Which not all of them are, but never mind that.

So a few people now have asked me about my various Oblivion characters, and since I've played enough of them, I've started forgetting who they were. So I checked. And you, dear reader, can be the beneficiary of some show and tell.

Valerius: Male Dunmer Custom Class, Level 29
Playing Time: 70h, 2m

Skills: Blade 125, Alteration 47, Destruction 75, Mysticism 59, Restoration 56, Light Armor 100, Sneak 72
Factions: Mage's Guild (Arch-Mage), Fighter's Guild (Master)

My first character, who also beat the main quest, explored a LOT, and did two factions worth of quests (Fighter's Guild? It sucks. Trust me here.). As you can see, primarily a light armor blade fighter, with a bit of magical versatility (only since you have to really devote to magic, not really). He worked, as far as he went, but light armor, blade-wielding, non-stealth characters are pretty rough going, so my first game was pretty challenging, until I reached high levels and custom enchanting, and then...well, not so much, really.

Twitch: Male Khajiit Custom Class, Level 25
Playing Time: 54h, 22m

Skills: Blade 68, Acrobatics 60, Light Armor 68, Marksman 115, Mercantile 53, Security 104, Sneak 111
Factions: Arena (Grand Champion), Dark Brotherhood (Listener), Thieves' Guild (Gray Fox)

Twitch is a result of Samson and Whir going "You don't have a Dark Brotherhood character? It's the best faction in the game! What's WRONG with you!?" Since I wanted to try a stealth character anyway, I went for it. Allow me to inform you that, not only is the Dark Brotherhood easily the best faction in the game, followed by the Thieves' Guild (note the factions), stealth archers are, once you get over that initial phase of running away because you suck, pretty much a God class. Twitch, via night eye, is able to traverse dungeons as if in daylight, quickly gunning down even the most powerful of enemies in one or two bow shots, almost always without ever having been seen. If it weren't so fun, it would be disturbing.

Alera: Female Altmer Custom Class, Level 32
Playing Time: 51h, 10m

Skills: Alchemy 100, Alteration 100, Conjuration 100, Destruction 100, Illusion 82, Mysticism 42, Restoration 50
Factions: Mages' Guild (Arch-Mage)

In which I attempt playing a mage character, devoting body and soul to it as I know you need to. And it works, mind you, after a fashion. Against many enemies, Alera is a Goddess of Destruction, laying fiery burnination upon the masses, or summoning daedra lords to do it for her. Due to the way magic leveling works, it took forever to get there, but what the hell. Suffice it to say that I feel like Oblivion PC magic got nerfed hard from previous games, and it's now more annoying that fun. In addition, Alera has yet to complete the main quest line, as she is stuck in Kvatch. At level 32. You know that tip where you should do Kvatch before level 5? They mean it.

Hrolf the Ganger: Male Nord Custom Class, Level 26
Playing Time: 33h, 19m

Skills: Armorer 91, Blade 60, Block 51, Blunt 100, Heavy Armor 100, Restoration 77, Security 42
Factions: Knights of the Nine (Divine Crusader)

"Hey, Knights of the Nine! I should make a crusader character to go through it!"

It turns out that, when played correctly, heavy armor fighters are highly effective, both at killing and leveling. By simply getting in fights, then repairing your gear, you level quickly and easily, and at later levels the game helps you by making the fights longer. Restoration helps you heal up after the carnage.

After doing the atmospheric Knights of the Nine, Hrolf was also my first (and so far only) character through Shivering Isles, which was...something. I remain highly ambivilent about my SI experience, not in the least because a paladin was not meant for SI storywise, and because there's not many things more annoying than having to spend literally 2-5 minutes fighting every time you see a Grummite. Those aside, I had fun with SI, but my favorite DLC is still Knights of the Nine.

