PRE-EMPTIVE MODERATOR DISPELLATION: This is addressed particularly to the audience of this forum, and there's no unified forum for discussing mods across multiple titles, so this is the right place for it.

There are plenty of mods that call themselves "lore-friendly" just because by some herculean effort they restrained themselves from including drow, M16 rifles, Barack Obama, etc. but I'm wondering if there are any really superlative mods out there for either Oblivion or Morrowind that combine an enjoyable and polished gameplay experience with a monkeytruth level of lore. I'm mainly looking for epic-scale quest mods here - standalone houses, companions, swords, etc would have a limited scope with a harder time rising to the stature of monkeytruth, and book/dialog mods could be experienced just as well in the form of web pages. Astion's mod almost certainly would have met the criteria I'm looking for, but that one's dead in the water.

"Tears of the Fiend" was one of the earliest Oblivion quest mods I tried, but it very quickly started talking about ancient wars between angels and demons and tried to get me investigating my own character's family tree, which it had [censored]-all chance of getting right, so earned a summary uninstall.

"Zealots of the Nine" was a non-starter as it caused CTDs out the nose.

"Lost Spires" clearly has higher production values in terms of art, level design, and dialogue than 99% of mods. A troll on the first quest kicked my ass, so I'll be leveling more before I can really come to a conclusion on the story. From what I've heard so far its setting itself up to take a complete departure from TES cosmology, apart from using the name "ayleid".

"Et in Arkay Ego" looked promising, with its premise that Arkay the mortal was not "lies from a previous age", but I've been less than impressed while playing it so far. The creators clearly did their research on TES cosmology - some of the NPCs live in a hut full of books that are decent reads - but as an actual gameplay experience it consists of a series of NPCs who spout homoerotic non-sequiturs and then direct you to other NPCs without really adequately explaining why you should want to keep subjecting yourself to their ramblings.

A lot of people have gushed over "Integration: A Stranded Light". It seems to have some well researched lore hooks, but I haven't tried it yet due to its dependencies on several game balance mods I haven't wanted to deal with yet on my current playthrough. It has buckets of endorsemants, but they're mostly from the kind of people who like playing dress-up with their anime style modded races and butt floss clothing. Anyone level-headed tried it?

I also haven't investigated the field of Morrowind mods half as much as Oblivion, but I'm eager to try "Great House Dagoth" next time I pick up the game. Recommendations are welcome.

I'm sorry, but what is "monkeytruth?" I assume you mean as lore-correct as possible?

http://monkeytruth.net/.

No one really has a monopoly on defining a neologism, but the basic criteria of monkeytruth as I see them:
1. New ideas - not just consistency with what's already out there
2. Foundation in the lore - so not so new it stands totally outside TES
3. So good it stands alongside the best official lore (and above the worst official lore)

Monkeytruth likely takes something mentioned but undeveloped in lore and expands on it, like mananauts or imga.

Ah, thanks for the explanations. Well in that case no, I don't know of any mods I can recommend, sorry Rhoark.

Bethesda itself does not do that, how could modders with very limited resources and incomplete knowledge do it? Besides that few players do care or are that much into Lore so, unfortunately, the few attempts at this level of "lore friendliness" died without being released.

Tamriel Rebuilt's for morrowind mainland for TES3 and Stirk for oblivion is worth checking out. Both are made by several members of the lore community. the mainland is definitely a lore correct epic quest mod, Stirk is smaller but should still provide several hours of entertainment. Elsweyr is also worth checking out - some of the lore is a bit iffy, but i dont think there is anything totally lore breaking in there (though ive not played it), and its quite epic indeed. KotN is definitely worth it, if you've not played it yet.

At the risk of sounding rude, why do you care so much about being pinned so tightly to lore? Lost Spires, for example, is simply EXCELLENT, unique and beautiful assets and resources, GOOD voice acting, and interesting quest. Seriously, whether or not it fits to lore is the least important issue, you shouldn't prevent yourself from enjoying it just because of that. Its your game, nobody needs to care if you don't follow lore while playing it.

