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therealralts

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therealralts

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About this mod

Adds an in-depth bard career path with MIDI-based performances and custom songwriting. Play in taverns or on the street. Recruit other bards and assemble a troupe. Collect music boxes. Compose songs about your adventures. Make a name for yourself as a master of bardcraft.

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Permissions and credits
Changelogs
Bardcraft
for OpenMW 0.49




Overview

Bardcraft is a fully-featured bard experience for Morrowind, powered by OpenMW-Lua. Perform music, level up your skills, compose your own songs, and gather a troupe of unique performers as you make a living playing taverns and streets across Vvardenfell.

Key Features

  • Bardcraft: A new character skill that lies at the heart of the mod's gameplay loop. At level 1, you'll struggle through basic scales, and likely be thrown out (or assaulted) in any tavern you dare to test your mettle in. Keep at it. The more you play, the better you'll become.
  • Dynamic reactions: Great performances will earn you tips in real-time, and the crowd might even erupt into cheers. Truly awful performances, on the other hand, will get you pelted with food and drinks by rowdy taverngoers, or even get you banned from a venue for a while. The mod has plenty of variety -- over 700 unique tip messages, patron and publican comments, depending on a mixture of performance quality, complexity, and NPC race.
  • Song learning: Booksellers stock a few basic songbooks that'll teach simple songs to get you started. But any good bard is also an adventurer, and things are no different in Morrowind. Hundreds of potential music box locations have been hand-placed in dungeons across Vvardenfell, with a unique selection appearing in each playthrough. The more difficult the dungeon, the higher tier the music box. When activated, they'll play a rendition of a random song of their respective tier, teaching it to you and allowing you to play it yourself. They can be picked up, and make great home decorations :)
  • Assemble a troupe: You can perform solo, but it's more fun with a band! Bards-for-hire can be found throughout the taverns of Vvardenfell. For a price, they'll lend their talents and travel with you. Each performer has a distinct personality, backstory, instrument, and fee.
  • Instrument sheathing: Most instruments can be worn on your back by dragging them onto your character as you would a piece of armor.
  • MIDI-based performances: All of the mod's songs are pure MIDI, played in real time, note-by-note. This enables instrument animations that are truly synced to the notes being played, and audible flubs with low performer skill.
  • Custom songwriting: Buy blank sheet music from a bookseller and write songs in-game, completely freeform, using a MIDI piano roll-style interface. The editor is simple but functional. You can choose instruments, parts, adjust BPM and time signature, toggle looping, and use helpful tools like scale highlighting and snapping. More functionality, like copy/paste, undo/redo, and group selection is planned for the near future.
  • MIDI importing: Any MIDI file can be imported, and it'll just work. Place the file into the folder "midi/Bardcraft/custom"; upon loading in, the song will be added to your songwriting drafts. From there, you can make any tweaks you'd like, and then finalize it using blank sheet music, as you would any other song.

Instruments

Currently, there are five playable instruments.

  • The vanilla lute and drum are playable, and have had their prices adjusted to be more reasonable. All Tamriel Data lutes/drums are supported by default.
  • Ocarinas, bass flutes, and fiddles are new additions.
  • All vanilla general merchants will stock a random variety of instruments. Fiddles, being an uncommon Cyrodiilic import, can only be purchased in Pelagiad.

Recruitable Bards

Currently, there are eight recruitable bards.

