Last week, I played three hours of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, at my leisure and free to go and do whatever I could. I’m telling a series of anecdotes based on what I saw and did; here’s the first, here is the second and below is the cowardly third.

Despite the outer limit of my creative achievements in real life being hammering a bit of rotting wood I found in the street over a drafty gap at the top of my bedroom window, for some reason I simply cannot resist going heavy on the crafting option in most any RPG I play. The idea that there is some item or items I could have (and for free!) but don’t is intolerable to me. So, while others invited to this play session dedicated their levelling-up to becoming as buff as possible then racing off in search of a dragon or two to stab, I was sticking my hand up and saying “excuse me, how do I make leather?”(more…)