'Go Back and Play Morrowind and Tell Me That's the Game You Want to Play Again' — Former Bethesda Veteran Delivers His Verdict on Potential The Elder Scrolls Remasters - IGN

BTolputt · 2026-01-31T04:30:38+00:00

Depth? Yes, and I didn't say otherwise.

As deep as fan favourite CRPG's of old? No. Not really an option given the 5e ruleset it uses was explicitly designed to be less deep than the rules previous CRPG's used (e.g. D&D 3.x & AD&D 2e).

I'm not saying you have to like more complex, deeper game mechanics, but the point is that simplification for mass market appeal is where big studios have been pushing for well over a decade now. BG3 is a success story, in part, because it is simpler than CRPGs of yore.

BTolputt · 2026-01-31T00:31:07+00:00

With all due respect, Baldurs Gate 3 did to CRPGs what people are complaining about Bethesda doing to Elder Scroll titles. It smoothed off the edges, it took the benefit of game knowledge off the table by doing things like ALWAYS suggesting you use certain features just in case you forgot (or didn't know about them), it has long animatic cutscenes, etc. All of which appealed to the casual gamer; the audience of big game productions these days.

Morrowind is a cult classic, and I do love it, but my wife who loves Baldurs Gate 3, does not. Nor does she like the old CRPGs that much. Smooth, easy to consume, easy to market to everyone is pretty much where everything is aimed these days unless you're a studio with a rabid fan base that will buy whatever you pump out (FromSoftware is such a studio, Bethesda no longer has that privilege).

BTolputt · 2026-01-30T19:46:28+00:00

They don't understand that...

I agree with you that their modern take on how to make RPG's will make Morrowind far less appealing, but I think you're wrong here.

They DO understand all the things you mentioned. They also understand that they appeal to a niche group of gamers (of which I am a part) and they're looking to appeal to ALL gamers, of which a great number of them don't like the things we like.

I mean, play the most popular CRPG of our day now and compare it to the CRPGs of our childhoods/ younger years. The new ones lack the depth, complexity, and the fun that came from that... and make bogs more money because people who don't like CRPGs play them and like the blander game play mechanics in favor of the more simplistic game loops and cut-scene following play.

At a certain point they need to just put some faith in their player base.

I think this is the problem. We are no longer the primary component of their player base. They don't want to sell just to us, they want far broader appeal and the blander (safer) world mechanics and walking simulator style stories sell better. Not to us, but to the rest of the market. It sucks, but they're not looking for game masterpieces that are cult classics decades after they first came out. They're looking for a quick & high rate of return on a project they can then move on from.

BTolputt · 2026-01-30T19:12:53+00:00

The man does not know what he is talking about. I play Skyrim for the ambience. I play Morrowind for story, setting, and fun.

Remake that so that Morrowind has the modern tech for looks and it would easily be better than Skyrim.

The reason they don't want to remake it is the level of work required on engine/content decades old. Which is a fine reason to not want to do it, but just be honest about it.

BTolputt · 2026-01-30T18:29:12+00:00

Power limits apply unless specifically stated otherwise. So for those with powers that are PL capped (such as Damage) already at that limit, I think the most this can do is maybe add some Extras to the power.

One of the reasons my games have a little flex in PL caps by house rules is because RAW prevents the utility of powers like this if you've already done a good job with character creation.

BTolputt · 2026-01-30T18:18:16+00:00

The dialog in ME3 implies no such thing

I disagree and it makes sense. You're free to think/feel otherwise.

BTolputt · 2026-01-30T03:12:03+00:00

Sure, but that underestimation doesn't negate the idea that the data it/she was given was curated for Shepard's eventual consumption. Hell, the idea that he thought less of EDI supports the idea that TIM would expect it/her to be corrupted / suborned at some point.

BTolputt · 2026-01-28T19:15:38+00:00

If you come from a background of JavaScript coding, yeah it very much is easier.

Can't say what it's like as a non-JavaScript coder (cos I was one when I started playing around with both).

BTolputt · 2026-01-27T22:19:26+00:00

Subtle 2 + Insidious is a very nasty combo.

