Hello. Allow me to begin by expressing a big "thank you" for the LGNPC body of work. I count myself a devoted fan.

I'm posting to bring your attention to a compatibility issue between LGNPC Pax Redoran and NazoX9's guards mod, which he resolved by creating a patch to change the filtering on a few Pax Redoran dialog entries (detailed http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1049492-relz-nazox9s-guard-mod/page__view__findpost__p__15672198). I was wondering if you feel that this changed filtering would be safe to include in a future release of Pax Redoran, obviating the need for a patch.

Thanks again.

I would also like to voice my appreciation and thanks for the wonderful work done in these mods. Quick question, with the release of MCA 6.1, does the Less Generic Secret Masters compatibility plugin for MCA need to be updated to work with the new version?

@Jac and Alaisiagae: Thank you for the offers of assistance. Such business should be conducted privately, but right now I am still trying to get my head around what needs to be done. For anyone up to the challenge of a writing test here is a line from a graduation speech I listened to in June:

"...our ambition is unfathomable."

What is wrong with that phrase?

@connary: you had us all convinced of your qualifications when you abbreviated 'postscript' P.D.

I do appreciation your observations. You have been a part of this community for so you’re your wisdom is always welcome even if you do not have any first-hand knowledge of the mods under discussion. I cannot pass judgment on you. I do not play Morrowind anymore either, and back when I did I had never heard of the LGNPC project. :bolt:

@Ostar: I am gratified by your confidence in my judgment, but your work is of too high a quality to ever be in danger of being rewritten. Besides we have long been of the same mind about the goals of the LGNPC project.


Do not blame yourself - you did not open the can, it had been long open. Your very reasonable question provided a transition for me to address issues that I had too long neglected.

What you write about the pace of feedback is true. When I began in my present role I was shocked at how some glaring bugs could have endured without being reported for a year or much longer.

No, LGNPC is not an 'adventure' mod. Still we like including quests when it reinforces the storytelling. It is a way to make our NPCs lives more vivid.


Good. I wrote that in the hope of making you smile.

@Kir: Thank you for the report. Those errors have been attended excepting the illogic of the LGNPC Aldruhn quests.

@abot, Debi, Symon and Zeno: Thank you for your support of the project.

@Macready: I am not familiar with NazoX9's mod, but I am looking into it. I gather it replaces every guard in the game with a leveled list to create random guards with (somewhat) unique appearances. Presumably these guards have IDs different than Bethesda's guards making LGNPC dialog inaccessible. If that is the case then Nazox9's mod will break the Lost Sister quest from LGNPC Pax Redoran and both quests from LGNPC Khuul. I do not know the content of Less Generic Tribunal, but we will watch for this concern when we begin work on LGNPC Tribunal. Updates of Pax Redoran and Khuul will not be released for some time (after they have been proofread), but except for some insistencies in the dialog for LGNPC Khuul and the new LGNPC Ald Velothi (not available) that refer to the appearance of the Bethesda guards it should be possible to implement changes that would make the patch unnecessary.

@Browncoat. I do not have Morrowind Comes Alive so I cannot comment on its compatibility with LGNPC Secret Masters. However the way one could find out would be to run the two mods together and see if there are any problems. Unless players report that the existing patch does not work as intended I do not expect that Ostar will be updating it.

You've seen my work, Cyrano. I'm willing to work some more on Ebonheart should you need the help.

As for your sentence, something being unfathomable means that it can't be measured or comprehended, neither of which I'm sure the speaker meant to say. Ambition does have its limits, even if they are huge. Without having the context of why it was said, it would be difficult for me to rewrite that sentence. But, at first glance, I would change it to something like our ambition is limitless, or boundless, or will carry us to new heights, etc.

Anyway, you know how to contact me whenever you're ready.

Hello cyran0. Your assessment of the situation is correct. Thanks for taking the time to consider this issue and promote compatibility between the two mods. Thanks as well for the warning about LGNPC Khuul. I'll deal with this in the short term by using the CS to ignore the Khuul (-9,17) cell edits in NazoX9's mod. That will restore the reference to "redoran guard male" and should resolve the issue.

@Jac: Again I thank you for the offer, but work on Ebonheart is suspended until all of our existing installments can be edited for spelling as well as for other fixes and additions.


This was not directed at you, but thrown out there for anyone reading that post closely. I was thinking more along the lines that to fathom is to plumb the depths of the sea, whereas ambition is to aspire (reach up) for something greater. So "unfathomable ambition" is something of an oxymoron. I weary of editing similarly flawed dialog when I can do little more than correct the spelling. Any of your edits would be perfectly appropriate.

