[This is the final version of the alt.games.morrowind newsgroup I founded in 2003 as a huge fan of the game and level designer.]
alt.games.morrowind
Frequently Asked Questions List
Version 1.2
13-Jul-03
alt.games.morrowind newgrouped by John Henry (johnhenry@lowgenius.com) on 23-August-02
FAQ © 2002, 2003 John Henry. All Rights Reserved. This document may be reproduced freely via any public or private medium, as long as this copyright notice remains intact.
Welcome to alt.games.morrowind!
Preface: What is this document?
This document is the Frequently Asked Questions list for Usenet newsgroup alt.games.morrowind. As such, this document pertains mostly to the newsgroup, as opposed to the game itself. If you are looking for an FAQ for the game Morrowind or it’s companion applications, we suggest you start looking at the official Morrowind website at www.elderscrolls.com, and continue on from there. There are a number of great game FAQs for Morrowind that deal with all aspects of the game; the scope of this document is merely to provide a simple game overview, and an explanation of the purpose and substance of the newsgroup.
Be forewarned that while we try to avoid spoiling the game for you, there are some minor spoilers throughout this document.
If your news server doesn’t carry alt.games.morrowind, they probably will if you politely request it! If they ask, yes it has a properly formatted control message at ftp.isc.org, the repository of record for newsgroup control messages.
1. The Newsgroup
A. What is this place?
B. Who put this thing here in the middle of my Internet?
C. Why wasn’t I informed?
D. Okay, but really, what’s the point?
E. Isn’t [insert other newsgroup here] good enough? Is it really necessary to have a separate Morrowind newsgroup?
2. The Game
A. What Is Morrowind?
I. The Game
a. Overview
b. The Elder Scrolls Series – History and background informationII. The Place
III. The Story
IV. Game Playa. Character Races, Classes, Skills, and Attributes
b. Guilds, Factions (“Great Houses”), and Cults
c. Weapons, Magic, and Travel
d. Non-Player Characters (NPCs)B. What Is Tribunal? Is it worth the extra money?
C. What About Bloodmoon?
D. Platform Variations
E. The Elder Scrolls Construction Set
F. Where can I get these wonderful, must-have, innovative, earth-shatteringly stupendous games?
3. FAQ Version History
4. alt.games.morrowind Control Message Archive
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1. The Newsgroup
A. What Is This Place?
This is Usenet Newsgroup Alt.Games.Morrowind. It is a discussion group dedicated (mostly) to conversations about the PC and XBox Game “Morrowind: The Elder Scrolls III,” produced by Bethesda Softworks. The Newsgroup Charter (every properly-created newsgroup has a charter, except for a collection of groups who’s charters were lost in a major crash in the early 90’s) reads as follows:
“alt.games.morrowind is a Usenet newsgroup for the purpose of discussing all aspects of Morrowind. Excessive crossposting and binary posting are prohibited. Binaries may be posted to alt.binaries.games or a website. alt.games.morrowind is an unmoderated newsgroup; we strongly suggest that all users check out newsgroup news.announce.newusers prior to posting, if you are unfamiliar with Usenet.”
In short, it’s a place where people gather to talk about Morrowind. What’s Morrowind? Keep reading.
B. Who Put This Thing Here In The Middle Of My Internet?
I did.
You’re welcome.
Okay, a real answer. Alt.Games.Morrowind was created by John Henry <johnhenry@lowgenius.com> in August of 2002. As of this writing, John maintains the FAQ, and CONTROLS THE PLACE WITH AN IRON FIST.
Just kidding.
The group is unmoderated, although, like any other usenet newsgroup, binaries and excessive crossposting are ‘forbidden,’ meaning that most news servers will automatically torch a binary (that is, non-human-readable-text) file that is posted to a non-binary group. You can tell the non-binary groups by the lack of the word “binaries” in the group name. Excessive crossposting may potentially trigger anti-spam bots or be a violation of your ISP’s terms of service. Posting in “rich text” (i.e. HTML), while not PROHIBITED, is STRONGLY DISCOURAGED, which is also true across all of Usenet. We also recommend, if you are new to Usenet, that you take a browse through the newsgroups news.announce.newusers and news.answers. It may prevent embarrassing mistakes, offensive body odor, acne, and erectile dysfunction.
