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[Sparksol]

"I expected that within the first dozen episodes you'd have more gold and magic loot than you could carry, simply by exploiting things like this. But over the entire course of the game there were only ever a handful of suggestions like this, and they tended to be heavily outvoted."

Seeing this kind of thing constantly over the chapters before I could join in made it clear such efforts would likely go unrewarded, though one still had to try. Honestly, the constant conflicts in voting kind of reminded me of a very slow version of Twitch Plays Pokemon, which I couldn't stand to watch. Seems like a lot of people found TPP popular, but frankly it seemed like half the players wanted things to fail on purpose to see other people's reactions. Where's the fun in that?

"So, as of right now, since in that particular universe our protagonist is an avatar of the game world itself having grown self-aware, Luna is the only actual player in the game. Our protagonist isn't a player. He's a manifestation of the game. So the idea was that, like NPCs, he wasn't able to trigger world events. Tarhiel's event script requires a player to walk in a certain spot. You can even go around it and come from the other side and Tarhiel won't fall. So Michael walked through that spot, and it didn't trigger the event."

"I had plans and ideas for that...but nothing ever really came of it, and the whole idea was mostly abandoned. Though the difference between Michael and "the player" did come up a few other times, like for example the recurring theme of the "gamey player aura" where "PCs" were able to get merchants to do dumb things, because game mechanics. And Michael wasn't able to do that."

That one caused problems on the obvious side by not letting us get away with stupid gamey things some of us had come to expect from Morrowind, and on the other side by opening up a lot of potential red herrings such as getting caught up in the lives of characters who, in plain Morrowind, would be bit-part NPCs who might only have a name, if that.

I will only continue this if the thread remains active.

That's entirely fair, but we're probably going to run out of things to say beyond "Yep, that happened. We did do that." Although if that's what it takes to know what was going on, I'll do my part to encourage you until you run out of story.

...unless of course, this is some sort of continuation of the first game. As was likely pointed out to both us and Michael in both the Prologue and the earlier numbered chapters in this thread. Voice 6179 sighs. I'm not saying it is for sure, but I'm not ruling it out, either.

Although if only a few other forum hivemind voices are paying attention in here, this may drop earlier than expected. Incidentally, how many of the readers here were playing when this Morromess got started? It'd be nice to know that at least a few of them have stuck around this long.

So, Luna/SexyWithers was running around doing basic early game stuff like leveling her skills at this point, I'd imagine?

Incidentally, Luna being SexyWithersXOXOXO didn't quite feel right to me - another thing I got wrong - but seeing as there was little known of her canon character at the time, it was fairly open to interpretation, and I didn't and still don't know much of how she was and is known amongst the fanbase. (Unless I take extra time to study up on fanfiction sites and tumblr accounts. Scary places.)

[vjmdhzgr]

I'm PTWing this. I only started participating in the game 4-6 updates before it ended, but it is one of the better forum games I've seen.

Though I think I only got here 1 update before it ended. I don't even remember why I decided to read the entire thing. I think somebody linked to it somewhere. It's also weird reading this and feeling like I'm being insulted even though I wasn't involved in this early stuff at all. I read "I expected that within the first dozen episodes you'd have more gold and magic loot than you could carry, simply by exploiting things like this. But over the entire course of the game there were only ever a handful of suggestions like this, and they tended to be heavily outvoted." and feel like I messed everything up. I do wonder what I would have done had I actually participated earlier, probably nothing very helpful because I had never played Morrowind three years ago. Anyway, this is interesting.

[Spitfire]

PTW

Wow, I would never have figured that shit out.

A thing about the sun references: Those never struck me as odd, whenever I'm hiking or generally away from modern civilization the sun becomes pretty damn important. Time, navigation, weather, temperature. If I did an audio-log during bush tramps, the sun would get mentioned quite often. So I assumed Michael feels the same.

[gordy]

Now I want you to start over and let us abuse it the way you intended....

[WillowLuman]

I was watching from the start, though I don't have as much time to do detailed responses anymore.

