SylviaBun

What a title. With that title, you may have questions like “What is a solo RPG?” and “how would that even work?” Well, a brief explanation of a solo RPG is that it is essentially a tabletop game played by one person, it is a practice of creativity and personal story-telling as well as a challenge of self-regulation. In a solo RPG you take on responsibility for all roles within the game. You are the Game Master, you are the player, you are the arbiter of fairness and the sole writer of your story. You have to create the World, Player Characters, Non-Player Characters, and sometimes even the rules. There are tools to help with this, such as “oracle” systems, which act as RNG decision makers in situations where you may be uncertain about something. Not sure if an NPC would be aware of another character or event? Assign a probability from the oracle's chart, make your dice rolls, go with what the result on the chart states. This sounds like a lot to keep track of, and that is where the journaling aspect and creativity aspect come into play. The general rules and guidelines of the specific game you are playing also are designed to guide you into the setting you chose or created.

    With the hows out of the way, the next question would probably be “Why?” Again, a simple answer suffices. I have always wanted to play tabletop RPGs with friends, but as someone who is fairly shy and struggles to find and maintain groups of friends it's very rare for me to have those opportunities. Add onto that a recent move across the country (nearly 600 miles from where I previously lived) and breakups of the social groups I've inhabited in person and online for the last several years, and you can see why a solo RPG may appeal to me.

    In particular, I am currently focused on the tabletop game Elegy, which takes the basic function and ruleset of another solo RPG “Ironsworn” and colors it with shades of Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Carmilla, Dracula, Blade, Only Lovers Left Alive, What We Do in the Shadows, and additional mythology and folklore. It seems to be a fairly competent but accessible system, with quite a few ways the player can heavily customize it in world “generation” alone. Additionally, as it is a free modification of Ironsworn, it is more accessible than many solo RPGs by virtue of essentially being playable with no investment. Don't have dice? Use online dice rollers. Don't have a printer? Write your character sheet out manually. How do you read the rules? Access the PDF on your phone, desktop, laptop or other electronic devices. Everything is fairly accessible, so long as you have an internet connection and modern electronic device. As someone who is a huge World of Darkness fan and has much love for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, I am excited to jump in and experience Elegy for the first time.

    Now that I've disclosed what system I am using, we're going to jump ahead to the “World Generation.” I'm going to assume that you are either somewhat familiar with Elegy, or will go read the first two chapters on your own. The part we are interested in right now is Chatper 3 – Begin your journey. Chapter three goes through establishing what you will be doing here, as well as explaining base “truths” of your world, things that are universally true every time you play the game. Once you've read through that, you come across the “Create Your Underworld” section. This is where the fun begins. Here, you see a variety of prompts that you are intended to respond to. Typically, Elegy's core book will give you 2-3 responses that are designed to be fairly simple, and then an “other” option. I took the other option quite a few times, often choosing to mash together two choices that I liked parts of from default options, or falling back to Vampire: The Masquerade type inspirations.

    This wound up actually working out a lot better than I expected, due to one of the factions that exist within Elegy's core setting. It's worth noting that there are as many as five factions in Elegy, based on which response to the “Factions” prompt you give while creating your underworld. As I chose to go with lineage based factions, where every vampire belongs to the same lineage as their progenitor, there are five factions: the Narcissus, the Deimos, the Cassandra, the Adamas, and the Kerberos. Given that I also chose for vampirism to have originated as a “divine punishment” and wrote in explicit references to Abrahamic religions in the form of referencing “a descendent of Adam”, the existence of a faction known as “Adamas” is quite fitting.

    As I followed my way through the prompts, I found myself getting a picture of the world I was creating. I already knew what city I wanted to set it in, despite having never set foot there myself, and I began imagining the kinds of events that could take place there. The kind of characters I could create. This singular act of “generating” a world and rules for the vampires and werewolves and so on gave me more ideas on what I could potentially do in this world than what most types of games I'm used to ever approach. Typically, I find myself struggling to come up with ideas in sandbox situations. Here, I felt very naturally guided to explore ideas and jump into the mythology of the setting. It was great!

    After generating the “truths” of my world and vampires, I actually had to do the setting. As I already stated, this was something I already knew roughly how I would handle. It wound up varying quite a lot from what I initially expected, as I had to learn a lot about the city and its layout during this stage, but you will see all of that later. For now, just note that I chose to set my city boundaries within Seattle. Elegy encourages you to create your own city, use one inspired by a real world location, use an actual real world location, or rely entirely on an oracle. Obviously, I chose to set this one in a real city and this did a lot of the work for me.

