Morrowind, or why the setting is everything

 

There is a new (is it really though?) concept in these days, which is nostalgia for something you never experienced in your life because it happened before your time. Well, I can't say that I'm immune to that. All the contrary: it's been almost three years that I swim in a subtle nostalgia for the '80s, which I almost never experienced (I was born in the July of '89. At least I can say that I "was there" when the Cold War ended). Music, aesthetic and objects, but also themes, movies and the like. But this is not the main topic of my post. In fact I'm here to talk about Morrowind.

Morrowind is a fictional land placed in the Elder Scrolls games and I simply love it. It's the location for the third installment of that series and that videogame is widely considered the BEST Elder Scrolls chapter. Yeah that game is pretty dated (2002) and although we've (well, not me I confess) visited Morrowind in recent times in Elder Scrolls Online (technically also in Skyrim, since the island of Solstheim in the fourth era belongs to Morrowind), TES III is still the most morrowind-ian experience you'll get. So play it. Like, now. Install overhauls, mods, different engines (Open MW is the way), just experience it. But, why?

Well Morrowind of course belongs to the fantasy genre, but it is a fucking original setting. So original that I haven't really found anything yet to surpass it (well, ok, Planescape is cool AF too). So you'll have the classic undead, mages, swords and prophecies, but almost nothing here is a pale copy of a pale copy. Morrowind is alien but also deep, and has an immersive, alive environment.

So, why I started this post with that nostalgia thing? That's because for years I had a nostalgia for Morrowind that I could not explain. My entry in the TES universe was with Skyrim, but the more I learned about dunmer culture and story, the less I cared for dragonborns, Nords and civil wars. I overhauled so many times Solstheim to be the perfect dunmer-place that at a certain point I decided to face the struggle of making TES III stable and bugless enough to finally play it. I was intimidated by it, because I heard so many bad things about how bad it has been programmed. But I sort-of made it and was finally able to roam the island of Vvardenfell for the first time. In 2016.

I never ended that playthrough. My modded version was functioning, but still higly unstable and somewhat laggy. One day, after a crash, I simply let it go. I tried again in 2019, with a completely different set of mods/overhauls/engine (that Open MW I mentioned earlier) and everything ran smoothly, beautifully and finally I completed the main quest. I quenched my thirsty nostalgia for this land and I took a pause from this universe. Or so I thought.

I'm playing it again now. The thirst was not quenched, after all. It's not the game per se that keeps me going back to it, it's the setting. In fact, this time I don't want it to be challenging (and Morrowind can be very challenging), I just want to chill out in Balmora or lazily explore a Sixth House base and play those fascinating array of bells that they've got. I want to hear the silt striders' drone while admiring a (very low-poly) sunset in Seyda Neen, or feel the mistery that exhudes from the Telvanni's house/mushrooms. I want to finally and truly read all of the 36 Lessons of Vivec in-game and hunt down those annoying cliff racers with my spear.

I did not intend this kind of "spear" with my last phrase, you know.

So you see, setting is everything. Whatever you're doing, be it an rpg campaign, a novel, a movie, a comic, if you have a strong and unique setting, you will be set on a good path. Great stories will come out almost naturally from it, with profound characters and themes. For example, take Vivec, one of the three living gods of the Tribunal of Morrowind. He/she is complex to a point that people still search for clarifications about his/her motifs. Is Vivec good? That depends on how you view the world he/she lives in.

Foul Murder

If you are interested, I'll now drop some ideas on how to adapt Morrowind as a setting in some ttrpgs. First and foremost, roam the wikis for context, quest ideas (heck, you could even play the TES III campaign to people who never experienced it and see where that goes), items and lore.

I've heard and read very good things about the Cypher System, to the point where it could be the simplest way to play a tabletop version of Morrowind (or of really anything to be honest), but I've never actually tried it.

One way I'd like to explore is using the system of Symbaroum, which I think is interestingly malleable, although truly hardcore for characters (mainly because how magic works, maybe it would need a modification to the whole Corruption mechanics).

Obviously D&D. I mean, the Elder Scrolls were born out of a D&D campaign of some Bethesda employees after all. The DM might have to work a little more, especially to adapt certain races (look at my modest attempt to create Nerevar for example, without the new features introduced with Tasha's I would have had to create a custom race) or classes, but it's definitely doable.

There exists an Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG in the works, which to my understanding is a literal adaptation of the videogames mechanics to the world of pen and paper. Other fan-made rpg's do exist (a couple precisely based on Morrowind) and the link I provided also has links for them.

I should also mention TES3MP, which is a multiplayer fork of Open MW. Yes, this is a videogame and not a pen and paper experience, but it lets you play in Morrowind with your friends, so I guess it qualifies to a certain degree. Also, here a GM could create customized quest mods for their players...

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These were just ideas. If you are familiar with one of the games I suggested, you should go with that; if not, totally check out the Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG, it's free and I suspect that the authors would be delighted. Well, check it out anyway, but you get what I'm saying.