Hey guys, just a quick question. I'm writing up the dialogue for my mod, and I've noticed there's a few instances of swear words. Not a lot, but enough to be noticeable, IMO.

Personally, a bit of this kind of language doesn't bother me at all, and I think it fits the context of what's going on and the personalities of my characters, but the fact is that vanilla Oblivion has very, very few instances of swearing.

So, I thought I'd ask the forums. How much swearing is too much? Does it break immersion for you? And if so, why?

The way I see it, any language that is used should fit in with the original dialog. Otherwise, you are drawing attention to the fact that this is not from the original game, and therefore you break the fourth-wall.
It's very easy to write very descriptive and violent dialog without resorting to swear words.... unless swear words are all that you know.

Also, fantasy fiction in general usually stays away from swear words that we use now. It unnecessarily and immediately dates the game to our generation, when the vulgar words should sound archaic and more "old-fashioned" so that they fit into the fantasy setting.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. However, it's not like I'm dropping F-bombs, more like an Ayelid ghost refers to the main character's mother (if playing as a human, anyway) as the world's oldest profession. It fits the context of the setting, but I agree that it does sort of detract from the setting at the same time.

That sounds reasonable enough. Do recall, there are a few swearwords in vanilla Oblivion (Adamus Philida gets off a few obsceneties at Sithis, and the Cheydinhal Fighter's Guild head-orc has some off-color lines, too) so a few obscenities are perfectly reasonable.

But don't make like you're the next Quentin Tarantino unless you're trying to make your mod feel different from Oblivion.

Good responses. I would also suggest that too much profanity really makes the mod seem more immature. Movies that overuse the F-word are obviously targeted at an adolescent audience. Very few non-teenagers actually talk that way in real life unless they are emotionally immature or insecure.

If you want a great point of reference for what swears and curses are 'fitting' within the Elder Scrolls universe, just try reading the books and literature provided right within the games. You can find almost every text ever written in the Elder Scrolls up on the Imperial Library, although a great deal of it is also available on the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages as well.

There is a surprising deal of foul language which goes on in some of those books, but because it isn't the same as we're used to, for the most part, you might not catch it all the first time.

Anyhow, hope that was helpful... and good luck!

At least make the swearing lore appropriate, use n'wah, NUMNIT, or "busier than a bookseller in Bliss" instead of RL profanity.EDIT @ 10:11 CST another Morrowind term Mabrigash.
To the moderators please feel free to edit this post, this is a gray area.

Yeah, that's what I find cool. It reminds me when we studied Shakespeare in school. The text would seem super boring and then the teacher would explain what it really meant! You wouldn't believe the words that passed for curse words back then. If you dig some of those up, it would lend a nice touch to your mod. Here's a link to the http://www.imperial-library.info/ The Argonian Maid is one of the more obvious ones. I can't think of any other examples right now, but if I find one, I'll post it.

I agree with a lot of the points dropped here - modern cursing slang dates your mod and excessive cursing makes it stand out a lot from the game itself, there are a lot of in-game curses and terms of disparagement that can and often should be used instead of RL slang, etc.

However, I'm going to weigh in on the flip side here, for the sake of giving all sides their due if nothing else. First, it should be noted that the game we're playing shipped with a Mature rating. While the vast majority of the game doesn't really seem to merit this, there are some really, really dark corners to find if you go looking for them. A little cursing? Nothing I'd flinch at compared to, say, the lore on Molag Bal. Anybody who has judged themselves sufficiently mature to play this game can probably deal with some cussing.

Second, someone claimed above that noone cusses a lot except the emotionally immature. Not true. I'd be almost ready to accept "no middle-class, educated, religious white Americans cuss a lot unless they're emotionally immature", but that's because in that particular pocket of culture cussing can be legitimately shocking. In cultures where cussing isn't shocking, it's just a part of the vocabulary everybody uses. I learned this to my surprise when I befriended someone from a very poor New Yorker background in college; he cussed constantly, but there was never any vitriol in it, no desire to shock the hearer and no malice whatsoever, and you could tell that plain as day. On top of that, the very definition of which words are curses varies considerably from place to place. My understanding is that in Australia the F-word is about as common as breathing. And on the the flip side, I was warned as a child that my great-grandfather would take moral offense at the exclamations "jeez" or "dang it". In short, a character's background and personality is what should matter most in deciding whether it's appropriate for them to curse, and how they choose to curse.