"So, as of right now, since in that particular universe our protagonist is an avatar of the game world itself having grown self-aware, Luna is the only actual player in the game. Our protagonist isn't a player. He's a manifestation of the game. So the idea was that, like NPCs, he wasn't able to trigger world events. Tarhiel's event script requires a player to walk in a certain spot. You can even go around it and come from the other side and Tarhiel won't fall. So Michael walked through that spot, and it didn't trigger the event."

"I had plans and ideas for that...but nothing ever really came of it, and the whole idea was mostly abandoned. Though the difference between Michael and "the player" did come up a few other times, like for example the recurring theme of the "gamey player aura" where "PCs" were able to get merchants to do dumb things, because game mechanics. And Michael wasn't able to do that."

That one caused problems on the obvious side by not letting us get away with stupid gamey things some of us had come to expect from Morrowind, and on the other side by opening up a lot of potential red herrings such as getting caught up in the lives of characters who, in plain Morrowind, would be bit-part NPCs who might only have a name, if that.

Completely agree on the red herring front. The initial stuff led me to believe 100% realism, which is a big part of why I wanted to [infamously] go for the Legion, but then skill/stat increases still turned out to be gamey.

[LordBucket]

That one caused problems on the obvious side by not letting us get away with stupid gamey things some of us had come to expect from Morrowind,

A lot of those things you're referring to were either poor game design choices, or outright bugs. Some were even fixed in patches or by mods that I routinely run. From my point of view you were being given plenty enough advantages without sitting down in one episode to grind out alchemy to 100. And I don't think that would have been any more fun to read, either.

and on the other side by opening up a lot of potential red herrings such as getting caught up in the lives of characters who, in plain Morrowind, would be bit-part NPCs who might only have a name, if that.

Nothing wrong with that though. In fact that was explicitly an option from day one. Look at your friend Draren. He was a valuable ally, and I think he made an interesting companion. But anybody in the game could have become a companion. Vibius, for example. And Cinia. I was actively trying to encourage you guys to make allies, and Celestia in her universe was actively trying to give Micheal friends. Cinia was actually intended to be a love interest. There was no need to focus on big names only. Any random background maid could have and would have become a fully fleshed out personality and companion for you. That was by design.

So, Luna/SexyWithers was running around doing basic early game stuff like leveling her skills at this point, I'd imagine?

As of episode 3 she's still in the census office making her character.

Incidentally, Luna being SexyWithersXOXOXO didn't quite feel right to me - another thing I got wrong - but seeing as there was little known of her canon character at the time, it was fairly open to interpretation, and I didn't and still don't know much of how she was and is known amongst the fanbase. (Unless I take extra time to study up on fanfiction sites and tumblr accounts. Scary places.)

Remember that from Luna's point of view, SexyWithers was just a character she's playing in a game. Your personality in-game when playing Morrowind probably isn't entirely representative of your real life personality either. But her personality in MiM in general was sort of combination of her portrayal in the season 2 halloween episode, and fanfiction consensus. Either way there was room for flexibility, because again, we're dealing with hyperdimensional entities spread out over multiple universes and with varying degrees of awareness of their other-universe-selves. Like Divayth pointed out:

: " It's altogether likely that there are countless variations of this same conversation being had by other Divayths and other Michaels in other Planes of Oblivion.

The Luna that you encountered didn't need to be "The One, True Luna." The very premise of the game implies that there isn't a "one true" Luna.

A thing about the sun references: Those never struck me as odd, whenever I'm hiking or generally away from modern civilization the sun becomes pretty damn important. Time, navigation, weather, temperature. If I did an audio-log during bush tramps, the sun would get mentioned quite often. So I assumed Michael feels the same.

And yet Michael also had direct conversations with the sun and prayed to both Azura and Celestia a couple times. Granted, this was always done in contexts that granted plausible deniability. For example, this was one of my favorites:

Stepping outside you're immediately greeted by a warm, friendly and glaringly bright morning sun gazing fondly at you with what seems like a little too much enthusiasm.



