I bought these and started DAO again a couple days ago. I had them on console before, but it was cheap enough to add to my Steam account. I loaded up a ton of mods this time. So far I’m having fun, but it crashes a lot, so I’m quick saving constantly. I’m not sure if the crashing is the game, my laptop, or the mods. I’m assuming its the mods and so far don’t care enough to figure out which one(s). The good news is, I can go from desktop to loaded game in about 30 seconds, which is a nice change from modern games that take forever to load.

For those commenting on EA, if you buy on Steam you’ll get a launcher, but you don’t need the EA app to play (at least for DAO, I haven’t gotten to the others yet). However, if you just don’t want to give your $7 to EA (after Steam’s cut), that’s totally understandable.

Sugar Bee and Rockit apples!

One of my prior roles was moved from a proper office to an open office and one of the “selling” points was “you can work from anywhere in our cool new building!”. So, I spent most of my day anywhere but my desk. I got my work done and half my time was spent in meetings either way, but if I didn’t have somewhere to be, I’d be in the quietest spot I could find in the building (cafeteria mid-morning/afternoon, conference area when there were no meetings, outside, the lobby, etc.). I was regularly commended for adopting the new culture.

Magic brownies sound amazing! Maybe I should move back to California.

Is there a reverse version of this where all the brownies are middle brownies? That’s the version I want.

Depends on your hairstyle, but I used to have my hair cut about once a month for $20-25. I bought a set of electric hair clippers for about $30 more than 15 years ago and learned to cut it myself and have saved thousands of dollars. Its a simple men’s cut, so it works for me.

An electric razor or a quality safety razor are also possibilities. I used to use the disposable gillette razor cartridges at about $4 per head, which lasted 3-4 weeks (I used them until they hurt to save money). Now I have both a safety razor and an electric razor (I don’t need both, the electric was a gift). The safety razor was $45 and and blades are about $0.10. Blades last about a week instead of a month, but it paid for itself in about a year. I experimented with various shaving creams as well, but eventually went back to canned shaving cream because the time spent creating a good lather in alternative forms was annoying and not worth the savings.

The electric razor may or may not pay for itself depending on how much it cost and how often you have to change the head and the cost of cleaning solutions, but I do enjoy having it for a quick shave. It definitely is not as good of a shave though.

Hey, I’ve been there! Related to Christmas, every year Nevada City has a Victorian Christmas celebration where they all dress fancy and neighboring Grass Valley has Cornish Christmas, that seems to celebrate the working class. Total speculation on my part, I’m guessing in the 1800s all the mine owners lived in Nevada City and all the miners lived in Grass Valley.

I pretty much only buy cables (of any kind) from Monoprice.

I don’t find it worthwhile to spend mental energy thinking about food, so I eat the same things constantly (though I occasionally change the menu). My wife doesn’t like eating the same thing more than a couple of times in a row, so she always wants to make something different, but is constantly stressing about what to plan for meals. She reinforces my view that food planning is not worth mental energy.

I haven’t tried it yet, but A Little to the Left looks like a fun organizing game. It was just added to Game Pass if you have that. I also see my daughter playing Power Washer Simulator sometimes, which I haven’t tried, but it looks like it could be satisfying to play.

I’m a big fan of Don’t Nod games (Life is Strange, Tell Me Why) for atmospheric storytelling. Life is Strange: True Colors is from Deck Nine games, but falls in the same category. Detroit: Become Human is also kind of similar, but it occasionally throws in sections where you have to quickly react with button pushing that I don’t enjoy. One thing I find interesting about all of these is that you can play them more than once with different choices to get different paths, but so far I haven’t replayed any of them because I felt like the path I took was meaningful and I don’t want to change my story yet.

An MMO could be a good way to go. My wife isn’t really into gaming, but we played WoW together on and off for years. I haven’t played them much, but if I were to recommend one to start with now I’d probably check out Final Fantasy 14 or Elder Scrolls Online.