@Macready: I have examined NazoX9's work and we can accommodate it in a somewhat satisfactory way - certainly better than patches that do not filter the duplicate dialog properly, and could result in crashes to desktop if the player learns something he/she shouldn't. However, the lost sister Adruso Raviro in Pax Redoran refers to her 'brother', the guard in Molag Mar. There is no longer any assurance that she has a brother. Perhaps one of the side effects of the disease of vampirism is not recognizing one's sibling's gender. :rolleyes: Certainly we could filtered the guard's dialog for gender and only advance the quest if the guard is male. However a different NPC offers the quest, so it will be broken until the player kills the guard enough times to finally spawn a male - the elusive Y chromosome.

This along with the other contradictions of gender and appearance that could result with other guards addressed by LGNPC would hint that a better 'patch' for these few instances would be to remove the change from the affected areas in NazoX9's mod (as you have done in your own game). We will do our part, but we cannot anticipate all of the changes to official NPCs that NazoX9 or other modders could make.

My offer of editing still stands as well. I've come across more than a few errors and inconsistencies, but they're usually small so I don't mention them. If you like, I'll start on one of the "smaller" ones like Pelagiad and send that to you. We can discuss this via pm if you prefer.

Why can't LGNPC give one guard in each instance a unique ID so he wouldn't be touched by the other mod? A patch would be fairly simple, just change the ID of the "brother" and the other guard.

Cyran0, it strikes me as odd that you keep saying what a pile of work you have and yet every time someone offers to help, you give some excuse as to why you can't accept assistance at this time. There are many people out there capable of proofreading dialog. It seems what you are afraid of is that some typo or poorly structured sentence will still slip through if you don't go over it yourself. I understand this. It's a combination of factors which result in severe micromanagement. Either you want help or you want to do it all yourself, which is it?

Incidentally, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with "unfathomable ambition". It has a primrose path feel to it, but "unfathomable" can simply mean "incapable of being understood". the fact that it does have meanings which refer specifically to depth and most people think of depth as being negative rather than the "soaring" positive normally associated with "ambition", the fact that it "feels" wrong, doesn't make it technically wrong.

That actually puts a finer point on my observation. If this were in LGNPC, you would feel inclined to take charge and change it, no matter who wrote it originally. This is micromanagement at it's worst. Focusing on something that isn't actually wrong.

I really do feel for you, because of the enormity of the task you have taken on. It's a fantastic set of mods which I use myself. You have helped me with troubleshooting it in the past and were extremely friendly. Sadly, in this thread it has become clear your enjoyment has declined and it shows in your posts. You seem irritable and almost ready to throw it all in. If that's the case, maybe you should just put it down and walk away for a bit. Hand a single mod over to another person with the caveat he/she cannot release it without your permission and take a vacation. Maybe even play the game?

Good Luck.

Ok, thank you. I do see that the optimal course of action is to surgically remove several small, specific pieces of NazoX9's mod, which fortunately is fairly easy to do.

This issue is really best addressed by small edits in NazoX9's mod. The only reason I didn't see it myself at first is that I was following the path started by NazoX9's patch - refiltering dialog entries. But really, if one restores just three of the original Morrowind guards (the correct three, of course), all of the issues simply vanish. I do appreciate cyran0's willingness to help, though, and would rather this discussion not to turn into some sort of indictment of his management of LGNPC.

Perhaps its unwise of me to rise to Cyrano's defense when he certainly hasn't asked me to - and please Elaura I am not attacking you or disputing the validity of any of your points - Cyrano could do that if he wished but I doubt that he will so I'd just like to make a point for those who mod but no longer play the game

You don't have to swim in the sea to show that you love it, some just enjoy walking on the shore and combing the beaches or painting it from a distance. You don't have to play Morrowind to love it and enjoy it, painting it or adding to it via the CS can be even more satisfying.

Some who played the game move on to modding and find that modding gives them as much pleasure if not more than playing it. Playing MW is an enormous time sink, modding can be even more so, therefore some of us need to decide how we are going to spend what time we do have - and I for one am glad Cyrano puts his time into modding and in helping modders - very few have gone to as much trouble to help me understand scripting and dialogue as Cyrano has and I've noticed he regualry contributes help to the CS forum helping out those stuck with scripting

Anyone can add mods to the game, even those who never play the game, if I'm playing the game or adding mod resources to my modding efforts I personally prefer them to blend with the MW world and lore and I think LGNPC does that really well.

