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The Elder Scrolls

For discussing role-playing video games, you know, the ones with combat.
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Bertram_Tung
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Post by Bertram_Tung »

jdcp wrote: January 4th, 2026, 20:22
Nihilipotens wrote: January 4th, 2026, 19:15
I haven't modded ever before up until quite recently, but I still know nothing of the 'communities', because I don't use Discord, Reddit, etc. Feel free to share cool stories. I've read through the modder cringe thread but it was about BG3 modding.
Aye, you can see most of what sucks about these communities with how things get handled with BG3, if you've read what most people think of the mod our pals here host, then you've heard it all.

Here's a pic of how people react to a person asking about realms restored:
Image

Just for a question you're already targeted, made fun of and denied of any kindness, poor fella... Hope he made his way here. This is the way most behave, now back to TES:

It's pretty common for TES communities to be full of weird people, really weird people, a good example are furries who always play Khajiit/Argonian and do so some crazy stuff. With games this notorious it's just normal it eventually attracts disgusting, if at least questionable, personalities. What lies ahead is partially unrelated to this case, but are some examples of **** within the community:

TES modding can sometimes be really cool with people helping each other to make some really good stuff, or the lowest of the lowest you can see a person do for literally nothing, people who believe they are worth more than they really are pulling their mods out just because someone complained, massively entitled fucks.

Not sure if you remember but there used to be paid mods in Steam, back in like 2014 or 2015, many modders completely removed their mods from Nexus or other websites (back then not everything about modding was centered on Nexus) so people would pay for them in Steam. Really bad.

Also Most follower mods are cringe, like I'm serious every ******* follower I can install for my game is either gay or a 15 year old (actually a 30 yo with that mindset) self insert it's kinda weird.

There's too the constant fight for permissions in what assets you can and can't use for a mod (for some reason), mods have been deleted for this reason. And there's the Unofficial Patch... yeah, that's a long story. Also the fact that for some weird ****** up reason many modders HATE TO DEATH to have their mods featured in a modpack, I don't know why but they just... they hate everything about someone else touching their stuff... ******* weirdos.

A bit more related to what's being talked about, I remember this popular modder back in the times of LE (He eventually left shortly after special edition came) who used to put in all his mods constant LGBT pride stuff, no big deal with that, but his mods were pretty cool stuff that for some weird ******* reason had gay stuff in it. Go figure but it's said he eventually left simply because he couldn't take the amount of people criticizing him, it's a common thing to happen.

I've forgotten most names and controversies to be honest so I can't say much more, but don't think I can forget about Arthmoor (the unofficial patch guy). That guy is an embarrasment, an active detractor of everything that freedom and mods stand for... damned scum.

Morrowind modding used to be a bit like that some pretty ******* long years ago, but it has turned into a relaxing place to be around with many modders supporting each other and pulling out some really good mods. Who knows, maybe the annoying people just left, maybe they matured... either way, it's a more healthy community than what Skyrim is.

Anyway, funny pic to chill out:
Image
Nihilipotens wrote: January 4th, 2026, 19:15
Qyranians originate form the namesake desert continent, which is said to be both barren and inhospitable. At the same time it is also known as cradle of science, mysticism and culture. While many foreign countries admire Qyra for its advanced culture, they are often deemed as heretical and immoral – especially on religious continents like Enderal.
I don't like when people do a religion≠science in fantasy, it's stupid because both things can coexists and support each other perfectly. Hope is not the case with Enderal, but this sounds bad, pretty bad.
This relates back to what I said in another thread, but it shouldn’t be news to anyone around here. Leftists, and particularly ******** and feminists, HATE video games, and the only reason they involve themselves with them, whether from a gamedev position or a modder’s perspective, is to destroy them, subvert them, or push normal-minded gamers out of the communities.

The reason they moved on from Morrowind (which I can’t verify, but I’m going by what you claimed) is simple: Morrowind is no longer relevant, while, somehow, Skyrim still is. That alone proves they never actually liked the game; if they had, they would still be active there.

