Micah you’re a real gem, love the DFU content but the genuine commentary is what makes your videos stand out. Keep it up 👍 PS don’t be afraid to throw in a “remember to like the video” in there, viewers often forget they can do that to show support. It’s the least we can do for the awesome content
Thanks, I totally space out on the typical UA-cam housekeeping stuff. Hopefully my brain will remember this interaction when recording the next episode
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
I look forward to these so much dude. Such a nice way to spend my evening after work. My only complaint is that there's not more of them! Great work sir!
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.
That sure was you! I love chatting about manga when I get the chance. I could remember your pfp but not the name :b Those early Yu Yu Hakusho sagas are something special, and Botan wearing a leather jacket while wielding a baseball bat is 😍😳 While I think there's a bit of a decline after the Dark Tournament arc, Sensui's arc is also really cool. Shout out to his hand gun technique for being hilarious
@@micah_raygun_ All good man! Love talking manga as well. Botan's leather jacket outfit is just chef's kiss what an awesome look! I also think the series dips a bit after Dark Tournament but I still really enjoy Chapter Black for bringing everything back to the spirit detective stuff for a while. And Sensui's guns akimbo ability is so goofy. I also enjoy the weird soccer energy ball he uses
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 also enjoy mowing the lawn, but i recently noticed that the last time i cut the grass i accidentally cut down my watermelon sprout with the weed whacker which dampened the mood. On the brightside georgia has a pretty broad growing season
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 love WWN, Stars without Number, etc. Man Alone has a video about converting your favorite ttrpgs into solo RPGs. It has helped me prep for my next solo game, maybe it will help you convert Castles & Crusades too
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.
I can agree with that, the Messianic trope doesn't have to be a bad thing. For example, the Vault Dweller in Fallout 1 is literally the chosen one. He was chosen by the overseer to get sent out and find the water chip that would save his people. Their water supply might run out, so there is some urgency that keeps the player focused as they explore the Wasteland. In Fallout 2, the main character is also a bit messianic even with the Ashlander-esque prophecy backing them up. But having urgency and player agency mixed into the equation improves the quality of the messianic trope considerably when compared to Oblivion and Skyrim.
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!
Dolmenwood is such a great game! I think they're releasing a newer version that is still OSR but is not tied to Old School Essentials. I'm looking forward to revisiting the setting when that times comes. Dungeon Meshi is fantastic--thanks for keeping it spoiler free btw, we're only six episodes deep so far 😅
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.
You make some great points, and I'm a sucker for hearing someone's in-game stories. Yeah there are some glaring issues with starting things off as epic and intense as possible rather than allowing the player to explore and get some stakes in the world first. But hey daddy Todd Howard sure knows how to market a game doesn't he. To your point, I think TES 4 and 5 simply have a different target audience than the RPG fans who started with earlier games
@@micah_raygun_ Yeah Oblivion and Skyrim has 100% found its audience, and Bethesda intends to cater to it. Which is fine by me. Mods are there to placate people like you and me, and Daggerfall/Morrowind aren't going anywhere. I have no expectations of ES6, especially after how barebones Starfield's character building system is. But all there is to do about that is wait, I guess.
As an old hand at GM'ing/homebrewing etc I wanted to throw in a few words about the Avatar idea you mentioned: Most rpgs have terrible magic systems. There is a set of rules for everyone else, that is mostly "describe what you attempt to do, GM tells you how difficult it is, roll some dice to see if you make it". But then when it comes to magic, oh no. Suddenly you have to have a seperate book of spells. And special rules for controlling your mana/power/memorization/whatever and your own little mini-game. Bonus points if you have to use tokens to keep track... I usually disallow spellcasters in my groups for this reason becuase I am there to roleplay not play some kind of resource management game and I do NOT want to have to keep track of any of this for players. Also, the more magic there is in the world, the less special and mysterious magic feels. Anyway, with the system I am cooking up now I just went for: if you are creating a caster you decide what kind of caster you want to be. Like, are you a fire mage, or do you manipulate plants, summon deamon etc. Just pick a theme. Then when you want to cast a spell, just tell me what you want to do. However, the description has to be thematically accurate and make sense. Then I just say how difficult that is to pull off and you roll for it. Same as any other skill in the game. Avatar is pretty much perfect for this. Just have each character have a bending skill and then use that to make up how they want to solve problems. As long as they can explain how they use their element to do it and you think it makes sense, just set a difficulty based on how advanced it sounds and let them roll.