I consider myself level-headed (even though some people I know consider me a bit... 'peculiar'), and I haven't played much through Integration, but from the little I've seen, it has deep research into lore and a good deal of deep, interesting dialogue, which even contains some good sense of humor. I doubt most of the endorsemants come from the people you are mentioning, more from people who like me want good and interesting quests with multiple results, and NPCs who actually have something of importance to say.
Seriously, if you can't put up with the fancy hairs and clothings, AFAIK Integration only uses clothes through an optional add-on, it does use new hairs to give a bit of spice to the new NPCs, many of which use the new race entries(none of which are 'anime-style', but actually lore based races interesting to give a try) and the new spells added by those two required mods, which are also excellent to have: L.A.M.E, which you'll probably need anyway if you want to use magic to thrive in the game; and Race Balancing Project, basically the All-In-One mod for new races and associated.

Me, for example .

Most of the following is IMO, obviously.

I?ve tried quite a lot of Oblivion mods since I simply find checking others? creative endeavors entertaining and the game is totally unplayable without mods anyway.
I can safely say that from the bunch of quests mods I ?ve tried Integration is by far the best and most impressive, period.
Mod?s problem is that it contains some rather idiosyncratic aesthetic decisions in regards to its characters which is probably why you think its fans consist mainly from anime lovers. Particularly culpritous are big eyes here and there and especially hair on some furries, eh. If you?ll play Integration a bit longer you?ll find how truly miniscule these issues are. The other aesthetic aspects are fine and there?s always great attention to detail in regards to mod?s architecture and decorations.

However, the real meat of the mod are its quests and dialogues and there the mod simply has no competition, both in quality and quantity. Quests are varied, often multi-stage, contain a lot of skill checks, require all kinds of thinking and in-game lore research, handful of choices & consequences on the way and often offer multiple solutions. Personally, I think that hints are sometimes a bit too obscure for their own good (aka a bit unfair), but most hit the sweet spot accurately and the way how its all put organically together is really something to behold.
Its dialogues are rich, add a lot of personality even to minor characters and, along with mod?s books, substantially expand in-game lore as well. Seamlessly, might I add.
Another fine aspect of the mod is how well it adds to game?s vanilla characters and how its sometimes tied to vanilla quests. Speaking of vanilla quests, Integration also adds a great heap of motivation to do them since you often need to build your character in order to progress in the mod and some of its quests are hard to finish without having the world well explored.
There?s a lot of content for Shivering Isles as well and mod does a good job at integrating it tightly to the main world. A lot of ties to Morrowind are a big plus as well.
Its included romance option is tasty, well reasoned and if you decide to pursue it, you definitely won?t be able to finish it in one afternoon. The usual whining aspects are subdued and not irritating.

At last but not least, it?s also very well balanced. You won?t receive any hackmasters of instagratification +10 along the way and rewards are often more in the "feeling of work well done" vein.

Really, Integration is a great achievement in quest design and rarely falls short throughout its ~ 100 hours of content. That it by far surpasses the poor original game is out of question.
I?ve played a lot of mods for other games as well (BG2, Wizardry 8 etc.) and Integration quite easily remains the most impressive of the quest category. The fact it?s made by just one person is ridiculous.

To comment a bit on some of the other mods you mentioned:
Lost Spires are technically really good but quite quickly delve to repetitive dungeon hack?n?slash fest and the additional lore is really sparse.
Tears of a Fiend and other Simyaz?s mods are in general technically maybe even more impressive but lorewise go out of whack and its characters way too often talk like author?s alter-egos pondering upon their latest lesson of social sciences. However, taken out of the gameworld?s context, his mods are interesting pieces of work nevertheless.

All the great environment enhancing mods like Better Cities, Unique Landscapes, All Natural etc, as well as FCOM would basically end in vain for me since without good quests I?d have no incentive to play the game at all.
Integration provides such incentive and thanks to its implementation makes even the vanilla quests more meaningful.
Dismissing the whole mod for its miniscule aesthetic controversies and additional mod requirements would be definitely a mistake.