: "What do you want?!?!?" you yell, shaking a first at the sky. "I'm just going for a walk. Maybe get a nice...full body tan. Can't I do that? Huh? Can't I?!!?"

The sun, wisely, doesn't respond. Hmph. Serves it right.

That event suddenly takes on a very different context knowing what you now know, doesn't it? From my point of view I was regularly doing stuff like this hoping somebody would notice.

The initial stuff led me to believe 100% realism, which is a big part of why I wanted to [infamously] go for the Legion, but then skill/stat increases still turned out to be gamey.

Your first skillgain was in episode 3, and you were getting them pretty regularly from then on. And between episodes 13 and 14 I even mentioned the skillgain mod being used. You didn't join the legion until episode 26. I have a tough time beleving that you hadn't noticed how skill gains had been working that entire time.

What were your expectations? General Darius explained, in episode 19, how Legion training would work:

: "First off, recruit, you'll be put through a training regiment to put some meat on you. I don't think I've ever seen an applicant as skinny as you. Standard induction is four weeks, during which you learn proper command etiquette, how to march, the basics of weapon and armor use, and the like. After basic, you'll be assigned a patrol. We follow a five days on, two days off rotation. Pay and rations begin accumulating at the end of your first successful patrol week, and can be requisitioned from your assigned quartermaster. Standard patrol assignment lasts one month, after which you'll be reassigned to a new patrol based on seniority. Enlistment is for one year, with the option to renew at year-end."

He said it would be four weeks. Did you expect it to not be four weeks? He said that you would be trained in the basics of weapon and armor use. You got exactly that. What was the surprise? Were you simply expecting more points than you got or something? I am aware of nothing at any point in the game to suggest that you could have come out of Legion training as a high level super competent character. And from a narrative point of view, that would have been bad writing. I don't know why you expected anything different than what you got.

And given the fact that after hearing the deal from Darius, you decided to not join and left Gnisis, I have a tough time believing you guys didn't know what the deal was. I never understood why you changed your mind seven episodes later and came back.

[LordBucket]

MST3K Episode 4
Marooned in Morrowind Episode 4: Arille's Tradehouse, and introducing speaker avatars

: "Everyone remember Michael's original shirt? It was mentioned that he had it, but adding in speaker avatars gave me a good excuse to use it as a constant visual reminder of ponies. Somebody asked at one point, and no, that's not me in the picture. I just googled 'rainbow dash t-shirt' or something. I think it's from welovefine.com."

Good day, citizen.

"Oh, look. A tourist," she sneers.

You laugh. You know it's supposed to be an insult, but in a way it feels good to hear it. It's familiar. If nothing else, it seems that while you're obviously not a native, it seems you "blend right in."

: "For those who haven't played Morrowind, these are direct quotes from in-game characters actually voiced in the game. If you've played Morrowind you probably have a difficult reading those lines without hearing them in the in-game voices. For a while I was having a lot of fun incorporating in-game spoken dialogue into the game. Occasionally Michael lampshaded it. Did this off and on throughout the course of the game, but this episode was one of the more blatant examples. The 'blend right in' part is a reference to the Legionaire during boat sequence who says "I'm sure you'll fit right in" after you choose a face/race/gender for your character."

Speaking of natives, come to think of it you've yet to see a Dunmer.

: "Next time you play Morrowind, look for this. It's surprising how few dunmer there are in the game. The ashlands and some for the Telvanni areas are about the only place where they're the majoritiy. Most other places they're a tiny minority."

: Greetings, Imperial. Welcome to Arille's Tradehouse. I'm Arille. What can I do for you?

(Oh, so they think you're from Cyrodiil. That makes sense.)