Rankin: Male Redguard Custom Class, Level 19
Playing Time: 20h

Skills: Armorer 47, Athletics 48, Blade 75, Acrobatics 51, Light Armor 75, Security 49, Sneak 62
Factions: Arena (Myrmidon), Thieves' Guild (Shadowfoot)

My current character, such as he is, assuming I decide to ever play him again, which should give you some idea what I think of his playing style. The problem is the same thing that makes fighters easy to play - he levels quickly, and can rapidly outpace his equipment (he still has a Kvatch guard helmet at level 19). Too, it's that same thing as Valerius. Light armor is really bad to take to a fight, and he gets in a lot of fights. It seems clear that when I go to play through Weye for real, I'll be doing it with a new character.

Some of you may remember this post from a time ago, in which I discuss D&D worlds and the building thereof. As I am in a creative brainstorming mood, and as I need a break from beating my head against a certain part of Weye for a moment, allow me to ramble.

Coming up with unique countries that aren't direct representations of Earth stuff is pretty hard. Just saying. So most of this stuff needs to be preliminary until I can figure out how to put my own spin on it.

There's a spot in the east, a couple islands and some coastline, that I always sort of earmarked as "Put some wizard artificer types here", and I sure don't want to use gnomes, so let's not do that, but it does occur to me that I always thought Al-Qadim was really cool, I have a ton of sourcebooks for it, and Sha'irs and Clockwork Mages are about what I want out of the thing. So the whole elemental theme could be pretty cool. I am unsure what route to take with this. Using actual genies could be neat, but seems wildly overpowered. Genasi could also be cool, but are sort of bland. Ditto for spirit folk. Also, in order to keep these guys from ruling the world, it would be best if they had a sort of enclaves at war feel, or they're so damn advanced they just don't care, and it's all political intrigue all day in fantastic clockwork cities. Only we want clockwork cities anyway, because that's cool. On the downside, that whole elemental thing has been so DONE.

Maybe some sort of combination of Nethrese enclaves, clockwork mages, Mafia/yakuza clans, and wizard's guilds. Unified island kingdom that hasn't really had any threats forever and a day, and hangs out and trades with guys for stupid amounts of cash because omg mechanics. Maybe a sort of lawful-neutral guild-run society where everybody and their plant life has a guild, and the guilds have some sort of council, and it all looks a lot like Star Wars except without the Jedi. They can do the trade enclave thing on the mainland, too, only the whole wizard enclave thing has been so done to death.

In any case. The swamps up near Kitilumia/Sanagos might better be populated by Bullywugs for the sake of variety. They have the right kind of flavor stock. Kind of like chicken, only with summoning added. Also, way too many reptiles going on.

The northlands really want a sort of Norse/Finnish feel to them, which has so totally been done, but that's because it's so totally cool. We don't want ALL the baggage from that, just the whole idea of going off and raiding dudes, rocky farms, trees and snow-covered mountains, and Bad Things Coming Out Of Them At Night. Such as, for instance, gibberlings, or grimlocks, or quaggoths. And in the trees we can have tribes of kenku, because that's a great spot for them. We can also split whoever these Norse guys are into two distinct groups - one the more traditional Viking type, the other more of a nomadic, fur-wearing, "we done herded us some reindeers" type that the Viking types kind of look down on and feel a bit sorry for. Maybe not reindeers. Rothe or something, perhaps, but you get the idea. Makes there be a whole lot of friggin' nomads in this world, but oh well. Also, pretty probable these guys end up being either bugbears or hobgoblins, or some kind of non-lycanthrope wolf-type race. Hengeyokai could fit, but maybe not, as they'd sort of blend into the Kenku.

Am still wildly unsure as to what to do about the vast majority of the center land, which is obviously human, only with no clear conception on how to make them cool. I've been sort of building them up in my mind as sort of Saxon/Frankish/Woohoo Charlemagne types, sort of blending more and more into civilization as you get further south, but more on the level of Celtic hill forts rather than medieval castles or Roman forts.

A few things we can do about this. Firstly, if we're going to do the whole elected kings/witan/warrior bands thing, why don't we ramp up the duty and honor thing and make them sort of the Anglo-Saxon equivilent of samurai. Maybe not katana/wakizashi, etc, but that sort of thing. Elected kingship gives us cool opportunities, too. If we're going to be all Bernard Cornwall about the thing, we may as well emphasize shield walls and such, too.