To somewhat clarify where do I come from, here?s a list of some of my favorite games:
Planescape: Torment, Fallout, Arcanum, Wizardry 8, The Witcher, Mask of the Betrayer, Bloodlines, Gothic 2: NotR, Deus Ex, Ultima 7

Great House Dagoth is definitely worth checking out. It really keeps Dagoth Ur and the Sixth House in the 'grey' area when you join him, rather than making him stereotypically evil. (Which is what Endrek's Sixth House mod does. Still a very good mod though)

My own Kragenir's Death Quest is a bit of a mix of being lore friendly and relying on it a lot (miscellaneous quests) and not so lore friendly (main quest) so I wouldn't recommend it for this list.

Thanks, n_trophy. That's the sort of review I was looking for and will try the Stranded Light. And thanks to Lady Nerevar. I was a bit wary of getting into the TR mods while they're still a work in progress, but Stirk seems comfortably stand-alone.

The Lost spires essentially pulls a new race of obviously evil but conveniently dead people out of its ass, and you may have a problem with one of the major plot tickets in the mod. Overall, the only reason to play it is so you can romp through new dungeons and grab some great loot.

Great House Dagoth is excellent, and in general sticks pretty well to the lore. Though unfortunately it completely misses the mark at one point. Though this is forgivable, and it should otherwise meet your criteria. Though you may not be able to stand being a corpus beast, they're very slow. You should definitely have spells to compensate for the movement problems tied to the various creature forms.

I remember that. Very cool moment, but too little consequences.

Wow, you're the first member I've seen named after a Crash Bandicoot mid-boss.


GHD was great fun, I did especially like the


A shame it does end quite abruptly. I made my own foreigner relocation quest to fill the void. No humans in Balmora now!

Hmm? I don't recall any but floss or anime faces in my 15 or so walkthrough videos(a lot more to come before it could be a complete walkthrough)... Well I did wear Golden Saint gear, or Dark Seducer gear in some of them but in most I'm wearing robes. Since I'm using a body mod, I have had to worry about nudity showing up but that's only because of....
1: Xivilai lore correct clothing (just a kilt.)
2: A "brothel" (. ... Spoiler'd part is if you somehow need an explaination for a brothel being included)

Also if it was really an "anime lovers" thing you'd see perfectly beautiful elves with skimpy clothes(30% or less coverage), instead of mostly eccentric looking Daedra with appropriate clothing (50% or more coverage)
----
Other than that I think n Trophy explained it best, also he and I seem to have similar favorite games.



As for me? I might be a little biased because I was one of the first beta testers and about the only consistent one. I made at least a moderate impact on parts of the mod, so if there's really something sensible and that can be done bg is always willing to take suggestions.For instance; suggestions of mine that are in the current mod:

Suggested flavor dialogue for some of the less talkative characters.
Suggested clean ups for certain minor characters so it didn't seem like they existed solely for their quest(s) involvement.
Made certain things more complex and maybe a little harder( a certain riddle, and the romance off the top of my head).
and with the most recent update I was the one who came up with the idea for the .

There are others, and lot's of different things I can talk about but I have a habit of speaking too freely and inadvertently spoilering stuff. So I'll just shut up since n trophy already said everything so well.

EDIT: Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention is before Integration I knew really nothing about Elder scrolls lore, parts of it are really educational.

Near to Monkeytruth I suspect may be/have been Giskard's Mods. Rpeutation to the contrary he was quite restrained in what he did. Basically he used the Lore to reveal new facets of itself. He tried to progess Lore past what is obvious and you might assume that he goes off on a tangent if you do not really look carefully at the background to the stuff he produces. However people generally say they enjoyed his stuff.

No idea where you can now download his mods as he has become more than slightly reclusive.

Liliana is very Lore-friendly - her Elsweyr, Deserts of Anequina is still growing, like a lot of good mods

Funny that you mention it. I've only seen few mods declared by their authors to be entirely lore friendly, and on those I declared DisContinuity and blissfully ignore their existence for completely other reasons. So I don't even have to challenge their notion of lore friendlyness, because the mods don't exist. How convenient.