: "So far as you and Michael knew at that time, you were from another universe. This was early establishment that being 'human' wasn't going to be a problem. "

mushrooms

: "The whole mushroom thing with Arille and mushroom-picking thing really makes a lot of sense if you think about it. The mushrooms really are that big in game, and you really can pick them every day, and they really do stay in game when 'picked.' The scrapings explanation reconciles all of that."

get yourself some cheese

cheese or something

: I'm sorry, I have no cheese for sale. But I do have scrib jerky I'd be happy to sell you for 8 septims each, or kwama eggs for 3.

: "At the time I thought you guys were making a boatmurdered reference. Back when this game had started, I'd actually yet to play Skyrim, and cheese wasn't mentioned in Morrowind much. Looking back now, I see it was probably a Sheogorath reference."

"Interestingly, the hyperdimensional entity of which Sheogorath is apart of is/was actually extremely interested in both you and this game since the beginning. While pony enthusiasts sometimes tend to think of 'chaos and harmony' as being in opposition to one another in the context of My Little Pony, I actually don't see is that way at all. Rather,  I see order as the more likely opposite. But chaos is most definitely NOT 'evil.' In this game, Chaos took an interest in you because it's associated with free will and choosing. A perfectly ordered environment or purely deterministic universe has no room for choice. Chaos can clearly be associated with the concept of free will. That 'you' were growing in awareness of your various universe counterparts is/was of great interest to chaos. I suppose Chaos probably noticed the cheese reference even if I didn't."

[WillowLuman]

First off, recruit, you'll be put through a training regiment to put some meat on you. I don't think I've ever seen an applicant as skinny as you

Because this. I thought we'd get stat increases. I wasn't expecting super awesome character, I just thought we'd be trained to the point of basic competency

When we started doing pushups and the officer looked at us like we were crazy, that was when the full weight of the mistake became apparent to me. Still, wasn't a total loss.

[LordBucket]

When we started doing pushups and the officer looked at us like we were crazy, that was when the full weight of the mistake became apparent to me.

Might just be a case of not paying attention then. You specifically tested resistance training three episodes before you decided to join the Legion:

try picking up a large rock (meaning, as heavy as can be carried)
and running with it around Seyda Neen for a few hours.

: "Ok. I can do that."

You head back to the lighthouse and look around for rocks. There aren't really any single rocks that seem suitable. Instead you gather up several rocks, none larger than your head, and put them in your backpack. Then you run around for a while.

Athletics is now 10

: "Hmm. Well, I don't know if that helped at all. The running would have made me stronger with or without the rocks. Did the rocks help? Maybe. I can't really tell."

(GM Note: I used the console to conjure up ~50 pounds worth of stuff then ran in circles for two game hours. You went from 9 89/100 athletics to 10 29/100 athletics. I'm not really sure what you expected from this. But, there you go.)

Still, wasn't a total loss.

Not at all. Quick check...you gained three levels and roughly 15 attribute and 70 skillpoints over 7 episodes. More than you'd gained in all 25 episodes leading up to it. Sure, you probably could have done better. You gained 31 skillpoints in episode 39 part 1 alone, for example. That was the episode you did the "kill a rat" quest and attempted an escort for the fighter's guild. 31 skillpoints, plus fighter's guild reputation and Eydis paid you 100 gold for it. If you'd chosen a guild and done quests for 2-3 episodes it probably would have given you more raw points than the legion training, and the points would have been concentrated in skills you cared about. Same if you'd decided to push training once Draren joined your party. With him healing you, if you'd really wanted to, you could easily have done a level or two every episode just by focusing on it. A couple people suggested it, but most seemed more interested in doing other things. I remember a few people arguing against even trying to get stronger. I'm neutral on that. Gaining raw levels wasn't actually necessary, but it was a completely viable option, and if you'd focused on it you could have done it.

Ironically, because of Morrowind's "the world gets harder as you level" quirk, the skill distribution from Legion training might have hurt you some compared to the other options you had. 20 points in one combat skill is worth a lot more than 5 points in four different skills because the monsters get harder the more levels you have, but 5 points in 5 different weapon skills doesn't enable you to hit any more often than 5 points in only one, because you're only using one at a time. That's just how Morrowind works.

