Morrowind Mods for Roleplay value

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I know the best bet for most CRPG games is to play the original, then add the mods. My experience, though, has been the opposite - wait until the fan base is strong and solid, people have given the feedback, and play fun games that have folks who really know the game solidly. And add their fixes and interactions. That may mean I am out of date by a year or three (or 7 ) but I think it has served me well. My case in point here is reading the descriptions of Morrowind, and what folks like/don't like.

So, the basic question - for a confirmed roleplayer, coming from BG/BGII, just getting a system that can run this well, what mods would be recommended for Morrowind after full patching for

1. expansion of NPC interaction
2. repair/smoothing of burrs, bumps, and bugs?

 

1. Haven't tried much myself yet, but stay away from anything that has a lot of female characters, especially if they require Better Bodies (BB itself isn't bad, but it creates opportunities for rather juvenile mods).

2. I'd say just fix things yourself as you find them, but then I love debugging. Could give you my own that I've built, if you've got the GotY edition, but no promises; I'm still finding things.

 

I would greatly appreciate it; I will come begging once I have it up and running (I expect late December early January). I don't have any version yet, but am building a rig and Morrowind is the first new install on it (I research well in advance).

And thank you for the info on the Female Character loop. I have nothing against gratuitous juvenile display, but am really looking for good interactive NPCs rather than "oooh look at that" .

 

I have very few mods myself. An Apartment I downloaded for Balmora. A house in Seyda Neen I made myself. A plug-in that lets magicka regenerate slowly while you are awake. I have one that adds to the Twin-Lamps but I can't really recommend it as I have had problems with it. Fel fixed one.

My advice for mods/plug-ins for Morrowind. Be careful. So far my experience has been that they mess things up more than they help or overpower the game.

Oh, I have one that brightens up the plants you can gather ingredients from. So far I haven't felt the need to add much to Morrowind for changing the game playing or adding to it.

 

I can’t really think of good plugins for role play. Most come across pretty lame and buggy.

Probably the largest and most popular “role play” plugin is The Underground. It adds numerous new quests, most vampire related, and creates a massive underground society beneath Balmora. There are some reasonable opportunities to play either good or evil, although the dialogue is written like a sixth grade play. The plugin author, Quarl, has come up with some incredibly creative ideas that I can guarantee that you’ve never seen in Morrowind. Unfortunately the plugin can be a bit buggy and in order to follow the main plot line you’re essentially forced into a romantic relationship with a vampire of the opposite sex. The Underground will also increase load times and bog your hardware down unless you have a really fast computer…that’s how big the plugin is. As such, I can’t really recommend it for most players.

In my opinion, most plugins imbalance the game in such a way that it can ruin much of the challenge.

You really can’t go wrong with any of the Bethesda released plugins however. Bittercoast Sounds, Area Effect Arrows, Siege at Firemoth, Helm of Tohan and the Propylon Index all add quests or balanced items to the game.

Better Bodies isn’t bad, although some may use it for a peep show. It’s actually required for many mods that provide some really nice modded clothing and armor. I’ve run version 2.2 forever and have found it truly augments the game visual as well as opening up a world of “appearance” mods.

By far the best “house” plugin I’ve ever tried is A Good Place to Stay. This awesome plugin adds a house built into a hill in Balmora complete with an alchemy lab and an armor room. The armor room even has wooden mannequins that you can equip complete sets of different kinds of armor on.

Some of my favorites are those that do so very little. Book Rotate allows you to place the books you collect upright in a normal position in a bookcase (A Good Place to Stay has two large, empty ones). Combine Book Rotate with Book Covers and every book in the game gets a custom cover with unique art on the front and title on the spine. It’s great fun for an anal collector type person like myself.

One last plugin that has been kind of fun has been Ye Olde Knight Shoppe. It adds a retired Knight and shop in the foyer of Fort Firemoth. There you can buy, for a fairly steep price, some really beautifully rendered medium and heavy armor items. All the items are balanced with appropriate AC so you don’t get UBER, you just get to create an armor set that suits your Paladinesque character. He doesn’t pay much to buy items so you can’t exploit it to gain gold.

Always take care of where you dl a plugin. There are a lot of outdated sites on the web that have corrupted or busted plug-ins. I’ve always had good luck with Planetelderscrolls.

All in all, choose plugins wisely. Look at the number of dl’s and the feedback from the users. A poorly chosen plug in can ruin your game, so save with caution. They can also be tricky to unzip so you may find yourself manually having to move around meshes, textures and sound files.

Good luck!

 

[quick side question, please keep going on this - the feedback is extremely helpful and appreciated. I took a look through SP links for IWD Compendium and BG Compendium, and only found Amazon.uk direct links, and did not find Elder Scrolls links - if I want to make sure the purchases are supporting SP, I need to go through the non-direct links {lesser commission} provided in the "how to support SP" thread http://www.sorcerers.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/18/666.html , right? Or are you folks putting up direct links for Elder Scrolls and these for US users soon? I can wait - as I said, 2 month lead time on this. January is going to be lots of fun... ]

 

Thank you - I didn't want to sideline, but it is useful to have the information as many places as possible, anyways...
I was talking about the new DVD releases of the IE games, and Morrowind as well.

http://www.sorcerers.net/Gamestore/index.php

has links to recent/upcoming compilations (entrie BG Saga on 1 DVD, entire IWD Saga on 1 DVD) but they seem to be only available thorugh the .uk link; I have not found TES:Morrowind (preferably the Game Of The Year edition you folks have mentioned) on a direct link. I am happy to do it manually, but your post in the old forums indicated you get a higher percent return from direct referral than from the signup; win - win situation if there is a direct link available through your store

 

Thank you - Morrowind purchased 10 minutes ago from above link (I will wait for purchase of my backups of BG and IWD to see if .us links become available).

Sounds like I would be unhappy with The Underground, but am off to research the other recommendations!

 

For a roleplayer ... well, quests-wise I have little in my collection.

Environment mods:
A flock of seagulls
abotWaterLife
abotWhereAreAllBirdsGoing
The Lighting Mod (TLM)

Rules mods:
Wound Penalties
Falling Down (you fall prone when exhausted... embarassing in the middle of a fight)
Vertical limit climbing mod is fun.
Galsiahs Character Development ... sounded good at the time, I'm not sure if I got far enough in my playthrough to see a great difference.

Wrye Mash seems to be the best mod manager out there for Morrowind. Recommended.

There's an infinite number of graphical mods out there, you'll find a bunch you like easily enough.

And a certain Kevin Dorner you might remember has a text patch for morrowind too.

Somebody else has an unofficial fixpack for the game. I have a Morrowind Patch v1.6.2 installed at the moment; never quite sure where I find these things. (looks like this one: http://www.etherealsoftware.com.au/patch/ )

 

OK, I tried to resist, but failed. It took some serious research, a good bit of tweaking, and a willingness to drop graphics resolution through the floor as well as slightly OC my NVidia 5500, but I got it all working on my ancient machine with a playable - if - slow 15 to 20 fps in town and a bit higher indoors. And I definitely think this is my kind of game - it is alot of fun!

I am investigating the above mods and fixes, testing stuff, and playing around - I have to find a way to get my computer built faster (like not playing and going out and getting a seasonal part-time job).