The purpose of this FAQ is to answer the most basic issues we find ourselves dealing with, and then address those questions. This page could be considered as a set of guidelines for modding in Tamriel Rebuilt--if you read this page thoroughly and stick to what it says, you'll do just fine here.

In essence, Tamriel Rebuilt (TR) is a 'mod' (mod is a universal abbreviation for 'modification'. Thus modding stands for 'modifying', and 'modders' are 'modifiers') project for Morrowind, one that attempts to create the entire province of Morrowind as presented by Bethesda through lore and in-game dialogue. Tamriel Rebuilt was founded in 2002 by Ender, before Morrowind was even released. Its standard of quality and dedication to excellence make it one of the most critically acclaimed mods of the Elder Scrolls community, for both Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. It also plays host to an impressive repository of must-have utilities (our name generator is one of the most popular tools of the community), and comprehensive, thorough tutorials on all aspects of modding.

Tamriel is a fantasy world created by Bethesda, and is used in their Elder Scrolls games, in titles such as Arena, Daggerfall, Redguard, Morrowind, Oblivion, and their latest title: Skyrim. At first a rather ordinary world, it has gradually developed to be more and more interesting during the years and new titles to the Elder Scrolls series. It is lore that makes Tamriel an interesting place, to the extent that we want to see the Crystal Tower, the Palace of Sentinel, and the Eltheric Ocean after traveling all the way from Cyrodiil, explore ruins of old cities and all that, rebuilt, to achieve a dream.

The map below shows how Tamriel relates to the four ES games and The Elder Scrolls Adventures games. Arena, the first game of the series, had all of Tamriel playable. Most of it, however, was randomly generated and the game itself is obviously a rather generic one. Daggerfall consisted of a huge area around Iliac Bay, in the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell. Sadly, most of its content was random, too. Morrowind, which takes place on the island of Vvardenfell, in the province of Morrowind, is considerably smaller in play area, although the island doesn't seem so small on the map. This is because Morrowind was modeled on scale, about 1:10 in order to make a 3D world of sensible work requirements and so as to keep away from randomly generated content. It succeeded in being credible, though, much more so than its predecessors. Skyrim, the latest title in the Elder Scrolls series, goes beyond the bounds of all previous games conceived. One underlying goal of Tamriel Rebuilt is to be credible while still being imaginative. While we are not outright against random generation, we'd rather work on the land by hand and not by tools that don't necessarily produce believable, and memorable, results.

Lore, according to Dictionary.com, is accumulated facts, traditions, or beliefs about a particular subject. In TES, lore comes through books, dialogue, maps, architecture, game mechanics, and many other things. In Tamriel Rebuilt, we strive to make the world as this knowledge has established it, and preserve it as accurately as possible. This does not mean limitation of creative freedom, for all lore is very, very vast. The books alone are about 1400 pages on A4 paper, both sides, not to mention dialogue, geography, bestiary and all the other sources of information at our fingertips.

We do have to create more lore, however; the current amount is not satisfactory for the whole of Tamriel. We have begun this grand effort by making spellbooks, writing stories and quests, and seeking out answers to our many questions. However, original lore should not be changed without exceedingly good reason to do so. If you need any information about lore, there are a number of pages to look at. Perhaps the best-known place is The Imperial Library. To make sure there's enough material, we have our own maps, bestiaries and other collections of rules for the mod. If even more information about lore is needed, people in the forums will certainly help, and there is always the option of visiting the official Elder Scrolls Forums for questions or discussion. If you need any information about lore, there's a number of pages to look at. Perhaps the best-known ones are the Imperial Library and the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages. To make sure there's enough material, we have our own maps, bestiaries and other collections of rules for the mod. If even more information about lore is needed, people in the forums will certainly help, and there's always the official forums for sometimes even quite theoretical discussion.