But then you also gained some things from the Legion you might not otherwise have. For example, Strillian gave you a lot of useful information and you also first met Awesomicus during training. It also led you your eventually joining the Blades, which got you involved in the main quest and back on course to finding out what was going on. But the almost a month you spent in training meant that you lost an awful lot of time advantage. Events in the rest of the world continued, and however much it materially affected you, I did get the impression that you guys felt seriously inconvenienced by that.

I think it wasn't a bad thing overall. You were definitely stronger after than you were before, and it did progress the game some. But in terms of raw power I think you guys could have done a lot better. I expected magic training to happen way sooner than it did, and that would have changed so many things. Like you saw once you did finally learn magic, you were averaging a couple Destruction skillgains every single episode without even trying. If you'd done any of the get-rich-quick schemes back in episode 10, then trained magic and focused on it, I'm fairly confident you could have been a double or triple spellschool grandmaster by the time you actually got around to your first spell training. For a while, I was hoping you'd join House Telvanni and climb the ladder there. I had some fun things planned if you did. We were running both the Rise of House Telvanni and Uvirith's Legacy mods, and between that and the whole 'off the rails' approach of the game, you could very plausibly have, for example, become head of Great House, actually destroyed other guilds, killed the Duke and become rightful ruler of the island, etc. All sorts of things were on the table.

Anyway, doing better in terms of raw character power wasn't necessarily even important. Confronting Dagoth Ur was a valid end-game, but it wasn't the only option. As mentioned previously you could have had a successful game over at level 1 having never picked up a weapon. And not just by talking with daedra, or convincing Vivec to take out Dagoth Ur. You could traded an artifact for gold, then become a land baron for example. Or courted and married Ranis, and settled down for a 'lived happily ever after' ending. She completely thought you were flirting with her when you first met her. Or you could have done whatever you wanted. Anything was possible.

[IronyOwl]

I have some conflicted feelings about a lot of this game, but I think one of the more obvious and universally agreed upon points is that any one thing probably would have been fine if we'd just stuck with it. As with most democratic things and most things taking place over a long period of time, that didn't happen.

Becoming a Telvanni grandmaster and dealing with SexyWithers would have been hilarious, though it likely would have magnified our aimless flailing. Which is, I mean, fairly fitting on some level.

[LordBucket]

I have some conflicted feelings about a lot of this game,

Do share.

but I think one of the more obvious and universally agreed upon points is that any one thing probably would have been fine if we'd just stuck with it.

Yes, on mltiple levels. CHIM. The various universes and various gamemasters in each of them were favorably disposed towards giving you anything you chose to pursue. The very fabric of reality was attempting to accommodate you. As was mentioned previously, the reason Tentaclejack was Tentaclejack was that a bunch of you very strongly expressed disdain for the involvement of ponies, and then you went looking for ponies hoping you wouldn't fine them, and many of you believing that you wouldn't. You wanted to have lengthy philosophical discussions with Yagrum, you got that. There was no pre-existing mechanism for learning necromancy, but you decided to learn necromancy, so the universe changed to accommodate you.

: "The entire world has CHANGED! The very foundational rules by which this realm exists have been tweaked, altered, adjusted, modified! Not for the first time, but changed! Some would say for the better. I don't judge. They've changed, and for me, that's enough.

The universe was "favorably disposed" to giving you what you sought.

Which is not to say that you always got what you wanted, nor immediately. If you want corn, then plant potatoes, you get potatoes. If you want potatoes and plant potatoes, but then immediately dig them out and plant corn instead, you get corn, not potatoes. And even if you want potatoes and plant potatoes, you might still not get potatoes if you plant them in rocks instead of soil and never water them.

The intensity of your seeking and the diligence with which you pursued it were both relevant to your success. In principal, anything you'd chosen to pursue consistently could have been successful. Unfortunately, collectively you had a very difficult time maintaining cohesive action.