Instead, they gravitate toward whatever still has cultural weight. Skyrim remains visible, influential, and populated, so that is where they go. Relevance dictates their targets. They follow attention, not affection, inserting themselves wherever they can cause the most damage, rewrite the most norms, and push out the people who built those communities in the first place. They hate the games themselves, they resent what gaming represents as whole, they hate the primary gaming audience, and they only want to cause destruction in order to push "the message".
Last edited by Bertram_Tung on January 4th, 2026, 21:25, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by ThulsaDoomer »

Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 21:24
The reason they moved on from Morrowind (which I can’t verify, but I’m going by what you claimed) is simple: Morrowind is no longer relevant, while, somehow, Skyrim still is. That alone proves they never actually liked the game; if they had, they would still be active there.
For once, my experiences are relevant. I've been active with Morrowind modding for five years now, four of those being involved in their chat circles. The ******** have not moved on, they are worse than ever before, and have pushed out every sane White guy away from being involved with the community or modding all together. How do I know? I'm friends with all the racist modders, we banded together against the horde of ******** and homosexuals who made Project Tamriel their headquarters and spread like a plague. That's what they do.

One of the leads of PT, Tani or something, self admitted to intentionally going to other servers or places, causing drama with the modders he didn't like by complaining to moderation and talking **** in chat, then leaving once the damage is done to repeat the process. I was banned in one for telling Tani to kill himself, and banned in the main server for exposing a sexpest and insulting the other degenerates there. Now I am labelled "evil" by these *******. Suits me, being away from that cesspit was the best decision I ever made.

Openmw has ******** and openly kowtows to their whims, you will be banned and removed no matter what your contributions if you express right wing views. I don't think many realise how ******* dire modding is for most games.
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Post by Bertram_Tung »

ThulsaDoomer wrote: January 4th, 2026, 21:36
Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 21:24
The reason they moved on from Morrowind (which I can’t verify, but I’m going by what you claimed) is simple: Morrowind is no longer relevant, while, somehow, Skyrim still is. That alone proves they never actually liked the game; if they had, they would still be active there.
For once, my experiences are relevant. I've been active with Morrowind modding for five years now, four of those being involved in their chat circles. The ******** have not moved on, they are worse than ever before, and have pushed out every sane White guy away from being involved with the community or modding all together. How do I know? I'm friends with all the racist modders, we banded together against the horde of ******** and homosexuals who made Project Tamriel their headquarters and spread like a plague. That's what they do.

One of the leads of PT, Tani or something, self admitted to intentionally going to other servers or places, causing drama with the modders he didn't like by complaining to moderation and talking **** in chat, then leaving once the damage is done to repeat the process. I was banned in one for telling Tani to kill himself, and banned in the main server for exposing a sexpest and insulting the other degenerates there. Now I am labelled "evil" by these *******. Suits me, being away from that cesspit was the best decision I ever made.

Openmw has ******** and openly kowtows to their whims, you will be banned and removed no matter what your contributions if you express right wing views. I don't think many realise how ******* dire modding is for most games.
Yeah I figured his claim that ******** moved on was probably wishful thinking. They are very obsessive, you have to be pretty obsessive to cut your genitals off to make your dad angry.
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Post by Maledict »

Val the Moofia Boss wrote: January 4th, 2026, 21:09
So eventually, in mid 2025, Square Enix finally cracked down and banned Mare. Given how 1/5th of the remaining playerbase were using mare, this then lead to another population drop.
RIP coomers :rip:

Very informative! Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me.
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Post by Tangerine »

Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 21:43
ThulsaDoomer wrote: January 4th, 2026, 21:36
Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 21:24
The reason they moved on from Morrowind (which I can’t verify, but I’m going by what you claimed) is simple: Morrowind is no longer relevant, while, somehow, Skyrim still is. That alone proves they never actually liked the game; if they had, they would still be active there.
For once, my experiences are relevant. I've been active with Morrowind modding for five years now, four of those being involved in their chat circles. The ******** have not moved on, they are worse than ever before, and have pushed out every sane White guy away from being involved with the community or modding all together. How do I know? I'm friends with all the racist modders, we banded together against the horde of ******** and homosexuals who made Project Tamriel their headquarters and spread like a plague. That's what they do.

One of the leads of PT, Tani or something, self admitted to intentionally going to other servers or places, causing drama with the modders he didn't like by complaining to moderation and talking **** in chat, then leaving once the damage is done to repeat the process. I was banned in one for telling Tani to kill himself, and banned in the main server for exposing a sexpest and insulting the other degenerates there. Now I am labelled "evil" by these *******. Suits me, being away from that cesspit was the best decision I ever made.