Most modders instead, if they refer to lore at all, mostly use the term "lore based". That's not the same - it is admitting that you're outside of established lore, and make up your own theories and stories and all that which may not share the developers' visions of the Elder Scrolls world and their history. Lore based only means that what's happening in your mod could be explained by established knowledge.

Then there's another important consideration: We, both as players and as modders and as loreholics are confronted with something called Gameplay and Story Segregation. Example given in Oblivion there's no Guild Guide, while there was one in Morrowind. Now why not? Likely dev lazyness, considering that there's fast travel. However now doesn't there a Guild Guide exist in "lore" Cyrodiil, or merely not in "game" Cyrodiil? Could a lore reason be used to explain the missing of Guild Guides in "game" Cyrodiil, instead of merely calling it dev lazyness?

That's where it gets murky. Lore wise there isn't a single mention of Guild Guides except the city guides in Morrowind, so it may have been a Gameplay and Story Segregation on Morrowind's part. In Oblivion the Mages Guild is a lot more centralized and reclusive than in Morrowind, which could be used as an explanation why a Guild Guide was abolished or never instituted. However the centralized and reclusive nature of Oblivion's Mages Guild can also be Gameplay and Story Segregation (it may very well be so, to include "guild perks" for Beth's new target audience).

Thing is, we - as being not the developers - can only guess. I, as a modder, prefer to not use the "dev lazyness" and "made for Beth's new target audience" explanation, instead trying to find an explanation compatible to lore. And I can go horribly wrong with it, too. Who knows? There's only so much you can safely conclude from existing knowledge, and a bit more you can be relatively sure about.

However you can also go over the top with it, which means putting what you see in game above existing lore. Only because in game there's like five steps between the Sentinel and the Serpent's Trail, doesn't mean the book describing the distance as around a days travel long is wrong and in truth it's only five steps. Another pitfall to avoid.


Epic scale quest mods are kind of rare to begin with.

With a monkeytruth level of lore? Good luck.

The next wall of text is not about lore, but about modder psychology. Please bear with me.

There are three main approaches when it comes to stories in quest mods.

1. There's an external story idea that is implemented into the game. Examples are Blood and Mud, The Lost Spires, and a lot of others. At best they pay lip service to lore, at worst you'll end up with M16 wielding Drows fighting a Terminator 1000 copy of Barack Obama.

2. There's an in world story idea that is implemented into the game. Examples are Reclaiming Sancre Tor (not yet released), Kvatch Rebuilt, and some others. They usually adhere to lore as far as it serves their idea, and the idea itself is usually lore based.

3. The quest mod's main focus is not the story at all, but other aspects (like quest design -> Integration, or aquiring spells -> Midas). The few mods falling into this category carry the possibility of not needing to make lore alterations for story telling purpose, therefore can keep pretty close to it over even use it as their quests' content - if the modder in question chooses to. Or they can get even farther away than those doing only lip service.

Know why a mod was done, and it may help you to decide if it could be something for you - or not.

I'm not sure what to think about this. As the author of Integration I refuse to make comments regarding its quality, however three things I want to point out:
1. Once upon a time Integration was developed as an additional feature for people using the requirements. That it became something bigger was a strange incident. One I best not think about.
2. Integration: The Stranded Light has zero endorsemants, because I have ratings disabled (still from a time it was a silent protest against tesnexus' rating system from times past).
3. I do not know of the zero endorsemants given the percentage of dress-up anime lovers, nevertheless I kind of doubt that they're attracted to Integration because of them loving playing dress up and animies. That simply does not match Integration's content. There's only one piece of new clothing (which uses Vanilla's standard robe mesh), and the few new weapons are sized like those of Vanilla. (And for those not liking the face design, there's even a TNR style alternative available, done by another player who didn't like my faces.)

_____________
n trophy: Many, many thanks for your post! It made me happy reading it .

As far as I'm concerned, there are Guild Guides in Cyrodill too, but they chose not to represent it in-game due to the fast travel overhaul which would have rendered it redundant. It still seems like a silly oversight, all things considered.