It would have been very interesting if you'd had a consistent consensus to do something entirely out of the bounds of Morrowind. For example, if you'd unanimously agreed to go looking for Darth Vader in dungeons. At first it would have been completely unsuccessful. Like planting cocoa beans in snow. It's the wrong environment. But if you'd kept looking, perhaps you might have started seeing strange synchronicities. And in time, with diligence, some avenue might have opened up such that you could possibly have met up with Darth Vader.

So yes. Anything would probably have been fine if you'd stuck with it. And in the sense that you mean, also: if you'd grinded levels, or done a bunch of guild quests, or whatever, yes: that would probably have generated better results than you got.

Becoming a Telvanni grandmaster and dealing with SexyWithers would have been hilarious

Yes, it would have. I had always expected that there'd be some sort of confronttion with SexyWithers. I'm surprised that it never happened to any great extent. She could very well have developed into a recurring rival and the two of you might have raced against each other to face Dagoth Ur, for example. But there were a lot of ways that could have played out. In Luna's universe, she was playing a game via a spell, just like you collectively were playing a game via a web forum. But whereas you knew that you had a connection with Michael, Luna had no knowedge of that.Celestia didn't tell Luna her spell had grown self aware, and she probably wouldn't have noticed immediately. (Hyperentity Chaos) did, but notice that (subset hypoentity-of-Chaos: Discord) didn't, because he was interfacing with "you" via his interface with the game/spell. Probably either of them were capable of noticing if they'd looked, but it was unlikely that they would have. You could have interacted with either of them at length and they'd have assumed that "the Michael" was nothing more than another npc.

[Sparksol]

An active avatar of the spell/gameworld itself. Not the kind of avatar with tons of power more than normal inhabitants so far as we were aware* like some people perceive the term, but the sort that's like anyone else, only inhabiting the world and experiencing itself. And, whether incidentally or not, the player (and eventually players) from outside itself.

*And this is incorrect, because we had at least one power no one else had; the power of not being reduced to simple-mindedness because of the presence of players. Any simplemindedness displayed on our part was something that was already there.

Although it is also possible that our power was increasing the awareness of the NPCs around us instead, especially since we were treating the world as more real, it may have been becoming more "real" by our apparent wish that it was so. Or possibly both. Poor Michael, so conflicted in what he wanted. Let that be a lesson to us all: don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

[IronyOwl]

I have some conflicted feelings about a lot of this game,

Do share.

On the player side, the plot vs strength thing is the main one. I waffled myself on this somewhat, since while I was fairly interested in doing stuff rather than just grinding alchemy, our obvious weakness really did lock us out of a lot of options. Yes, in absolute theory, we could have beaten the game instantly with no effort, but in practice the fact that we couldn't reliably go anywhere or do anything not only hampered our plot-finding/completing things, it likely dulled interest in the game in general.

So we did what we always did, which was two or three things at once poorly for something like eight different reasons. The crossover did have some advantages, but I still feel like picking one or the other likely would have had better results. I just have no idea which of those was the right path to pick and stay on, though.


On the game side of the issue, I'm not entirely sold on the completely open world thing. I feel like the utterly scatterbrained approach we had was somewhat predictable for a pure democracy thing, and that some GM forethought and guidance might have resulted in a better product. Admittedly, that would have more or less ruined the premise and run the risk of turning the game into Legion Quest or something instead, but I suspect there may have been some middle ground in there somewhere.

[Sparksol]

Seeing as we seem to be running out of meaningful contributions and observances on both the game as it went (with new insight) and our responses and observances, I'm going to guess this won't be lasting very long either. It does leave me a little disappointed, but I doubt we can change that sufficiently to allow it to remain interesting for all parties.

Whether or not this remains true, thank you LordBucket for running an interesting game/mental exercise/focused viewpoint of interdimensional fatigue.

Edited for spelling.

[vjmdhzgr]

I remember it being said he alread finished the first twenty though, so, those could just be posted even if there's no interest in editing them to make a bit more sense.