    Quickly I jotted down Seattle, known as the City of Rain, a small description of its geography copied from a website that details Seattle's region, a quick search of the official founding date of Seattle, and then I had to set out to design regions. Elegy's official rules state “Your city is divided into up to 9 different Regions.” This seems... fairly arbitrary, but wound up working just fine for me. One thing to note is that in my Elegy campaign, there are also sub-regions of each region, which are controlled by “Appointees” of that Region's “Queen.” Essentially, each neighborhood has an official who regulates and controls it, they pay a fee to the Queen of the region every quarter, and they tax those who reside or hunt within their borders. Either way, I jumped on to the internet and quickly found myself looking at Wikipedia which has a Council District map which looks to be set from 2015-2016. This map is outdated, and has been superseded by an updated map in 2022. To me, this was unimportant. It gave me a fairly clear layout of Seattle with 7 districts and several neighborhoods in each district. I began building the districts and setting owners to them based off of their history and vibe.

The result of this can be seen following this paragraph. Before I just dump my entire world creation though, I want to say that this whole process has been exciting and interesting. There's still several stages to go through before I start playing, from creating my character to buying physical dice and setting up my play space. I could do all of this exclusively digitally, but there's several things I want to do that will make this both more fun, easier, and better documented than just playing it entirely digitally. My play space will consist of my laptop, a Kindle Fire tablet I'm expecting to arrive soon, physical dice and a box to roll them in, a binder I will fill with printouts of the rule book, some quick references for the core rules and my setting, and so on. This entire post is only part one of a hopefully larger series of posts that will come over months at the least, and maybe even years. Anyway, I've held you long enough, let's go ahead and dump my entire First Campaign Quick Reference document into this post for you to gander at. Should you choose not to continue, I hope to regardless get your attention in future posts on this topic as I detail my character creation, my play space, and my sessions.

Elegy First Campagin Quick Reference

Truths

Origins

Vamprisim is believed to be... a divine punishment. In pre-history, the time of myth, a descendant of Adam consumed the flesh of another man in desperation. For this, God punished him to walk the Earth eternally with a hunger that could only be sated by taking the blood of another into his body.

Factions

Vampires of this city are... divided by their lineage, into five factions. Every vampire belongs to the same lineage as their progenitor. Each lineage has its own culture, traditions, and goals, representing one facet of the vampire myth: the seductive Narcissus, the monstrous Deimos, the mysterious Cassandra, the aristocratic Adamas, and the feral Kerberos.

Govern

The governance of this city is... divided among Queens and political appointees under each Queen. Each faction rules its own domain, with a generalized set of rules and mandates by the Queen, and each sub-domain owned by an appointee is regulated and has further restrictions in place chosen by each appointee. While no one Queen rules the city, there are some who are more powerful than others, and have more appointees assisting in regulating their territory. Each appointee must pay quarterly dividends (typically, in blood) to their Queen, or perform duties mandated by the Queen before the quarter is up to keep their position. Should they fail, they are eliminated by the Queen's personal hunters and new appointees take their place. There is no loyalty among appointees in many factions, and they constantly go to war with one another in order to seize more territory or eliminate an appointee they dislike in hopes that one of their heirs or allies will be elevated to the now open position. Residing within a sub-domain owned by an appointee will see you needing to follow additional regulation and rules, often with taxation of any blood or artefacts you collect.

Territorialism

Can you transit, feed and slumber in other Factions' domains? Generally, as long as you do not cause trouble you are permitted to move between domains freely and feed or slumber there. If you are in a domain that does not belong to your faction, you must pay offerings to the Queen before you take a life. Sub-domain appointees may also require offerings for you to be permitted to hunt and slumber in their territory. However, if you enter the territory of a faction that is at war with yours or that opposes your factions rule, you may be in for a fight.

Blights

A vampire's blight — their particular weakness — starts... when they're turned. You begin the game with a blight and a corre- sponding Blight Edge. If gameplay prompts you to mark the Changed condition, instead lower your base Rush by 1; if it is already 0, reduce your max Rush by 1.

Natural Powers

A vampire's natural powers and blight are... inherited from their progenitor, but influenced by a vampire's personality. Typically, they will gain their supernatural characteristics from their progenitor (the one who turns them.) However, particularly strong-willed vampires who's minds and bodies resist the changes that come with this may develop their own “mutations” of power. They will inherit most, if not all, of their strengths from their progenitors, but may also develop a new form of power that becomes a part of the lineage should they turn another in the future.

Vampire Hunters

Vampire hunters are... rare, almost extinct. While in the past, Vampire hunters posed a real threat to the average vampire, they are now exceedingly rare due to a purge of their orders hundreds of years ago. Now, there are a few who hold out on the fringes. In some cities, they become bold and begin to eliminate many vampires. In those situations, it is inevitable they are revealed and hunted down (typically, on order of a Queen with a high reward for their head.) While the average vampire is unlikely to ever meet or need to worry about a Vampire hunter, they do exist and are exceptionally honed in their trade. Only the strongest and smartest have survived this far.