There are also strange aesthetic choices such as the Imperial Legion uniforms in Cyrodill (with the exceptions of Palace Guards and Captains) actually being far uglier and more utilitarian than the ones in Morrowind, which is about the opposite of what one would expect. You'd think the more practical, drab uniforms would go to soldiers in provinces where wars are likely to break out such as Morrowind and the ornamental uniforms would be worn in the well defended home country. A good example of a real world equivalent would be the dress uniforms that U.S. Marines wear for photographs, ceremonies and parades as opposed to the combat uniforms worn on the battlefield.

Simple lore answer for the fast travel whathaveyou: Mark and Recall were outlawed sometime before the OB onslaught, since the basic premise for guild guides were those two spells they quickly found themselves out of work, since levitate is also illegal...well, we get fast travel instead...

Post "Infernal City" Tamriel should let loose all the magey goodness thats been lacking (hello Passwall) since theres no mages guild and personal politics to contend with...rogue mages training people in the long lost art of "area of effect" spells to earn a few Septims makes me giddy...

Edit: no I didn't forget about the College of Whispers or the Synod, but these are new organizations that aren't going to appeal to every mage, especially ones that have been around the block and are sick of the in-fighting...

Off-Topic: It would be interesting, if Bethesda did it right, to see a conflict between the College of Whispers and the Synod, especially if one decided to allow Necromancy.
On-Topic: I've heard of Integration, but after reading that review I really wish that I could run Oblivion again, so that I could plat through it.

Let me set the record straight that I have not condemned Integration. Since you were blindsided by my first impressions, consider how a neutral observer without an inside view of the mod might interpret a mod that primarily serves to add tons of dialogue with friendly female daedra seducers, elves with huge eyes and dayglo hair, and catgirls. One could be forgiven for suspecting that it might be more about the catgirls than the quests. Owing to the fact that 99% of everything is crap, I wanted outside opinions before investing much time in it. The mod's fans (whose endorsemants I mean in the colloquial sense) couldn't serve because they obviously dig the dayglo hair aesthetic. The response has been positive, so I took the time to go in TES4Edit and rip out all the prereq's edits to vanilla races and will get down to trying Integration in the new year.

Just to clear these up....
1: I think elves are one of the least used races, there's the 'Hidden Elves', but still very few of them.

2: huge eyes... I'll quote bg's comment from elsewhere.



3:Hair. As for that it's really quite simple.... must hair mods come from Asia meaning they might have a skew towards anime/Asian type hairstyles.

Others: Befriending a Daedra Seducer.... I'll give you that one, but looking further it is a truly serious relationship, nothing akin to say.... Viconia(constant mood changes, suddenly thrusting the player into the next stage of the romance, etc.)

Catgirls... not many at the start, but they do play an important role at around the middle part of the questline. You were talking about the Ohmes-raht right?

Females: bg's reasoning was that he made better female faces, also you can continually pester the Guild Leader about it with each new member "All Females?" "All females?" "All females?", and she'll even give you an explanation for each, and even mention the men that join. Also quest mods lack women as it is; most are relegated to damsels in distress, or romances. One mod had to fill the vacuum. :lmao:

I'm curious as to what texts, or pictures brought you to these conclusions, would you mind posting whatever pictures or texts gave off the negative assumptions? Can't really show a lot of the quests and dialogue in screenshots without spoiling but seeing this alone should have been enough to show it's not some lame anime mod:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/22320-4-1233520688.gif
(The Mazken one with all the dialogue choices.)

Who knows, maybe me and bg just don't see it because we still remember when the mod was nothing but an idea.

Not that this helps, but I'm waist deep in overhauling the MQ. I'm hoping to have the first third done sometime this summer.

This has only indirectly something to do with lore, but oh well.

Those that remember the earlier days of Integration may remember my first descriptions and screenshots. They described mostly the core of the mod, which is quest design and content. After the mod had more quests than Shivering Isles and a playing time approaching the 100h, I had like three players. That was a bit depressing, so as another suggested a different description, and already made actual examples, I adopted them. Numbers of players skyrocketed.