Openmw has ******** and openly kowtows to their whims, you will be banned and removed no matter what your contributions if you express right wing views. I don't think many realise how ******* dire modding is for most games.
Yeah I figured his claim that ******** moved on was probably wishful thinking. They are very obsessive, you have to be pretty obsessive to cut your genitals off to make your dad angry.
It's a two-phase plan. The regular leftoids/foids are part of the initial invasion of the space, while ****** are the rearguard after the rest move on.
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Post by Norfleet »

rusty_shackleford wrote: January 4th, 2026, 17:27
They just stand around and give the same canned dialogue.
Isn't that how things work in real life, too? I saw a vidya of a Walmart and people did that there, too.
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Post by jdcp »

Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 21:43
Yeah I figured his claim that ******** moved on was probably wishful thinking. They are very obsessive, you have to be pretty obsessive to cut your genitals off to make your dad angry.
Not really, I'm not active with PT or TR so I can't speak for them. (Though I've heard of their ****, specially PT which is a mess)

About the other 99% of the community I can, they're pretty nice people with good values.

Big projects like PT are prone to attract undesirable people, let's not pretend this is false. But the rest of the community is great.

Everything is very relaxed in the Morrowind reddit, and modders I have talked with always look forward to criticism and giving support. To that guy who answered you... have you spoken to Katyakarrel? Ruffinvangar? Johanrosen? Merlord and the Affiq team? MelchiorDark?

Given what you said, and hopefully you aren't centered only in a single part of the modding community, then you know those are just few of the heavy weights that keep the modding scene going. They have their **** going, but they deliver good work and keep things grounded in the content they make.

This is not wishful, it's firsthand experience. Your bad experiences with the biggest project in the whole scene aren't anything new, everyone knows how things go that way.

This is almost like looking at the Beyond Skyrim project and saying "yep, skyrim community sucks" It certainly does, but you need more than that you assert that lol.

And it's not about "******** moving" that was never my point, I never said that, I said the weird **** moved on. You can be a ***** and make good content as long as you don't push your ******** on me. As far as I know, all I mentioned are straight tho.
Last edited by jdcp on January 4th, 2026, 23:49, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Bertram_Tung »

jdcp wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:45
Everything is very relaxed in the Morrowind reddit, and modders I have talked with always look forward to criticism and giving support.
The most unconvincing thing I've read today.
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Post by jdcp »

Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:49
The most unconvincing thing I've read today.
Suit yourself, but don't talk **** about a whole community just because of a group of entitled fucks like the PT team.

Also I've been working with this tiny team trying to make a total conversion for Morrowind where you get into the crusades:

It's still in progress but it's going well, lots of good folks here
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Post by Bertram_Tung »

jdcp wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:50
Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:49
The most unconvincing thing I've read today.
Suit yourself, but don't talk **** about a whole community just because of a group of entitled fucks like the PT team.
I don't know anything about the PT team, and I never talked **** about your gay community. I merely explained to you a fundamental truth about leftists, specifically ******, when it comes to their involvement in video games. You're conflating my posts with someone elses and getting yourself worked up over it.
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Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:53
I don't know anything about the PT team, and I never talked **** about your gay community. I merely explained to you a fundamental truth about leftists, specifically ******, when it comes to their involvement in video games. You're conflating my posts with someone elses and getting yourself worked up over it.
You're the one who validated his post, and continue to call the community gay.

You're trying to make a point to excuse yourself out of my words, yet you're affirming I'm right?

I don't have any problem with what you said before all that, in fact I mostly agree. I'm mad about the ******** that guy said and you saying you expected that to be so (which it isn't)
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Post by Bertram_Tung »

jdcp wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:55
Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:53
I don't know anything about the PT team, and I never talked **** about your gay community. I merely explained to you a fundamental truth about leftists, specifically ******, when it comes to their involvement in video games. You're conflating my posts with someone elses and getting yourself worked up over it.
You're the one who validated his post, and continue to call the community gay.

You're trying to make a point to excuse yourself out of my words, yet you're affirming I'm right?

