5 replies to this topic

[charwo]

Hi there!

 

I got Morrowind years and years ago. I played it a lot (as Fallout was more or less a dead franchise then) but I couldn't get into it. To me it was all Fed-Ex quests and dungeon crawls lacking context and character development. And by context I mean I found it so alien as to be incomprehensible.

 

But if you guys are still doing Morrowind, there has to be a trove of good story mods. And other stuff. Beyond mods though, if I want to do this I need to ask long time Morrowind players a critical question: what is the context of this world? In terms of another Bethesda game, Fallout 3: my character is a 19 year old budding scientist. She sees the world with great rationality and a drive to make the world better. More than that, she knows Shakespeare, her favorite play is the tempest, she's broadly a deist with little time for supernatural phenomena or superstition. She is well educated, having access to the library of congress in the Vault's computers, understands music enough to tell a medieval ballad from work of Beethoven, is well aware of the sociopolitical development of the United States and more broadly the Western World from 1492 to 2077,  and because she has a BB gun given to her for her 10th birthday, she has a tactile understanding of handling a gun, clearing a gun and using physics to fire a gun.

 

While a few of these details are my own, most of the context of the person she was before escaping the Vault is laid out in the sociopolitical climate of the Vault, shaped by broad understandings of Christian and Greco-Roman ethics and metaphysics, as well as an understanding American laws and ideals, and at the least she can plainly see the Nazis and demon symbolism bound up in the Enclave, and a knowledge that slavery is abjectly illegal under the American Constitution (and she pledged allegiance to that flag every morning she went to school) as well as socioeconomically backwards and morally repugnant (except as punishment for crimes, of course).

 

I can't establish that kind of context with a character I make in the Elder Scrolls. I can figure out the world, but I can't figure out where my character fits into it. I don't know what she would know, how economic and class relations work, even in principle. The standard of living, the creation myths, not even a full map of the world (Tameriel is the middle continent but that doesn't mean much), how the economy works, how secular or rationalistic the people are, how the polytheistic factions define each other. I don't even know why my character was sent into prison, whether she was guilty of it. And I don;t mean a specific character, I mean any potential Navarine character.

 

I play not as a game, but as a kind of counterfactual anthropology. My chief relationship in the game is with this person I am leading from her past into her future. And I don;t have enough information to understand or construct her past.

 

This is a problem I have faced a lot in fantasy gaming. Could someone give me pointers?

[pheo3309]

Each character that I play in any fantasy game (not just TES) I always make a fresh slate. Rather than making a character that I've used over and over, make a character with a completely different history. For instance the character that I'm running through Skyrim now, he's an Imperial mage who was kicked out of the Synod and rejected from The College of Whispers. He's ran into some history of running from the law, so that's how he ended up crossing the borders into Skyrim. After that, it's it's own story. Another thing that helps me is RP guilds on various MMOs or games that have some sort of multiplayer. While Gamespy has taken down it's master server listings, there are servers that you're able to direct connect to. Amia's a good one if you want to level up. But with servers like that, you role play them. Figuring out their quirks, perks, idiosyncrasies, and most important, what really drives them. For my character on Skyrim, it's his thirst for knowledge.

 

For a good start of how the polytheistic factions work, Morrowind is one of the more thicker ones in regards to lore with involving Divinity. (Meaning there was so much going on with it). I'd suggest playing through it before getting into context of roleplaying any character just yet. I know how it is from making the switch from games that take place in certain parts of our history to fantasy. In Neverwinter I played on four servers. One of them was a modern zombie survival server, and the other three were fantasy. While I played on more fantasy servers, I found myself engrossed in the MZS server. On all four servers though, I made some pretty crazy characters. Both in a good and bad way. My advice though, is play through it without the context of roleplay or read up on some of the lore of TES. The politics of Nirn (not just Tamriel), is rather alluring. Things ranging from the Aldmeri Dominions, to the first Emperor of Tamriel, who was really a woman and then she became a saint. I hope some of these pointers help.

[charwo]

Actually it does, and doesn't.  The politics of Venderfall should be new to the character, the problem is I need to know what they would know back home, wherever home is. You as a player might know Yokuda exists in some form or another (apparently mentioned in Oblivion) but you're character might not.

 

And in that case, I've never heard of Tiber Septm being a female to male transsexual. Had to be, fathered children. Do tell.

[IanBitterss]

Well first of all Elder Scrolls dates back farther and before just morrowind, but was never a text based game like fallout from what I remember. Also unlike fallout morrowind doesn't have a REAL history to begin with and base a whole game on. In fallout, the world is real, the locations are based off real locations and ect. Morrowind is fantasy, created off of general lore and lore unique to Elder Scrolls. In fallout you past is given to you, in Morrowind you must create it! Other than this it's easier to make a game full of context when it has real history. When you start with magic and swords, you know basic medieval history. But unless your on earth, all events must be created. I'm not dissing on fallout I love it, but just trying to explain, what your asking

[IanBitterss]

Also not to mention in fallout choices of dialog are all responses to something, either scaling from nice to mean, dumb and smart. In Morrowind you are asking about something, a word that you know to see what an individual will know about it. You can do this in fallout by manual asking questions in a text box! So this creates big differences is how you roleplay in the game and how you can interact with the gameworld. Morrowind is not part text adventure like fallout. (im talking about the original fallout's 1 and 2)

[maddgod96]

you should google the uesp wiki. look on there for info on the lore, ideas, mythology ect... and base your character off of that. decide what he/she knows, doesn't know, specializes in, ect... and most of all, have fun on your (and your character's) adventure