Baldur’s Gate is getting an HBO TV show, and I’m excited in the most responsible way possible, which is to say I’m excited while also keeping one hand on the emergency brake like I’m driving a cart full of fragile miniatures down a cobblestone hill.
Here’s what we know: HBO is developing a Baldur’s Gate series and Craig Mazin is attached as the creator, writer, executive producer, and showrunner. That’s the Chernobyl guy. The The Last of Us guy. The “we are not here to make a cheap tie-in with suspicious wigs” guy. On paper, that’s the kind of name that makes you sit up straight and go, okay, this might actually be a thing.
Now, the reason I’m cautious is obvious. Video game adaptations have a long history of showing up, making intense eye contact with the source material for three seconds, then sprinting in the opposite direction while yelling “we’re doing our own thing!” Sometimes you get something great. Sometimes you get a project that feels like it was written by someone who heard the title mentioned in a hallway once.
But this particular situation has one detail that makes me feel better and worse at the same time: the show is reportedly set after the events of Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s not a straight “let’s recreate your playthrough” adaptation, which would be impossible anyway unless HBO invents a technology that allows a season finale to have 4,000 mutually exclusive endings based on whether you clicked the wrong dialogue option at 2 a.m. while half-asleep.
Setting it after BG3 is smart because it gives the show room to breathe. It can use the setting, the tone, and the fallout without having to canonize every single choice you made. And it needs that wiggle room, because Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t one story. It’s a story generator disguised as a CRPG. It’s “choose your own adventure” except the book is 200 hours long and the pages sometimes punch you.
The endings are the big problem here, and it’s the kind of problem that can either become a creative advantage or a fandom civil war. BG3 doesn’t just have minor variations. It has major world-state consequences, companion outcomes, and moral choices that can swing the whole vibe of the campaign from heroic fantasy to “we are the villains and we’re somehow still cracking jokes.” A TV show cannot keep everything simultaneously true. Eventually, it has to pick a baseline. And the second it does, there will be a portion of the internet that reacts like the writers personally deleted their save file.
This is where I’m hoping they do the sensible thing: don’t try to “adapt your story.” Tell a story that lives in the same world, after the same big events, but isn’t shackled to recreating specific player choices. The reports floating around suggest the show may use new protagonists while still having the option to bring in familiar characters. That is exactly the lane I want. New party, new mess, same city, same sense that any plan is one bad roll away from becoming a slapstick tragedy.
And while Larian isn’t making the show directly, there are indications that Mazin has reached out to them for their thoughts. That matters. It’s not a magic shield that prevents bad decisions, but it’s a good sign when the person adapting your world actually calls the people who built it instead of saying, “We respect your work deeply,” while holding the lore upside down like a restaurant menu.
There’s also chatter that Mazin is genuinely into BG3 as a game, not just as a brand. The kind of into it where you don’t just “sample” the experience, you do something unhinged like finishing it on Honour Mode. That’s not proof the show will be good, but it does mean he understands the material on a molecular level. He knows what it feels like to be confident, then immediately humbled by a single failed saving throw and a chain reaction of consequences that ends with you staring at the screen like you’ve been personally betrayed by probability.
There’s even talk about trying to involve the original voice cast in some capacity. If they pull that off, it’s an instant credibility boost. BG3’s performances are the reason half the fanbase talks about these characters like they’re coworkers from a job they can’t quit.
Now let me be extremely clear about what I want from this show, because this is where my “cautious excitement” becomes “please don’t mess this up, I’m begging you.” I want it to feel like the Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves. That movie nailed the secret sauce. It didn’t treat D&D like an encyclopedia. It treated it like a table. Party chemistry first. Humor that comes from personality, not parody. A sincere heart hiding under the jokes. A sense that the characters are competent just often enough for the incompetence to be fun.
And that tone is what makes or breaks a Baldur’s Gate show. Because Baldur’s Gate, especially in BG3’s flavor, is not just grimdark prestige fantasy. It’s not misery tourism with better lighting. It’s funny and weird and occasionally horrifying and often surprisingly tender. It’s a story where you can have a heartfelt conversation about trauma and identity, and then five minutes later you’re dealing with a clown situation that spirals out of control because someone decided to click the obviously cursed option.
If HBO goes too far into “serious prestige,” it risks sanding down the game’s personality until it’s just another expensive fantasy show where everyone whispers in candlelight and looks sad in armor. If it goes too far into “wacky,” it risks turning into a parody that doesn’t land any emotional punches. The sweet spot is the Honor Among Thieves balance: fun without being disposable, sincere without being preachy, and always anchored by the party feeling like a party.
That party feeling is key. I don’t want a show where the characters are all brooding lone wolves who occasionally assemble to exchange exposition. We’ve had Game of Thrones. I want a real D&D party dynamic: overlapping goals, conflicting morals, accidental chaos, dumb side quests, and the constant sense that they love each other and also might murder each other if the next long rest doesn’t happen soon.
I also want the show to respect the setting without getting trapped in it. Give me city politics, cult nonsense, and the occasional cosmic horror nightmare fuel, but keep it grounded in characters making decisions, not just walking through famous locations like it’s a guided tour.
And most of all, I want them to pick a path and commit. Don’t try to outsmart the audience with “canon wars.” Don’t tease three different directions and then hedge every consequence. The show isn’t competing with my save file. It’s competing with my standards. And my standards have been raised by both BG3 and the rare adaptations that actually understand what makes their source material work.
So yeah, I’m excited. I’m also guarding that excitement like it’s my last healing potion before a boss fight. Craig Mazin attached to Baldur’s Gate is the kind of headline that makes me believe this could be great. But the real test will be whether they capture the vibe: the party, the heart, the weirdness, and the feeling that the world is epic and dangerous and also kind of ridiculous in the way only tabletop stories can be.
If they pull that off, we might get the best possible outcome: a show that non-D&D people love, and that D&D people watch without spending every week fighting about whether it “ruined the lore.” Which, honestly, would be the most miraculous roll of all.