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!
Slumming it out in the canals of Vivec is truly a special experience. Agreed about Caldera too, the sheer beauty and simplicity of it really blew my mind when I first booted up OpenMW
I've got like 30 hours into DFU and I've never even bothered with the main quest. But I have two player homes fully decorated, and stocked with all kinds of weapons and ingredients. I've got enough cash to travel all over and one time I even found a shrine in the mountains not on the map. My character goes out and finds dungeons to explore whenever she wants to do so, and she enjoys doing all sorts of little quests that don't take weeks to accomplish. I agree that Oblivion especially, but also Skyrim both kind of make the main quest hang over you. My favorite part of Daggerfall is that no one cares who you are. You are not "The Chosen One." Oh, one more gripe about the later games... the dungeons are always basically ONE PATH TO VICTORY. Daggerfall dungeons are like these crazy mazes in 3D because you never know how deep it really goes. One time my character went way deep in a big dungeon and there was an abandoned farm house down there. Why? Who knows? Oh... the "secret doors" in Skyrim dungeons are so obvious that it's just silly. Daggerfall has no handholding at all. It's just the best.
Skyrim MSQ is rough cuz sure, first few times it's pretty cool. Not much variety but.. modern bethesda lul. But the main part for me is that once you've done it, you want your other characters to do it, or most of it to get either unrelenting force, clear skies, or most likely Dragonrend. Which the latter is locked behind going to Blackreach. Still enjoy the game tho :D Love the series and I'm starting to want to play DFU =D I'm homing TES6 won't have the typical "chosen one" bs with skyrim shouts regurgitated into some other kind of form as well, so here's hoping
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.
Oh hey good to see you! I felt a bit bad but I also wanted to check out the game! I don't have a time of time or money to throw at games these days, but I trust the creators of Gothic to know what they're doing. If nothing else, it'll sit in my Steam wishlist until I pull the trigger. Thanks for watching!
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"
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!
Thanks so much! Glad you're liking the stuff c: I have Kenshi in my steam library, but the thought of learning such a seemingly complex system has deterred me thus far, though it seems like it's right up my alley
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.
Winter's Daughter, yep that's the one! That was my introduction to actually playing OSR rather than just reading books. We got ourselves into plenty of perils in the various burial mounds near the main dungeon, but I think the threat of peril was more perilous than the perils themselves. For example, when we got to a certain ethereal door in the dungeon we simply kept turning around bc we feared what we would find on the other side 😂 Shout out to the wizard whose skin was running away from his skeleton, what a cool encounter
@@micah_raygun_ Oh I think your DM may have added some stuff :) There were no burial mounds outside the main dungeon in the module I ran, same for the wizard, that sounds like a fun encounter actually!
@@solaris_cc4353 I asked my buddy about this while we were playing Basic Fantasy RPG last night. He says those burial mounds/wizard encounter were not in Winter's Daughter, but were in a more general Dolmenwood book. He and I will be revisiting the setting after its official released and I'm pumped!
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
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!
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.
Yep, Climates & Calories is the Ashfall equivalent for Daggerfall Unity. It lets you keep track of food, sleep, temperature, and water supply. C&C is what nearly killed me in the middle of this episode when I forgot to refill my waterskin and was doing overland travel. I really should just bring two waterskins instead of risking it like that.
i like the vibe of vivec city even though it's a pain to get around i had a funny argument with someone slamming the dragonborn dlc for skyrim because they killed vardenfell with the metoer. i'm like dude the meteor was supposed to hit after the tribunal fades and slam into a giant volcano. if you're mad at that then be mad at morrowind not skyrim
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" ?
