Sorry about the buzzing effect on the mic in this one. I’m working out the kinks on that, hope it’s not too unbearable.
Bogard takes his first stab at the main quest and promptly bites off more than he can chew. Will he live to see episode 9? I dunno bro might just have to watch and find out!
Mods:
Archaeologists
Background Question and History Fixes
Bards and Balladeers
Basic Roads
Betony Restored
Beyond Ashes – Bounty Hunters
Birds in Daggerfall
Bloodfall
Climates & Calories
Convenient Quest Log
Critical Hits
Daggerfall Enemy Expansion
Daggerfall Expanded Textures
Darker Dungeons
Detailed City Walls
Diverse WeaponsDrafty Secret Doors
DREAM HUD & Menu
Dungeon Loot
Dynamic Skies – Pixelated
Famous Faces of the Iliac Bay
Finding my Religion
Fixed Desert Architecture
Fixed Dungeon Exteriors
Gotta Pet Em All
Guaranteed Ingredient Lootdrops
Horrible Hordes
Improved Interior Lighting
Jewelry Additions
Kab’s Unleveled Spells
Kleptomania
Language Skills Overhaul
Limited Gold Shops
Lively Cities
Lives of Raiders – Banditry Events
Locked Loot Containers
Lootable Villagers
MUDEX
New Paintings
No Nudity
Open Cages
Order Service
Paper Map
Persistent Dungeons
Random Starting Dungeon
Realistic Wagon
Reasonable Blood
Rest Warning if Unwell
Roleplay Realism
Roleplay Realism – Items
Skulduggery
Taverns Redone
Temples Cure Poison
The Penwick Papers
Third Person Camera
Training Service Overhaul
Travel Options
Uncanny UI
Unleveled Loot
Vanilla Enhance
Varied Wealthy Homes
Villager Immersion Classic
Villager Reactions
Warm Ashes
World of Daggerfall
source
first
Loving the series! Feel so lucky to have found your first video on recommend a while back!
Love this series. Cant praise it enough.
I absolutely love Vivec as well, I played Morrowind when it released and I thought it was the coolest place ever! Memorized the whole city and loved hanging out by the canals with my argonian. Caldera is another favorite location, even though it’s tiny and not very exciting. The tavern in Caldera is sooo nice!
maybe an RPG hot take, but I hate hate games where hitting a certain point (especially early on) causes big events to recur, like the Oblivion Gates, or Skyrim (random dragons spawning after doing Bleak Fall's Barrow early on, or hitting level 15ish when random vampire attacks in villages happen every 2-3 fast-travels)
I love a game/world having consequences for my actions, but like in actual practice in videogames it means "oh let me stop everything for the chore of random combat AGAIN"
Oh I DM'd the adventure you're talking about where your dwarf got paralyzed and they coated you with the floating slime. It's definitely Winter's Daughter, I liked that one. Maybe a little light on real perils, but it's probably a feature since clever players basically won't face any danger.
One of the players was paralyzed by the mirror, but they somehow figured out they could use holy water to cure him.
Oblivion and Skyrim has a major issue with sudden escalation because they've been greatly underestimating the patience of their playerbase since they moved into the console market. Which is partway warranted due the shift from the market favor away from RPG's by the time of Oblivion's development/release. This later carried over into Skyrim of course, and since Oblivion sold well they thought that it was the right move to make.
But the escalation of stakes are awful in their games because they just don't know how to keep it in their pants anymore. They're too focused on trying to set the scene of the "epic" of their stories and completely forget that spacing the events out and giving the story a proper build up is what's going to make them more engaging at the end of the day. Morrowind did a great job with it, even if not perfect, with Dagoth Ur being mentioned in in-game written and spoken history. With the 6th House Cult being a tangible extension of what his purpose and design is meant to be. Before getting to raid your first 6th House in the main quest it's all largely investigation, and you as the player are only meant to impose what you know from what you've learned.
What's better about this is those Cult bases exist in the game world unaltered by quest progression and you can stumble upon them. Their atmospheres and enemy types are so wildly different to anything else on Vvardenfell the uniqueness of the encounter sells itself without telling you a thing about it. During my first playthrough of Morrowind I ran into the 6th House Fortress Telasero outside of Suran on my way to Molag Mar for Temple questline stuff at the behest of Caius telling me to know the land. And nothing was like it. It absolutely felt like this wasn't some random creature or smuggler cave. The difficulty being the immediate differentiator in that. And up until I raided the 6th House Base for the main quest and seeing the same atmosphere did I finally get an explanation for what I ran into over 10 hours ago. It was great. The fact it's all played straight leaned into the 6th House encounter very well.
Then you have Oblivion and Skyrim. Within the first half hour you're seeing Oblivion Gates and Dragon Attacks. Hell, in Skyrim less than 10 minutes if you count Alduin torching Helgen. It all falls flat because it's an immediate 0 to 100. You're basically fulfilling the Chosen One narrative tackling the climactic danger of the main quest whilst still Lv1. Meanwhile, I'm normally past Lv10 when I receive the order to tackle the 6th House Base in Morrowind's main quest. And even then, the idea of you being the "Chosen One" is questionable. As the Emperor's coded message even says that you could pose as a convincing imposter. Which satisfies the ends to the means.
Castles & Crusades as a solo RPG is something I've thought about doing a few times. It's mechanics are pretty streamlined. Worlds without Number is in my library but haven't used yet.
Really enjoying the content lately. Keep it up.
I would LOVE a video about Vivec City! I feel so confused by all the hate, it's my favorite part of the game, easily the most memorable and interesting city for me of any game I've ever played
I get that "anxiety when hearing kids crying"-thing. When my kid was about the same age as yours I played alot of Crusader Kings, and there is plenty of audio-cues and soundeffects of crying kids in that game as raising families is part of the core gameplay. I can't tell you how many times my wife came into the room to ask "has she woken up or is it just your stupid game again?" for the first 2 or 3 years.