Having spent a lot of time buried in modding dialogue myself with NPC's for the past 2 years I've learnt that that is really satisfying for roleplaying, getting into another's mind and working out their backstories - I suspect Cyrano gets the same measure of satisfaction otherwise he would of given up working on LGNPC a long time ago. If anything I wonder if Cyrano would rather less people got involved in LGNPC to avoid any issues of having to tell some modder that their work doesn't fit in with MW lore or with other events that would of impacted the NPC - he could end up spending more time trying to reason with a modder on how to improve their work than just letting the current team do it

... hmmm I can feel myself getting defensive for Cyrano when really the point I was trying to make is that I don't think you need to play the game in order to keep getting fun from modding it - I bet the developers didn't get to play the game while they were adding content yet still had a lot of fun.

@Jac: Again, thank you for the offer. However this is something I feel I have to do myself. Earlier attempts at proofreading failed to correct more errors than I care to track - although my favorite in recent memory is "...born and bread". :lmao: I made a unilateral decision and changed it to "...born and bred" with the full appreciation that the writer might have intended "...born and breaded" in the event that the NPC's mother was inclined to eat her young. I'm just saying it can be a challenge to honor the writer's intent. Anyway, I am ultimately responsible for the editing so I need to know it has been done well. While I do not rate proofreading as something I do particularly well I know what to watch out for and I am doing it slowly and carefully.


We could, so the question really is why don't we? If a modder wants to depend on something existing for the completion of a quest, the best approach is to introduce those elements with the mod. There is plenty of that going on with LGNPC quests. However we are a project that builds on existing elements of the game so dialog inconsistencies and broken quests in the wake of the changes introduced by other mods are a way of life for us. Some of this is adherence to conventions that were created early in the project. LGNPC Khuul added new dialog filtered for that town's guard and we have preserved it. Certainly we could add a second guard that would have a life and know all about the black market and other local concerns while the official guard knows nothing, but we would be introducing an inconsistency that might not otherwise exist. Yes we could create a new guard with a lost sister (not in the current cell since there would not be room to turn around in Saetring's shop), but we decided to preserve Ostar's original vision for that quest.

With a project as comprehensive as LGNPC conflicts are inevitable, therefore our approach is to 'first do no harm'. We will try not to break other mods. If other mods break our quests that is somewhat out of our control, but there are some proactive steps that can be taken. As Macready points out, the burden of compatibility rests with the mod that makes changes to the official guards. Having a few standard guards in a sea of spawned 'unique' guards should not be too great a hardship on the player.


I want to do it myself for the very reasons I offered to Jac above.

I do not enjoy managing the activities of others. Give me something to do and I will set upon the task quite happily. This unnatural role was thrust upon me. When the project was collapsing because the principal members could not continue to put so much time into it I volunteered to help with the construction set work. I did not want to manage other writers or edit their work. My offer was answered with an archive file of all the LGNPC work recorded to date and the ultimatum that the project was dead unless I decided to keep it going by taking over the administration of it.

I prefer to be writing and modding. I have not been a very successful manager of writers. In my (in)experience the majority of new writers fade away before producing dialog for a single NPC. They do not save me trouble, but rather create more of it. I invest several hours in correspondence to help them along - time that might be better spent creating the dialog myself. I also have a difficult time saying no, so when two new writers expressed an interest in joining the team in June I reluctantly agreed. We have had some brilliant writers involved in the project, and I do not want to make the mistake of turning away the next LGNPC star. Predictably (for me) neither writer has been heard from for at least seven weeks. Yes I could contact them myself, but I value the peace - and the opportunity to do something more satisfying with my time than write correspondence.


No it is not technically wrong - there are second and third definitions to words, but we usually reach for the first until it is proven it is not appropriate in the present context. My first impression was that of contradiction: using a method to measure below me to describe how far above me something is. It is an example of people trying so hard for poetry that they lose sight of the meaning. I have a very playful style of speech - I love metaphor, but when addressing an audience (this community) that is not entirely native English speakers I prefer to err on the side of caution and write with more precision. This is just as true for the dialog in our mods. In fact, it makes our writing more stylistically consistent with Bethesda's dialog - I believe that is a good thing.


If you read my previous post more closely I was lamenting that we should not alter the phrase (except to correct the spelling of 'unfathomable' if it was incorrect) because this manner of speaking might be characteristic of the NPC uttering the line.