I thought about dubbing over, but it would feel a bit contrived and I simply don't have a ton of time on my hands for that sort of thing. I can't exactly remember what drove me to make the "save the Wu Tang clan" campaign. But I remember listening to the album Liquid Swordz repeatedly back in the day (it would be on in the background while reading Berserk, playing Bloodborne, etc). GZA says Razor Tracks to refer to RZA/RZA's music at times, and this spawned an image for Rei Zortrax, a platinum dragon who poses as a human music producer to gain power and influence in America. Things spiraled out of control from there and I couldn't be more pleased with how things turned out.
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 Shadowrun as a setting and even as a system, to an extent. I like the dice pool system, but I can imagine that unless the group and GM are very well practiced, combat grinds things to a halt as you pitch 17 d6s and diligently count the hits and whatnot. There are also just so many systems--skill resolution, combat, magic, astral plane, decking--it's badass, and the way conflict resolution is handled in each situation is similar, but it's still just a lot of work for the GM. With my AvatarPG idea, I'm hoping to incorporate d6 pool system in a way that is tighter and easier to keep track of. We'll see how successful I am in that regard once my wife and I playtest a bit.
@@micah_raygun_ I picked up the Returns trilogy which hooked me immediately, and after browsing the 5e rulebook I love the idea of glitching since its not mutually exclusive to succeeding the check which sounds more narratively interesting than crit fails or crit successes.
me and a friend play solo rpgs in the same world with kinda parallel campaigns if that makes sense. we keep a strict calendar n sometimes do a wargame between different factions we make. pretty fun we use OSE + AD&D and chainmail lol
Yo that sounds so based. I have a ton of questions. So how does strict timekeeping work when y'all are playing separately? Do you each just do a session for an in-game day, then wait for the other person to complete their session before proceeding?
@@micah_raygun_ we do it very loosely honestly. we have a shared doc that keeps track of all of the events. we use standard 12 month calendar but every month is always 31 days just to keep it easy. there's a bit of an unspoken agreement to not advance the calendar too far without the other player knowing. the standard we've come to naturally is that we can run a session on our own that moves the timeline forward up to 1 month. we record everything that happens on the calendar and have other note documents to keep track of the smaller details. The world is big enough that our parties very rarely are in the same local area, so we haven't had to worry about tricky situations like that yet. Mostly the ways our parties interact is in the larger political situations that come up around the region. For example: I have a large mercenary group called the Dragons that has been growing a lot the past few in game years, and while that was going on my friend and his Halfling party were able to cement themselves as the "Adrol Trading Company". So eventually we started dealing together. I would lend some of my troops to deal with bandits, he let me in on some of his sea trading, eventually I bought a few extra boats for his company n we been making money ever since. the wargaming aspect is really fun too, wars really shake things up in the world when you do it right. So far, we've played through 3 different wars, and they've all been utterly devastating, the latest war brought about a new government too. So now my friend and one of his Halfling characters is one of the governing members of this rickety new alliance between the surviving noble houses after the Emperor got deposed.
@@micah_raygun_ (I think youtube ate my original reply to this comment somehow, but this is take 2) the way me and my friend run things is kinda all over the place for solo play, but it works good enough for us. either of us can move the timeline forwards a number of days at any time really just by adding to the calendar. there's a bit of an unspoken agreement to not go too far ahead without both of us present, but sometimes one of us might play out a whole month within a session depending on what we're doing. randomized dungeon crawling is pretty slow so that usually only takes a few in-game days depending on how long the trip is from town. but we often have sessions that are solely focused on random political situations we create or just figuring out our downtime, and that's when an in-game month can pass very quick. sometimes if we're in the middle of a war we'll do sessions that cover even larger time frames like 3-month periods but that is just to sort of quickly resolve certain things. we try not to but there have been a few moments where we've had to go back in the timeline and retroactively add events we forgot to do, but it's not that big of a deal to us when that happens. there's also a lot of jank half made systems we play around with. like I made a shitty way to randomize flight paths for dragons and giant flyers when they're randomly encountered. if they have no lair, they look for one, if they're in their lair they have a random chance to leave every once in awhile to go do something and then come back. 4 cities were completely destroyed because of this system. it's been a little bit since we've moved the timeline forward but it really is an awesome way to play, we have had so many random emergent stories come about and it just keeps building upon itself.