Secondly, what say there aren't any horses in the whole place. Like, anywhere in the world. There are various ways various folks make up for this, of course. Your lizard-types can ride other lizards or dinosaurs, the Sanagosi probably don't ride in the first place, the wizards wouldn't stoop that low, and the Vikings are on boats half the time anyway. There should be some kind of mounted element to these people, probably, but I'm not sure what it is.

Since we're already overboard on strong, god-king and wizard-ruled states, we may as well ditch that element, and leave out any kind of strong church flavor for these particular humans. There'll be those aasimar healers and such, and maybe some monastary type things, the people may be devoted, but dispense with the strong churches. Also, some inter-religious strife by competing missionaries of the Vikings, Ssithilos, Sanagos, and Aasimar could be fun, and give each particular kingdom some flavor.

As I say, probably a blend between Celts, Saxons, and Charlemagne, here. Probably have some kind of overking in the south trying to impose his rule on everyone else and failing, sort of like the not-awesome Charlemagne, which also sets up some good tensions with the petty republics and tyrannies of the Free Cities. South probably has a lot more motte and bailey type action going on, versus the hilly (and much more heavily attacked) north, which is all Celtic-style hill forts of earth and stone. The whole elected king/council of warriors thing is probably lots stronger in the North, too, with the whole thing being a polite fiction in the South, and probably a good plot point for whoever the overking is as he tries to establish hereditary autocracy.

All that having been said, these guys are still super bland compared to everyone else. That may be a good thing, because it's always nice to have something familiar, but if I'm going to go whole hog on this being unique thing, well.

Maybe two other things we can do here. If we're going for the whole warrior honor culture thing, it's a good spot to import the concept of wandering duelist kensai-types, as well as warrior brotherhoods/orders that are probably a lot closer to Aztec jaguar/eagle knights than the Templars. Probably at least a few of these, some tied to religion (the hobgoblin wolf god probably has a big one), some tied to wizards, though the wizard ones are probably less. On that same note, as much as it pains me to say it, the aasimar monastic healers make a good fit with the monk class. Considering the whole healing in a dangerous world aspect, they'd probably be all up into martial arts. Must think on this. Some sort of cleric class that got some monk abilities could actually be sort of cool. Also, with the exception of the universally loved because they take care of our sick kids aasimar, the warrior brotherhoods may or may not be pretty suspect as agents of the overking up north.

There are two islands south of Great Ssithilos. I'm guessing our snakey friends probably suck as sailors, so these don't need to be all that influenced by them. One of them can be some kind of conglomerate pirate base. It's a bit far from anywhere, but it can raid the south coast good, and there needs to be that one spot for exiles that's a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

I have no idea what to use the other, larger island for, and I similarly have no idea what to do along the whole east coast without making the wizard thing ridiculous, and on the second of those two big islands up there. I could reserve one island to be more or less uninhabited, full of who the hell knows what creatures (because that plot's always fun), but one of them is country-sized. Humans influenced by the wizard people? Some blend of Peretoi Zuluism and wizards? zomg teh wizards we hates them we hates them? Must think on this.

A word on probable economies, while I'm thinking on it:

Sanagos: Best minerals in the world, probable source of some ridiculous amount of the world's gem supplies.
Free Cities: Mercenaries for everyone else, plus they're in the best spot to trade with literally everybody.
Saxon Humans: Probably the breadbasket of the whole Middle Sea area, and export food to everyone.
Peretoi: Nomadic herders and hunters, though what they herd is anyone's guess.
Vikings: Small-time farming, supplemented by raiding the Saxons.
Ssithilos: Huge spice plantations, exotic pets, and given that string of volcanic mountains, the other gemstones that Sanagos doesn't supply. Or maybe they do all the gems, Sanagos does most of the iron mining and such, as they're in the position for that.
Pirates: Piracy. Yearg.
Wizards: Selling awesome clockwork shit, which incidentally is a great way to introduce some new magic stuff.