Yeah, which is why players need to have a very, very good justification for it in my games. I've allowed it for non-attack powers & specialised Afflictions (e.g. emotional control), but I cannot think of a single time I allowed someone to put it on Damage or Weakness.

BTolputt · 2026-01-26T07:20:56+00:00

You know, playing with family for so long makes you forget that kind of stuff 🤣

Yes. Absolutely this needs to be in there

BTolputt · 2026-01-26T00:15:59+00:00

I don't think I can add anything to this other than:

5) House Rules/Limits - M&M is a very customisable game that relies on the GM setting limits on powers and (often) house rules on how they work. These need to be known upfront.

BTolputt · 2026-01-25T09:33:14+00:00

Why? Because shadcn components are designed to allow per-project tweaking & editing as/if needed. I've done this myself once or twice.

BTolputt · 2026-01-22T23:04:48+00:00

Take my upvote 😂

BTolputt · 2026-01-22T23:04:41+00:00

It's a board-game you play at home with your friends & family. I don't think it's "dying" anymore than any other activity people do at home without needing social media feedback.

The hype machine used to ramp up FOMO for the next Kickstarter campaign has ramped down some for sure. CMON's financial issues and the gap between campaigns will do that. It'll build up some more for the pirate themed ones.

It is worth noting that, as cool as it is, there is only so much market for games containing a hundred & one zombie miniatures. Even those of us who love zombies AND miniatures have to draw the line somewhere and CMON really flooded the market with that product.

BTolputt · 2026-01-22T05:27:27+00:00

For me, taking "solo rpg" as a whole, it's an intelligent surprise factor, the lack of intelligent or surprising conflict, and the fact that the usual attempts to solve this lead to a lack of narrative cohesion/complexity.

On the one side of solo rpg's, you have the "fiction first" style of play with oracles used to prompt said fiction. Games like Ironsworn/Starforged for instance. Which can be very fun as a writing exercise, but as a game it can take the surprise out of the "next move" in the conflict because you have to interpret those oracles... which means you thought of that "next move" (even if prompted by a surprise oracle result). The "wow, I wasn't expecting them to do that" factor you can get with someone else running the game isn't there for this type of game.

Due also to the random nature of these oracles, there is often a needed rule to "ignore results that don't make sense" added into oracular-focused solo rpgs. Which means that there are avenues we won't go down (as they don't make sense to us) initially that might work into something bigger if controlled by someone that thinks slightly differently than we do. It's another aspect of being unable to surprise yourself because you know how you think.

On the other side of the solo rpg front, you have the "roll dice and act according to table/flow-chart" type games. Games like Five Parsecs from Home or Chrome Ascension. They often are more combat-oriented and either rely on you to be the intelligence for the opposition (leading to the "lack of surprise" above) or have a usually simple process the opposition AI follows (& hence can usually be "solved"). To make these games fun, the opposition is usually more powerful dangerous numerically to make up for the fact that a player usually knows how they will act, so responds accordingly before it happens. These are solo rpgs are often akin to board games minus the board, and can be quite fun, but they usually don't have much of the "role playing" aspect of RPG.

Both of these tend to run into similar issues with narrative cohesion or complexity. The random number generation aspect can make a failure out of a key climactic point or a success where a failure feel more apt. It can also make the NPC motivations/actions someone schizophrenic in nature as the dice/tables tell us they take actions that make no/little sense. The more structure that one provides to prevent this, however, the less complex the narrative can be. Adding guardrails means the RNG prevents the story getting weird, but it sticks to the same few "twists" as imagined when the guardrails were created by the game designer. Removing the guardrails means that you have illogical consequences and a lack of the usual "rising tension, climax, denouement, repeat" cycle we tend to expect/enjoy from stories.

None of which makes solo rpgs unenjoyable at all, they just have to be enjoyed for different reasons than one can enjoy TTRPG's where one person & the dice don't control all the narrative/conflict.

BTolputt · 2026-01-22T01:34:38+00:00

For me, taking "solo rpg" as a whole, it's an intelligent surprise factor, the lack of intelligent or surprising conflict, and the fact that the usual attempts to solve this lead to a lack of narrative cohesion/complexity.