@@micah_raygun_ my replies to this keep disappearing for some reason so I'll be brief: we don't have a concrete procedure for how we play, but me and my friend can both add to the shared calendar doc we have. usually, we only move the timeline a few days at a time depending on the session. Sometimes we will come together on a call or in person and do larger jumps in time while we deal with wars, downtime or overarching plots. the map we play in is big enough that we don't visit the same dungeons, but both parties influence the politics of the region in different ways. we also spend a lot of time running all the NPC's and their factions which is a lot of fun. for those we use a lot more "oracle" rolls for determining their actions rather than the personal goals we assign to the PC type characters.
Daggerfall just barely edges out Morrowind as my favourite main quest. I likewise dislike the power fantasy/chosen one of Skyrim. I still can enjoy the game, but Elder Scrolls has always appealed to me as being 'just some guy.' Maybe this character isn't the Neravarine and instead he is the one to restore order to the Fighter's Guild or take Gentleman Jim Stacey's place. Something that I've noticed with Skyrim and Oblivion is that I don't make seperate characters for guilds. The guilds in those games don't tend promote that to begin with. Both Morrowind and Daggerfall encourage me to make seperate characters to do a set of guilds. Like right now how I have a bard in Morrowind that did the thieves + morag tong with a smidge of Telvanni. Or my current weaponmaster for Daggerfall that focuses just on the fighter's guild and purifying undead dungeons. I guess this is more a case of build variety getting worse since Daggerfall, but it does sting a bit to see the rolepaying mostly gone in the Elder Scrolls.
Haven't had the chance to try, but I think a mod conflict will prevent me from turning in the quest. Same thing happened in a fighters guild quest--both of which were added by a mod pack. I asked for some tech help from heavy hitters in the custom quest field like Jagget and JayH. They inspected the save file and couldn't figure out what was going on. I suspect that I'll end up killing the quest and taking a minor hit to thieves guild rep, but I would love it if I could iron out all my mod conflicts for the sake of everyone's enjoyment and immersion.
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.
I'm not sure how it came off, but it certainly wasn't my intention to come after Morrowind in any way. I actually thought I was pretty generous about its MQ compared to Oblivion and Skyrim since the Morrowind MQ is conducive to the player's usual goals of exploring dungeons, cities, and meeting NPCs, getting tangled in politics etc. I don't love Messianic tropes, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying media like Dune that leans heavily on the trope. Just isn't my preference. To your point, the agent in Daggerfall is exceptional in that we met the Emperor who sent us on a couple important missions. yet the Agent is an expendable political pawn, and there are no prophecies about him, the emperor never saw him in his dreams, etc. I'm obviously biased towards Daggerfall but Morrowind still has a special place in my heart and memory
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Love this series. Cant praise it enough.
Micah you’re a real gem, love the DFU content but the genuine commentary is what makes your videos stand out. Keep it up 👍 PS don’t be afraid to throw in a “remember to like the video” in there, viewers often forget they can do that to show support. It’s the least we can do for the awesome content
Thanks, I totally space out on the typical UA-cam housekeeping stuff. Hopefully my brain will remember this interaction when recording the next episode
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
🤣 this is now canon lol
Please do make a video about your favourite cities in TES! And anything and everything else you want to make a video about too, so here for it man!
I look forward to these so much dude. Such a nice way to spend my evening after work. My only complaint is that there's not more of them! Great work sir!
Loving the series! Feel so lucky to have found your first video on recommend a while back!
Loving the series, bud!
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.
That sure was you! I love chatting about manga when I get the chance. I could remember your pfp but not the name :b
Those early Yu Yu Hakusho sagas are something special, and Botan wearing a leather jacket while wielding a baseball bat is 😍😳
While I think there's a bit of a decline after the Dark Tournament arc, Sensui's arc is also really cool. Shout out to his hand gun technique for being hilarious
@@micah_raygun_ All good man! Love talking manga as well.