C. Why Wasn’t I Informed?
That’s what you get for missing staff meetings ($1 to the alt.usenet.kooks FAQ)
D. Okay, But Really, What’s The Point?
Sharing information, tips, inside jokes, and various other bits relating to Morrowind. That and the sooper-sekrit nekkid pictures of the Suran Strippers.
E. Isn’t [insert other newsgroup here] good enough? It is really necessary to have a separate Morrowind newsgroup?
Well, that’s a long and rather convoluted story, but I’ll try and make it simple. When I first set out to create AGM, I searched for an appropriate newsgroup (other than comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg) for Morrowind discussion and didn’t find one. Now, contrary to popular belief, I’m not omniscient…but I’ve been on Usenet for about 7 years as of this writing (27-May-03), and it never even dawned on me to look for “elder-scrolls.” alt.games.elder-scrolls also never came up during preliminary discussions in alt.config, so I’m forced to conclude that it didn’t dawn on anyone there, either. That, if nothing else, indicates to me that chances are when people go looking on Usenet for information about Morrowind, they’re going to search for “Morrowind” long before it occurs to them to search for “elder scrolls.”
Furthermore, there *is* precedent; Several game ‘franchises,’ including Sid Meier’s “Civilization” series, Diablo, Command and Conquer, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Final Fantasy, Quake, Sim City, Myst, Mechwarrior, Unreal, Vampire, and even Morrowind’s predecessor Daggerfall all have their own dedicated newsgroups.
With all due respect for the question, I personally don’t understand it; by the logic inherent to the question, the entire alt.games.* hierarchy shouldn’t exist; after all, that’s what comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg is for, right?
Finally, it should be noted that a.g.m currently handles between 70 and 100 messages, average, per week. Not exactly the kind of post counts you see in places like alt.politics or rec.sport.pro-wrestling – yet – but certainly enough to justify the group, and more than one of our regular readers has said that if not for alt.games.morrowind, they would have never known about alt.games.elder-scrolls. The general tendency is for people who have played the previous games in the ES series to go to a.g.e-s, and people who have not to come to alt.games.morrowind. That said, there is plenty of cross-pollenation between the two groups (and several others), and there is no effort in any quarter to encourage a “preference” for one over the other.
As of this writing, addition to the Google archives of alt.games.morrowind is pending.
As you may have guessed, I will not discuss this further on newsgroups, as it tends to be a pointless series of arguments that leads nowhere and eats into my gaming time.
2. The Game
A. What Is Morrowind?
I. The Game
a. Overview
Morrowind is a combination first-person shooter/role-playing game for the PC and XBox published by Bethesda Softworks and released in 2002. The official website is located at http://www.elderscrolls.com. That’s the nuts and bolts of it; the full answer is much more complex and interesting.
b. The Elder Scrolls Series – History and Background Information
The Elder Scrolls series of games actually consists of (as of this writing) no less than *8* titles: Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, Redguard, Morrowind and it’s two expansion packs Tribunal and Bloodmoon, and Oblivion. All of the games are set in a world called Tamriel. Unfortunately, Your Friendly FAQ Keeper has not played any of the previous titles, so I can only pass on information I’ve gleaned from other sources, but here’s the series in a nutshell:
Arena, released in 1994 (not sure of the exact date, but the Unoffficial FAQ hosted at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (http://12.145.63.45/~uesp) was last updated in December of that year), was the first title in the series and was widely hailed at the time as a genuine breakthrough in PC-RPG’s. This is a watermark that is common to all three of the main titles in the series (Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind). The visual immersion (even back in the bad old days when $Mb was an obscenely huge amount of video memory to have) – including weather effects, seasons, and night/day – open-ended style of game play, and high-quality storylines have long been worshipped by many in the CRPG community. From what I gather in reading about it, the main quest in Arena is to gather the pieces of a major weapon and use it to defeat a “Boss” character in the form of a battlemage. However, with over 400 cities and uncounted side-quests and NPC’s, the main quest is – as with Morrowind – merely a small slice of what the game has to offer.