Witches

Mortals that study and practice magic are... so rare that most believe they don't exist in this city. While nothing stops mortals from practicing magic, the knowledge of it is mostly lost and scattered amongst small covens who prefer to stay outside of society due to prior persecutions. Those who do exist are smaller practitioners, more likely to practice practical magic rather than arcane magic (think along the lines of a witch who tends to a garden she uses to make medicines, rather than a witch who casts spells actively.)

Werewolves

Humans who turn into large wolves are... common within this city, and quite dangerous. Werewolves contest the control of the city that the vampires have acquired, and actively seek to destroy the vampires political organizations. While a common vampire has little to fear in an average day, during periods where the werewolves attacks are more frequent blood flows freely in the vampires' districts. These events are infrequent, so as not to draw attention, but extremely brutal.

Fae

Etheral beings born in the lands of dreams are... nothing but a myth. No records of Fae that can be proven accurate exist, and if they ever did exist they were wiped out before the dawn of modern man, during the early Abrahamic times.

The City

Name: Seattle

Known as: The City of Rain

Geography: Seattle lies on a narrow strip of land between the salt waters of Puget Sound and the fresh waters of Lake Washington. Beyond the waters lie two rugged mountain ranges, the Olympics to the west and the Cascades to the east. It is a city built on hills and around water, in a mild marine climate that encourages prolific vegetation and abundant natural resources.

Date of Foundation: May 23, 1853

Regions/Districts

District 1 – West Seattle. Contains: Riverview, High Point, South Park, Harbor Island, Arbor Heights and the part of the Industrial District. Owned by: Adamas Known for: Beautiful views, beaches and sunsets. Easy access to downtown via public transport. Walkable. Many varieties of small shops like coffee shops and record stores. No late night dining.

District 2 – Southeast Seattle. Contains: Rainier Beach, Pioneer Square, Columbia City, Beacon Hill, Georgetown, SoDo, most of the Industrial District, and part of Mount Baker. Owned by: Adamas Known for: Ethnic diversity, rich cultural heritage, strong sense of community, strong sense of community, ongoing development.

District 3 – Central Seattle. Contains: First Hill, Madrona, Madison Park, Yesler Terrace, Montlake, part of Mount Baker and North Beacon Hill, and part of Chinatown International District. Owned by: Deimos Known for: Rich history, vibrant cultural scene, diverse food, progressive activism, historic architecture, connected to downtown.

District 4 – Northeast Seattle. Contains: Roosevelt, Bryant, View Ridge, University District, Sandpoint, part of Wedgwood, part of Fremont and Wallingford. Owned by: Adamas Known for: Leafy neighborhoods, classic architecture, excellent schools, proximity to the University of Washington, mix of residential and vibrant student life. Connected to downtown by Link Light Rail.

District 5 – North Seattle. Contains: Haller Lake, Bitter Lake, Olympic Hills, Cedar Park, Maple Leaf, North College Park, Broadview and parts of Greenwood and Wedgwood. Owned by: Kerberos Known for: Shopping and entertainment, parks, access to North Seattle College, strong neighborhood presence.

District 6 – Northwest Seattle. Contains: North Beach/Blue Ridge, Crown Hill, Sunset Hill, Loyal Heights, Whittier Heights, Phinney Ridge, Green Lake, Adams, West Woodland, most of Fremont and Greenwood. Owned by: Cassandra Known for: Vibrant neighborhoods, unique shops, breweries, restaurants and nightlife, plus abundant green spaces.

District 7 – Downtown Seattle. Contains: Lawton Park, Briarcliff, Southeast Magnolia, Interbay, North Queen Anne, West Queen Anne, East Queen Anne, Lower Queen Anne, Westlake, South Lake Union, Belltown, and the Central Business District. Also contains part of First Hill and Pioneer Square. Owned by: Narcissus Known for: Iconic landmarks, a vibrant waterfront, the Seattle Art Museum, diverse food, the business district, and Pioneer Square.

Based on district maps from: Seattle City Council – Wikipedia

Thank you for taking the time to read my post! Your time and thoughts are appreciated, and if you're interested in discussing something you have read here you can reach me at @thatgalsilver@zoner.work

Brief Explanation of OpenMW and its modding capacity

    One of my favorite video games of all time is Morrowind, and that is in no short part due to the modding community and their wonderful creations. Whether it is for bug fix mods, quality of life mods, or content expansions, there is plenty of reason to find yourself on sites like NexusMods when you are a fan of this game. For myself, my go to setup at this point in time is a modlist designed for the OpenMW engine called I Heart Vanilla, a package that focuses on vanilla gameplay, bugfixes, and QOL enhancements.