I don't have any problem with what you said before all that, in fact I mostly agree. I'm mad about the ******** that guy said and you saying you expected that to be so (which it isn't)
Stop being gay.
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Post by Stack of Turtles »

All modders are gay. All redditors are gay. So the Morrowind reddit modding community is at least double gay, and probably triple gay, since Morrowind sounds pretty gay itself.
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Post by Vaako »

Stack of Turtles wrote: January 5th, 2026, 00:35
All modders are gay. All redditors are gay. So the Morrowind reddit modding community is at least double gay, and probably triple gay, since Morrowind sounds pretty gay itself.
same energy :fishing:

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Post by DemoGraph »

rusty_shackleford wrote: January 4th, 2026, 17:27
They just stand around and give the same canned dialogue.
It definitely wasn't that way in Fallout, BG, VTMB, Gothicc, WOW, RS, etc!

Also, I've got curious and dloaded plain text files for dialogue+queststages for TES 3, 4, 5 from here: https://www.imperial-library.info/out-of-game/game-data
Cleaned technical columns from them. And counted letters.
Morrowind: 5.1 million letters (4.4 if duplicate strings are removed). 32k strings. 138 letters on avg per string.
Oblivion: 2.6m (2.5 m). 27k strings. 89 letters/string.
Skyrim: 3.6m (3.4 m). 45k strings. 76 letters/string.
For comparison, Bible is 3-4m letters. Harry Potter 1-7 are 1.1m words, so about 5m letters.

Morrowind is still x1.5 larger than others. Every subsequent game reduced the text length. Even if we disregard the writing quality and simply count the monkey at a keyboard time, the games declined.

Also, Morrowind was $50, Oblivion and Skyrim were $60. Inflation-adjusted price was equal for Morrowind and Skyrim and ~10% higher for Oblivion. There's no excuse for decline.
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Post by ThulsaDoomer »

jdcp wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:45
Everything is very relaxed in the Morrowind reddit, and modders I have talked with always look forward to criticism and giving support. To that guy who answered you... have you spoken to Katyakarrel? Ruffinvangar? Johanrosen? Merlord and the Affiq team? MelchiorDark?

Given what you said, and hopefully you aren't centered only in a single part of the modding community, then you know those are just few of the heavy weights that keep the modding scene going. They have their **** going, but they deliver good work and keep things grounded in the content they make.
Jdcp has me ignored, but I'm not about to let that deter me. There are some good people in modding, but those guys are disconnected from the community, precisely because when a "fandom" begins to form, you get the troglodytes vying for meaningless power over others all based on the virtue of "cooperation and understanding". That does happen occasionally, and then it quickly dissolves into petty drama and ideological clashes, especially nowadays where you cannot avoid these kinds of differences.

This ****** name drops people pretending he actually knows them. I know that Merlord married a girl from Singapore, that he received a custom made teapot set for one of his birthdays, or that I baited the modder Safebox (Simpy in screenshots) into self admitting his **** couldn't function properly and needed surgery, or that Melchior Dahrk had issues with his roof leaking last summer. (He's a well intentioned man, the rare few I do not dislike.) I'm not even proud of my time in this community, it was full of stupid drama that I despised and the very reason chat platforms are so terrible, but I also met some genuinely great guys who shared my beliefs and whom I still talk with today. I just wanted to make some mods to pursue my own interests and didn't realise the depths of despair I wandered into. Personally, I still enjoy modding but I do not enjoy the people involved.

While I'm not around in the community anymore, I know some guys who lurk and send me snippets of the decay still progressing. Let us take a look at just this year of random messages.
► Show Spoiler
DarkElfGuy runs the Morrowind Modding Showcases on youtube, he has expressed his support for "***** rights" numerous times, even blamed a lull in mods due to political events, etc. DaisyhasaCat is a mtf ******, yuki is a mtf ******, Sophie helps runs a major modlist pipeline for Openmw, and Micky D is primarily a Morrowind youtuber.

Do these people appear the kind who would take criticism well? I can assure you, they do not. If they do, it's because you align with their ideology and tolerate your "missteps". The entire creative hobby sphere is a minefield, modding is just one of those, and sometimes I regret caring so much about it when this is its modern userbase.
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Post by sheet »

You think they'd be good at developing **** because of the rampant autism, but then they have to have constant "self care" or long periods of depression because they can't accept that pretending to be the other sex is destroying their already fragile minds. Sad!