Daggerfall, the second title in the series, was released in September of 1996. With some fifty thousand people, six thousand towns, and tens of thousands of houses, dungeons, caves, and so forth, it was far and away the largest CRPG world ever created at the time, and indeed remains so. According to the Unofficial Daggerfall FAQ, Daggerfall features “much improved plot over ARENA; your character is asked to undertake a special mission for the Emperor and obtain artifacts before rival groups of the court of the town of DAGGERFALL can get them & use them to instigate an uprising. In investigating the court of DAGGERFALL, stories of madness, unrequited love, dark sorcery, seduction, betrayal, and a plot to recreate a powerful force from thousands of years past will be revealed.” Daggerfall also was one of the earliest PC games to feature parental controls over sexual and violent content; indeed, according to what I’ve read, it’s quite possible to find full frontal nudity in this game. Again, like Morrowind, game play is open-ended; it is even possible to win the game by working AGAINST the main storyline. Further, details such as clothing, experience, player class, and the completion of side quests were calculated to have a lasting effect on the players world-wide reputation which had an effect on overall gameplay. All of this packed in to what was at the time the most advanced 3D graphics engine ever created and featuring many of the same environmental innovations as Arena – weather, day/night, etc. The FAQ keeper actually has a copy of this game; unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to make it run properly under Windows XP.
Battlespire and Redguard were apparently intended to launch new branches on the Elder Scrolls tree, with Battlespire being touted as the first in the “Legends” series, and Redguard being billed as the first in the “Adventures” series. It appears that after these two titles were released, Bethsoft decided instead to concentrate on creating Morrowind…a process which took them nearly 5 years. Both games were less “open-ended” than the other three titles, and seem to be less RPG than action-adventure game, but they did provide a nice bit of additional information and structure for the world of Tamriel.
Oblivion is the announced title for the next game in the series. No further information is available about it, other than it’s next, it’ll be a while, and it’ll likely be different from Daggerfall and Morrowind.
II. The Place
Tamriel, the “planet” upon which all of these games take place, is a land rich in flora and fauna, as well as several different species of intelligent life – a few different races of elves (“Dwemer” and “Dunmer”), a ‘human’ race, the lizardly Argonians, and the feline Khajit, possibly among others – not to mention gods, demi-gods, and mortals who have usurped the power of gods for their own egotistical ends.
Tamriel is quite probably the largest, richest, and best-documented fictional planet outside of a fantasy/science fiction series or the original Dungeons and Dragons games.
Morrowind is an island continent, surrounded by archipelagos (archipelagi? archipelaguses? i’m so confused…), in what is usually drawn as the north-eastern quadrant of Tamriel.
III. The Story
Many years past, a group of powerful mortals – Amalexia, Sotha Sil, Vivec, the Nerevar, and others, if I’m remembering my legends correctly – found a key to power which would grant them the powers and longevity of gods. Unfortunately, it did not necessarily grand the wisdom of a god. There are various aspects to this key of power, and one of the group of mortals seized this key, betraying the others to gain control of for his own selfish greed for power. Now, a stranger “born of uncertain parents under a certain sign” has arrived in Morrowind, and there are rumors that this stranger may hold the power to divest the traitor of this key, and with it the power he has usurped. Note that by “key” we mean “an object which is primary,” not “something that unlocks a door.” There are several thousand “door keys” in Morrowind – we wouldn’t want you to get confused!
IV. Game Play
a. Character Races, Classes, Guilds, Skills, and Attributes
One of the enduring traits of the Elder Scrolls series is the ability to create characters of various races and attributes. I won’t go into listing them all here – again, this is supposed to be an FAQ about the newsgroup, not about the game – but suffice it to say that you’ll find everything you’d expect from a full-featured RPG, and then some. Each skill is governed by an attribute; each attribute is improved with the used of the skills that use it, and you progress through “levels” as you gain higher skill and attribute values. For instance, the “Hand to Hand” skill may be a function of the “Agility” attribute…so if you go through Morrowind getting in fist fights, your H2H skill will increase, and when you advance a level, you may be awarded a potential bonus multiplier for your “agility” attribute. Each race has specific weaknesses and strengths, which are explains both in the game and in the various game tutorials that can be found on the web. You can also create your own custom Race and Class which has it’s own strengths and weaknesses.
b. Guilds, Factions (“Great Houses”), and Cults
Guilds are, as you might expect, professional associations…sort of like labor unions without all the contract disputes. There are several guilds in the game – Mage’s, Fighter’s, Thief’s, a guild of assassins known as the Morag Tong, and more. You have to be careful, though! All is not what it seems, and it is not uncommon for one guild to send yo on a quest which, when completed, will get you thrown out of another guild.