Botan's leather jacket outfit is just chef's kiss what an awesome look! I also think the series dips a bit after Dark Tournament but I still really enjoy Chapter Black for bringing everything back to the spirit detective stuff for a while. And Sensui's guns akimbo ability is so goofy. I also enjoy the weird soccer energy ball he uses
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 also enjoy mowing the lawn, but i recently noticed that the last time i cut the grass i accidentally cut down my watermelon sprout with the weed whacker which dampened the mood. On the brightside georgia has a pretty broad growing season
Another great video find myself really looking forward to this lp
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 love WWN, Stars without Number, etc. Man Alone has a video about converting your favorite ttrpgs into solo RPGs. It has helped me prep for my next solo game, maybe it will help you convert Castles & Crusades too
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.
I can agree with that, the Messianic trope doesn't have to be a bad thing. For example, the Vault Dweller in Fallout 1 is literally the chosen one. He was chosen by the overseer to get sent out and find the water chip that would save his people. Their water supply might run out, so there is some urgency that keeps the player focused as they explore the Wasteland.
In Fallout 2, the main character is also a bit messianic even with the Ashlander-esque prophecy backing them up. But having urgency and player agency mixed into the equation improves the quality of the messianic trope considerably when compared to Oblivion and Skyrim.
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!
Oh, also Dungeon Meshi, fantastic! Such a whimsy show, well, until...
Dolmenwood is such a great game! I think they're releasing a newer version that is still OSR but is not tied to Old School Essentials. I'm looking forward to revisiting the setting when that times comes.
Dungeon Meshi is fantastic--thanks for keeping it spoiler free btw, we're only six episodes deep so far 😅
@micah_raygun_ I can't wait for that official release! And you're right, Gavin Norman is making it so that it's completely separate from OSE.
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.
Big rant. tl;dr Oblivion and Skyrim doesn't know what pacing is in response to the main quest rant at the start of the video.
You make some great points, and I'm a sucker for hearing someone's in-game stories. Yeah there are some glaring issues with starting things off as epic and intense as possible rather than allowing the player to explore and get some stakes in the world first. But hey daddy Todd Howard sure knows how to market a game doesn't he. To your point, I think TES 4 and 5 simply have a different target audience than the RPG fans who started with earlier games
@@micah_raygun_ Yeah Oblivion and Skyrim has 100% found its audience, and Bethesda intends to cater to it. Which is fine by me. Mods are there to placate people like you and me, and Daggerfall/Morrowind aren't going anywhere.
I have no expectations of ES6, especially after how barebones Starfield's character building system is. But all there is to do about that is wait, I guess.
As an old hand at GM'ing/homebrewing etc I wanted to throw in a few words about the Avatar idea you mentioned: Most rpgs have terrible magic systems. There is a set of rules for everyone else, that is mostly "describe what you attempt to do, GM tells you how difficult it is, roll some dice to see if you make it". But then when it comes to magic, oh no. Suddenly you have to have a seperate book of spells. And special rules for controlling your mana/power/memorization/whatever and your own little mini-game. Bonus points if you have to use tokens to keep track...
I usually disallow spellcasters in my groups for this reason becuase I am there to roleplay not play some kind of resource management game and I do NOT want to have to keep track of any of this for players. Also, the more magic there is in the world, the less special and mysterious magic feels.
Anyway, with the system I am cooking up now I just went for: if you are creating a caster you decide what kind of caster you want to be. Like, are you a fire mage, or do you manipulate plants, summon deamon etc. Just pick a theme. Then when you want to cast a spell, just tell me what you want to do. However, the description has to be thematically accurate and make sense. Then I just say how difficult that is to pull off and you roll for it. Same as any other skill in the game.
Avatar is pretty much perfect for this. Just have each character have a bending skill and then use that to make up how they want to solve problems. As long as they can explain how they use their element to do it and you think it makes sense, just set a difficulty based on how advanced it sounds and let them roll.
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!