However I must confess that while proofreading these months I have done more than correct spelling and grammar. It is very unsatisfying to invest all the time to edit the dialog and still have it be poor quality. If a line is ambiguous, I take the liberty of restructuring it, but sometimes I cannot make any sense of a sentence at all. I pledged that I would not 'Khajiitify' entries, but I have a difficult time overlooking that which I know is wrong.


Yes it is a large undertaking, but it is getting smaller by degrees. For a long time after I took over the administration of the project almost all or our resources were spent on responding to bug reports. It is unfathomable ( ) the blatant errors that existed in those early releases - hopelessly broken quests, triggers for crashes - yet some of them existed for years unreported or at least uncorrected. Hundreds or hours spent repairing the flaws in earlier installments left little time for new content. Pushing for the release of new installments at that time could have paralyzed us by making mod support 100 percent of our effort. My philosophy was to get the earlier mods working so we could concentrate on the new project towns. We were just about there before the need to proofread all of our dialog was proposed. I was really looking forward to make meaningful progress on our new projects.

I regret that I have given the impression that I am irritated - I do not resent the well-meaning posts by you and many other users of our mods. I do appreciate your concern and advice on my behalf. Again, my formal manner of writing in an open forum can give the impression that I am cross, but that is rarely the case. I do not mean to challenge what you wrote I am merely explaining my point of view. I do not complain about the workload, but rather inform the community that anticipates our next releases that it needs to measure our progress not in weeks and months as for most mods, but in months and years (seriously). I do not have a problem with the timeline, but I know that most players are disappointed that it will not happen sooner.

Yes, I knew I would not get through this proofreading task if I did not budget some fun time for myself. I have spent some time on a few personal mods, and I have worked 'illegally' on LGNPC Ald Velothi. I do not know the future of the latter - I did not mean to do very much with it. However one NPC's story gets you thinking about his or her neighbor's situation and before I knew it I had completed most of them and started the last three. Happily it is at a point I can safely stop. The dialog for one of them will be available in the next update of LGNPC Secret Masters. That way I can blame Ostar if anyone objects to the changes to Orero Omothan.

We have been tolerably productive owing to this 'quiet' period. I hope that I have not fan the flames for a new controversy in this thread. I prefer modding to discussion of the process - that is why I do not contribute to a work-in-progress thread. I posted yesterday to address the very real concerns raised by Macready and Browncoat. However to ignore what others took the trouble to post back in June might have appeared rude so I decided to respond to their remarks.


...Too late, Illuminiel chimed in while I was trying to bring this to a close.

@Illy: Do not worry - I still love you.

@The rest of you: leave Illy alone - she is entitled to her opinion and it is clear she does not mean to be critical of any of us.

@Illy: You are very perceptive, although the qualities and motivations that you ascribe to me may be true for many modders (yourself included). Yes I have some fear of being drawn into playing the game at the expense of modding, but there are other concerns. I do not split my attention well (as you speculated). I prefer to follow inspiration as far as it will take me because who knows when I will be visited by it again. It is very inefficient to pick up a work-in-progress after suspending work on it for a prolonged time. It takes too long to figure out where I was, where I was going, and why did I decide some strange workaround was necessary. I actually planned to play Oblivion this summer. I saw a couple new (to me) mods that would make playing that game tolerable. For me, playing one game while modding for another does not break my focus so much. For those of you who are wondering, no I never did load Oblivion. It is also true that I enjoy helping other modders and not just for the selfish reason that I know that means there will be more mods for me to add to my game when I do play again. It is also for the selfish reason that I enjoy the diversion and challenge of working on someone else's problem - especially when the highlight of my modding day is editing dialog. I will admit that posting in the Construction Set forum allowed me to feel like a contributing member of the community during a time I was deliberately avoiding this thread for over two months. Thank you for your supportive post.

When are we going to se LGNPC Pax Telvanni/Hlaalu, and/or which are we going to see first?

Which 3 edits did you make (and type of edits) - I can use EE or CS but I want to make sure I fix it correctly. I am using all LGNPC mods and NazoX9 guards and patches. Thanks.

Let's continue guards mod discussion http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1049492-relz-nazox9s-guard-mod/page__view__findpost__p__16311957.

I've got to agree with Cyrano here. Dialog should flow, no tripping up over the meanings, and should be accessible to ESL speakers/readers.

