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This mod is by no means the final version of Ald Velothi, but Blake and I have spent about 4 hours on this. This is what 2 people can acchive in 4 hours. The town is a racist one, we noticed when scoting the NPC's that it was exclusivly Dunmer, and we decided to build a story around that. In a shack near the top of the town there is a woman who enjoys inciting racial hatred, she speaks particularly nastily of Khajiits.

Not everyone in the town believes her propganda, but those that do are under the impression that Ald Velothi is the best thing since sliced bread. The Town Hetman is an idiot and the author of Ashland Hynmes is hanging about near the docks.

The story of this isolationist town will be further developed in the Khuul dialogue, and other towns. This is essentially our advert for the project, and just in case you are unsure of how to install the mod, you should once its downloaded, copy it to C:/Program Files/Bethesda/Morrowind/Data Files. I know that there might be the odd spelling mistake or typo, but this was done in just 4 hours. Really its just to show that the task facing the less generic NPC team is not impossible, just hard, and as long as we break it down, we can do it. A whole town has been done in an afternoon by two people. They all have unique dialogue for: My trade, background, Ald Velothi, Someone in particular, Specific Place, Dunmer, (the racist lady also comments on each and every other race) latest rumours, little advice, little secret, and probably other stuff that I have forgotten.

Every bit of Dialogue that would be there if you just had Morrowind and not Tribunal or Bloodmoon is unique (Solsthiem and Almalexia topics are not unique), any other mods that add dialogue have obviously not been catered for, but for an unmodded version of MW, without Tribunal or Bloodmoon, this mod would make every single word uttered in Ald Velothi unique.

Ald Velothi is along the coast from Khuul. Post your feedback here, we hope you enjoy this. If this has inspired you to get involved with the team, we'd be delighted to have you. Even if you only have an idea for one NPC backstory, we'd love to hear it. Post it on here, or email it to any member of the team.

Dark Master

Originally posted by Dark Master
The Solstheim topic remains generic, because I don't want to exclude non BM people or non Tribunal people from this mod.

So... does this mean I can't say Aldi's husband moved to Sostheim? I was planning this whole little plot where Helga's spreading gossip that Aldi poisoned him and threw him off the dock (though Aldi, not wanting people to know he left her for good, is telling everybody he's visiting relatives back home) Ah well. I just thought since they're all immigrant Nords from Solstheim anyway... in Khuul, anyway... Aw, this is so much fun. I love the "racist town" idea. You guys are awesome. Give me a hug.

Yeah thats fine, as long as it doesnt require bloodmoon... and me and dm are doing all the plugin in so we can do that, so yeah thats fine.. be sure to check out the plug in....

Originally posted by beornica
So... does this mean I can't say Aldi's husband moved to Sostheim? I was planning this whole little plot where Helga's spreading gossip that Aldi poisoned him and threw him off the dock (though Aldi, not wanting people to know he left her for good, is telling everybody he's visiting relatives back home) Ah well. I just thought since they're all immigrant Nords from Solstheim anyway... in Khuul, anyway... Aw, this is so much fun. I love the "racist town" idea. You guys are awesome. Give me a hug.

You can obviously mention Solstheim, thats absolutely fine, your idea is very cool, I mean in Ald Velothi we have a somebody who has moved from Mournhold, they aren't exactly evil, and they aren't exactly racist, but to be accepted by the people of the village, they had to act that way.

If you want plot development like that, each NPC telling a story, we don't have to stick to the latest rumours for it. Maybe your latest rumours is Aldi saying "I heard that Helga's Husband is dead" and you write response for "Helga's husband" make sure you stick it under that heading when you email it to me, and I'll take care of the rest so that when Aldi says that, "Helga's Husband" comes up in blue, and you just need to click it to hear here say "Yes she poisoned him...or whatever" We can add our own dialogue as well as making the existing dialogue unique.

Originally posted by blake
Yeah thats fine, as long as it doesnt require bloodmoon... and me and dm are doing all the plugin in so we can do that, so yeah thats fine.. be sure to check out the plug in....

@Blake, thats a bit unclear, do you mind if I clarify it? It looks from that like we do all the writing, when actually we just put the writing into the TES Construction set, we still need as many people with a creative mind as possible.