    For those unaware, OpenMW is a total engine replacement for the original game. The original engine is marred by technical issues that this open source engine aims to utlimately resolve, as well as preventing the game from being lost to time should the original engine fail on future operating systems. With OpenMW, anyone can take the code and port it to whatever platform they wish, and update the libraries behind it which in theory will allow Morrowind to “live forever,” which in the world we live in where media is lost to time constantly is quite a blessing. The engine is also designed to be capable of expanding the original game in a way that the official engine never could. It has early support for LUA mods as of the 04.9 release, although incompatible with the prior “Morrowind Script Extender” classifications of mods, it proves to be as malleable if not moreso than the prior scripting solution.

    With that explanation of what OpenMW is out of the way, let us get to the topic of today: installing mods for the OpenMW engine on Linux. Thankfully, with the recent 0.49 release of OpenMW this is easier and more comprehensive than ever before. Through websites like Modding OpenMW (MOMW), we have the ability to quickly download and install curated mod lists designed explicitly for OpenMW. The process was difficult prior to the official release of OpenMW 0.49, as LUA scripting was only available in developer builds and these mods heavily relied on those builds. If you were on a distrobution that does not ship git packages, you were forced to set up a build environment and compile the game for yourself, as well as all of the tools provided by the MOMW website. This is no longer the case, although if you find yourself stuck on an LTS distro that still does not ship the 0.49 release package of OpenMW, you may be forced to rely upon Flatpak. This guide will not be covering the automatic modding of Flatpak versions of OpenMW, and the MOMW Tools Pack does not officially support Flatpak installations, although I suspect if you were to use a tool like flatseal to enable the package to use the Home folder you would be able to otherwise follow this guide.

Installation

    The first step to modding OpenMW is quite simple. You need to acquire a copy of the game, either through GOG or Steam, or alternatively install from a CD should you have the original physical release available to you. Installation of Morrowind will require either utilizing innoextract to take the GOG package apart, WINE to install the GOG package or official release disc to a chosen bottle, a WINE manager such as Bottles, Heroic Launcher or Lutris, or the Steam client to install a Steam copy of the game or alternatively using Steam's Proton integration to install other versions. You will then want to install your native package of OpenMW, I am on Arch Linux at the time of writing this so the process for me was as simple as using the package in the official repos with sudo pacman -S openmw. For Debian-based distros, the command would look something like sudo apt install openmw, though you should check your distrobutions repos to confirm that there are no alternative packages needed as some distros may divide things up into multiple packages.

Setting Up MOMW Tools Pack

What is the MOMW Tools Pack?

Well, it is a pack of tools that allow you to install the aforementioned premade mod lists from the Modding OpenMW site. These tools are designed to make it easy to download, install and manage your modlists for OpenMW, and the mod list we will be installing today is a pretty fantastic base to start with for adding your own customizations on top of.

    The next step for setup is something that can vary quite heavily due to factors such as:

• Personal preference

• Repository packages

• OS/Distro choice

   As such, this section is more of a “how I set this up” than a recommendation for your personal setup.

The first step will be to download the official release of the MOMW Tools Pack and extract it to a directory within your path. In my instance, I chose to put the files extracted in /usr/local/bin after removing the momw-configurator-linux-arm64 binary from the directory. Alternatively, you could create a directory in your home folder such as mkdir ~/bin and then adding it to your PATH as per the standard of your chosen shell. Note that while the Arch User Repository (AUR) does have packages for these tools, several of the tools fail to build properly under the current PKGBUILD and I didn't want to put the time or effort into troubleshooting why they were failing. This is the easier, and likely safer, route of getting these files on your system.

    Once you have the tools added to your path, you should restart your shell so that it can pick up the new binaries. You should now be able to run commands such as s3lightfixes and momw-configurator-linux-amd64 directly from any folder without needing to specify where these binaries are.

Synchronizing A Modlist

    Now that we have our tools configured, it is time to pick a mod list and get it downloaded to our system for the installation stage. This is made extremely easy now that we can execute the files from anywhere. Simply open your terminal emulator of choice and run umo setup to get started.

    Upon launching, umo will ask you for a number of things. First of all, your default browser will pop up and ask you to authorize access to your NexusMods API key. If you don't have a NexusMods account, now is the time to create one.

    Once the tool has been given authorization to the API key, you can close the browser window and return to the shell where you will see umo now asking you for a directory to store its mod files. Be aware that these mod files will reside decompressed at the location you choose to store them until you personally remove them, so make sure you have enough space for the mod list you choose. In the case of the I Heart Vanilla mod list, it is a total of 4.8GiB on the disk. That puts this mod list at over 4x the size of the original game, at 1.1GiB. If you want to add more mods to the list, it will only grow from there. With this in mind, and the knowledge I have a 1TB NVMe drive as my boot drive, I chose to create a directory called ~/.mods to have all of my lists managed in.

    Similar to above, umo will ask you to specify a directory for cache. The same considerations should be kept in mind, I left the cache directory to its defaults which are ~/.cache/umomwd. The compressed files downloaded from NexusMods are kept here, compared to potential updated versions, and managed by umo. You should *not delete this cache unless you absolutely need to save space and do not intend on altering any modlists that are installed, or you have fast enough internet to not care about needing to re-download these files again.

