Saturday 3 August 2002

Pic of the day: Welcome to scenic Morrowind ... and its friendly natives. (Actually the two kids here were summoned by my Summoner to hunt down the big larva you see on the ground. We call this "overkill".)

Moving to Morrowind

The dreams have begun. Not the ones in the game, the ones you start having once you begin the Main Quest. No, the scary RPG dreams. They have changed from Daggerfall to Morrowind. I noticed this some days ago. I cannot remember exactly what it was that scared me, but I remember I woke up and didn't want to return to the Morrowind dream.

Not all dreams are scary, though. Tonight I had a dream that wasn't exactly about Morrowind, but it had a small bit of Morrowind-like magic. In Morrowind, you can sometimes get short-lasting magic effects by eating bits and pieces of plants or animals. (Don't try this at home, kids!) Effects like "water breathing", for instance (don't try that, either). Well, in my dream I ate some small bit of food to get the magic effect "detect mace". (No, there is no such effect in Morrowind, though there is "detect key" and "detect magic".) Sure enough, I found a good mace just lying around, and along with it a magic scroll which, when used, gave a fish to everyone in sight. "Feed multitude". OK, that spell was hardly Morrowind ...

Today I had my first character fly, or "levitate" as we call it. So far he can only cast a training spell that lasts for 11 seconds, and even that may fail. (Even though he is up to 99% chance now ...) You really don't want your spell to wear off while you're floating way above the rooftops. I loved to fly in Daggerfall, and Morrowind is much more realistically painted. Well, levitation in Morrowind isn't exactly flying; it is walking on air. Still, it is a grand thing to do. And scary, since I am afraid of heights. I tell myself it is just a game, and indeed it is. But it is still exhilarating.

***

Freestone Wilson once wrote on the Daggerfall newsgroup, perhaps in jest, that maybe we go to Daggerfall when we die. Of course, according to Christian theology we don't, and I am sure according to most world religions. Then again they are world religions for a reason. If we factor out the component that says that deities want attention, but keep the belief in an immortal human spirit, then it is indeed conceivable that I might go to Morrowind if I were unlucky enough to die during the fad. As Smith's Friends so truly say: What interests you today will return as part of your spirit tomorrow.

There are levels of interest. If you read a book by a less than favorite author, say something stereotypical like a romance novel or a cowboy story, it will slide over your soul like water on oiled cloth and very little will stick with you. Next year you might read it again without knowing it. But a book by a favorite author may linger in your thoughts for weeks, and then you read it over again, finding new meanings. You will find yourself quoting it occasionally when you feel it says a thing better than you could. And then there is religion. People read some book, like the Book of Mormon or the Mahabharata, and they start to change the way they see the world. They begin to imitate fictional people and think like them. And it's not quite limited to religion. You have Trekkies, for instance ...

I think the way I relate to Morrowind now is more like reading a favorite book than religion; but the way a game allows you to interact makes it more alive than a book or a cartoon can be. (Though you have to wonder when you read some Harry Potter fan fiction ...) I don't think my spirit has truly relocated to Morrowind – there is too much content already, and I have other interests too – but I can see how people with a less developed personality might lose their soul in a game like this. And it is still just 2002. No virtual reality yet.

***

(Al Schroeder has more or less promised to write a story arc in his online comic MindMistress where a person actually gets lost inside a kind of game. This is still some months ahead, I understand, but you may want to watch it three days a week anyway, because it is just that well written. The drawing is slowly getting better too. And while we're on this topic, I can't help but notice from his own journal that he seems to think about his MindMistress every day. I guess that's what takes larger spirits to a level beyond mere interest: The ability to create. I know that from my own life, how I can get drawn into the process of creating – a novel or a computer program, it doesn't really matter – and forget food and water for a whole day or forget sleep for a whole night.)

In conclusion then, in so far as my spirit is moving to Morrowind – or at least vacationing there – it is because of the opportunities to be creative there. Unlike the simpler "adventure" games, there is no fixed path through Morrowind. You create your own character as one of millions if not billions possible, and then you make it more unique by doing things in new and different ways. It may be less enthralling than creating in the real world – but then again, as I habitually say, real life lacks a tried and tested reload option and runs slowly on most hardware.