There are three “great houses” – Hlaalu, Telvanni, and Redoran – and again, each has it’s distinct advantages and disadvantages. You can only join one Great House (unless you’re using a mod that allows otherwise), although I Have heard rumors that you can join 2 houses IF you pick the right two.
There are also several religious organizations – the Imperial Cult, and the Temple, for instance, that you can also join; I don’t believe that membership in one will prevent membership in another.
In all the guilds, houses, and temples, there are things you can do which will cause you to be kicked out, or which may prevent advancement higher through the ranks. In my first character, for instance, I made a mistake which caused the Mage’s guild to refuse to promote me any further.
c. Weapons and Armor, Magic, Items, and Travel
TRAVEL in Morrowind happens in a variety of ways – you can walk or run over the landscape; you can get real good with potions or spells and fly over the landscape; you can take a silt-strider (sort of a bug bus) to and from major cities in the game; you can travel by boat to and from certain places; you can travel by something called a Propylon Chamber, which is sort of a teleportation device; or you can make use of one of the Mage’s Guild transporters (I think you have to be a member of the Mage’s guild to use these). Each has it’s own advantages and disadvantages, and chances are you’ll use just about all of them in the course of playing the game. There are a dozen or so major cities, quite a few minor cities and towns, and small settlements (such as the Ashlander camps) scattered all across Morrowind, and each one has it’s own surprises and challenges. Of course, there are also literally hundreds – perhaps over a thousand, I haven’t counted them – of dungeons to explore.
MAGIC in Morrowind is unlike any other game your FAQ Keeper has played, and – along with the spectacular graphics, incredibly immersive game play, and just plain fun of it – is one of the reasons why it is far and away my favorite CRPG since Betrayal at Krondor. Not only do you have spells, but there are scrolls, ‘soul gems’ in which you can trap the soul of vanquished foes and use it to enchant weapons, clothing, and armor, potions which you can create from alchemical components you gather on your journeys (more on that later), inherent powers that you may be gifted with depending on how you elect to build your character. There are ranged spells, contact spells, and spells you cast on yourself. You can control fire, ice, electricity, poison, and paralysis; you can fly, walk on water, enhance or restore your skills and attributes, drain or enhance the skills and attributes of hostile or friendly NPC’s. You can combine spell effects – in-game, without creating mods – and there are hundreds of scrolls, potions, spells, and enchanted items that are already canned and placed in the game for you to use. If magic is your forte, you’ll love this game without a doubt.
WEAPONS and Armor in Morrowind are just as varied as magic; in part, because they can be enchanted with any magic effect that is in the game. There are multiple classes and types of swords, maces, staves, bows, crossbows, knives, clubs. They might be made of chitin, glass, steel, silver, ebony, or other material, each with it’s own set of strengths in varying degrees. Ditto the armor…and it can all be enchanted (and often is!) with any given magical effect…if you’ve gained the skill or have the money to pay someone to do it. Plus, again, there are several hundred (thousand?) “canned” items already placed in the game for you to find or buy.