Slumming it out in the canals of Vivec is truly a special experience. Agreed about Caldera too, the sheer beauty and simplicity of it really blew my mind when I first booted up OpenMW
I've got like 30 hours into DFU and I've never even bothered with the main quest. But I have two player homes fully decorated, and stocked with all kinds of weapons and ingredients. I've got enough cash to travel all over and one time I even found a shrine in the mountains not on the map. My character goes out and finds dungeons to explore whenever she wants to do so, and she enjoys doing all sorts of little quests that don't take weeks to accomplish. I agree that Oblivion especially, but also Skyrim both kind of make the main quest hang over you. My favorite part of Daggerfall is that no one cares who you are. You are not "The Chosen One." Oh, one more gripe about the later games... the dungeons are always basically ONE PATH TO VICTORY. Daggerfall dungeons are like these crazy mazes in 3D because you never know how deep it really goes. One time my character went way deep in a big dungeon and there was an abandoned farm house down there. Why? Who knows? Oh... the "secret doors" in Skyrim dungeons are so obvious that it's just silly. Daggerfall has no handholding at all. It's just the best.
Yu yu hakusho is an absolute masterpiece of an anime❤
An illusion major nightblade might be good for a next character, doing mages guild and noble quests.
Skyrim MSQ is rough cuz sure, first few times it's pretty cool. Not much variety but.. modern bethesda lul. But the main part for me is that once you've done it, you want your other characters to do it, or most of it to get either unrelenting force, clear skies, or most likely Dragonrend. Which the latter is locked behind going to Blackreach. Still enjoy the game tho :D Love the series and I'm starting to want to play DFU =D I'm homing TES6 won't have the typical "chosen one" bs with skyrim shouts regurgitated into some other kind of form as well, so here's hoping
I didn’t know what it was or how I knew, but I could tell you were a fellow Texan
Must have been my appreciation for lawn care or the southern hospitality :b
Lovely stuff
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.
Oh hey good to see you! I felt a bit bad but I also wanted to check out the game! I don't have a time of time or money to throw at games these days, but I trust the creators of Gothic to know what they're doing. If nothing else, it'll sit in my Steam wishlist until I pull the trigger. Thanks for watching!
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"
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!
Thanks so much! Glad you're liking the stuff c:
I have Kenshi in my steam library, but the thought of learning such a seemingly complex system has deterred me thus far, though it seems like it's right up my alley
Bogard found a lucky stick lol
I grew up mowing the yard and now that I'm older I hate it. Love you're videos though.
I just want you to know that i installed DFU because of you and i basically copied your exact mod list. Im having a great time.
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.
Winter's Daughter, yep that's the one! That was my introduction to actually playing OSR rather than just reading books.
We got ourselves into plenty of perils in the various burial mounds near the main dungeon, but I think the threat of peril was more perilous than the perils themselves. For example, when we got to a certain ethereal door in the dungeon we simply kept turning around bc we feared what we would find on the other side 😂
Shout out to the wizard whose skin was running away from his skeleton, what a cool encounter
@@micah_raygun_ Oh I think your DM may have added some stuff :)
There were no burial mounds outside the main dungeon in the module I ran, same for the wizard, that sounds like a fun encounter actually!
@@solaris_cc4353 I asked my buddy about this while we were playing Basic Fantasy RPG last night. He says those burial mounds/wizard encounter were not in Winter's Daughter, but were in a more general Dolmenwood book. He and I will be revisiting the setting after its official released and I'm pumped!
@@micah_raygun_ Great! Have fun in Dolmenwood :)
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
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!
I actually watched that one a bit in high school, maybe I'll pitch it to my wife once we've watched Dungeon Meshi c:
A conjurer (as in summons armor/wrapons) and healer would be cool!
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.
Yep, Climates & Calories is the Ashfall equivalent for Daggerfall Unity. It lets you keep track of food, sleep, temperature, and water supply. C&C is what nearly killed me in the middle of this episode when I forgot to refill my waterskin and was doing overland travel. I really should just bring two waterskins instead of risking it like that.
i like the vibe of vivec city even though it's a pain to get around
i had a funny argument with someone slamming the dragonborn dlc for skyrim because they killed vardenfell with the metoer. i'm like dude the meteor was supposed to hit after the tribunal fades and slam into a giant volcano. if you're mad at that then be mad at morrowind not skyrim
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" ?