@Fable, you used to work on the books in a text based RPG didn't you? You would be a hugely valueable member of the team if you had time.

I'm hoping that the release of an entire settlement (all be it a small one) that was completed in four hours will convince people that it IS possible to do this, and get more people on board.

DM

yes thats what i meant, excuse my lack of clarity. Has anyone actually tried the plug in yet? I would love to hear your thoughts, positive or negative.

Originally posted by Dark Master
@Fable, you used to work on the books in a text based RPG didn't you? You would be a hugely valueable member of the team if you had time.

Books, rooms, NPCs, quests, and one entire civilization I created. (Not to brag, but.. ) I'd be more interested in NPC dialog, frankly. It's a lot easier than writing entire short stories and the like...but we'll see.

I have one concern, though. These plans are really fascinating, and they sound great. But have you checked to make sure that they don't conflict with the many mods already heavily used by the MW community, and located (like so much else is) at least partially in Seyda Neen? Some mods that are only tangentially involved in the area, like Haldenshore and Velendsoval, conflict, because they use the land mass to the south to expand Seyda Neen and grow another village. Even others that don't expand the land mass add a ton of NPCs to the area. I added three mods once that suddenly had five new NPCs wandering around the streets. And there are many mods that simply add a building or two in the area. Anything that interferes with another mod can cause instability in the results, with potential crash-and-burn symptoms.

I'm not suggesting you pull back on your plans, but you may want to load in some of those mods--the two I've mentioned, maybe some of the Armor of Tamriel series (Arkay and Dibella, I think), Veldion, Tir Thalor, Korobal, Tarmar, Kendra, and Sorefoot Enterprises. Take a look at 'em, and make sure there are no conflicts with NPCs, land use, etc. It's better to do so now, while you're still in the planning stages, than have to rework things later when you've already gotten a good deal of the scripting done.

Fable, we aren't adding any landmasses or anything like that, its simple a rewrite of the dialogue, and those mods that you mention (well Haldenshore and the Armour of Tamerial) are both installed for me and work fine with the Less Generic Project for Seyda Neen, which we didn't do, and won't be doing, since there is already one out there. Right now we've done Ald Velothi and are working on Khuul. I've structured the nolore part of the dialogue so that any other mods that change the dialogue of any NPC's will override the dialogue that we've put in, so conflicts should not exist.

To people in general, please have a look at Ald Velothi and tell us what you think, I say it only took four hours, but we did work hard in those four hours, and I know some of it might seem a little over the top, but this town is the advert for the project really, Blake posted the link on the first page of this thread, so go have a look. Tell us what you think.

DM

Sounds good, then. I'd be far more interested in writing dialog, though, and bringing characters to life, than books. So let me know if you have any need for that. As DW wrote, "How about if people contributed their different skills and it was done collectively? For example, I know I could write up dialogue, but I have no ability with the technical side of things." That pretty much sums me up at the present time.

So if you need NPC dialog, count me in, and tell me what you want written--for whom, whether it involves branching depending upon profession, sex, etc. And whether it's supposed to be fluff, or plot-related. I'd be glad to help.

*grins* and now that I have committed I ought to take a look at those characters in Khuul
Sorry about that guys, I just got very distracted doing some research for something else I'm working on

I'm thinking I should be able to come up with something between this evening and tomorrow.

Thank y'all so much. "y'all".... I even type texan... Anyway Dm and i can handle the technical side so all we need is dialogue, because that takes a while to write and we would like this to express the personality of the gamebanshee forums not just ours.

Fable... good to have you man. <Big handshake> Welcome to the team. We've got everybody covered for Khuul, but when we move onto the next town (Maar Gan) we'll need you to write some dialogue for NPC's. You pretty much have free reign as long as you keep within Morrowind style language, you know, stuff that feels right. You can create a whole backstory for an NPC.

DW - I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

If you want to develop the NPC further than just the my trade etc options just type what you want the new topic to be called, and the response they will give to it, and make sure you mention the topic name in one of the others (so it would come up in blue in the game) - I've already done this with the racist woman in Ald Velothi.

