Sort of. My grandparents spoiled me growing up so I had a lot of fun toys, but lost them all in a house fire in high school. I’ve been slowly picking up some of my favorites ever since, everything from Mighty Max to Transformers to OG Gameboy games.

And hyenas are dog software on cat hardware.

So what’s the mammalian equivalent of Linux?

You need enough lore to explain where the PCs fit into the world, both for their races/backgrounds and for their current adventure. Some of this can be plenty vague: you don’t need to know everything about the elven city states yet, just that they exist and one of your PCs grew up there. You don’t need an entire pantheon, just the gods your PCs worship. The details that are most important are for the local area: what might the PCs need to know, and what would they want to see? Who runs the town? Where are the rat catchers going? And what will hook them on their next adventure?

Generally I start with a vibe, usually generic fantasy land since that’s what people are most familiar with.

Then I plan out the local town and the countryside around it: Portland Court used to be an ancient tiefling city-state but that was so long ago the only real reminders of that era are the large basalt bricks people still recycle for building and the occasional weird bones folks still find in the nearby fields. Now it’s mostly just humans doing what humans do, scratching out a living using whatever they can. The name court refers to the central open market and the successful merchants who are the defacto leaders of the community.

Then I work with the PCs for a little background. There’s a dwarf in my party and she hails from the nearby Iron Mountains. A cleric worships Sol and Luna, twin gods who embody the sun and moon. There’s also a halfling who grew up south of the Court, in the Roving Prairies.

Finally I try to fit everything together: the local merchants need guards for a caravan going to the next town over because the demon-worshipping cultists who want to revive the dead empire keep knocking over wagons and stealing goods. This is good tension even if it’s not very original. Plus it gives the party opportunities to continue adventuring and, if they choose, learn more about the ancient history most people would rather keep forgotten. The merchants will need more help, and the cultists will keep escalating until someone does something about it once and for all.

Hope that makes sense. I like to start small and build up as the party adventures and the stakes get higher, with just enough thought out that I can give the worldbuilding direction when I go back to it.

4e was peak D&D and anything before or after is a pale comparison.

I miss my Alias 2, best phone I’ve ever owned.

I’m way overdue for an Ocarina of Time replay, thanks for the reminder!

The latest Zelda games for me, I just wander around aimlessly and it helps me relax.

My cousin’s house, a co-worker’s desk, and my own shed, to name three different instances of lost or forgotten keys.

Also the stack of Masterlocks my friend thinks is funny to hide around my house but that’s a different story.

Lockpicks and earplugs. I’ve had to use both far more often than I’d like.

Way late to the party, but I picked up Lost Kingdoms for the GameCube for $5 back when GameStop still had bargains. One of my favorite games to this day.

Have you tried a factory reset?

Yeah, okay, between you and Dudewitbow I’m halfway convinced to give Ryujin and the Crimson Fleet a try.

You’re absolutely right and if I can muster up the energy to start the game back up then Ryujin is probably going to be my first stop.

I’m curious, you mentioned the hostage scenario at Akila. Does talking down the Shaw gang give you a peaceful method of obtain the artifact near the end of that quest? I try not to save scum so when that whole ordeal went south I had to gun my way through everyone outside of the cavern, then of course only after half her people were dead did Shaw bother striking up a conversation. Not trying to be an ass here, I’m genuinely curious as to whether or not that would’ve actually changed with prior gameplay.

I tried a few side quests and none of them were at all compelling, though I’ll admit I didn’t bother going too deep with most of the factions. I don’t know, each one I tried consisted of walking back and forth and listening to people talk about trees being too loud or some shit I couldn’t care about. Maybe if I’d gone to Space Tokyo or signed up with the space pirates that would’ve been different. But following the main storyline and tooling around the first few planets was repetitive and just more Bethesda-style gun in, then take the shortcut out after getting the thing. I gave up on the game after around 20 hours of not enjoying the experience.

If you’re liking the game then good for you but my experience was that none of the choices I made actually mattered and the world Bethesda built was bland and cliche. And the game mechanics themselves were nothing ground breaking at all, except maybe ship building but that took way too much effort to grok. I tried to like the game but couldn’t.

We must be playing different games. Every storyline quest I’ve done has been:

1. Go to this random place
2. Gun down everyone in sight because my mandatory companion can’t stealth.
3. Talk to the named bad guy.
4. See if I win a coin flip. 4a. Walk out with a McGuffin. 4b. Gun everyone down again, then walk out with the McGuffin.

It’s nothing but, “Go there, kill guys,” as you call it. Everything is a fetch quest with faceless mooks between me and whatever fifth turn I need to take to get to the end of the corridors in the space dungeon.

And comparing the game to Morrowind is laughable. Morrowind was an amazing feat of world building based on actual player choice. Starfield is a bunch of boxes to tick to see the next space cliche.

Throw a few canned laughs in there and it’d be on-par with half the crap they churn out today honestly. Most sitcom humor is character A snarking character B, pause with ugly looks at each other while the laughs play. Rinse and repeat.

When it’s ablaze.

Joke’s on you, I survived past 30.

Jury’s still out for 40.

My autistic ass would have them watch all three Lord of the Rings movies. Y’all need to find a better diplomat than me.

Always has been.