UESPWiki:Archive/CP Morrowind NPC Redesign Project

This is something I have wanted to bring up for a while now, but haven't had time for it. The Morriwind NPC documentation could really use a makeover and general improvement. The reason for this is simple: most pages for Morrowind NPCs are stubs at best and there seems to be no overall guide of style for writing them. Here are a few generic examples:
Many articles are basically stubs, being barely more than a sentence long even if there is more information to provide. ("X is a race in the town of Y. He/she may be involved in murder...")
Containing generic information that would apply to any NPC: "Make sure you wear your uniform if you are in the legion, or he/she will refuse to speak with you", something that applies to any Imperial Legion member. Rpeh made the same observation above.
Far too often, the page will simply say "he/she is not involved in any quests and does not provide any unique information." Not only is this sentence extremely redundant, it is quite often incorrect. Skimming through the construction set will show that many of the NPCs that supposedly "does not provide any unique information" do indeed have unique dialogue.

These are just generic examples, but quite a lot of Morrowind NPC articles are like this and therefore not very helpful. Now I'm not complaining at the users who wrote them, because I understand that they were written when the site was fairly new and it would have been an overwhelming task to look up information and write elaborate articles for each and every one of Morrowinds NPCs. The problem is though; they have remained stubs ever since they were written. Now that the groundwork is mostly done and the site is much more stable, I think that we can start concentrating on expanding and improving the existing content.

As for the solution, I have a proposal. Looking at page history for Oblivion NPC articles, I see that many of them used to be just like the Morrowind ones. But then the Oblivion NPC Redesign Project was created, and now the NPC articles for Oblivion are very informative and elaborate, even for minor NPCs. So my proposal is this: creating a Morrowind NPC Redesign Project. The pointers can be basically the same as the ones for ONPCRP:
Quest Involvement: Same as in Oblivion, a short summary of their involvement in quests. This is pretty well covered for most of them, but there are still some that doesn't have it (there are still a few quest-NPCs that don't even have articles), and it would still be good to double-check the existing information and see if there is anything missing.
 : Since Morrowind NPCs don't have schedules, this one can be disregarded.
Services: This is actually very well documented already, so there wouldn't be much more to say. Could still be double-checked though.
Personal Inventory: personal inventory is not covered at all right now, and I think it would be very useful. Even if the NPC is otherwise uninteresting, they may actually have interesting, rare or useful items in their inventories.
House Contents: As I have already proposed here, we could merge the content of the Morrowind:Houses pages into the pages of their respective owners, same as for Oblivion.
Unique Dialogue: Any unique dialogue or uncommon dialogue the NPCs may have. Unique dialogue is more uncommon in Morrowind than Oblivion, but that does not mean there isn't any. In fact there are more NPCs with unique dialogue in Morrowind than one might think, but it's so much easier to miss since it's all in text and you're likely just skimming through it. Many pages say that the NPC does not have unique dialogue even when they in fact do. I also think using the Oblivion style of quoting the dialogue rather than attempting to reinterpret it into prose (as I have been doing so far) would be better. The amount of dialogue listed should be dependent on how many lines the NPC in question has. If they only have a small amount of unique dialogue it can all be listed. If they have a substantial amount of dialogue only we should only pick out a few important, interesting or unusual lines for them.
Rumors: Rumors work differently in Morrowind than Oblivion, but this section would still be used for anything said or written about an NPC by anyone else, for example from latest rumors, someone in particular and services. I think this should also include notes and books. It should be written in flowing quote form like the unique dialogue.
 : I don't think this is needed. The faction system is much simpler in Morrowind than in Oblivion. An NPC will only ever be part of one faction (if at all) and the faction will never change.
Spells:   Undetermined. We can either mention a few important spells the NPC may use in combat, or we could disregard this section altogether.

I think starting a MNPCRP would be very beneficial for the site. It would create consistency in style and format not just for the Morrowind pages, but for the site as a whole as the Morrowind and Oblivion pages would have the same overall style of writing. It would help to make the Morrowind NPC pages much more informative and make it easy to check what needs to be done on each page. As an extension of the project, I would also like to discard the "relevant/non-relevant NPC" criteria and create articles for every Morrowind NPC. Now I know that this issue has been brought up in the past, but that was a different time and there were different standards. Back then, it was said that it would be too much work, no one would bother to create them and that there would be nothing to say about most of them. While I agree that it is true that there is generally a lot less to say about Morrowind NPCs compared to the ones in Oblivion, their lack of schedules for example, I do think that by including all of the information in the sections above for each NPC then there would be things to say about every one of them. Even if an NPC is not involved in any quests, they may have some generic but unique dialogue or be mentioned by someone, and that may still be interesting to read about. Even if they are not relevant themselves, they may own a house and their house may have interesting properties. Even still, every NPC has an inventory (I can only think of four exceptions), and it is almost never randomized. For example, I do think it would be very useful to include information about the inventories of hostile NPCs since this can be quite relevant to how challenging they may be in a fight. It makes quite a difference if a hostile smuggler wears Chitin armor or Ebony armor for instance. Overall, I think that these sections would give us something useful to say about every NPC in the game. I don't think this is absolutely necessary to do, but I do think it would be a natural extension of the project. As for no one being willing to do them, I would certainly be willing to write them. Not all of them at once of course, but I am certainly be willing to write them from time to time, as I have been doing sporadically.

