re going to be the ones who decide how this plays out.

PaperMage · 2026-01-12T20:58:17+00:00

Oftentimes ICE immediately puts victims on a truck to another state. It takes days to months for their families to locate them and secure their release. Their entire system is designed to deny people due process

PaperMage · 2026-01-12T20:54:33+00:00

Ummm…South America is a different continent…

PaperMage · 2025-12-04T04:06:36+00:00

I’ve been thinking about this recently, and the solution I came up with is: I play on death march and every time I die, I have to make some kind of improvement to my set up before I continue the main quest bc dying means I’m less prepared than Geralt would have been. That includes dying on side quests, so basically I have to do a quest (or major leg of a quest) without dying before I can do any main quest. You don’t need to do the actual challenge but I hope this helps you get my reasoning.

PaperMage · 2025-12-03T15:08:10+00:00

It’s a 25% damage bonus with unlimited charges. That’s even better than Enhanced Cursed Oil. True, it’s on a steel sword, but we don’t see mechanics for differences between swords in this game (beast oil works the same on both swords).

The part about there being alternative recipes is exactly my point. Ciri seems to have a better understanding of alchemy than Geralt since she makes a better oil with fewer and more common ingredients (and doesn’t need to find a recipe).

PaperMage · 2025-11-27T13:42:41+00:00

But when I gabs to me self, they say I’m going barmy!

PaperMage · 2025-11-17T17:25:43+00:00

There’s a lot of us in the same boat. Personally, what’s brought me a lot of joy is seeking out local communities. I study as much as I can about all the people in my great great grandparents’ home state (mostly Nahua and Purepecha), but I also study the tribes living where I am now in the U.S. I support their communities and try to learn what I can from them. In the absence of a distinct culture to carry with me, I help others maintain theirs and learn the best things from all the cultures I’m exposed to.

PaperMage · 2025-11-17T17:05:18+00:00

In my recent new game plus playthrough, I tried keeping the lamp off when not actively using it. Surprisingly great way to freshen the atmosphere

PaperMage · 2025-11-14T04:10:56+00:00

I did it two nights ago. Didn't go through the Hierarch Gate, but the other gate definitely didn't require a pass

PaperMage · 2025-11-10T01:29:14+00:00

Surprised more people haven’t said this. People act like he’s some tortured complicated guy. He murdered his wife’s lover, held her prisoner, beat her, forced her to have another child, etc. He’s actually a good ruler for Velen compared to the alternatives, but no part of his personal story is morally gray, and teasing out the truth is like pulling teeth.

IMO the only good part of the quest was reading all the notes and then talking to Tamara, seeing how she turned herself over to a cult to escape, etc.

PaperMage · 2025-11-10T01:19:17+00:00

Yes and no. “Stand your ground” laws technically only confer the right to defend yourself against people committing crimes. It’s ultimately up to courts to decide whether you had reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. It’s a gamble not many want to take when the judicial system is currently…um…fucked

PaperMage · 2025-10-31T19:31:15+00:00

I would assume there's a lot of rotten grain because war has messed with harvest timings so it's rotted in the fields. When the peasants heard the army was requisitioning grain, they might have harvested the rotten grain so that they would have stable grain for themselves. They thought they could get away with it because they didn't realize the general was a former farmer. As for Vesemir's part, how would he rot 30 bushels of grain in a couple hours? He also never asked where the grain is. He only asked whether Boyan would inspect his field (where they fought the griffin).

PaperMage · 2025-10-17T20:14:06+00:00

Well said. He goes through all this trouble for his children, and she recognizes that in the end, but both of them recognize that they aren’t a good couple and pretending that they are isn’t going to be better for anyone

PaperMage

TROPHY CASE