Good luck with your mod!
Asterai

Wrong. Check your history, then come back to that one. Or even, failing that, check any half decent dictionary.

The four biggest four letter words that come to mind right now are all MUCH older than, it would seem, you might think. Really. Like, hundreds and hundreds of years or more. Varying word by word, of course.

Medieval times, and well before that, people were swearing. All over the place. "Harshly", at that.

And as for real life - of the more modern variety - I think you'll find most advlts will swear, on occasion. It's nothing to do with immaturity, insecurity, or what have you. It's part of the vernacular, so it's there as an option. Particularly in times of pain, stress, surprise, shock, etc. After all, not everyone is brought up in extreme puritan fashion, with peers/environment/media/experiences/interests/activities to match, throughout a lifetime. Um, to put it mildly.

I would say swearing in an Oblivion mod is just fine, for many of the reasons listed above, it's unrealistic to remove swearing altogether, too little can be equally immersion breaking IMO. But I would add that swearing in the hands of a bad writer is often worse than omitting it altogether. I've seen many a young modder with poor language/writing skills overusing swear words in place of forming real character and natural dialogue; I cringe playing those mods it's just bad writing stashed behind profanities. If you are pretty confident with writing and can use swear words in a fair context, I'd say go for it. :foodndrink:

I'd say if you're going to use swear terms, try and find stuff that's fitting to the setting. While our old friends the 4-letter words have a long and rich history here on Earth, Tamriel isn't the natural environment for them for the most part. Though there are two real world words I can think of off-hand that are used, but I don't know if they're entirely appropriate to post as examples.

Someone mentioned n'wah and swit, I'm sure there's others that aren't coming to mind.

Well, there's Fetcher, for one... which while not exactly 'vulgar', it is obviously a derisive insult meant to imply uselessness or inferiority.

I'm not sure of other examples, really, but the obvious references towards "Oblivion" being equivalent to Hell are hard to ignore. "Oblivion take you!", obviously, being the Elder Scrolls equivalent of "Go to Hell".

With a little effort, you'll find plenty of evidence right within the lore which will help you determine an appropriate amount of vulgarity.

Yeah, I would also agree to just keep it in context. That's what I was trying to say in my previous post. As for foul language being a sign of immaturity, I would say, like others, it depends on your cultural region. I deal with a lot of business professionals, all with university degrees - Bachelor at least - and I can tell you our language would peel paint of the walls in some places.

It's funny because as a Canadian, we have Quebecois swearing. It's all based on the church. They don't care about f-bombs or excretement and don't even consider them a swear word. However say Tabernacle or Chalice and you've just said the most horrid swear words you can imagine. And now I hope I haven't offended any French Canadians - although I suspect that if they are visiting these forums, they not only say such words, they can also quote the proper verb conjucation for them.

So the safe bet is to stick to the curse words the game has already given you, if you can find them all

I'd say that how much bad language is "too much" depends entirely on how much of it is believable, which depends somewhat on the context, and the character who is speaking, could you see the character who is speaking swearing a lot? Also, in the context, does it seem appropriate for that character to swear? I also think one thing to remember is that overusing bad language can actually diminish its impact, because when a character can't say a complete sentence without swearing, such words suddenly seem somewhat trivial, and when it gets to the point where swearing would really be warranted, it carries less strength as a result. Sometimes, using the occassional swear at the right moment can be a lot more powerful than doing it regularly, because it shows that when you're characters feel the need to swear, they really mean it.

I'd also agree that if you want it to feel like it fits in with the rest of the game, you should probably try to limit it to the kind of language you'd expect to hear in the default game where possible. Since using words that you wouldn't see someone use in the unmodded game tends to stand out and feel a little inappropriate in the setting. Of course, you can do whatever you want with you're mod, but if you want it to fit in with the setting, I think doing that is a good idea.