Also, with scant exceptions, like Sanagos and what used to be Kitilumia, I really lack history for this whole world. It's pretty probable that Great Ssithilos has pretty much been there in one form or another since Way Back In the Day, Egypt-style, and clearly the wizards got to their own ossified state somehow, which will have to be thought on. The Saxons and Vikings, being probably semi-literate, are probably in that situation where they know stuff happened before them, but it's legendary, which gives me some fun DMing opportunities. The lizardfolk either had a big ass war with Ssithilos, gradually grew via escapes, or both, sort of like what one hears the Carribean was like back in the days of slavery, except literally tooth and claw rebellions all the time.

In any event I think we're leaning towards young world worldbuilding, rather than back in the day there were tons of huge empires 40,000 years ago woohoo old world worldbuilding, which is ok.

I think we've pretty much established at this point that a lot of the stuff in the PHB items list just isn't there, starting with horses (but riding dinos is cooler), and lots of weapons like polearms and crossbows. Armor probably maxes out around banded mail or breastplates, though the possibility always exists of really freaking heavy Mycenaean type platemail. Similarly, things like the larger sailing ships are pretty much Sir Not Appearing In This Setting, but that's probably quite ok.

I've really got to come up with a good way to do Ssithilos-type names. Which brings up the thought that if northern humans are Germanic, and the southern ones are more Greco-Sumerian, that same blend probably holds true for the eastern ones - Greco-Roman, Greco-Sumerian, something like that. There's a chance for some really interesting blends between that culture and whatever the wizard one ends up being. More urbanized, some guilds and magic. They need issues and something to do with themselves, though. Trade isn't it so it's probably farming, and something's got to be done to keep it all not generic European.

Some kind of Indian-style caste system would be neat for the wizards.

Yes, this is what info dumps straight from my brain look like.

Oh yeah, religion. Two guiding principles:

1. I'd rather have evil guys in the church of the good god than an evil church. Better drama, and besides the Thugees and those five guys that worship Satan because it's like, so DARK, men, how many societies really run around doing evil god worship anyway?

2. So damn tired of generic polytheism. So so very much. Monotheism for a whole world would be boring, however.

So, ok. We seem to be coming up with three styles of god, here:

- Immortal gods that went, created races, and actually live with their worshippers (or not);
- Mortals who did awesome stuff and became gods;
- People who worship magic, essentially.

So of the first type, probably the Viking wolf god and the Aasimar healing god are this, along with Great Ssithilos.

Of the second type, Sanagos is the prime example, and there's probably some major lizardfolk hero who led his folk to freedom, wields a two-handed sword, and shoots lightning from his eyes and fireballs from his tail. Probably there can be a couple more of these, especially for the humans, once I decide what they are.

Of the third type, primitives like the Aischroi definitely do ACTUALLY worship it, and the wizards probably have some sort of deistic belief in how magic is like the Force, and seriously if I'm not careful these guys are going to turn out very Star Wars. Pretty probable that most wizards share this sort of deism, which probably makes them very unpopular with the clerics.

I've got the Peretoi down as being sort of nature/spirit worshippers, which I guess is a sort of fourth kind of religion. Probably the kenku do this too. The nomadic herder hobgoblins might do it too, which could be interesting.

Of our new-to-be-created gods, the wolf god is probably sort of an Odin/Athena type, wise, kicks ass in battle, wanders hither and thither in the land, showing up at random guy's battles and either winning them, or just beating up dudes. The Aasimar healing god is sort of turning out to be a Jesus Christ figure, if Christ was a little more Second Amendment and a little less turn the other cheek. I'm willing to bet that the wizard nation doesn't even do temples at all, except if any foreign devils get enclaves.

(it occurs to me that, while boring, the wizard guys could be yet more humans, though it would be cooler if they weren't, really)

I promised you Weye pics, so here they are. Enjoy.