If you can do it, and do it well, we need it. We are in need of landscapers, modelers, texturers, interior builders, city builders, quest writers, scripters, sound editors, animators, concept artists, music composers, voice actors, literature writers/editors, and lore scholars. Lore scholars are simply people who have read more books than you have. Basically, we seek all people with original and fresh ideas, basic knowledge of TES world and lore, devotion to the project and enthusiasm for the original game, and of course, friendly behavior and good manners are welcomed.

All of the project's work/data is organized into what we call claims. These claims are grouped together by type(Exteriors, Interiors, Quests, Objects, Sound, respectively) and are all located at the bottom of our Board Index. The level of viewability and access differs with each level of membership at TR; Guests and Members can view most subforums, while TR Modders can view an additional subforum or two and post, and Reviewers can see hidden subforums where they review the work done by TR Modders. Even still, there is another subforum called "N/A" viewable only by Moderators and Administrators.

Each "group" of claims includes several subforums, usually "Unclaimed", "Pending", "Claimed", "Reviewing", "Finished", and "N/A". Each Unclaimed subforum houses claims of its respective type that are available for TR Modders looking for work. Modders can either claim a claim from the subforum index, or click the claim thread to view more information, claim history, any Work-In-Progress(WIP) files, etc. and claim it from that interface as well. Pending subforums house claim threads that have been claimed by TR Modders but not yet granted by a Moderator. Claims in Pending subforums can be granted or denied for any number of reasons. Each Claimed subforum contains all the current claims of TR Modders that have been granted by Moderators and are currently being worked on by their claimers. Once a claim has been finished by a TR Modder, it is sent to it's respective Reviewing subforum(which is hidden from view to TR Modders to protect Reviewers from harsh backlash from a begrudged modder) and reviewed by a Reviewer. Then a moderator(usually the appropriate department head) will give the claim a final review and either send it back to Claimed for more work, or approve it. Approved claims are sent to their appropriate Approved subforums, where they will stay unless an error is found posthumously. N/A sections are where off-limits claims are kept. These off-limits claims can be such because they are not real claims, or be kept because the focus of TR's work effort needs to be on other claims, et cetera.

Tamriel Rebuilt, as a hobby project, can have serious problems with deadlines and getting its Modders to complete work in a timely fashion. Because of this, there is a policy in place that states a TR Modder has a maximum of one month from his last status update/progress report to post another. If the modder fails to do so, a PM, e-mail, query, or IM may be sent to the modder, and he or she is given one week more to post before a claim is revoked. TR Modders can also drop active claims whenever they need to, as things come up, or they just aren't able to work on a claim anymore.

At Tamriel Rebuilt, work is done in stages, or layers. This means we do all the modding of one type before we start another. The way we chose this order was one of common sense; you can't create NPCs if there are no interiors or exteriors to place them in, after all. Our order is as follows: Exteriors, Interiors, NPCs/Creatures & Dialogue, Quests. NPCs NPCs are created after exterior workand interior work have been finished. Dialogue is also created at this time. Quest NPCs are added later(during the Quests stage, believe it or not) for both projects.

In order to download our in-progress maps and playable content, you must be a TR Modder. Simply being a member of the forums does not make you a TR Modder. It is possible to download many of the individually submitted plug-ins and put them together yourself. However, we recommend that you wait for our official merged versions when they are released. They are, and will be, found on the Downloads page.

Currently, we don't have any plans to work on any provinces other than completing Morrowind.

Please, by all means, join the forums and ask your questions there, in the appropriate sub-forum. New members have their own forum to ask any questions without fear of being considered unwitty or dull. If someone mistreats you at this forum, Private Message (PM) an administrator or moderator, and they will take care of it. Public Discussion is for all discussion that doesn't fit elsewhere, so if it's something unspecific, go there. If you are confused by all the forums, then you can PM one of moderators, administrators, or older members for help. Don't be afraid of them, as they are here just to serve the project as others have.

For further reading, take a look at the Do's and Don't's of modding at TR as well as all the other FAQs found at the top of the sidebar on the left-hand side of this page.