Maybe related, but the emulator melonDS had a lot of work put into it but updates are so slow and if you go to the website, half the news posts are the developer having depression bouts. Maybe I'm insensitive but I don't ******* care about all that just hand the project off then.
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Post by Kolgrim »

When it comes to mod authors my rule of thumb is that they are gay or at least ***** adjacent until proven otherwise. Same thing goes for indie developers.
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Post by maidenhaver »

The real rule of cool was witnessing the lorefags who threw **** at me on the old boards turn satanist, die of aids, and ***** out, while I kept reading books and listening to my inner dialogues. Get ******.
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https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-elder ... ikes-back/
Bethesda's former Elder Scrolls loremaster on why he left, Starfield's 'communication breakdowns', and how he wanted The Elder Scrolls 6 'to be The Empire Strikes Back'

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Kurt Kuhlmann, the longtime Elder Scrolls "loremaster", hasn't revealed why he left Bethesda in 2023 after more than 20 years—until now.

His departure didn't make headlines but it rumbled those who know the series best. Michael Kirkbride, who worked alongside Kuhlmann on Morrowind and Oblivion, wrote at the time that "Kurt was the best writer that TES ever had… his leaving will be to the creative detriment of [The Elder Scrolls] 6."

"It was almost certainly time for a change," Kuhlmann, who now works at the Tencent-owned studio Lightspeed LA, tells me. "There were some things that had been going on for a long time that I'd not been super happy with."

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Some were an inevitable result of Bethesda's boom years: with hundreds of developers across multiple studios making Starfield, communication sometimes broke down and developers felt disconnected from senior management, Kuhlmann says.

But there's another reason—and it's linked to a promise Todd Howard made to him about The Elder Scrolls 6.

A promise, he says, that was never fulfilled.

Kuhlmann's tenure at Bethesda was split in two. As a junior designer in 1996 and 1997 he worked on The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, and pre-production of Morrowind. He returned in 2003 and was involved in every major Bethesda game after that point, including as co-lead designer on Skyrim and as lead systems designer on Starfield.

He became the Elder Scrolls "loremaster" because of his longevity at the studio and his shaping of Tamriel's history: when ZeniMax Online Studios began making the Elder Scrolls Online, Kuhlmann was assigned to field lore questions.

Over this two-decade second run, Bethesda ballooned and its culture changed, he says, particularly after 2011's Skyrim.

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In the early days, it was a close group of developers—including Todd Howard—in a basement office, making decisions and eating in the canteen together, he says. But new offices opened and other studios were folded in by owner ZeniMax Media, including BattleCry Studios and Escalation Studios (both in 2018). Zenimax was itself bought by Microsoft in 2021.

By the time Starfield shipped in 2023, "it's four remote studios all working together on a game," Kuhlmann says.

"When you get to that size, you can't have people just popping into Todd Howard's office to chat about a design point. He's not having lunch with everybody… It's very different when it's 400 people, four studios, big business, and Microsoft is now involved."

Size brought problems. Decisions that, on Oblivion, would've been made on the spot after a face-to-face conversation were instead filtered through layers of management. Sometimes developers couldn't even work out who had made those decisions, Kuhlmann says.

He also describes "communication breakdowns" during Starfield's development, where teams didn't understand what they were supposed to be doing. "Or, you know, there would be people talking to the leads in one studio and getting an answer, and people talking to the leads in the other studio and getting maybe a different answer."

The snowball

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Bethesda's growth and the problems that came with it were a "slow, rolling" change, he says, and predated Microsoft's acquisition. And these changes sound as if they're exemplified by how Howard's role shifted.

"Todd's a very good project lead and fundamentally I think he's a designer at heart, and he's good at it, obviously, if you look back at the games," Kuhlmann says. But "over time as he got busier and every part of this larger and larger organisation wanted him to do stuff for their project… he would get pulled away".

Howard made good decisions, Kuhlmann says—so when he wasn't around, games suffered. Sometimes choices made in Howard's absence needed undoing later.

