I realize for most people this isn't really an either/or question. But I often find myself struggling to find a good balance between free-roaming adventuring on the one hand and guided questlines on the other.

And for some reason, I find this balance most difficult to achieve in Morrowind (out of the 3 latest TES games).

That is, I often get wrapped up in a faction questline, and find my interest in my character waning once the quest is over (or once I reach an impasse). But a faction questline does provide some real motivation for exploration, and can help define your character in the early stages.

At the other extreme, I find it hard to 'make a living' in Morrowind by just exploring/adventuring randomly. There's only so many times I can journey around the ashlands or the grazelands or any region before feeling like I'm "not doing anything". But in the early stages, exploration in Morrowind is extremely rewarding, more so than in the other games.

An ideal solution would be to mix the two - supplement your guild quests with free-roaming, or vice versa. But I find that hard to do in practice, since questlines can get pretty urgent, so "taking a break" seems really irresponsible. And on the flip side, it's almost impossible for me to just dip my toes into a faction questline, since you end up advancing and getting caught up in it all, which usually ruins my character concept if that character was intended to be a rugged individualist, for example.

It would be great, I think, if Skyrim's radiant quest system could live alongside the interesting factions and long faction questlines of Morrowind - so I could just 'do jobs' for the Thieves' Guild or the Fighters' Guild without advancing if I so chose. But alas, that's not the system we have.

So how do you handle that tension between individual adventuring and the pressures of joining a faction?

It depends entirely on the character. When I roleplay I'm really not "playing a video game" so much as I'm telling myself a story. And, as in other forms of fiction, each character's story is different.

Sometimes a character will join a guild right away, become disaffected with the guild, and then leave (at which point free-form adventuring takes over). Sometimes a character begins a game as a wanderer (free-form adventuring) and then decides to join a guild. Sometimes I want to tell a more complex story and I will allow my character to start a guild but get involved in other adventures along the way (a mix of guild and free-form adventuring).

For me it's all about the character. I let the character guide me. The character has a story to tell and I use the game assets provided by Bethesda to help me unlock that story. If the vanilla game does not help me tell my character's story then I turn to mods for help, or I use my imagination. Completely imaginary stories have resulted in some of my favorite games.

I don't have any hard-and-fast rules about this. I try to stay loose, improvise, listen to my character. My character knows what she wants to do better than I do, most of the time.

It seems to me that most of the guild quests work like this: Ask for "duties," receive quest, do quest, return for reward, ask for "advancement," and then ask for "duties" again... I've found that I can break the cycle just before asking for more "duties," and can go off to happily explore/hunt/gather without any sense of urgency. Then come back when it's time for more guild work.

By doing it this way, my characters' guild advancement tends to mirror their levels fairly well.

As Pseron Ward puts it, it depends entirely on the character.

In a couple of cases, I had a character who did assignments for a Guild, but after the completion of the mission, would often go back to investigate places discovered in passing during the course of the mission. Another character was prone to getting lost, looking for shelter for the night, and clearing out critters, bandits, or occasional Daedra from the first likely-looking spot (or else just trying to get out alive if it contained a whole lot of real trouble), then continuing the mission the next day after a good night's sleep.

Decide on the personality of the character, what interests them, WHY they're doing what they're doing, and then do what the character would do under the circumstances. There are always going to be "slow spots" where the character may lose focus after completing the task at hand, in which case you need to figure out what the character would consider to be the next good move (which might range from joining another faction to wandering into town to get drunk). When it reaches the point where the character has nothing left which they feel needs to be done, then maybe it's time to start a new character.

I have similar problems with you, OP, though especially with Oblivion and Skyrim. Those games have even more of this "sense of urgency" going on than Morrowind ever does, and for me that feeling of being in a hurry makes it really immersion-breaking to go elsewhere during the questline. However, I don't have this problem with Morrowind. As glargg said, you can leave the quest giver without asking for more quests at that time. There is no-one to urge you to ask for more quests at that particular time, and the storylines themselves mainly don't feel so linear and urgent as they do on later titles, at least in my opinion. Just try leaving the guild halls and whatnot between the jobs, without asking for more work, and go free-form exploring!