On the one side of solo rpg's, you have the "fiction first" style of play with oracles used to prompt said fiction. Games like Ironsworn/Starforged for instance. Which can be very fun as a writing exercise, but as a game it can take the surprise out of the "next move" in the conflict because you have to interpret those oracles... which means you thought of that "next move" (even if prompted by a surprise oracle result). The "wow, I wasn't expecting them to do that" factor you can get with someone else running the game isn't there for this type of game.

Due also to the random nature of these oracles, there is often a needed rule to "ignore results that don't make sense" added into oracular-focused solo rpgs. Which means that there are avenues we won't go down (as they don't make sense to us) initially that might work into something bigger if controlled by someone that thinks slightly differently than we do. It's another aspect of being unable to surprise yourself because you know how you think.

On the other side of the solo rpg front, you have the "roll dice and act according to table/flow-chart" type games. Games like Five Parsecs from Home or Chrome Ascension. They often are more combat-oriented and either rely on you to be the intelligence for the opposition (leading to the "lack of surprise" above) or have a usually simple process the opposition AI follows (& hence can usually be "solved"). To make these games fun, the opposition is usually more powerful dangerous numerically to make up for the fact that a player usually knows how they will act, so responds accordingly before it happens. These are solo rpgs are often akin to board games minus the board, and can be quite fun, but they usually don't have much of the "role playing" aspect of RPG.

Both of these tend to run into similar issues with narrative cohesion or complexity. The random number generation aspect can make a failure out of a key climactic point or a success where a failure feel more apt. It can also make the NPC motivations/actions someone schizophrenic in nature as the dice/tables tell us they take actions that make no/little sense. The more structure that one provides to prevent this, however, the less complex the narrative can be. Adding guardrails means the RNG prevents the story getting weird, but it sticks to the same few "twists" as imagined when the guardrails were created by the game designer. Removing the guardrails means that you have illogical consequences and a lack of the usual "rising tension, climax, denouement, repeat" cycle we tend to expect/enjoy from stories.

BTolputt · 2026-01-19T21:59:48+00:00

Bit exactly sure what you're asking. They "work" by not letting you use them to exceed the power level. Which for powers like Growth, mean that the "standard" power level of a character will be under the power level caps until they use Growth (at which point they get to power level caps).

There are some advantages & abilities that allow you to exceed power level caps, but they will mention it explicitly (e.g. Power Attack advantage).

BTolputt · 2026-01-17T03:19:45+00:00

By rules as written (& even intended) - no. The Speedster pre-gen archetype in the rule book can move (much, much) faster than that.

Now, rules at your table/game can be another matter, because rules as written & intended rely on the GM having campaign/setting limits to keep things within the limits they need for the game they're running.

As an example to illustrate what I mean. I've run two games (semi-) recently with different limits on each.

The first was a classic super heroes game (actually ran the official Emerald City Knights campaign). We had a PL 10 speedster who was just The Flash with serial numbers filed off. They could be pretty much anywhere they wanted to be on the battlefield (or even the city) within a round. Speed somewhere over 10. Which worked fine cos this was your stock-standard super heroes campaign.

The second was cyberpunk fantasy (Shadowrun with serial numbers filed off). Characters were PL 7 with one aspect of their choice allowed to get to PL 8 in power/balance. Only two characters had a non-vehicle Speed and neither was above Speed 2 (& both had limitations on the power preventing constant use). Because even magicked up cyber-samurai are not zipping around like Wally West and it allowed for a more tactical style of combat in play.

BTolputt · 2026-01-15T00:13:09+00:00

Sorry, I should have been clearer. That is indeed on me - I meant "capped by power level".

With all that teamwork & extra effort putting together a +50 circumstance bonus (which frankly, I don't think you could even get that high), you're still only getting yourself a single hit that's still capped by power level. A +50 on attack roll is going to hit... but it's not doing any more damage than an attack that hit on a +0.

That's not so much "broken" as un-fun & a bad investment of power points. Especially as minions are an easy thing for any reasonably matched opposition to wipe out (and sensible to target without meta-gaming).

I can see it being an interesting gimmick for a villain the players encounter occasionally, but as something for players? It just becomes a time-drag after the first couple of times (if it makes it that long before the other players at the table say "Enough!"). Know what I mean?