ITEMS in Morrowind are ridiculously plentiful – nearly EVERYTHING in this game can be picked up and manipulated. The products of native flora (flowers and plants), fauna (animals and monsters that you kill or harvest), and other natural resources (like gemstones) can be used as alchemical components to make potions with; there are lock picks and probes; armorer’s hammers and metal-working tongs so you can repair your own armor and weapons if you’d like; there is a HUGE variety of clothing in different styles and qualities that can be enchanted with spells just like armor and weapons…but even such mundane things as spoons, napkins, and pillows can be picked up, bought, or sold as you wish. Additionally, there is property ownership in Morrowind; many things are laying around for the taking, but many more are “owned” by an NPC, and if you steal them you will be caught by an Ordinator or Imperial Guard (Morrowind Cops) and forced to give the property back, plus pay a fine or serve time. There are even illegal drugs – some traders will refuse to deal with you if you have certain things in your possession.
d. Non-Player Characters (NPCs)
There are two major classes of NPC’s in the game – essential and non-essential. Essential NPC’s – leaders of guilds and factions who give you quests, wise women of the Ashlander camps, and all sorts of other interesting characters – may give you quests or challenges which will help you complete the Main quest. Unlike many other RPGs, these characters have personality – just wait until you get to meet Crassius Curio! You maintain a level of favor or “disposition” with *each and every NPC in the game*, which, together with your overall reputation, determines how they act toward you throughout. You may find yourself being looked at with contempt early on by characters who will become almost slavish in their admiration as you progress. The non-essential NPCs are, perhaps, not *quite* as versatile and interesting as the essential ones, but in any case, especially early on in the game, it pays to talk to EVERYONE about EVERYTHING. Plus, of course, there is the usual assortment of shopowners, regents, bad guys of all caste, slave (yes slaves – buy them, sell them, or set them free), and even – if you know where to find them – a trio of erotic dancers (all human ;-)). Sometimes you may have to escort them from place to place – other times you may take great pleasure in killing them with no remorse…as long as they attack you first. You can pick their pockets. You can strip them naked (nearly) and leave their corpse laying in the street as an example of your power. It’s your game – play it your way!
B. What Is Tribunal? Is it worth the extra money?
Tribunal is the first official expansion pack for Morrowind, released in fall of 2002. It adds a new city – Mournhold – and a whole new set of NPC’s, quests, caverns, dungeons, new flora and alchemy components, new weapons, new armor, and new reasons to continue playing. The original Morrowind game is required for Tribunal on the PC. The Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions are not available for the XBox; however, Bethesda recently released an XBox version called “Morrowind Gold” that incorporates elements of both expansions.
C. What About Bloodmoon?
The Bloodmoon expansion is now in stores worldwide. Hailed by most as yet another stunning advance, Bloodmoon incorporates new creatures, new alchemy ingredients, new spell abilities, a new island, Sothseim, that is about 1/4 the size of Morrowind, and of course, a whole passel of new quests. Also added is the ability to become a Werewolf, which carries with it a whole new dimension of game play.
D. Platform Variations
Your FAQ Keeper is not a console gamer; therefore, I can’t speak much about the XBox version of the game beyond what has already been written. However, many of our readers are owners of the XBox version, and questions regarding it are certainly welcome. If someone here can’t answer your questions, chances are we can point you to someone that can. The biggest variations are in regard to expandability – there is no “modding” for the XBox version; hence, the Elder Scrolls Construction Set does not come with the XBox version. As mentioned above, the expansions will not work with it either (and are not offered for XBox as separate products) although Bethesda has created an XBox version called “Morrowind Gold” which implements elements from both expansions.
E. The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, and “Mods”
Included in the PC version of Morrowind is The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, a “level editor” unlike any you’ve ever seen. Basically, anything that is part of the game, you can create, recreate, or modify here to suit your own needs. While there is no included tool to re-texture (“re-skin”) existing models or create new models, re-texturing can be done fairly easily with the help of a decent graphic program (I highly recommend Adobe Photoshop) and several available tools; if you’re loaded with extra cash, you can pick up the 3DStudioMax software from Discreet and make your own models. Even without new models and textures, however, there is an unlimited range of things you can create with the level editor – new interiors (caves and houses), exteriors (land and building exteriors), characters, weapons, armor, jewelry, spell components, quests, storylines, alchemy tools, clothing…even create entirely new factions, races of characters, or (as several folks have already done) create an entirely different *game*. If you don’t want to do all that work yourself, there are literally thousands of mods out there to be downloaded and enjoyed as you see fit. A caveat – some modders aren’t as careful as they should be about changing things; we highly recommend that you install one mod at a time and make sure it works, rather than going and downloading 50 of them and installing them all at once.