I thought about dubbing over, but it would feel a bit contrived and I simply don't have a ton of time on my hands for that sort of thing.
I can't exactly remember what drove me to make the "save the Wu Tang clan" campaign. But I remember listening to the album Liquid Swordz repeatedly back in the day (it would be on in the background while reading Berserk, playing Bloodborne, etc). GZA says Razor Tracks to refer to RZA/RZA's music at times, and this spawned an image for Rei Zortrax, a platinum dragon who poses as a human music producer to gain power and influence in America. Things spiraled out of control from there and I couldn't be more pleased with how things turned out.
If bogard bites the dust, I’d like to see you transition into Margery. Maybe a combination of stealth and magic?
I did a poll about this yesterday, I'll likely take the top pick from that if you want to cast your vote c:
Algorithm bump
Around 6:11 you tell someone to remember to go back and cut out some stuff :)
Ah bro how embarrassing 😅 I'll have to take care of that tonight. thanks for the reminder
Fixed it, thanks again bud c:
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 Shadowrun as a setting and even as a system, to an extent. I like the dice pool system, but I can imagine that unless the group and GM are very well practiced, combat grinds things to a halt as you pitch 17 d6s and diligently count the hits and whatnot. There are also just so many systems--skill resolution, combat, magic, astral plane, decking--it's badass, and the way conflict resolution is handled in each situation is similar, but it's still just a lot of work for the GM.
With my AvatarPG idea, I'm hoping to incorporate d6 pool system in a way that is tighter and easier to keep track of. We'll see how successful I am in that regard once my wife and I playtest a bit.
@@micah_raygun_ I picked up the Returns trilogy which hooked me immediately, and after browsing the 5e rulebook I love the idea of glitching since its not mutually exclusive to succeeding the check which sounds more narratively interesting than crit fails or crit successes.
What mod do you use to get potions to spawn at normal shops? I feel like you mentioned it in one of your earlier videos, but I can't find where.
I believe Roleplay Realism + Roleplay Realism Items is what you need, my friend
me and a friend play solo rpgs in the same world with kinda parallel campaigns if that makes sense. we keep a strict calendar n sometimes do a wargame between different factions we make. pretty fun we use OSE + AD&D and chainmail lol
Yo that sounds so based. I have a ton of questions. So how does strict timekeeping work when y'all are playing separately? Do you each just do a session for an in-game day, then wait for the other person to complete their session before proceeding?
@@micah_raygun_ we do it very loosely honestly. we have a shared doc that keeps track of all of the events. we use standard 12 month calendar but every month is always 31 days just to keep it easy. there's a bit of an unspoken agreement to not advance the calendar too far without the other player knowing. the standard we've come to naturally is that we can run a session on our own that moves the timeline forward up to 1 month. we record everything that happens on the calendar and have other note documents to keep track of the smaller details. The world is big enough that our parties very rarely are in the same local area, so we haven't had to worry about tricky situations like that yet. Mostly the ways our parties interact is in the larger political situations that come up around the region.
For example: I have a large mercenary group called the Dragons that has been growing a lot the past few in game years, and while that was going on my friend and his Halfling party were able to cement themselves as the "Adrol Trading Company". So eventually we started dealing together. I would lend some of my troops to deal with bandits, he let me in on some of his sea trading, eventually I bought a few extra boats for his company n we been making money ever since.
the wargaming aspect is really fun too, wars really shake things up in the world when you do it right. So far, we've played through 3 different wars, and they've all been utterly devastating, the latest war brought about a new government too. So now my friend and one of his Halfling characters is one of the governing members of this rickety new alliance between the surviving noble houses after the Emperor got deposed.
