Morrowind Trading Cards: A Morrowind Mod

Danae -

The Story

At long last, a mod I made just because I wanted to make it!
The inspiration was obviously Magic The Gathering, even though I never collected the cards myself, I've enjoyed the games with friends and later on the PC game (1997)
Morrowind is where I get to unleash my inner-pack rat and collector, so it only made sense that I put the 2 together.
By then, I had learnt to modify meshes and give them a different texture, I also knew who to create dialogues with multiple choice, but MTC was going to be a whole new level.
To make the card, I used the screenshots of creatures from UESP, I also used the descriptions for the card albums.
Adding the cards to traders and levelled lists was fairly easy though I started a game countless times to make sure it was balanced enough.
It took some fiddling, tweaking, merging and gluing scripts to get the cards sorted and displayed. At the time, Aurel wasn't there to check/fix my scripts, so I felt it was quite an achievement.

I was also pleased with the artsy book covers, nothing to be proud of though, I just applied the oil painting filter...
The dialogues were quite a nightmare. Imagine this: When you talk to a collector, there are 12 different outcomes (one for each type of card). For each of these, as many outcomes as there are creatures in the selected type (between 5 and 12). For each of these many, many, many outcomes, 2 more outcomes suggesting to trade 2 different cards. Phew!
There are many typos in there, honest mistakes a well, but nothing will make me go back to this maze of dialogues. Unless OpenMWCS has a nice clear layout for dialogues: I hate the dialogue window in the CS and the fact that the font is so desperately tiny.

The mod

Morrowind Trading Cards VERSION 1.42
By Danae & PikachunoTM
NEW in version 1.42: fixes many grammatical mistakes and optimizes all unoptimized textures. Drastically reduces archive size by optimizing a
lot of stuff (By PikachunoTM).

What it does

  • This mod adds more than 100 cards to collect, each of them representing various creatures found in Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon.
  • The cards can be found in various containers except for the rarest and unique ones.
  • The rarest cards can only be traded: their current owners will let you know what they want in exchange for their card. You will need to ask around to find those cards collectors.
  • Other card collectors are scattered around, speak to Magnus Stylus in his tower by the fort in Gnisis for tips and a list of these card collectors.
  • You may also buy packs of cards from traders; you will discover what card is in the pack after you open it. Rare cards can be found this way. Drop the pack on a table, activate it, discover your new card.
  • You may gather your cards in albums. There are special containers in front of Magnus Stylus. You may also ask him to sort the cards for you. Once a set of cards is complete, you will receive the album for this set. The corresponding cards will be removed from their container and put on display.
  • There are 14 albums to make (including the CoM album), and each of them will give you a special power (see spoiler section if you can’t wait to find out. You can buy Bestiaries from bookshops: they have the illustrations and descriptions of creatures but do not give any powers as the card albums do.

How to install

Extract the content of the compressed file in your Data files folder.
Activate AND load first:

  • MTC.esp (basic with all the cards and quests, the albums give special powers)
    You can also choose from a number of patches:
  • MTC-no buff (the albums no longer give you any power/ability, the guides are no longer for sale.)
  • MTC-CoM (Some kids, easily recognisable by the card they are holding will also trade cards like any other collectors. Additionally, they can give you cards from a unique set: the Children of Morrowind set. Will not work without Children of Morrowind, by Emma)

Content

Meshes folder
BookArt folder
Texture folder
Icon folder
3esp (1 main, 2 optional addons)
Read me

Conflict

The cards collectors (see list below) have a small script, any mod giving them another script will prevent them from trading cards, but not prevent you from collecting ;)
The script of one of the crystals (Act_Crystal_02_Pulse, script: Sound-crystal-ringing) has been swapped with a new one that allows the player to harvest cards/crystals

Versions:

  • version 0.9: Initial release
  • version 0.9a: New book textures, books for sale.
  • version 1.0: dialogue fix, texture fix, script fix, new icons for all cards, a CoM esp.
  • version 1.1: adds patches for LGNPC Seyda Neen and Pelagiad
  • version 1.2: adds 2 new optional patches to choose from: one that completely removes the spells/powers/abilities you get when receiving an album and removes the guides you could buy from booksellers, and the other that seriously reduces the said bonus.
  • Version 1.3: adds 5 new albums. All icon redone to give them transparency. Magnus Sylus moved to a tower adjacent to the fort. Magnus will sort your cards. Cards are removed from the containers to be displayed upon album completion)
  • Version 1.4: fixes mistakes introduced in the previous version. (Set completion script, Children being able to trade more than once a day)
  • Version 1.41: fixes the PrinceAlbum script (thanks to Lightsouled for pointing the problem out.)
  • Version 1.42: fixes many grammatical mistakes and optimizes all unoptimized textures. Drastically reduces archive size by optimizing a lot of stuff (By PikachunoTM).