I broke out laughing in the middle of my local gamestore. I was standing in line and they were playing the usual mélange of marketing bullshots on the screen behind the counter, and it had rolled around to the newest The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim DLC,”Hearthfire”. When the young lady behind the counter asked me what was so funny, I told her, "We've been playing it that way for years."

My younger son is the household aficionado of all things Elder Scrolls. The expansive world gave him a perfect stomping ground, and stomp he did, all up and down Morrowind and Vvardenfell. Now he's ridding Skyrim’s frozen peaks of dragon-kind. He’s not done with the main quest yet, but we’ve already had some memorably hilarious encumbrance problems. He accidentally quick-looted a secret chest he found and loaded himself down with 700 pounds of random stuff. He wouldn’t let it go, either. It took him several minutes and quite a bit of blue language to stagger down to the blacksmith (using Whirlwind Spirit over and over) so he could sell the heavy stuff. The guard kept harping on him about Shouting in city limits.

After that, getting the ability to build a house and own it without depopulating a small town first was right up our alley. We hung a SOLD sign on the expansion and started the download.

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