The way decisions were made wasn't the only problem for Kuhlmann: as Bethesda grew, senior developers became more managerial and less hand-on.

Skyrim's leads, Kuhlmann among them, were also making the game directly, for example writing and building quests. But by Starfield, the leads, overseen by Howard, included the heads of entire studios. It felt "more bureaucratic", he says. "The expectation was… your job can't be also making content if you're actually managing that scope of the project."

He doesn't believe this set-up is necessarily wrong, and says it's perhaps inevitable as a studio grows. He enjoyed leading other people but preferred designing. "I didn't want to work that way, because I like making games and being hands-on," he says. "It had gotten to a scale beyond where I was really enjoying working in that environment."

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But what of Todd Howard's promise?

Kuhlmann says that after Skyrim, Howard verbally promised him the lead design role on The Elder Scrolls 6 (TES6), which was supposed to be the next project after Fallout 4.

"Of course, after Fallout 4 we didn't go to TES6, we made Fallout 76, and then even then we didn't make TES6, we made Starfield, which became this extremely long project compared to other ones. So from my point of view, I've been waiting like 11 years to be the lead on TES6," he says.

"I was obviously one of the old-timers there and had a lot of experience. Bruce [Nesmith] and I had been the co-leads on Skyrim. I think most people would call it a successful project, so I thought that it wasn't unreasonable for me to think that I could be a successful lead on TES6. It wasn't just my expectation—I had been told that that was going to happen," he says.

"And they made the decision, no, you're not going to be the lead."

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He remembers that being a "tough conversation", and that Bethesda's leadership hoped he'd be happy with a different position. "Todd said, 'Well, we want you to have an important role in the project.' But what I wanted and what he wanted were different at that point."

Bethesda declined to comment on the topic, and Kuhlmann says he doubts Howard would acknowledge the promise—"and in any case, he could also say, well, that was a long time ago, things changed. And he's definitely right that things changed, and the role of lead on TES 6 is very different from the role of lead on Skyrim."

In retrospect, as much as he wanted it, he doesn't think he would've enjoyed it, "and so they may have made the right decision of saying shouldn't be in this role."

Leaving Tamriel

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It was a combination of this missing out and his overall dissatisfaction with the way the studio had changed that made him think the time was right to leave, he says.

He talks about these events without malice or bitterness. It's obvious that Bethesda, and the Elder Scrolls, still means a lot to him and that he enjoyed working with his colleagues on those games. If Bethesda was still the smaller studio it was 15 years ago, he would love to be making TES6.

He even knows what he would've done with the game's story—or at least, what he would've liked to do.

"I had in my mind that TES6 was going to be like The Empire Strikes Back," he says. The Thalmor, the elven supremacists who were peripheral in Skyrim's story and ultimately wanted to control all of Tamriel, would be the bad guys who come out on top, setting up TES7.

He saw evil triumphing as a welcome alternative to the "chosen one" idea Bethesda often relied on. The player might have "secretly saved the day" at the end of TES6, he says, for example by protecting an heir to the throne, "so you've preserved hope for the future, but overall it looks like the Thalmor are on the march".

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He ultimately doesn't think Bethesda would allow an Elder Scrolls game with a "bad" ending and with the pace of its releases, a cliffhanger is "completely unfeasible," he says. "That's not a good way to end a game and say, yeah, we'll see you in 10, 15 years."

Fan theories point to Hammerfell and possibly High Rock as the locations for the next Elder Scrolls game—Kuhlmann says he doesn't know where it will be and jokes that his friends who remain at the studio "can't talk to me about what's going on".

The series' loremaster is now, like all of us, watching and waiting from the outside.
Just like Yves, I chase tales
rusty_shackleford wrote: October 28th, 2024, 07:36
Mediocre or bad games can still have parts that are good.
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Post by maidenhaver »

Its finally and forever over.
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Post by KnightoftheWind »

Managerialism killed Bethesda the same way it's killed every other company. Genuinely talented and creative people now have to jump through dozens of hoops just to get anything done, while the spiteful mutants suck corporate resources dry like a parasite.
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Post by maidenhaver »

Sounds like Todd's basically half way out the door, like a consultant, and he can't even pick teams, just moves around. How else could he work on that Indiana Jones game?
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The_Mask wrote: January 17th, 2026, 02:18
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-elder ... ikes-back/
Bethesda's former Elder Scrolls loremaster on why he left, Starfield's 'communication breakdowns', and how he wanted The Elder Scrolls 6 'to be The Empire Strikes Back'

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Kurt Kuhlmann, the longtime Elder Scrolls "loremaster", hasn't revealed why he left Bethesda in 2023 after more than 20 years—until now.