I also go back to Skyrim constantly; it is probably my most played game. I have a hard time making a definite suggestion because I sit here many nights and wonder which game I want to play and frequently find that I don’t want to play any of them (so I scroll Lemmy instead). That said, below are a few that might be possibilities and I’m looking forward to reading everyone else’s suggestions so I can find my next game too!

You could check out the Dungeon Siege or Torchlight series. They’re both Diablo-style gameplay, but in a super generic RPG setting. They’re both older, cheaper, and okay game series.

The Overlord series is fun, its kind of a reverse RPG where you are the bad guy terrorizing the locals with your minions. The gameplay mainly revolves around directing your minions more than direct combat. It is a bit simplistic, but I really enjoyed it.

I’m not a fan of the Witcher series, but lots of people love it and it seems to check most of the boxes you’re looking for.

I agree with the Oblivion suggestion. I’m always conflicted on this one because I think it is a better game than Skyrim in terms of quests and interactions, but the gameplay is a bit dated and there were some questionable design decisions that resulted in some major overhaul mods being built to completely redesign the leveling system. I would love to have Oblivion, but with Skyrim graphics and mechanics (mostly).

Kingdoms of Amalur definitely seems like it hits everything on your list. I struggled to stay interested in it long enough to finish it (I think I finished it), but I’m not sure why since it has all the elements I enjoy from other games.

Similar to KoA, Dragon’s Dogma seems to have all the typical things I like in a game, but I’ve played it twice and not made it out of the starting region either time. I’m not sure what it is that causes me to lose interest so fast. There’s nothing I can point to and say I dislike.

Greedfall is super weird (to me) and not quite a fantasy RPG, more like medieval fantasy RPG. It is generally an open world game, but not as open as Skyrim (fewer side-quests, semi-linear main quest line). I thought it was an okay game, the main thing that frustrated me is that there were some areas of the game where you could make decisions with major story impacts and other areas where you were not given any choice in the narrative. As a result, I sometimes felt like my character was taking actions that were not in alignment with the narrative I had created for him. I appreciated that the game seemed unique and not just copying something else that was successful and I think I played it on GamePass at the time, so it was kind of like playing it for free. :)

I also use a double edge safety razor, but have an electric razor also for a quick morning shave. Other things I do:

• I cut my hair with clippers I bought 15+ years ago for the price of 1-2 haircuts. This probably only works for people with simple, short hair, but has saved me thousands of dollars compared to getting a monthly haircut at $20+

• We put a basket with cloth napkins next to the dining table and a basket with washcloths on the kitchen counter and have drastically reduced the quantity of paper towels that we use

True, watching other people use Excel is painful. I used to have a coworker that was so good at Excel that she didn’t use a mouse at all and was way quicker than anyone else. She made me feel guilty whenever I was the one being watched because I knew she must be frustrated watching me do things with shortcuts and the mouse.

I’m not a fan of star wars, but I liked kotor 1 & 2. I’d probably play a kotor 3, but not a remake. I have no interest in anything tied in with the movies, make a new story with new characters, I don’t care about luke or darth vader.

I love Excel! The best part of my job is where I get to use Excel. The worst parts are where I have to use power point or interact with other people. Sadly, most of time is spent on PPT and interacting these days. :(

I’ve been playing Starfield almost daily since release on Game Pass. I would much rather play on PC with mods, but its a super mediocre game and I’m not ready to pay anything close to full price for it when I can play on Game Pass. I really hope they release some better content for it over the next year or two and then sell me a complete edition on PC and I’ll start again with mods to get rid of the BS if they haven’t already done so in future patches.

I got stuck a few hours into it and quit trying. I really want to love this game and play it through multiple times, but it just doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t want to read any guides or spoilers. I want whatever path I take through the game to be my path, but it isn’t working for me.

When I got my Steam Deck a few months ago, I spent the first week or so just modding Skyrim so I could play it on yet another device. Then I played it a ton until I finally took a break for some other games.

Musicolet is my preferred music player OurGroceries is what I use to keep shared lists with my family (mainly grocery list, but also things like a travel check list and favorite meals for when we can think of what to have for dinner).

A Dog’s Breakfast