As for the Messianic trope, personally, I actually really like it. The issue for me, in Skyrim in particular, is that it's shoved in your face too early, not the trope itself. Once you have that sense of urgency it just doesn't feel right to go out doing sidequests. Fallout 4 in particular did it worst of all the Bethesda games. They design an open-world game where most of the game is in the side-content and then gives you a main quest where there is no point in the narrative where it is plausible the player could just chill out and go out on random adventures. Witcher 3 is also guilty of this. None of these games actually have any kind of timers of course, and I think that's part of the problem. When the writers give the player ACTUAL urgency they are forced into taking the players urgency into account when doing side-quests, but when they don't they just figure that the player can, and probably should, do side-quests, but without taking the narrative into account, and that is so jarring for me. There is a mod for Skyrim that solves it so perfectly, can't remember it's name, but in that mod after you turn in the quest for Bleakfall Barrows you just get your reward with no follow up. Then 2 in-game days later you get a quest that just says "I wonder if Faengar have learned anything yet?" and you can go back at any time to resume the main quest and trigger the dragons showing up. It all works out so perfectly, it's simple, it's elegant, and the writers could have put a pause like that into the game themselves, but they didn't. In Morrowind it's built into the main quest early, and they should have kept that going for Oblivion and Skyrim, as well as for the Fallout games, it would solve so much of the narrative dissonance for the player.
Algorithm bump
You can also dub over the parts without audio if you really wanted to.
Wondering what inspired you to make a Wu-Tang Clan Fanfic was it "For the children" ?
An illusion major nightblade might be good for a next character, doing mages guild and noble quests.
Lovely stuff
I didn’t know what it was or how I knew, but I could tell you were a fellow Texan
I like to imagine that bogard didnt know the passphrase, but since he's generally kind of a brutish asshole, he just told the skeleton man to shut up because he wasnt in the mood and it happened to work
Have you and your wife watched Monster? It seems like an anime that would suit your tastes! It's a drama/mystery about a doctor who operates on a boy to save his life, who later becomes a manipulative killer, so the doctor feels guilty for saving his life and feels like he must stop him. It poses a lot of interesting moral questions and it's incredibly well written and directed, I think it could be up your alley!
Another great video find myself really looking forward to this lp
My guy! It's awesome that you play Dolmenwood as well. Such a rich setting. I haven't had the opportunity to play it yet, but reading over the material and watching 3d6DTL's live play really were my introductions to the OSR scene, and transitively, my introduction to old school video games like Daggerfall!
ey, Shadowrun mentioned. I've been wanting to play it for a while but its not as popular as DnD and from what I've researched its a bit of a messy system, I started jotting notes for a system that gets close to what I like about Shadowrun but without all the messy D6 spam.
I love these videos. A question about your mods, do you have some kind of survival mode on with water/sleep/food? One of my favourite and personal essential mods for Morrowind is morrowind Ashfall. Completely changes navigated the world.
If bogard bites the dust, I’d like to see you transition into Margery. Maybe a combination of stealth and magic?
Hey, that commenter was me! I was talking about Risen(2009).
Also It's alright man, don't feel bad about it. 🙂
btw I've noticed the text of shop gold limit and food/drinks menu overlaps with the UI, I think if you enable 'SDF font rendering' it will be fixed, its in the initial DFU menu.
Bogard found a lucky stick lol
Around 6:11 you tell someone to remember to go back and cut out some stuff 🙂
Watching you stop to climb a tower that obviously had nothing in it while your stamina was depleting had me screaming
What I dislike the most about Oblivion's (and Skyrim's) main quest is the ludonarrative dissonance between it and the core gameplay loop. Like it's the end of the world, portal to the literral Hell are opening but I'm roaming the wilderness and doing silly side quest? It's boggers.
Morrowind and Daggerfall are far superior in that regard IMO, earning a reputation as an adventurer and exploring the open world are an integral part of their main quests.
Also for a potential next character: a warlock who've made a pact with Nocturnal.
Primary Skills – Illusion, Stealth, Short Blade
Major Skills – Dodging, Backstabbing, Critical Strike
Minor Skills – Mysticism, Restoration, Daedric, Running, Climbing, Jumping
Advanteges – Bonus to hit humanoid, Regenerate health in Darkness, Magicka 3* Int
Disadvantages – Darkness powered magery, Damage from holy places, forbiden armor plate and mail
Finally got to sit down and watch this absolute banger! Glad you were able to get it out despite the issues. Audio sounded good to me.
Speaking on Yu Yu Hakusho (I think it was me who mentioned it in the comment thread) I agree the first arc is so underrated. It feels like a bunch of mini arc's that help to flesh out the characters that will play a bigger role in the Dark Tournament. The arc where Yusuke and co. climb the tower to fight the Saint Beasts is also one of my favorites and I agree it does feel like a JRPG with each character having their own skills and roles within the party.
I like you a lot, but calling out Morrowind is where I'm gonna call horse manure on you. You can literally walk into the most royal castles in the land on day 1 in Daggerfall, you're not truly a commoner either. Bethesda has never been great at this. While I don't disagree Morrowind has a messianic complex, it's really no less than the Royal Kings Quest in Daggerfall, no matter what your bias says. Kenshi would be a better comparison.
What an awesome video, I enjoyed it a lot. I know you’ve been told a lot but it’s just really comforting about your rants and your style of making these videos.
On the topic of playing other video games, have you ever played Kenshi? There’s something in that game that I thought a lot of when I first saw your video about emerging narrative. It’s gorgeous and very moddable too!