    The final thing umo will attempt to do is discover all of the other utilities the MOMW Tools Pack ships with. It should be able to pick them up automatically, but if it fails ensure that you specify not only the directory the utilities are in, but the name of each binary as umo asks for it. For instance, if it asks you for the groundcoverify utility directory, you would type in something like /usr/bin/groundcoverify, taking into account the directory you chose to store the tools in.

    Now that umo is set up, you can use it to install the list you have decided upon from the MOMW homepage. For I Heart Vanilla, this is done by simply typing umo install --sync i-heart-vanilla into your shell and hitting enter. If you are not a Nexus Premium member, a browser window will pop up for each file that needs to be downloaded. Simply click the 'Slow Download' button, and once the page shows the download has started feel free to close the tab. If you miss any of these pages, the install may stall. In this situation, you simply re-run the install command from above to resume installation from where you left off. After all of the downloads complete, umo will extract them to the mods folder you specified earlier inside a sub-directory for each list you sync and install. For my setup, this looks like ~/.mods/i-heart-vanilla

Configuring Your Modlist

    Now that the list is installed, we need the MOMW tools to configure our copy of OpenMW to be aware of these directories. This is done with the momw-configurator tool. It will automatically make OpenMW aware of the directories, set the load order in accordance to the modlist specifications, and enable plugins that need to be enabled. You should not modify the enabled plugins of the modlist you install. If there are plugins left disabled, this is for a good reason. Obviously, if you install your own mods on top of the list you are heading outside of supported territory and must know what you are doing.

    The configuration process is as simple as opening your terminal and running the command momw-configurator-linux-amd64 config i-heart-vanilla --run-navmeshtool --run-validator --verbose for the 0.49 release version. If you are on the dev build, currently 0.50, you should run momw-configurator-linux-amd64 config i-heart-vanilla --run-navmeshtool --run-validator --verbose --dev instead.

    At this point the configurator may ask you to enter the location of the openmw-iniimporter utility as well as the openmw-navmeshtool utility. If installed via your package manager, these should be found automatically. If in a directory inside your PATH, they should also be found automatically. If they are not found automatically, you will need to find where you have put them for your build of OpenMW and manually direct the tool to them.

    A step the official guide appears to be missing is running the tool s3lightfixes to generate a .omwaddon file called S3LightFixes.omwaddon. Simply run the s3lightfixes command in your terminal, and it will output this file in your home directory. Once generated, you can simply move it into the modlist directory and once the configurator asks you to specify its directory, you input the modlist directory. For example, I moved it into ~/.mods/i-heart-vanilla so I would specify that directory as the location of the file.

    The process of configuring the modlist can take quite some time, and is lengthened by the inclusion of the navmesh generation. If you are on a slower computer that is taking far longer than you would find acceptable to generate the navmesh, you can remove teh —run-navmeshtool flag from the configuration command. Keep in mind that this will have performance implications, especially on load times in-game.

    If something occurs to stop the configuration, it can be resumed in-place by using the momw-configurator-linux-amd64 setup command.

    At this point, you are essentially done with the setup! Congratulations! You can hop in and play now, or you can continue tinkering with options made available to you by the OpenMW game engine in its launcher.

Optional Game Configurations

    Before we get into actually changing any of the settings in the launcher, we first should make clear some caveats. If you change any settings in the launcher, ensure you are not simultaneously modifying the settings.cfg file for OpenMW simultaneously. The same applies in the opposite direction,if editing the settings.cfg file you should not have the launcher open. This can cause problems with the MOMW Configurator's changes, and may lead to situations where changes made in the file directly are not reflected or preserved in the launcher.

    The official guide for the MOMW Tools recommends that you read the official documentation for OpenMW, as well as the MOMW's own Getting Started: Tweak Settings pages. These are great starting points to get a feeling for what settings are available to you, and what you may want to consider changing. They additionally note that you can re-run the MOMW Configurator to reapply all default values, meaning any changes made are reversable to sane defaults for the modlist. For the remainder of this section, I will be detailing my own personal choices made in each section of the launcher as well as why I personally made those choices.

Data Files

    The first category of settings in the OpenMW Launcher is the Data Files page. This is a place where you can change load order, active mods, and even create your own lists of mods. You should not modify the load order or the active mods of the pre-made modlists unless you know what you are doing. With that said, the changes I make here are pretty simple. OpenMW will name each content list by the date it was created by default. I don't like this, and would rather my content list reflect the name of the mod list I am using. So, in the dropdown box at the bottom of the screen I simply select the modlist that was created by the MOMW Configurator and then delete the name, typing in “I-Heart-Vanilla”. These are the only changes I make here, and you should not need to make further changes unless you are specifying custom content to be added to your mod lists. In that case, you may want to go to the “Data Directories” sub-category, make a folder for your own custom additions somewhere on your filesystem, and then point the OpenMW Launcher to that directory.