His departure didn't make headlines but it rumbled those who know the series best. Michael Kirkbride, who worked alongside Kuhlmann on Morrowind and Oblivion, wrote at the time that "Kurt was the best writer that TES ever had… his leaving will be to the creative detriment of [The Elder Scrolls] 6."

"It was almost certainly time for a change," Kuhlmann, who now works at the Tencent-owned studio Lightspeed LA, tells me. "There were some things that had been going on for a long time that I'd not been super happy with."

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Some were an inevitable result of Bethesda's boom years: with hundreds of developers across multiple studios making Starfield, communication sometimes broke down and developers felt disconnected from senior management, Kuhlmann says.

But there's another reason—and it's linked to a promise Todd Howard made to him about The Elder Scrolls 6.

A promise, he says, that was never fulfilled.

Kuhlmann's tenure at Bethesda was split in two. As a junior designer in 1996 and 1997 he worked on The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, and pre-production of Morrowind. He returned in 2003 and was involved in every major Bethesda game after that point, including as co-lead designer on Skyrim and as lead systems designer on Starfield.

He became the Elder Scrolls "loremaster" because of his longevity at the studio and his shaping of Tamriel's history: when ZeniMax Online Studios began making the Elder Scrolls Online, Kuhlmann was assigned to field lore questions.

Over this two-decade second run, Bethesda ballooned and its culture changed, he says, particularly after 2011's Skyrim.

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In the early days, it was a close group of developers—including Todd Howard—in a basement office, making decisions and eating in the canteen together, he says. But new offices opened and other studios were folded in by owner ZeniMax Media, including BattleCry Studios and Escalation Studios (both in 2018). Zenimax was itself bought by Microsoft in 2021.

By the time Starfield shipped in 2023, "it's four remote studios all working together on a game," Kuhlmann says.

"When you get to that size, you can't have people just popping into Todd Howard's office to chat about a design point. He's not having lunch with everybody… It's very different when it's 400 people, four studios, big business, and Microsoft is now involved."

Size brought problems. Decisions that, on Oblivion, would've been made on the spot after a face-to-face conversation were instead filtered through layers of management. Sometimes developers couldn't even work out who had made those decisions, Kuhlmann says.

He also describes "communication breakdowns" during Starfield's development, where teams didn't understand what they were supposed to be doing. "Or, you know, there would be people talking to the leads in one studio and getting an answer, and people talking to the leads in the other studio and getting maybe a different answer."

The snowball

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Bethesda's growth and the problems that came with it were a "slow, rolling" change, he says, and predated Microsoft's acquisition. And these changes sound as if they're exemplified by how Howard's role shifted.

"Todd's a very good project lead and fundamentally I think he's a designer at heart, and he's good at it, obviously, if you look back at the games," Kuhlmann says. But "over time as he got busier and every part of this larger and larger organisation wanted him to do stuff for their project… he would get pulled away".

Howard made good decisions, Kuhlmann says—so when he wasn't around, games suffered. Sometimes choices made in Howard's absence needed undoing later.

The way decisions were made wasn't the only problem for Kuhlmann: as Bethesda grew, senior developers became more managerial and less hand-on.

Skyrim's leads, Kuhlmann among them, were also making the game directly, for example writing and building quests. But by Starfield, the leads, overseen by Howard, included the heads of entire studios. It felt "more bureaucratic", he says. "The expectation was… your job can't be also making content if you're actually managing that scope of the project."

He doesn't believe this set-up is necessarily wrong, and says it's perhaps inevitable as a studio grows. He enjoyed leading other people but preferred designing. "I didn't want to work that way, because I like making games and being hands-on," he says. "It had gotten to a scale beyond where I was really enjoying working in that environment."

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But what of Todd Howard's promise?

Kuhlmann says that after Skyrim, Howard verbally promised him the lead design role on The Elder Scrolls 6 (TES6), which was supposed to be the next project after Fallout 4.