This is essentially what I see in the editor.  The big orange boxes are either effects or trigger zones.  In this case, butterflies.  The yellow box things are door markers, where you appear when you pop out of a door.  The red ones are alternately map markers (the things you see on the world map and can fast travel to) or things called X Heading Markers, which are markers you can tell guys to go to and face a certain way.  The red Xs on the ground are X markers, which are the non-facing specific version of same.

For what it's worth, most of this shot is stock, and most of what isn't, like all those X Heading Markers, you will never see. But there's plenty more than this, believe me.

This is what the main street looks like in-game. Notice the new manor.

This is the side of the manor from between Lucius' Bows and Thalonias' tent.

This is the front side of the manor, facing the crossroads. The big out of place Ayleid switch is my cheat switch, which powers me through the whole first quest, gives me 30,000 gold, a daedric bow, and 50 legendary shockarrows. You will not get one of these.

This is Hagal and Yrsa, Nords in distress, and familiar if you played the first version of Weye.

This is Maxentius Alosius, lord of the manor, and his faithful bodyguard, Kalzi, strolling down the main drag.

This is Lucius and Thalonias going to work in the morning.

This is a trio of new NPCs, hanging out in front of the Wawnet Inn. Two of them are from the original Weye mod, one of them is all new.

This is the player-bought gardens area in the rear of the manor, or the part of it you get to see. Of all the parts of the manor, I'm proudest of this - it's very cool.

This is the player version of the entry hall, before I fixed the lighting. This is maybe half the total display cases.

This is also ground level, this time the dining room, again before lighting fixes.

This is upstairs, also before lighting fixes. While I've billed the addition of a maid to the manor, please note that this is...not the maid.

This isn't really a Weye image, although there's a new Weye NPC in the shot. It IS pretty cool, however.

So, Weye, or the main quest thereof, or should I say the, oh, five quests or so that comprise it, are now in playtesting, which I'd like to say a brief word about.

It's a funny beast, developing something this large and complex. You think you've got something that should work pretty well on the face of it - you planned pretty well, and the scripts all went together and compiled, and you didn't see any glaring issues with your item placement. So you go to test it, thinking "This shouldn't be too bad, right?"

Nothing, I assure you, could be further from the truth. Reality looks something more like this:

This is the result of forgetting a couple of if checks on a script, and I assure you that I have, for the first 2.5 quests and a short side quest, 3 notebook pages full of things like this, though many not so severe. Things like "More lights upstairs" and "fix hole in platform" competing with things like "Orlando STILL hates me" and "Quest does not start."

Oblivion turns out to be a very finicky sort of editing environment. It's not particularly difficult to break your script by changing something, or, in having 150 items trigger their loading off another, to forget the odd one here and there and wind up with plants floating bizzarely in space. Too, it is often hard to tell exactly where things are in the editor, which is why I wound up with a rug floating 5 feet in the air, more floating food than I care to think about (food is very hard to get right), and a couple of floating pieces of furniture, easily fixed.

Poor Mireena there was a little harder, though as with most things, it was absurdly easy once you know what happened and how to fix it. And I find that, as I go through this process, I am much more able to bend the editor to my will than I was in previous editions of Weye. Annoying bugs like people badgering you to get off the street so they can lock up? Gone after a simple flag change. The number one killer problem for the whole mod, how to get the manor guards to act appropriately, is finally fixed, and very easily so, after a year of trying and failing. Playtesting progresses slowly, but it progresses well, and I am generally pleased with the behavior of the final product. Whereas before, many issues had to be left because I simply did not know how to fix them, I can now fix with a minute or two of work. Things progress well.

You will have pictures fairly soon. Tame stuff, mostly (you'll get some cooler stuff later), showing the new Weye environs, which are muchly improved - you'd be amazed how much the new, larger manor improves the look and feel, and indeed many things, such as the fight scenes, now work much better, and are a lot more fun. Too, another reason why I take so long playtesting? I get lost in my world. I think it's great, and I have a lot of confidence you all will too. Let me know what you think so far.