If you want different responses based on whether the NPC is of the same sex/race or profession, I can do that, but it will take a little, longer, so try to limit it to one NPC that has different options per batch. On the other hand extended dialogue is eaisier to put in, so you can do that for all of them (extended would be like if she mentions 'my father' in 'my trade' and you want a topic about 'my father' then 'his friends', followed by 'wrong crowd'. You can do that for as many as you like.

Sometimes there will be NPC's with the same last name. I want to make more of a family feel to the environment, make it seem more real, so we'll give out the ones that are related to the same person, so that they can make a linked story if they want to. In our racist town we have examples of all this.

The racist has extended dialogue, and the mage will tell you that they hate outlanders. If you are a dunmer, she will say 'even outlanders with Dunmer blood in them' and if you are not, she will say 'espically outlanders with [your race] blood in them. Also down by the sea there is a young girl. Her mother is inside a shack, getting old. The father is long gone, and you can learn more about him from both of them, you only get the full story by talking to both.

On another note, we have released another version of Ald Velothi, some of the dialogue has been cleaned up, and you can now get information on Madura Seran from the Hetman, just inside the outpost. When you deliver her safely he rethinks his morals on outlanders. Owing to the disquiet this would cause though, he can't change anything. The guard now also tells how much she wants to sit down, although owing to the fact that a lot of guard dialogue is dublicated, we could only replace the name of the town in question with unique dialogue.

I also made a bit of the dialogue less over the top, and fixed the spelling of Argonian which was stopping the racist from offering her opinion of them.

The new version can be found in the same place as the old one, just follow the link that Blake posted before.

I know my posts can be a bit unclear, so if there is anything that you want me to clarify I will do my best.

DM

Sounds good. See you all when you reach Maar Gan. Just let me know when it comes under revision, and we can divide up the NPCs.

Cool. By the way have you had a look at Ald Velothi yet?

Edit: It took us a little longer than expected to load up the new version, and so it wasn't up until about 10 minutes after this post.

If the Hetman doesn't mention the phrase 'taken by ashlanders' when you talk to him about 'Ald Velothi' you have the old version.

http://www.angelfire.com/crazy3/kickyou ... e/mod.html

for those of you that don't feel like going back here is the link... My site has been gracious enough to host it because it is my site, so uh... check it out

this is the final cut of it, there was a minor, minor bug :O that was fixed and it is highly suggested that you download the brand new version as of now

There are a couple of tiny things to note, none of them are bugs and they won't mess up your game. The guard's dialogue when asked about Ald Velothi has a couple of words missing from the middle, and there is a random "I" in there for no reason - entirely my fault, and we still haven't been able to spell Argonian right, or we forgot to make the dialogue exclusive for the racist woman. Either way its not important and we'll correct both these problems in the public release. This post is really just to say we are aware of the problems, but if you find anything else, any grammer, or spelling awry, tell us, it will go on a list of things to check and change.

Thanks.

DM

Okay, I've just been to Khuul and 'interviewed' the said NPCs. I have a few ideas, and they may involve necromancy since all three mention it and, each have something slightly different to say. I also just took an underwater trek from Khuul to Valenvaryon, and of course there are tons of Dreugh, so there may be a possibility of incorporating something about them into the dialogue threads..

It occurs to me, it might be a plan to draw from the many Morrowind books around for the conversations around 'Morrowind Lore'. In addition to all the volumes I've collected, I have the numerous tomes littered about Abu's Manor to pour over

Right now I'm wondering if there will be a way of pulling the above ideas into the more mundane 'my trade' 'background' dialogue options, or if I'll end up doing something quite different. It is interesting to note that when you have completed the one Imperial Cult Quest they all mention the witch at the eggmine... *grin* Some intriguing fodder here..

Ahhhh Necromancy, Sounds great, i love it. And i think Dm already has some things about Dreugh so that will fit in with what you have to say...

With regard to what Blake said about Dreugh - yeah one of my NPC's in Khuul says that she's noticed thier numbers increasing, so it would be very cool to build on that. If you want to see whats in Khuul so far I've attached the current plugin as a zip file to this post. You should talk to the silt strider guy and the shipmaster lady.