Lore and quest design aren't hooks that attract the attention of potential players. Not even of a minority. However I did also not made heavily use of "sixy characters" as advertisemant figures. Of 14 preview screenshots 8 feature no characters at all, in 2 they aren't the main focus (only being part of scenery), 2 are examples of how diverse the new races are used, 1 is a dialog example, and only one feature Sanguine related artwork, which shows skin (but no naughty bits). That's one out of fourteen! The introduction text itself speaks mostly about Cyrodiil's current state of affairs and how Integration picks up these points. Only a couple of lines in a page long description are about the potential romance.

The main difference I done was to dramatize the old description, and keep the technical details out. I would be surprised if anyone that isn't highly prejudiced would conclude from the infos I offer that Integration is about what you described here. Lore can be a hook for players, it just have to be described right. Like you shouldn't describe Sushi as "dead, cold fish". I learned this the hard way. And if very small parts of the mod explore the darker shades of Sanguine, then there's no need to keep it unmentioned.

Question I ask you here, an d the audience of this forum: How should a mod describe itself to not cause people to draw any unwanted conclusions?

... plural?

I think lore wise it's not logical for every sentient being around to just attack the player. Take army leaders in Battlespire, they behaved a lot more rational than, say, most antagonists in Oblivion who only know frontal attacks. In lore there are also more villains that know more than direct violence - just remember how Pelagius got his madness .

You're asking for monkey truths, yet expect mods to follow Oblivion's recipe of unrealistic behavior. When a being called "Daedra Seducer" knows only violence to achieve her end, then something is very wrong. Just think about it.

I don't even know what dayglo hair means, but besides: This is a generic attack for which I cannot imagine any justification. It's often used to discredit a lot of mods, and just to ridicule it when applied to Integration the only female elf playing a major role in Cyrodiil is a Telvanni wizard with her age slider in (un-)pretty high regions.

The most popular catgirl mod for Oblivion are probably the "Ainmhi", which are just your stereotypical catgirls. And don't appear neither in RBP nor in Integration.

What appears instead are the Khajiit variants of Arena and Daggerfall, both males and females. And while the Arena variant don't have cat characteristics, the Daggerfall variant is much too catlike for the liking of nearly all "catgirl fans".

However these variants don't appear out of thin air. As written before, I consider the "dev lazyness" explanation to be boring, so actually constructed something why there are none openly known in Cyrodiil to begin with. That is very much no monkeytruth (more weasel lore, similar to the lame Levitation Act of which I may make a bit of fun), I confess.

Considering how Elves with "dayglo" (whatever the hell that means) hair and Cat people are a integral part of the Lore and Vanilla game it is interesting to see them raised as bad points to a mod.

Attractive characters? Let's be frank, the ugliness of Bethesda character meshes is a problem since forever and while everyone being supermodels wouldn't be realistic, everyone being wrinkled creepy monsters isn't realistic as well.

Anime? Yes, there are Sephiroth and Cloud mods, Giant sword mods, "butt floss" (WTF?) armor mods and stuff like that. I don't get why people get so upset about them as there is no one making players use them at gunpoint.

I like my elves to be physically beautiful as it is how they're supposed to be in their current popular incarnation as by their father, Tolkien. There is a lot of symbolism behind it as I'm sure you all know it. It doesn't mean their minds or souls have to be beautiful as well and that's the cool catch.

The are so many open questions and grey areas in TES' lore that a modder frequently has to fill a mod with a lot of his own homemade lore to be able to work.

Finally, besides the few gentlemen and madams that frequent this forum, Lore isn't that hot of a selling point for a mod anyway. Even to most of us, I guess, we would prefer one that is fun and well made, than one that is not that great, or one that never gets released as it seems to be the fate of most, if not all, lore friendly mods. People who work on them seems to disappear on a regular basis.

edit: This is a bigger wall of text as it seemed to be while writing it.