In which I wax wroth at Oblivion dialogue editing, because, well, why the hell wouldn't you, as I will now describe.

First thing you need to know is, Each line of dialogue, called a response, is contained in a topic, which is the smallest unit you can actually, say, assign to somebody. Topics, in turn, must be contained in quests, which leads to nonsensical things like the creation of quests that aren't really quests, but containers to hold dialogue.

If you didn't understand that, don't worry, because nobody else does either.

Back to responses. Now, if you accept that this whole dialogue scheme is kind of clever and actually quite powerful, and while I hate it, you may believe me that I have drunk the Kool-Aid on this one, you'll ooh and ah over responses, because there are several neat optional things here:

You can set NPC facial emotion while they deliver their line, and the intensity thereof. Things like anger, sadness, happiness, surprise, etc. This is cool. You can also, if you choose, add in sound files, and from these sound files, generate lip files that will make your NPC speak and give realistic lip movement while doing it.

But wait, did I say that part was optional? I lied, because it's really not, because the time which the text for your response spends on the screen is exactly how long it takes for the mp3 file that provides the voice to finish playing. No file means no text.

Fortunately, the game makes it relatively easy for you to add these files. It lists all the NPC races and sexes that can speak the response, tells you file paths to stick your mp3 in, and even provides you a file name, albeit one that looks similar to AFKNQDWeye_AFKWeyeTopic_000205A3_1 or so.

So you pop open explorer, copy and paste some mp3s, do some renaming, and you're cool, right?

Well, yes, except if you have a mod like mine with in excess of 300 lines of dialogue, in which case this will take a while. Also, there are several quirks to the system that you have to beware of:

Argonians and khajiit use the same voice (figure that one out...)
Breton females use the Imperial female voice.
All elves use the High Elf voice set.
Orcs use the Nord voice set.

Which turns out to be less work, but you get way less logic for your dollar.

Also, everything I just told you turns out to be based on a lie, because we're skipping a step. None of this is based on mp3s at all, it's based on wav files, which are used to make both the mp3s and the lip files, but are not actually used in the game, because the mp3s are. Which means deleting the wav files when you're done because otherwise a mod like mine would be Very Large. Oh, and get the settings right on your wavs and mp3s (44100Hz, 64kb rate, mono), or your files will be dead to Oblivion, and you will be angry. Your rage will burn like the sun. Trust me here.

Now, fortunately, there are useful utilities to generate the mp3s from the wavs for you, and the Oblivion editor has a button to generate the lip files, so once you get past that first step of making all of those damned .wav files, you're good.

If only that, like so much of this process, weren't a malicious lie.

Now, if you're that one guy who's still using the original version of the editor, rock on, because you are the only person in the world who can generate hassle-free lip files. The rest of us, who are using the patched editor with the broken lip file generation button, have some more hoop jumping to do.

Specifically, we need to get a copy of the old version of the editor, in specific the .exe file, load up our plugin, and generate from there. While getting an old .exe isn't actually hard, as basically everyone else is in this same boat, we're not done yet. Because the old editor obviously cannot open plugins created in the new editor, we have to download yet another utility to hack our plugin data (and Oblivion.esm data, if you've patched the main game, which you should be doing), so we can then load the fucking thing up and make some lip files. But first you need to back up the files you're about to hack, so you can revert to the new ones when you get done.

After that, however, you can just press the button.

-----------------

For those of you following along at home, by the way, the proper sequence of doing things is this:

1. Write a lot of dialogue. This has many steps in and of itself, chiefly among them "Try not to suck."

2. Get together your utilities. Chiefly among them are:

- A copy of the old Oblivion editor .exe file;
- ESPCracker (to hack your ESP version)
- mp3encode.bat (to make the mp3s)
- A fair amount of comfort food/liquid

3. Go through all of your dialogue, and make a list of all the file names you'll need, along with what folders they need to go in. You don't need to do this, but I find it easier.