Display

    This category gives you some very basic display options, you should set them as you see fit but for an example of my configuration it is as follows:

• Window Border is Enabled

• Framerate Limit is enabled and set to 144, as I use a 144Hz monitor. It defaults to 300, but the game engine is still heavily limited in multi-core utilization at the moment so it will swing quite wildly. I advise putting it closer to your desired average framerate to prevent some stuttering (although you will still see some, it is the nature of the game and the current iteration of the OpenMW engine)

• Vertical Synchronization is enabled. You can turn this off if you don't mind screen tearing, or otherwise limit your FPS in a way to prevent tearing. I had it enabled in an attempt to reduce some of the occasional stutters, but was fruitless so this may change in the future.

• Window Mode is set to Windowed Fullscreen. I stream, I record videos, I like to be able to alt-tab without the window freaking out when I try to go back into the game. Exclusive Fullscreen is the better option if you have your attention solely on the game and don't need/want to interact with other windows, but for me this is my go-to for all games.

• Anti-Aliasing is set to 0. You can enable this, it goes up to 16x. I just don't see a point in enabling it unless you are heavily modding the game, as aliasing is fairly minor in the vast majority of this game due to the low detail of the graphics.

• Screen is set to Screen 1 and Standard Resolution. Set this as you see fit for your preferences and display.

      Although this is the end of the “Display” section, this is not where visual tweaking ends. For that, we will address some in the next section as well as in-game when we finally launch the game.

Settings

    This category is where the bulk of the changes to OpenMW can be made, and you should take your time going through this and deciding for yourself what changes you want to make and what you value. This category is split into several sub-categories that we will tackle one at a time. I am going to detail what settings I am using, and why. These are not recommendations, and you should feel free to tweak these to your wants and needs.

Gameplay

    These are settings that affect some of the mechanics of the game. These are heavily preference based, and the defaults are a good starting point. I have the following settings enabled:

• Steal from Knocked out Actors in Combat – Why wouldn't you be able to steal from someone unconscious?

• Always Allow Actors to Follow over Water – Default setting, likely fixes pathfinding issues

• Permanent Barter Disposition Changes – In the vanilla game, you can spam trade attempts until you either succeed or get the merchant to 0 disposition and then when you close the dialogue window and talk to them again, their disposition is back to what it initially was. This fixes that, and prevents some cheesing of easy early game money.

• Use Navigation Mesh for Pathfinding – Another default option, affects how the AI is aware of the world around them. I would only disable on low spec machines, or for closer to classic gameplay reasons.

• Followers Defend Immediately – Fixes your followers just standing around waiting for someone to attack once combat starts. In the vanilla game, if someone initiates combat with you (or vice versa) but nobody has swung their sword the AI companions will act like nothing is happening. This makes the AI feel more aware and sentient.

• Merchant Equipping Fix – In the vanilla game any item you sell to a merchant that is better than their current equipment will automatically be equipped by them. This leads to silly but annoying situations where by end game merchants will be wearing all daedric gear and similar. Merchants won't change with this enabled, but to me it is more immersive than the alternative.

• Day Night Switch Nodes – Another default option, I just leave it as is.

• Classic Reflected Absorb Spells Behavior – Restores the vanilla functionality of reflected absorb spells behavior

• Can Loot During Death Animation – Allows you to loot corpses before they have finished falling to the ground. Maybe less immersive, certainly more convenient.

• Enchanted Weapons Are Magical – Restores vanilla behavior around enchanted weapons. Some enchanted weapons may not be flagged as magical in OpenMW, which means they would miss targets like ghosts that are only affected by magic weapons. This makes that no longer the case.

• Classic Calm Spells Behavior – Restores vanilla functionality around the calm spell, stopping NPCs affected by the spell every frame. Disabling it mimics the old Morrowind Code Patch, and may be more balanced than vanilla.

• Swim Upward Correction – Makes it so that in third person your character keeps their head above the water when you are swimming at the surface. In vanilla, it is quite clunky to swim just on the surface of the water in third person.

• NPCs Avoid Collisions – Modifies NPC pathfinding behavior to prevent them from colliding with one another. They may still bump into each other once in a while, but it should be significantly less than vanilla.

• Graphic Herbalism – Allows you to pick supported plants without opening a menu when activating the plant. This mod is included in the I Heart Vanilla list, so I enable this.

• Factor Strength into Hand-to-Hand Combat: Affect Werewolves – Self-explanatory, in vanilla the value of your Strength does not affect damage dealt in Hand-to-Hand combat. This fixes that, and makes it apply to werewolves as well. Might be unbalanced for werewolves.

• Background Physics Threads: 1 – OpenMW can use more than one thread for this, but it seems to not really affect anything. I leave it default.