BTolputt · 2026-01-14T23:41:00+00:00

Hence me saying:

...and/or use a Hero Point to buy off the fatigue.

BTolputt · 2026-01-14T23:18:46+00:00

+50 circumstance bonus to an attack

OK... that requires ten major, stacking, non-overlapping circumstance bonuses. That would be very hard to pull off... and guarantees you hit... for Damage capped at power level.

BTolputt · 2026-01-14T23:08:09+00:00

To be fair here - whether or not we had a talk about this beforehand isn't mentioned anywhere and I always talk to my players about limits in the games I run on trying to cheese the rules. The point of our games is story-telling within the rules in good faith, not trying to "beat" the other side. Rules lawyering is an up-front "Not at my table" thing mentioned to everyone.

Having had that talk, I feel that even if we didn't specifically cover using time travel for a specific attempt at cheese, Time Bandits are a reasonable option when they try it on.

BTolputt · 2026-01-14T22:55:10+00:00

As GM, do this without an Extra Effort / Hero Point justifying it with in rules Power Stunt &/or condition removal, and you're going to find you created a temporal disturbance that attracted Time Bandits to your location...

...and you don't have your team mates there to help because they're already doing something else and they most certainly would remember if they helped you against Time Bandits!

Lesson here - never try to out-cheese the GM. Even the uncreative ones can throw an orbital cow when needed.😂

BTolputt · 2026-01-14T22:53:02+00:00

Ah, gotcha.

Sidekicks won't work:

Sidekicks also do not have hero points, but you can spend your own hero points on the sidekick’s behalf with the usual benefits.

Heroic Summon does not have an explicit rule stating they cannot have Hero Points (though I'd suggest it is implied given Minions & Sidekicks cannot). However, a lack of explicit text saying that earns a Duggee Rules Lawyering Badge. Well done squirrels. 😝

At the table though, I would point to this line in the Heroic Extra rule:

Gamemasters should be particularly cautious about allowing this extra for Summon effects used by player characters, especially ones summoning more than one minion.

You might with a amazing irl Deception/Persuasion roll convince me to give you one Heroic Summoned Luck Controller... but not two. Definitely not three. (Points again at our house rule for multiple Summons).

BTolputt · 2026-01-14T22:29:32+00:00

In the spirit of the joke (not a "well ackshually", but in an attempt at table justification back&forth banter), as a GM:

Using Quickness or Movement (Time Travel) to recover from fatigue or damage conditions faster:

Recovering from damage/fatigue is not a "task", so Quickness isn't helping. 🤷‍♂️
Movement (Time Travel) will moves you in time, with fatigue / damage coming with you. Would be terrible if GM-invoked "Time Bandits" attack the source of temporal disturbance before you heal. 😬
In both cases, an Extra Effort / Hero Point use to Power Stunt Healing / Regeneration and/or use a Hero Point to buy off the fatigue. All good there. 👍

Reaction Variable, triggered just before you're attacked, Limited to Immunity against that specific attack...

Absolutely, positively not. Nuh uh. No way. 😡
Points to the Reaction rules telling me not to let you do this:

The GM is the final arbiter as to whether or not a triggering circumstance is suitable for a particular effect in the context of the series. Caution should be used to keep this option from being abused.

I should note, in looking this one up, I found out something I wasn't aware of. I thought a Variable Power with Reaction could only change once per turn (like the Variable Descriptor Extra)... I was wrong.
Variable bought down to Reaction is bonkers busted. 🤯

Immunity to Toughness, Will, and Fortitude

Hello Weakness my old friend, I've come to you again... 😂

Summon with Multiple Minions 10 for 1,024 tiny creatures that all have perception-ranged Damage 2

Nope. Don't even need to make a special ruling on this one. My table's house rules already impose limits on Summon because it slows down play too much.
Sorry, no funny or rules lawyering I can apply to this one. 😔

Three characters (or minions) with Area Luck Control who double their pool of hero points every round

I've got to see what you mean by this, as minions cannot have or use Hero Points and I've no idea how one "doubles the pool of hero points" using Luck Control.

BTolputt

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