4. For each file on that list, take either a generic blank 5-10 second .wav file or your actual voice acted .wav file if you're awesome, and actually make up all the .wav files you'll need. In my case, an awful lot. Hope somebody is going to actually appreciate this later.

5. When done, drop the mp3encode.bat stuff into each folder, and run it. Woosh, mp3s.

6. Back up Oblivion.esm and your plugin .esp somewhere.

7. Use ESPCracker to hax both of these files.

8. Load up the original editor. For each line of dialogue, go in and hit the generate lip file button a lot.

9. Close the editor. Callously destroy your haxed .esm/.esp. Restore your non-haxed versions of same. Rejoice that this task is behind you.

10. Look at clock. Wonder why it is 7am.

By now, most of you gaming types in the audience will have heard that Gary Gygax has died.

I don't want to dwell on this a whole lot, but it should be obvious to anyone who knows me that his great creation, Dungeons and Dragons, has had a great and profound effect on my life since the day in 6th grade when I found my brothers' old 1st Edition Player's Handbook and started running around in my Macbeth costume for the summer. Thankfully, I no longer have the costume, but I do have that PHB, shipped to me at some expense from accross the country, sitting on my bookshelf next to some 3.5 Forgotten Realms books.

But I've told that particular story quite a few times, so I'll just move on to something tangentally related - my Weye mod for Oblivion. Some of you have played it, and I think liked it quite a bit. Let me just say that this new version should be orders of magnitude better, once I get it done, which I assure you is happening at speed.

There have been interesting things about its development that I want to talk about, and in some fashion talk about what it means to be a game master and a designer of interactive fiction. I'll start by saying that there are, to my mind, three basic parts to this: Worldbuilding, or designing a setting for one's story; designing the actual story, by which I mean coming up with a plot; and actually telling the story, which happens around the game table, or in the case of Weye, through a keyboard and monitor.

Now, as it turns out, I'm a pretty good world designer. I should be - I love maps, and the creation thereof. As a history major, I love watching cultures and peoples clash and come together, and do their thing. I like fiddling around with the nuts and bolts of systems, trying to fine tune them to make them do what I want. The ultimate expression of this is probably Alsherok, but some of you remember Almriven and Tharavel and a few other skeletons in my cosmic closet as well. I am also, I find, fairly adept at adapting published settings - I've done a lot with the Forgotten Realms country of Amn, for instance, and tinkered with both Morrowind and Oblivion to some success. I'm also apparently quite good as a character designer.

Too, while I'm not quite the teller of stories I'd like to be just yet, I've come a long ways since that infamous day where I mind blanked for 10 minutes trying to get a servant to take the players to his master. I'm getting better at creating dramatic moments, describing action, doing good dialogue, and what have you.

Where I really fall down, interestingly enough, is the part where I have to actually design a good story. I'm great at designing characters, I'm great at designing places for them to play in, but it's an ongoing battle to come up with interesting things for the interesting characters to do in the interesting worlds. This has always struck me as odd - clearly other DMs do this well, but plotting for me is incredibly hard. I can barely do a short campaign arc, let alone a novel. Considering how many novels I've read, that's a bit strange.

I'm not entirely sure why that is. Perfectionism is one part of it, and the complexities of trying to put it in a game is another. Lack of practice, perhaps. In any case it's hard for me to come up with a good game plot that isn't five guys in a tavern heading out to go raid the dungeon.

What I'm ultimately getting at here is that I find that I'm really happy with where I'm going with Weye. I'm not sure if it's the computer environment, or the fact that I've been thinking about it for well over a year now (including at least two story rewrites), or what, but I like it. I feel like I've crafted a good solid story that fits in well with the rest of that world, and I've managed to create a real living, breathing town with interesting people who do interesting things and have interesting stories to tell and live. I haven't written Baldur's Gate 2 by any stretch of the imagination, but I like what I have.

More on this subject later, perhaps, and if you want maybe some screenshots.

I also have a photoset I want to post, which I promise you will recieve eventually. For serious.