• Actor Collision Shape Type: Axis-Aligned Bounding Box – Default collision shape, I see no reason to change it.

Visuals

    This section affects the rendering and animations of the game and has several sub-categories of its own. We will break them down by page.

Animations

    The following are enabled in my launcher:

• Player Movement Ignores Animation – Prevents camera sway during movement while in third person

• Use Magic Item Animation – Uses casting animation for magic items, just like spells would. In vanilla magic items did not animate their casts.

• Use Additional Animation Sources – Allows mods to load custom animations

• Weapon Sheathing – If you install a mod to include sheathes and scabbards, this will allow them to render

• Smooth Movement – Filters out the jittery movements the NPCs and player may make.

• Turn to Movement Direction – When combined with the above setting, makes movement much smoother than vanilla and more realistic. Recommended to enable if the above setting is on.

• Smoth Animation Transitions – Makes animations lead into each other more smoothly, and is configurable with YAML modding.

• Shield Sheathing – If you install mods to keep your shield on your character model, this setting enables that to be rendered.

Shaders

    The following are enabled in my launcher:

• Bump/Reflect Map Local Lighting – Fixes objects with Bump/Reflect maps glowing in the dark. Uses shaders to fix affected objects.

• Weather Particle Occlusion – Makes it so particles will no longer fall through roofs and other solid objects

• Soft Particles – Changes how particles are rendered to make them softer.

• Adjust Coverage for Alpha Test – Default setting, affected by mods

• Use Anti-Aliased Alpha Testing – Allows Alpha Tested meshes to use MSAA.

Fog

    Under normal circumstances I would modify these settings, for the purposes of this playthrough and guide I left them default which should more closely mimic vanilla Morrowind.

Terrain

    These settings will allow you to enable distant land and change the view distance past vanilla Morrowind's limited 0.875 cells limit. I left these vanilla, for that vanilla vibe.

Post Processing

    I enabled Post Processing to allow me to change the gamma in-game, as the game appears a bit darker than I would like on my current monitor. Gamma is hidden behind post-processing currently, and you can also use this option to enable other modded post process effects, such as the included bloom. Transparent Postpass and Auto Exposure Speed I left to default.

Shadows

    The following are enabled in my launcher:

• Enable Player Shadows

• Enable Actor Shadows

• Enable Object Shadows

• Enable Indoor Shadows

• Enable Terrain Shadows

• Shadow Planes Computation Method: Bounds

• Shadow Map Resolution: 1024

• Shadow Distance Limit: 8192 Units

• Fade Start Multiplier: 0.90

    This enables all types of shadowing in my game while keeping them looking close to vanilla detail.

Lighting

    I have the Lighting Method set to Shaders, as I have a modern mid-range GPU that is fully capable of running these. On older or weaker devices, Legacy mode or shaders(compat) mode may be necessary.

Audio

    I have changed none of these settings, but if you have interest in having 3D audio you can modify the settings here to enable HRTF and tweak it to your preferences.

Interface

    I have left these vanilla as well, but if you are new to Morrowind there are some nice QOL things in here. Additionally, if you have a monitor above 1080p, you may be interested in the GUI Scaling Factor and Font Size options. I would recommend the following settings:

• Show Owned objects – On (if you are new to the game)

• GUI Scaling Factor – 1.25 at 1080p for closer to vanilla feel

• Font Size – 16 or if you are struggling with the default font, increase up to somewhere around 18-20

• Change Dialogue Topic Color – Should be enabled by default, but keep this on

• Can Zoom on Maps – On – Allows you to get a better idea of what you're looking at on the maps in your player menu.

• Stretch Menu Background – Disable this to keep the original aspect ratio of the artwork. No idea why this is default.

• Enable Controller Menus – On (if you are using a controller)

• Show Controller Tooltips By Default – On (if you are using a controller)

Miscellaneous

    Here you can change the number of maximum quicksaves (I suggest 5) and the format of screenshots taken by the game (PNG is default) and whether you wish to be notified of screenshots being saved.

Testing

    The only option here I suggest changing (unless you are using an experimental modlist) is “Grab Cursor.” This functionality may cause some bugs in certain situations, but prevents your mouse from leaving the game window in multi-monitor setups.

In-Game

    Keeping in mind that I am on Arch Linux and my package is therefore newer than most distros, I am on Release 0.50 currently. This is a release candidate build which means that there may be some differences in the options available to me as compared to the builds in your repos.

    After we start the game we immediately want to head into the Options menu before even starting a new save. A majority of the settings in this menu are very much personal preference and familiarity, but I will detail by category what I chose for my setup.

Prefs

• Menu Transparency – Left it at default. You can make it not transparent or fully transparent, but I llike how vanilla Morrowind does it.

