I've decided to enter the modding world with a mod designed to add some interesting life to Morrowind's wilderness areas.

Planned features:
- Adding shepherds and their flocks throughout the grazelands and other areas.
- Possible expansion of existing farms and plantations.
- Adding roadside shrines for the country folk to worship at.
- Ruins of ancient Mer settlements.
- Roving groups of bandits, smugglers, skooma runners, and other scum, along with their small encampments.
- Adding a new faction, the Imperial Order of Rangers, including:
- A wooden HQ fort somewhere within the wilderness.
- Various lightly fortified hideouts, such as caves, treehouses, and hidden clearings.
- Quests involving the Rangers' principal duties in Morrowind, including shadowing local political figures, capturing poachers, fighting off bandits and smugglers, escorting VIPs through the wilderness from one city to another, carrying messages, and surveillance of factions troublesome to the Empire, such as the Morag Tong, Dark Brotherhood, Ashlanders, and of course keeping an eye on House Dagoth.
- Other quests, as well.

I may need a few pointers along the way. A few questions for now, however:

1. Where would you prefer to have the Ranger HQ? It needs to be somewhere away from cities, though preferably in a wooded area, since it should be hidden, and not easy for others to find.

2. Looking for good leather ranger armor, or even possibly different armor for the Ashlands, forests, and grasslands.

3. Would like to, at some point, have another faction attack the fort. No clue how to script this.

Any help is appreciated. Please keep in mind that while I would like for the Ranger uniforms and fort to be unique, the rest I would prefer to leave strictly vanilla, in order that everyone can use the mod without a massive download.

Cool idea one thing about the flocks though. For people who use Creatures X by Piratelord and or the Wilderness Mod it may get a little noisy in the grazelands area with other flocks roaming around. But certainly do not let that stop you!

As to the location of the HQ, it is difficult to find a place too remote in Morrowind that is in a wooded area. Simply because there really aren't too many wooded areas (other than the Bitter Coast). Maybe one aspect of your mod could be to add some more trees to certain areas, maybe the southern grazelands, or West Gash.

Good Luck :goodjob:

-Melchior Dahrk

This sounds like a great idea!

Have you seen Vurt's or Vality's tree addons?

You could make compatibilty versions to compensate for, or add to, all the trees added by those mods.
Also, due to the widespread popularity of Piratelord's Creatures, you should probably account for that as well.

I'd really like to see this project do well, because I've always wanted to try playing as a ranger in Morrowind,
but there just isn't much to roleplay that with in the game, or even with mods.

As I said, I'd rather avoid adding too much to vanilla MW. But you're right. I may have to add some trees to the grazelands area, just for "cover".

I don't plan to interfere with many of the wildlife mods, the only creatures I'll add will be Guar herders, maybe some goats or something.

Cool idea but it does have to pay attention to a couple of the more popular mods that add things to the wilderness. There could be a couple forts such as one in the grasslands and one in the more volcanic regions with differing missions etc, even have each have competing factions perhaps or one single faction, although that might be a bit much for one person to do.

Progress:
Got the Ranger HQ fort in the CS, now adding NPCs and items. It is situated in the south Grazelands region. Instead of adding a lot of trees as cover, I'm adding some, but found a nice section of landsacpe where surrounding hills hide it pretty well. It is actually built into a hillside, with fortifications surrounding the exit. Having a problem with Guars spawning randomly all over the place, no matter how far away I move the spawn points. It may be another plugin I have doing this.

Also, having recently reacquainted myself with "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood", I decided to add a few roadside taverns and inns along the byways of Morrowind. Nothing special, just a place to stop and drain a glass of Mazte or Sujamma and maybe rent a bed. Mostly just to function as landmarks where you can find certain quest-related characters. Also, adding guarcart traders like country farmers selling vegetables, herbs, and home made wines and beers, etc. Just to add some rustic flavor. Also, thinking about a small medieval fair or carnival. A lot of these newer additions will be at the outskirts of cities or at main intersections of roads, simply to make it easier on me and since it makes sense to place them that way.

Inns will include various different things, some will have stables or corrals for you to park your Guar or Packrat in, others will be simple roadside rest areas with a place to eat and maybe pick up some gossip. I'm trying to keep them realistic. Inns will have living space for the proprietor and their family, and each roadside farmer selling his wares will have a small home and garden nearby.

Am currently working on "The Lazy Guar", northeast of Gnaar Mok. Also adding some roadside worship shrines here and there.

this is great!
I've been keeping an eye out for mods that do this!
now correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember seeing a ranger mod around somewhere, but it was a WIP. I do not think anything came of it.
1. if you look at http://crazyn.uw.hu/pictures/terkepek/map_vvardenfell.jpg map of Vvardenfell you can get a good perspective of the lay of the land. I think it would be best set in a very rich and wild landscape so I want to say grazeland, but that's a bit TOO out of the way. perhaps southern west gash or ascadian isles
2.can't help you there D:
3. concerning another faction full on attacking it seems very unpolitical. I would think an assassin or a more formal approach to diplomacy. But really it depends on the faction that attacks.
love the inns idea. that is something I've wanted to do for a while, but never had the talent!

This mod sounds very cool. I know may wanderer character is going to love all of the new road-side taverns. I really like the idea of a faction attacking the base, and I think it would be fun to help defend it.

As for the leather ranger armor, I might know of something you could use. I don't remember what the readme says about use in other mods, but Korana's "Better Bodies Falconer Leather" mod might be worth taking a look at. I personally love it, and my current http://s580.photobucket.com/albums/ss244/Carpe_Ferrum/Stuff/?action=view¤t=MGEScreenshot16.jpg uses the coat and boots.

I can't wait to see some pictures!

EDIT: I just checked the readme, and it says that you can use it as long as you give credit, if you end up wanting to.

A bump in the road, so to speak. I screwed up a script somewhere that is causing a lot of doors around Vvardenfell to disappear. I'm still learning to script, but I forgot to backup the plugin for a few days, so a lot of work has to be redone.

The fort is in the Grazelands specifically because it is so out of the way. The aim of this mod is to make the empty spaces of Vvardenfell more interesting without the clutter and lore-unfriendliness of extra towns. Realize that this mod may not be for those who want to quick-travel everywhere. It is to encourage walking through the game rather than blipping around by boat or silt strider.

As for the falconer leather, I really like it, but it is not what I was looking for. I really want more of a robin hood/gondorian Ranger kind of motif. The coats and things from the falconer leather are superb, but I am really looking for green and brown clothing under light mail or leather armor. I am trying to give them green or brown cloaks, depending on their location, but a trenchcoat like the one Aragorn has in the fellowship movie would be better, since a cloak is too bulky for real stealth. The rangers will be heavy on stealth, marksmanship, and short blades, as well as unarmored or light armored defense. A shoot and get out without getting hit philosophy. The Rangers will not be assassins like the Morag Tong or the DB, more like Imperial Legionaires equipped for wilderness combat rather than battlefield combat.

Looking for a tutorial on how to script spawning leveled NPC's kind of like MCA. I want bandits and Rangers alike to pop up randomly. If anyone knows a tut or how to do this, I would appreciate the help.

Also, for the shrines, I am finding that they have to be too big with standard game statues. Is there a resource for smaller Daedric statues anywhere? Also, some stuff from the Nine Divines would b awesome, since the Rangers ARE Imperial, after all.

And again, a trenchcoat resource would be cool, but nothing weird or outlandish, simple green brown or black.

I appreciate all the help. I thought I knew enough to crank this out, but there is stuff I'm having to learn as I go.