Now I understand that improving the Morrowind NPC documentation is not considered an issue of high priority, but like the ONPCRP it would be a long-term project. It would be a lot of work and I don't expect it to be done any time soon. But I think that in the long run, it would be very beneficial for the site. While there are many, many more NPCs in Morrowind than Oblivion, there is still less work to do for each of them individually since they don't have schedules or other things that need a lot of in-game testing. Most of the information can be gathered from the construction set and/or some quick in-game testing. I guess I could just keep doing this on my own, but I do think it feels better to have some back-up from the community on this and the creation of a project would make it so much easier to see what needs doing and what has not been written yet.

Anyway, this is just a proposal. Let me know what you think. Kalrot 12:52, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

:Sounds good to me. Probably the best start would be to pick a couple of NPCs and work on a sandbox so people can see exactly how it would look in practice and spot any potential pit falls. Jadrax 14:11, 21 July 2010 (UTC) 

::I'll help out with this when I can. My schedule is kinda hectic right now though.--       19:05, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

::: I like the basic idea but I have concerns over the dialogue. There is much more dialogue in MW than in OB because 99% of it is text-only. If we're not careful, some NPCs would have thousands and thousands of characters of dialogue and it would take over the page. Spells would be a bit different to OB, because NPCs are given lists of spells based on class, level and race (I think) whereas in OB they tend to come from one leveled list. Without reverse-engineering the formulae we'd have to list all spells individually.

::: Otherwise, it's a good plan. rpeh  07:48, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

:::: Those are very good points Rpeh. You are absolutely right about the dialogue. Discretion is vital here or else every page for NPCs with substantial amount of dialogue will become flooded with text. I think the best way to tackle this is to write proportionately according to how much dialogue the NPC in question has. If the NPC has only a few lines of unique dialogue all of it can be listed, but for those with any substantial amount of dialogue only a few interesting or unusual lines should be picked out. 

:::: You are also right about the spells; they seem to be predetermined according to class, level and race. I'm not sure how we should handle this. I suppose we could just disregard this section, but I think listing maybe a few spells they are likely to use in combat could be useful information. Any thoughts on this? 

:::: Jadrax: That's a good idea, I'll try to write one soon. My basic goal would be for them to follow the style of an Oblivion NPC article with all ONPCRP-sections finished. If anyone has any other thought or opinions please bring them up and we might be able to work out some official project guidelines. Thanks. Kalrot 12:54, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

: Just wanted to chime in with some dialogue experiences and suggestions. I don't know too much about MW NPCs, but on the ONPCRP we tend to use two unwritten rules that might be relevant here. When we're writing dialogue, especially the quest-related dialogue, we aim to use lines that says something about the personality of the NPC. If it is strictly quest-related, we leave it out or add it to the quest pages. The other rule is this: It is easier to take things out than to put them in - meaning, if the MNPCRP launches, uneven dialogue bits can be removed in the final preview-stage - and it might be easier to check, if the whole thing is included. Like I said, we can always take it out again. --Krusty 13:50, 22 July 2010 (UTC) 

:: Also, if they have reams of dialogue that should all be put on the page, it might be possible to create something like    or   .--       18:23, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

::: Just for a comparison, I dug up a few OB NPC-pages with tons of dialogue. These are not the VIP-pages (like this) but are normal pages where the NPC happened to have a lot of dialogue (and different schedules): Velwyn Benirus, Dar-Ma and Quill-Weave. Now, you can think what you want about the size of these pages, but if you sit down and read the whole thing, every detail about the NPC (and his/her adventures) are covered step-by-step. I don't mind huge pages and I like the amount of information they provide - but if the MW NPCs have even more dialogue, maybe it is worth looking at the technique used for the VIP NPCs. --Krusty 10:04, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

:::: Here is a test-version I have written for everyone's favorite Bosmer (thanks to TheAlbinoOrc for creating the template!). Tell me what you think. Thank you very much for your pointers Krusty, they were very helpful. Kalrot 15:06, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

:::: As the project seems to have become semi-officially green lit (at least there are no objections to the creation of the project itself), I have now created a project page here. At the moment it's just a carbon-copy of the ONPCRP one with minor adjustments, but hopefully that can be improved. Kalrot 19:54, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

(u/d) Can we hold off on this for a couple of weeks? Yes, I think it would be a good idea, and Yes I agree with the rough suggestions that have been put forward, but I don't see a huge amount of enthusiasm for the project.

When I first mooted the OBNPCRP it was purely about schedules - to me these seemed the most important NPC characteristics to document because the times at which they were available for services, quests and so on were central to the game. Other aspects of the NPC got added over time and by the time we started talking on-wiki, everything was up for grabs. Schedules don't apply to Morrowind NPCs so are absent from this project.

There's an even more crucial point to this. Look at the dates on the OBNPCRP: a long time passed between the first stirrings of the project and the time when the template was written and applied. The gap was because it wasn't obvious whether or not the project should happen at all, then whether or not enough people were interested. I eventually went ahead because enough people seemed interested, but without the involvement of Krusty, SerCenKing and one or two others, the whole idea would have disappeared.

To cut out subtext: does this project have enough support to exist?

Compare and contrast the OBNPCRP and the OPRP: the former has moved forward gradually but the latter simply means we have hundreds of notices on pages and there's no clear idea of what's required to remove them. Unless there are enough people to help and a clear strategy of what is required then there's no point going ahead with this.

I'm sorry this is such a downer, but unless there are enough people willing to make an attempt - and I can't commit myself at this time - then I think a full-blown project is doomed to failure. rpeh  20:31, 25 July 2010 (UTC)