You can find sites full of mods all over the net just by typing “morrowind mods” into your favorite search engine. However, there are a handful of sites which this author, and many regulars of AGM, have found to be of particularly high quality and wide selection. These are:
The Official Morrowind Site – Bethesda has written several very good “official plugins” for Morrowind – you can find these by browsing their site at www.elderscrolls.com.
The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages – http://12.145.62.45/~uesp (or www.m0use.net – this URL is sometimes not as reliable as one would like) – source for much of the background information in this FAQ regarding previous ES titles, plus has full quest walkthroughs for Morrowind and Tribunal, and a great selection of mods.
http://www.morrowindfiles.com – this is where pretty much everybody uploads their mods to at some point. A huge selection, ranging from the simple weapon to entire quests. Well worth taking the time to browse through.
The FAQ keeper (who, being the FAQ keeper, is allowed ONE gratuitous plug for his own site!) also keeps a small selection of his own custom mods at his website, http://www.lowgenius.com. Just check the menu and you’ll see a link to several Morrowind-oriented pages. I also operate an official mirror for the Morrowind FPS Optimizer, which is a most excellent little tool to help you get the most out of Morrowind on your particular computer system.
F. Where can I get these wonderful, must-have, innovative, earth-shatteringly stupendous games?
Flattery will get you everywhere. Morrowind, Tribunal, Bloodmoon, Bloodmoon have shipped worldwide as of this writing. If, for some reason, you can’t find them locally, you can purchase them via the FAQ Keeper’s website, gratuitously plugged in the previous entry.
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So endeth this FAQ, at least for now. I hope you have found it informative, and if you would like to see something added in the future, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line at agmfaq (at) lowgenius.com, and I’ll see to it that it’s included in the next version.
3. FAQ Version History
1.2 13-Jul-03 Added information about Bloodmoon, more spelling corrections, added section 2F with purchasing information.
1.1a 29-May-03 Web-only revision to include some minor spelling corrections, information about Oblivion, an FAQ Version History, and a copy of the alt.games.morrowind newsgroup creation message
1.1 28-May-2003 – a huge overhaul of the FAQ, to include history of the Elder Scrolls game series, information about the history of the group, and detailed information about gameplay components such as character creation, magic and weaponry, and mod creation.
1.0 23-August-2002 Newsgroup created, simple FAQ written
4. Alt.Games.Morrowind Control Message
From johnhenry@lowgenius.com Fri Aug 23 16:25:29 2002
Newsgroups: alt.games.morrowind,alt.config
Subject: cmsg newgroup alt.games.morrowind
From: “John Henry, King Of The Night-time World” <johnhenry@lowgenius.com>
Organization: LowGenius.Com
User-Agent: Xnews/5.04.25
Control: newgroup alt.games.morrowind
Approved: johnhenry@lowgenius.com
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <Ylt99.134$eS.26242@news.uswest.net>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 16:25:28 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.96.231.239
X-Trace: news.uswest.net 1030119928 68.96.231.239 (Fri, 23 Aug 2002 11:25:28 CDT)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 11:25:28 CDT
Xref: news.isc.org control.newgroup:344636
[posted and mailed]
For your newsgroups file:
alt.games.morrowind Bethesda Softworks’ RPG/FPS for PC and XBOX
CHARTER: alt.games.morrowind discusses the fantasy role-playing game Morrowind. This discussion may contain spoilers, or be relative to The Elder Scrolls construction set, or the X-box version of Morrowind, as well as the PC version. The newsgroup is unmoderated. Binary postings are not allowed. Use of [SPOILER] tags, or other relevant tags for filtering, scoring, or killfiling (for instance, [TES] or [XBOX]) are strongly encouraged.
JUSTIFICATION: According to a google search on 22-Aug-02, the word” Morrowind” had appeared “about 38,300” times. The discussion is obviously there to justify the group. Currently discussion is spread across usenet, with some in the *games* groups, and some found elsewhere. There is also a strong existing community of Morrowind users who would certainly populate the group once it propagates. The alt.games.* nomenclature/subhierarchy is already established and active on Usenet. Discussion took place on alt.config 22-24 Aug 2002. Suggestions for improvement were incorporated into this message.
