I knew I wanted to try my hand at painting red sandstone cliffs, and looked around the internet for some references. There were a few shots of sandstone cliffs thrown into orange and purple relief due to the photos being taken somewhere around sunset (or perhaps sunrise) that inspired the colors of this image.
In Tamriel Rebuilt, Roth Roryn is a landscape of orange cliffs. It borders the Deshaan Plains to the south, which in Tamriel Rebuilt, are actual plains as the old name dictates instead of marshlands as they are seen in Elder Scrolls Online. The purple, gray, and green coloring of the Deshaan plains also comes from concept art of Tamriel Rebuilt, serving as the main color palette for this zone.
Over the weekend I was part of a streamed discussion for Tamriel Rebuilt, a game mod for the game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The streaming session was put together and hosted by Zaric Zhakaron. I’m Kevaar, a Lead Developer of the mod who specializes in quest development and lore.
As part of learning about the economy for my own business ventures, I decided to make a study of what World of Warcraft players call “playing the Auction House”, in which they try to make profits solely by reselling goods bought from other players instead of going out and obtaining these goods directly from the game world. In February, I ran two characters on two different servers to dip my toes into the world of buying and re-selling. My preliminary findings left me with many more questions about the Auction House economy, and so the study continued!
In the month of March, my study followed six characters, each with a different marketing scheme for selling their goods. These characters remained on the combined server of Cenarion Circle and Sisters of Elune, a relatively small North American RP server, as well as one of the oldest. I will summarize some of my findings below. Continue reading “Playing the Auction House: March Data”
Sad news today. I just received word that Neverwinter will be closing down its Foundry for good.
Neverwinter is an MMORPG set in Dungeons & Dragons’ Forgotten Realms setting, using a version of the 4th Edition D&D ruleset. It had an editor named the Foundry that gave players the ability to create their own quests and dungeons, complete with branching dialogue, monsters, simple puzzles, and (pre-generated) quest rewards, for other players to play through and critique.
Though it had its flaws, for me and many others, it was the main draw of the game. I won’t forget adventures like faithful renditions of Drizzt’s battle with the Many Arrows orcs, doing my in-character introduction for my roleplay guild <Order of the Broken Path>, knocking over mountains of crates just for the heck of it, evenings spent in specially created taverns chatting with other roleplayers, and even a quirky quest about saving a village from hallucinatory cheese.
Some of the aforementioned adventures were brought to you by one of these Foundry Authors. I’m the drow on the far right. From left to right: Theolus “Foundry Apprentice” of The Broken Path, Tony Chianti “Foundry Neophyte” of Infernal Paragons, Eixelebrat “Foundry Grandmaster” of NWLC Alpha, Ian Darksword “Foundry Stalwart” of Noble Misfits, Irras Locksheon “Moonstar Agent” of The Court of Bones, Claudia Helder “Foundry Grandmaster” of Jagged Daggers, Rendis Redhair “Foundry Neophyte” of Elite Mercenaria, Thia Duskwalker “Foundry Graduate” of Order of the Raven, CruelBanana “The Blue” of Reborn Immortals, Nedryn Zauth “Foundry Apprentice” of Order of the Silent Shroud (Photo credit to Locksheon.)
I myself created a small campaign following the story of a drow who had fled the Underdark after his daughter had been turned into an evil priestess of Lloth. He surfaced somewhere in the Anarouch Desert, met a sharp-tongued wood elf who reluctantly befriended him, and eventually found faith in Amaunator (Lathander), the god of the sun and truth. The campaign is still available until April 11th on Neverwinter. If you care to give it a look-up, it is called the Fox’s Den; author is @kevaar. Please note, given the current status of the Foundry, some bugs may exist that I can no longer control.
I’m just a little choked up it’ll all be gone soon, really. Over the next few weeks I’ll be salvaging what I can, perhaps to retool for a pen and paper module. Or perhaps greater things lie in store? The community of Foundry authors, while small, has been wonderful, and we’re considering refocusing our creative efforts into making a community based on creating quests and perhaps even our own indie RPG. It’s too early to tell yet.
In the meantime, it was good while it lasted. We’ll miss you, Foundry. Should you resurface in some form, whether in this game or another, don’t be a stranger, hey?
Here’s to our next adventure!
(Photo credit to JayAgeDee.)
In my efforts to start up a small bookselling business on Amazon, I ran a little experiment on the World of Warcraft economy. As described in my February Update post, I determined I would start with a small amount of ingame currency, then proceed to play the Auction House to see how much of a profit I could make with it. This was to simulate the real world market of buying items used and trying to sell them up for a profit.
It’s now one month into the study and I’ve decided to post my findings thus far.
Even the term “corkbulb” would have one thinking it is what it sounds like: a root made of a cork-like substance, that could assumably be used in place of wood. Alas, it is not quite so, and the uses of this fine root in Morrowind are often mistaken by horticultural novices.
Write down report: someone should really tell Zaurac not to bang his head on chairs.
You need to be a little punch-drunk to test quest coding, I think. This story was inspired by my attempts–and failures–to get chairs to magically float in a tavern for a Tamriel Rebuilt quest. Some of the jokes are references to the world or to the quirks of the Morrowind Construction Set. Can you decipher them all? Continue reading “A Day in the Life of Testy”
Cross-posted from my Tamriel Rebuilt blog, which originally hosted this article on June 26th, 2018.
Author’s Note
This will probably turn more into a ramble than a blog post. This is in answer to criticisms of why Tamriel Rebuilt (TR) has chosen to ignore most of the lore from Elder Scrolls: Online (ESO)and an explanation to why some folks still vehemently dislike ESO, from my personal point of view. Continue reading “If You Don’t Know About It, It’s Easy to Overlook”