Morrowind also seems to have more dungeons that are not quest related, compared to the later titles. I think this, along with the slower pace overall, urges you to explore the wilderness more without questing. Another immersion-breaking thing for me, that is, is to get a random journal update when I find a random item in a random dungeon. How on earth does my character know that it's quest related if he hasn't taken that quest? I think these moments are exponentially rarer in MW than in Skyrim at least (not sure about Ob), which is a really good thing and supports free-form adventuring.

So, what I mean to say is, Morrowind in my mind is the least problematic newer TES game in this department. I think it really allows you to abandon questlines more often than not if you pay attention to detail and quest-giver dialogue. Guild work feels more like "just jobs" than some movie-plot-on-rails which you can't really abort credibly when you're in the middle. Even if you follow the dialogue and come to same conclusion as I do - that NPCs only rarely urge you to take more quests right after the previous one* - but you still cannot abort the questline for a second, then how about you create some kind of character who wants changes in their life? Or even needs them? - Play a character with ADHD! Someone who constantly switches their main focus, can't help but do this. Or just some jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none type who is a bit curious of everything, can do a bit of everything but can't decide what their main goal could be, and who thus is bouncing between the factions and/or free exploring.

Hope you get somewhere and find the right balance!

(* There are actually moments in Morrowind where quest givers suggest you not to take more quests yet!)

In the same way as those above have stated, I play based on what I think my character would do and it just kind of flows from there. I rarely find the need to seek balance between exploring and questing, but I can understand where you are coming from as I didn't always play this way.

I also agree with Nelacayne... The sense of urgency in Morrowind isn't there for the guild quests, with a few exceptions. It often feels like they just want you to get around to it when you have some time on your hands and even when you've completed that quest there's no pressure to move on to the next immediately until you get to the very high ranks. Go grab some Sujamma and relax, double back and check out that cave or mine that you passed on your way back to town, go indulge in some earthly delights, then head back to the guild for your next assignment. I always like to think it would take a few days before they had the next quest available for me anyway. Skyrim is kind of the opposite, unless you're just doing the radiant quests, you feel kind of silly from an RP standpoint abandoning the guild in the middle of what's going on even for a few days. You get thrown into the deep end within a quest or two before you've had a chance to blink and then it's too late to stop what has been started.

If you're not already, try to avoid micro-managing your stats, then you'll be forced to explore in order to meet the requirements of the next guild level anyway. I found years ago when I stopped forcing myself to train and +5 attributes every level that I wasn't always guaranteed to meet the requirements for the next level in the guild, which meant I had to go hone my skills elsewhere for a while.

Great replies everyone, thanks!

This isn't a problem I always have - some characters manage to have a really well-executed 'story arc' that carries them through some factions and some exploration - but it is something I've noticed ever since Oblivion (the first TES game I really played).

I like the idea of just ignoring the 'more duties' dialogue option. For some reason, I almost never think to do this. It probably has to do with player knowledge vs. character knowledge. As a player, I know I have to click that button for the quest to continue, and most of the time I have difficulty resisting that temptation.

But my starting in Oblivion may also have something to do with this issue. In Oblivion, I learned that guild quests are mostly linear and tend to increase in intensity as you go along, sort of like floating down a river that starts off slow and peaceful but gradually turns into rapids. So in Morrowind, I tend to approach the faction quests in the same way - they start slow but I'm always looking ahead, going "yes, yes, but where are the rapids? Just around the next curve, probably..."

So I need to recalibrate my expectations, I think. I like Nelacayne's statement that MW's guild quests can feel like "just jobs". I think I'll have to consciously take that approach. Just made a Nord Barbarian (default class) and think I will start the Fighter's Guild with that in mind - it's a way to make some cash here and there, but not his life's work. That ought to leave plenty of time for seeing what's over that next hill, exploring weird ruins, and hunting these crazy alien creatures that are all over the place.