• Menu Help Delay – Left at the default (fastest speed) as I do not like delay on my tooltips

• Difficulty – 0 is the most balanced starting point. You can read on how dificulty works in Morrowind here but a TLDR is that the slider determines how much damage you do to enemies, how much damage enemies do to you, and other RNG manipulations. If you are absolutely lost and unsure how to play, -100 makes the game almost entirely peaceful to play even with your skills untrained.

• Actors Processing Range – Far (7168). This is the maximum currently allowed in-game. This setting determines the distance at which actors will animate and path around. While you can increase the game rendering above this value, it is very rare you will be observing NPCs from further than this. Modifying this in settings.cfg may be possible, but may not have an effect past this value.

• Auto-Save when Rest – On. Creates an autosave when you use the rest command or sleep in a bed.

• Always Use Best Attack – Off. Although if you want to meta-game, turning this on is better. I personally like having the option of attacking in different ways by changing the movements my character is making. This option disables that mechanic, and always uses the strongest attack type your weapon has.

• Subtitles – On. I'm hard of hearing.

• Crosshair – On. This isn't Skyrim, the crosshair is pretty damn necessary for picking up some of the games smaller items.

Audio

    This is heavily preferrential so I won't dive into my settings, but I suggest increasing the Voice volume and decreasing footsteps volume. Voices I max out, footsteps I keep around 20% or so, and then Music I keep around or below 50% as some of it is quite loud.

Controls

    This is again heavily preferrential, my personal changes are that I lower the sensitivity from the default and I swap the “Always Run” button to Shift because I disable my Caps Lock key entirely, and I hate holding Run to move fast. If you have a controller, there is an additional sub-category you can use to bind your controls there.

Video

    More video settings! A lot of these are identical to the Launcher, I will only document the changes made that are not in the Launcher. Note that some of these changes are under sub-categories themselves.

• Field of View set to 85

• Texture Filtering – Trilinear. This is under Detail Level.

• Anisotrophy – 16. This is under Detail Level.

• Water shader – On. This is under Water.

• Refraction – On. This is under Water.

• Sunlight Scattering – On. this is under Water.

• Wobbly Shores – On. This is under Water.

• Texture Quality – High. This is under Water.

• Reflection Shader Detail – World. This is under Water.

• Rain Ripple Detail – Sparse. This is under Water.

• Max Lights – 64. This is under Lights.

• Maximum Light Distance – 8192. This is under Lights.

Scripts

    Currently I am using none of the changes available here, however I recommend reading through each of these scripts and deciding for yourself what features to enable. If you like playing in third person, I suggest the Camera script especially as it allows you to have a more modern camera system in third person.

Language

    Here you can configure primary and secondary languages. I only speak English, so that is what I have set.

Starting a New Game!

    Whew, we're finally to the point where we can return to the main menu proper and click new! You'll have a cutscene to sit through, and then some dialogue. A guard will soon approach and ask you to follow him off the boat. At this point, you can sit down and just play. However, you may be questioning something that I mentioned earlier. Gamma. Where do you change that? Well, at the time of writing this Gamma and other Post Process effects are hidden away under a secret menu bound to F2. Once you are in-game, press F2 and the Post Processor HUD will pop up. Here you can see and activate any and all shaders included with OpenMW, or others you may have installed with mods. Activate the adjustments shader, and change the gamma there until the indoor lighting of the ship is comfortable for you. I have mine set to 1.300 at the time of writing. Contrast can also be adjusted here, though I didn't find a need to on my display. Additionally, you can enable bloom if that is your thing with the bloomlinear shader. Beyond this, you are ready to settle in and play Morrowind. If this is your first time, maybe watch some guide videos or read the UESP's Starting Out page for some beginner's tips.

Conclusion

    Whew, that was a ot. Over 5,000 words, in fact. This is something I chose to write very spur of the moment, and made sure to walk myself through it step by step as I wrote to verify I wasn't forgetting anything. If I have forgotten something, if there are issues with the formatting, or if there is a detail you would like me to include you can contact me on the Fediverse! My signature to each post will explain how to do this.

    While this was a lengthy article and may make the process seem complicated, it is only because I broke things down step by step and included more than necessary detail in hopes that this would be a valuable contribution to the Elder Scrolls community and those with less technical knowledge who find themselves on Linux. There's definitely areas this guide could improve, such as being re-written to be distro specific. I don't have the time, nor the energy to do that, so if you want to adapt this to a distro-specific guide (or Flatpak specific guide!) feel free, and if you see fit to credit me it is appreciated! I'm a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind and I've wanted to contribute something to its community for quite some time. Maybe this passionately written article will be the spark that drives me to learning to mod. After all, I did make a simple beast race patch with the OpenMW Content Editor to allow Khajiit and Argonians to wear shoes

Thank you for taking the time to read my post! Your time and thoughts are appreciated, and if you're interested in discussing something you have read here you can reach me at @thatgalsilver@zoner.work