"Of course, after Fallout 4 we didn't go to TES6, we made Fallout 76, and then even then we didn't make TES6, we made Starfield, which became this extremely long project compared to other ones. So from my point of view, I've been waiting like 11 years to be the lead on TES6," he says.

"I was obviously one of the old-timers there and had a lot of experience. Bruce [Nesmith] and I had been the co-leads on Skyrim. I think most people would call it a successful project, so I thought that it wasn't unreasonable for me to think that I could be a successful lead on TES6. It wasn't just my expectation—I had been told that that was going to happen," he says.

"And they made the decision, no, you're not going to be the lead."

Image

He remembers that being a "tough conversation", and that Bethesda's leadership hoped he'd be happy with a different position. "Todd said, 'Well, we want you to have an important role in the project.' But what I wanted and what he wanted were different at that point."

Bethesda declined to comment on the topic, and Kuhlmann says he doubts Howard would acknowledge the promise—"and in any case, he could also say, well, that was a long time ago, things changed. And he's definitely right that things changed, and the role of lead on TES 6 is very different from the role of lead on Skyrim."

In retrospect, as much as he wanted it, he doesn't think he would've enjoyed it, "and so they may have made the right decision of saying shouldn't be in this role."

Leaving Tamriel

Image

It was a combination of this missing out and his overall dissatisfaction with the way the studio had changed that made him think the time was right to leave, he says.

He talks about these events without malice or bitterness. It's obvious that Bethesda, and the Elder Scrolls, still means a lot to him and that he enjoyed working with his colleagues on those games. If Bethesda was still the smaller studio it was 15 years ago, he would love to be making TES6.

He even knows what he would've done with the game's story—or at least, what he would've liked to do.

"I had in my mind that TES6 was going to be like The Empire Strikes Back," he says. The Thalmor, the elven supremacists who were peripheral in Skyrim's story and ultimately wanted to control all of Tamriel, would be the bad guys who come out on top, setting up TES7.

He saw evil triumphing as a welcome alternative to the "chosen one" idea Bethesda often relied on. The player might have "secretly saved the day" at the end of TES6, he says, for example by protecting an heir to the throne, "so you've preserved hope for the future, but overall it looks like the Thalmor are on the march".

Image

He ultimately doesn't think Bethesda would allow an Elder Scrolls game with a "bad" ending and with the pace of its releases, a cliffhanger is "completely unfeasible," he says. "That's not a good way to end a game and say, yeah, we'll see you in 10, 15 years."

Fan theories point to Hammerfell and possibly High Rock as the locations for the next Elder Scrolls game—Kuhlmann says he doesn't know where it will be and jokes that his friends who remain at the studio "can't talk to me about what's going on".

The series' loremaster is now, like all of us, watching and waiting from the outside.


I don't know if it's the same man, but I recall reading some **** from ESO by a 'loremaster', and it was just recycled Morrowind / Daggerfall lore. Zero new creations.

What a dumpster fire.
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Post by maidenhaver »

ESO was Lawrence Shick.
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Post by Algol »

jdcp wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:50
Bertram_Tung wrote: January 4th, 2026, 23:49
The most unconvincing thing I've read today.
Suit yourself, but don't talk **** about a whole community just because of a group of entitled fucks like the PT team.

Also I've been working with this tiny team trying to make a total conversion for Morrowind where you get into the crusades:

It's still in progress but it's going well, lots of good folks here
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Wow. I look forward to playing this one.
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Post by Algol »

jdcp wrote: January 4th, 2026, 20:22
A bit more related to what's being talked about, I remember this popular modder back in the times of LE (He eventually left shortly after special edition came) who used to put in all his mods constant LGBT pride stuff, no big deal with that, but his mods were pretty cool stuff that for some weird ******* reason had gay stuff in it.
lol no way
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Post by Algol »

jdcp wrote: January 4th, 2026, 20:22
Go figure but it's said he eventually left simply because he couldn't take the amount of people criticizing him, it's a common thing to happen.
It's kind of shocking he would have been criticized by that, considering the massive amount of homos and etc in that scene.
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Post by maidenhaver »

Todd! Help me, Todd! Please.