It’s all too easy to reduce quests to that: “We’ve already built the world and now the player still needs something to do in it.†I suspect and also expect that no one reading this will subscribe to so simplistic a view. Quests, we all understand, is where it gets serious. Quests are the single biggest factor in our portrayal of the intellectual property we are adopting and expanding. In other words: we have to do this right. We want to do this right.
Years ago now, Bethesda Softworks tried to get it right, at least within the boundaries of what financing and producers allowed them to do. There wasn’t enough staff and enough money to make all of Morrowind real. This means they had to make choices, such as having the player interact only with characters that happened to be on Vvardenfell, even if their organization wasn’t restricted to the area. All of that can be pardoned on the basis of the situational constraints I mentioned.
In our attempt to get it right –or righter, even– at TR, we also have certain constraints. However, we are currently needlessly subjecting the project and our vision for it to a self-imposed restriction. Enough introduction, then. What I want to question here is the strict division between the 'vanilla' Vvardenfell and the modded mainland that TR has been trying to adhere to for many years, often to its own detriment. Not just for the sake of questioning it, but because I am convinced that a different approach is beyond any doubt the right course of action for this project.
I will give you all a number of strong arguments against the current method and in favor of a new policy. I will also try to show you that any practical objections to it are trivial and could remedied easily. My examples here will be applied to the case of the Telvanni questline, but can obviously be extrapolated to other other aspects of the project in due time, each with their own particularities. For now, allow me to explain the issue with the help of this one topic.
What does the current method really give us?
To not make this post any longer than strictly necessary, I will strive for brevity in the remainder of this post. First of all I want you all to consider what the current division in a 'Vvardenfell' and a 'mainland' Telvanni branch gives us in the way of advantages:
- It leaves the vanilla game untouched.
- To a certain extent, it prevents conflicts with other mods that affect the vanilla quests.
Regardless of those two advantages that I will come to discuss later on, what are the problems with our current approach?
- It creates an artificial, transparent and inexplicable division in an entity that is obviously meant to be a single whole, i.e. a 'house'.
- It creates awkward and constrained dialogue and quest ideas/solutions.
- The division is by default extremely transparent. Even a newcomer to the series can see that this is a handy cop-out solution, rather than a narrative-motivated choice. It will always feel like an emergency solution.
- From a 'lore' perspective, the division is entirely ludicrous. The whole idea of a Dunmer House is a clan of people who play by similar rules (or lack thereof) with a similar aesthetic. Any arguments that Telvanni are disparate by nature are missing the point. The quarantine idea was never true in the first place. The Inner Sea is in many places less wide than the distance between two Telvanni towns in the vanilla game.
- Most importantly, though, by establishing this division we gravely disrespect two things: 1) our own project's vision and 2) the intellectual property we are working with. By 1), I mean that the goal of TR is to make Morrowind the way Bethesda would have if they had had the time. Clearly, the idea was a single house. Therefore, we also disrespect 2), by introducing an ugly and unmotivated change into the ideas that went in the original game we all loved.
What I'm saying is that TR is getting its priorities majorly wrong in this matter. So far, we plotted the course we are going on the basis of trivial practical concerns listed above. (And trivial they are, which I will demonstrate later.) In making this decision, we are ignoring a host of other arguments that play a far larger factor in the vision of our project. I have said it a number of times by now: we all want to get it right. If we want to get it right, we need to do some reconsidering first.
What are you suggesting exactly?
Rather simple, in fact: that we reconsider the entire idea of a 'mainland' Telvanni branch and instead build a single, unified House Telvanni which incorporates both our material and vanilla material.
Woah. That's unthinkable! The levee will break! The hen won't lay! The cock won't crow! Babies will be born butt-first for seven unspeakable years!
That's alright, really. All silliness set aside, I understand this is probably something of an uncanny idea at first. Yes, we will be doing what we have long considered a cardinal sin. We will be touching the vanilla game and we will be changing it.
Rest assured, however, that I wouldn't be putting this idea forward if I thought even for a second that it would mean an insurmountable obstacle for the project. In many of the other fields of our mod, we've already come to realize that feverishly clinging to ancient, ill-conceived ideas was holding us back more than anything. Rethinking them often gave us a noticeably superior product and not rarely an increase in productivity, with an exciting and clear goal in sight.
I'm sure there's a number of valid concerns about this proposal. I will dedicate the rest of this post to addressing those concerns to the best of my abilities.
"We are touching the original game. Some players might not appreciate that. It might create conflicts."
There is an exceedingly straightforward solution to all these practical concerns: the questline is simply a modular .esp file. That is, the TR master files contains the land, the people, miscellaneous quests and what not, but the new TR Telvanni House that over-arches Vvardenfell and the mainland, is optional.
This way, people who want to see the mainland, but do not want any changes to vanilla can choose that option. The mainland exists for them, with a fair deal of challenges, but the vanilla Telvanni questline stays intact. People who do want a new, far superior questline simply have to install one more file. Perhaps in time a skilled programmer could even create an automated installer for this purpose. People playing the new overarching questline that already have a rank in the old vanilla faction should obviously be given a means of transferring their rank when installing the new faction (if they want to).
"It would create a massive PR crisis."
I'd wager to say this will not be an issue at all. People turn to TR because they expect quality and that is exactly what we are trying to achieve. Also, nobody will be disappointed by a greater amount of quests, especially if they are far superior even to the vanilla game. The result could blow their minds. I think the audience will also understand that the modular solution is a more than fair system, which many other big mods would not bother to implement.
"It would mean an enormous amount of extra work."
This is mostly an illusion. Any of the -slightly disorganized- work on the original Telvanni questline will have to be severely reconsidered at any rate, though the plan is to recuperate salvageable material. I owe a lot of gratitude to Why, who has already given me some great advice in these matters. Similarly, we can also recuperate worthwhile material from the vanilla quests to integrate it into the whole. On the other hand, nobody will mind missing out on one or two gofer quests. Either way, we will have to make new material, but the overall effort will not be significantly greater, with a significantly better result.
I will invite you all to sit back and digest this information for a while. Mull it over a bit, then give me your thoughts.
![:]](./images/smilies/pleased.gif "Pleased"){kind=small}
Slowly but surely, each bad idea from the birth of TR is getting removed.