@@micah_raygun_ (I think youtube ate my original reply to this comment somehow, but this is take 2)
the way me and my friend run things is kinda all over the place for solo play, but it works good enough for us. either of us can move the timeline forwards a number of days at any time really just by adding to the calendar. there's a bit of an unspoken agreement to not go too far ahead without both of us present, but sometimes one of us might play out a whole month within a session depending on what we're doing. randomized dungeon crawling is pretty slow so that usually only takes a few in-game days depending on how long the trip is from town. but we often have sessions that are solely focused on random political situations we create or just figuring out our downtime, and that's when an in-game month can pass very quick. sometimes if we're in the middle of a war we'll do sessions that cover even larger time frames like 3-month periods but that is just to sort of quickly resolve certain things. we try not to but there have been a few moments where we've had to go back in the timeline and retroactively add events we forgot to do, but it's not that big of a deal to us when that happens.
there's also a lot of jank half made systems we play around with. like I made a shitty way to randomize flight paths for dragons and giant flyers when they're randomly encountered. if they have no lair, they look for one, if they're in their lair they have a random chance to leave every once in awhile to go do something and then come back. 4 cities were completely destroyed because of this system.
it's been a little bit since we've moved the timeline forward but it really is an awesome way to play, we have had so many random emergent stories come about and it just keeps building upon itself.
@@micah_raygun_ my replies to this keep disappearing for some reason so I'll be brief:
we don't have a concrete procedure for how we play, but me and my friend can both add to the shared calendar doc we have. usually, we only move the timeline a few days at a time depending on the session. Sometimes we will come together on a call or in person and do larger jumps in time while we deal with wars, downtime or overarching plots. the map we play in is big enough that we don't visit the same dungeons, but both parties influence the politics of the region in different ways. we also spend a lot of time running all the NPC's and their factions which is a lot of fun. for those we use a lot more "oracle" rolls for determining their actions rather than the personal goals we assign to the PC type characters.
Daggerfall just barely edges out Morrowind as my favourite main quest. I likewise dislike the power fantasy/chosen one of Skyrim. I still can enjoy the game, but Elder Scrolls has always appealed to me as being 'just some guy.' Maybe this character isn't the Neravarine and instead he is the one to restore order to the Fighter's Guild or take Gentleman Jim Stacey's place.
Something that I've noticed with Skyrim and Oblivion is that I don't make seperate characters for guilds. The guilds in those games don't tend promote that to begin with. Both Morrowind and Daggerfall encourage me to make seperate characters to do a set of guilds. Like right now how I have a bard in Morrowind that did the thieves + morag tong with a smidge of Telvanni. Or my current weaponmaster for Daggerfall that focuses just on the fighter's guild and purifying undead dungeons.
I guess this is more a case of build variety getting worse since Daggerfall, but it does sting a bit to see the rolepaying mostly gone in the Elder Scrolls.
did you figure out how to turn that quest in?
Haven't had the chance to try, but I think a mod conflict will prevent me from turning in the quest. Same thing happened in a fighters guild quest--both of which were added by a mod pack. I asked for some tech help from heavy hitters in the custom quest field like Jagget and JayH. They inspected the save file and couldn't figure out what was going on.
I suspect that I'll end up killing the quest and taking a minor hit to thieves guild rep, but I would love it if I could iron out all my mod conflicts for the sake of everyone's enjoyment and immersion.
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.
I'm not sure how it came off, but it certainly wasn't my intention to come after Morrowind in any way. I actually thought I was pretty generous about its MQ compared to Oblivion and Skyrim since the Morrowind MQ is conducive to the player's usual goals of exploring dungeons, cities, and meeting NPCs, getting tangled in politics etc.
I don't love Messianic tropes, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying media like Dune that leans heavily on the trope. Just isn't my preference.
To your point, the agent in Daggerfall is exceptional in that we met the Emperor who sent us on a couple important missions. yet the Agent is an expendable political pawn, and there are no prophecies about him, the emperor never saw him in his dreams, etc.
I'm obviously biased towards Daggerfall but Morrowind still has a special place in my heart and memory
@micah_raygun_ I wrote that while tipsy and half paying attention, sorry. You're surely right. Thanks for the reply, love your content!
@@Tyler360 all good Mr. Doug Dimmidome, owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmidome
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