He truly has achieved the true version of CHIM — holes up with his clone-wives and his best Dwarven buddy!

I actually didn’t know Hassildor had a wife, I’ve never actually done that quest 👀 that’s really interesting, I’m looking forward to doing it now!

The few times I’ve run into him in Skyrim, he always brightens my day 😊

He’s probably the most real character I’ve seen in Morrowind, because at his core, I get it.

This is honestly the approach that’s given me the most peace of mind as I’ve gotten more years of GMing under my belt. As little as possible, but at least something for everything, so I’m never truly caught of guard by player shenanigans.

A solid choice, what really makes him your favourite as opposed to the other games M’aiqs?

They’ve somewhat fallen into the same trap Valve did with Half Life 3, and nothing they put up will live up to the nostalgia of Skyrim for many players no matter what, as it’ll never recapture the magic many of the fanbase felt when they first played it (at least that’s my take). It’s been overhyped, and people will have some unrealistic expectations no matter what.

I think sidelining the next installment was a misstep on BGS’ part, and now they risk alienating the player base of one of their two largest IPs; don’t get me wrong, it’ll probably sell incredibly well, but I think there’s just no way it’ll be as well-received as they would want it to be.

On a more positive note though , I hope that whatever they deliver brings improvements rather than downgrades – I want to see a better magic system taking inspiration from competitors and previous installments, a return to NPC schedules (looking at you Starfield 😒), and hopefully prioritizing world-space content over a large open world map. Even if it’s more of the same, as long as the story is fun, the NPCs are well-written, and the systems aren’t a pain to engage with, it’ll live up to my expectations.

Me, personally, I have slowly started to shift towards “bones-only” storytelling for my campaign settings – I build a loose plot, some NPCs tied to it, locations and a few bigger encounters. Beyond that, I want my players to not feel railroaded to encourage them to think creatively in each session, as it helps me as a GM enjoy the session more when players aren’t always looking to me to tell them what they should do next. I also usually stockpile a bunch of pre-baked generic encounters, NPCs, shops and such so that I can keep up with their story and choices.

Honestly, this sounds like a pretty fun way to engage with the game – personally, I can’t stick to my own self-defined playthrough rules once I run into these sorts of things, but it sure makes a run memorable.