Well, as the main creator of PAX Redoran, I will chime in. PAX consumed months and months of my time (sometimes 10 hours a day), and required "thinking " like a Redoran most of the time to make them real and believable. I greatly enjoyed doing PAX Redoran, but doubt I personally will have the time to do PAX Hlaalu/Telvanni in the future. Also, I like to believe it wasn't hard to think like a Redoran, but it was draining when I created LGNPC Tel Uvirith to think like a Telvanni for long periods.
So I guess the answer is that it will probably have to come some yet undiscovered LGNPC star.

Well you did a fine job Ostar, because I adore the Telvanni, but LGNPC TU is the only Telvanni mod I use. Far too many fall into the trap of 'Mwoo ha ha' Evil Telvanni, as espoused by House Hlaalu and the temple. I prefer them portrayed as subtle individualists with an anti-Imperial bent myself.

As an example:-

'Let's destroy the Mages Guild! Mwoo Ha Ha - what fun we shall have!'

No, lets subvert it, or belittle it. How about a stroke of genius! It's mocked by the Cyrodil Mages Guild (witness the dumping of incompetents on it as Archmage). Why not absorb it into House Telvanni! Now that's how Telvanni destroy the Mages Guild!

Not sure which LGNPC mod it comes from, but http://yfrog.com/hqoopsypj crashes the game when the topic is clicked.

@rylasasin: We do not have any intention of such mods at this time. Pax Redoran was not a LGNPC project, but a personal mod of Ostar. His modding philosophy made Pax Redoran a natural fit with other LGNPC installments and we are honored to be associated with it. What Ostar may have meant is that it requires a modder with a thorough understanding and appreciation of House Hlaalu or House Telvanni to create a faction mod comparable to Pax Redoran. Certainly there are already such mods already (Grandmaster of Hlaalu and Rise of House Telvanni), although these appear to extend the player's responsibilities after rising to the head of that Great House. Perhaps one day a Hlaalu or Telvanni enthusiast will create additional faction quests for those Houses in the style of Pax Redoran.

@Macready: Oops! That is from LGNPC NoLore (it includes generic responses written for Khajiit - hence the designation LGNPC Khajiit). It is now fixed. We will watch for similar errors as we edit that mod. Thank you for reporting the problem.

Just a minor readme update request. When (if) LGNPC Tel Uvirith is next updated could the readme be changed?

Currently it states:
Stuporstar's Uvirith's Legacy 2.0 readme saysI'd expect by the time of the next update pretty much everyone will be using the latest version of Stuporstar's mod so I'd suggest altering the readme to be:Thanks!

If you already knew about this then please ignore me

Vevur Arvel in the Venim Manor entrance is causing a crash when you ask him about House Redoran after you become Archmaster.

It fills Warnings.txt with:

@Dragon32: Thank you. Stuporstar and I had discussed this. We created a method of reconciling our mods that did not require a special version of LGNPC Tel Uvirith. When we next update the latter the readme will correctly identify the non-Uvirith Inside version as appropriate with Uvirith's Legacy.

@Sslaxx: I checked the two most likely candidates for altering the official VenimGuardScript and neither LGNPC Aldruhn nor Pax Redoran make any changes to the script or declare a global variable DM_temp. I checked previous version of LGNPC Aldruhn as well. Do you have any reason to suppose that this is a result of one of our mods? If so, please post your suspicions - it will assist me in the investigation of the problem. We do not routinely (ever?) use a 'DM' prefix with game elements introduce by LGNPC mods.

I'm no script / dialogue expert here but in "Lgnpc_aldruhn_v1_20.esp" there is a script "DM_vevul":

Begin DM_vevulShort noLoreShort DM_tempIf ( DM_temp == 1 )   If ( CellChanged == 1 )      Disable      Set DM_temp to 0   EndIfEndIfEnd

Maybe there's another mod that uses "DM_temp" in this "venimGuardScript" and they're interfering somehow..?

[Edit: Doesn't look like "DM_temp" is in the vanilla version of "venimGuardScript"]

Vevur Arvel NPC has venimGuardScript attached as local script in Morrowind.esm.
The DM_vevul script in Lgnpc_aldruhn_v1_20.esp seems to be have been made to be attached to Vevur Arvel, maybe the author changed idea to avoid replacing the standard venimGuardScript or did not complete it.
Ayway, it seems a command
set DM_temp to 1
in the dialog result box for first response to "House Redoran" topic for Vevur Arvel NPC has been forgotten and should be commented to avoid the error