Lute:
  • Strumak gro-Bol - Madach Tradehouse, Gnisis - 300G: An unusually introspective Orc who found solace in the lute after a "disagreement" with his stronghold.
  • Camilla of Cheydinhal - Halfway Tavern, Pelagiad - 1500G: A former Imperial court performer now scraping by in Morrowind after a run of bad luck.
Ocarina:
  • Sees-Silent-Reeds - Arrille's Tradehouse, Seyda Neen - 100G: A calm, yet cryptic Argonian who claims to have learned all they know from watching the waves on the shores of the Bitter Coast.
  • Elara Endre - Mages Guild, Ald'ruhn - 300G: A Breton Mages Guild initiate who finds mathematical beauty in musical scales and modes. Plays her ocarina with precise, almost clinical skill, using it to "explore tonal relationships."
Bass Flute:
  • Sargon Assinabi - Varo Tradehouse, Vos - 200G: A recently exiled Ashlander who left his tribe with his flute as one of his few possessions, and has decided to try to find a place in settled culture.
Drum:
  • Ra'jira "Quick-Paws" - Black Shalk Cornerclub, Vivec - 300G: An incredibly energetic Khajiit whose drumming is fast, complex, and infectious.
  • Rels Llervu - Andus Tradehouse, Maar Gan - 1000G: A stern House Redoran drummer who makes yearly journeys up to the Urshilaku tribe to study their traditional drumming technique.
Fiddle:
  • Lucian Caro - Six Fishes, Ebonheart - 1500G: A classically-trained fiddler (or "vielle" player, as he prefers) of the Imperial Conservatory, stuck in Morrowind on what he calls an "extended sabbatical".

Learnable Songs

Currently, there are 17 included songs, divided into:

  • Two starting songs
  • Four beginner songs (learned from Beginner Songbooks and Plain Music Boxes)
  • Seven intermediate songs (learned from Intermediate Songbooks and Engraved Music Boxes)
  • One advanced song (learned from Exquisite Music Boxes)
  • Three unique songs (learned in various ways)

Once you have learned all the songs of a tier, any further books/music boxes will pick an already-known song, so I recommend holding off on activating them until an update adds more.

There exists a rare fourth type of music box that has a chance to spawn at each of Sheogorath's nine shrines, and will pick randomly from all the song pools combined. A guaranteed one can be earned by completing Sheogorath's quest.

List of unique song learn conditions:
Spoiler:  
Show

  • Ahemmusan Lament: Learned from the Wise Woman of the Ahemmusa tribe after you complete their quest
  • Wondrous Love: Learned from the book "Ashland Hymns"
  • Ra'jira's Cadence: Learned from recruiting Ra'jira into your troupe


Installation

This mod requires OpenMW 0.49. There are no plans for an MWSE port.
  • Place the contents of the archive into your Data Files folder, or add it as a data directory in the OpenMW launcher.
  • Enable "Bardcraft.omwscripts" and "Bardcraft.ESP" in your load order.
  • In your OpenMW launcher, go to Settings > Visuals > Animations and make sure "Use Additional Animation Sources" is checked. "Smooth Animation Transitions" is also highly recommended but not required.
  • (optional, but recommended): In Settings > Audio, enable "use the camera as the sound listener" for better-sounding group performances in 3rd person.
  • (optional, but recommended): Keyboard navigation can cause issues and annoying behavior with this mod's UI if you accidentally press Tab. Unless you actively use it, I recommend disabling it. In your settings.cfg, add the [GUI] section if it doesn't exist, and in that section, add: keyboard navigation = false

Removal

Remove the mod's files from your Data Files folder or unlink them in the OpenMW launcher.


Compatibility

ReAnimation: Make sure to use an up-to-date (4/7/2025+) version of that mod. Older versions will likely cause issues.

The mod contains hand-placed music box spawns for nearly every dungeon in the game, so naturally there is the risk of conflict with mods that significantly change dungeon layouts, but the worst that will happen is a music box will be inaccessible, and there are hundreds of possible locations for them, so this is not a major issue.

The mod has built-in compatibility with S3ctor's wonderful S3maphore music framework and will smoothly silence background music during performances.


Credits

Spoiler:  
Show

=== TEXTURES ===

Piano keys texture: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/close-up-piano-keys_1007634.htm Image by jannoon028 on Freepik
Ocarina texture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ocarina_SopranoF_AltoC.jpg (Public domain)

Muted icon: https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/mute Created by Pixel perfect - Flaticon
Unmuted icon: https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/speaker Created by Pixel perfect - Flaticon
Delete icon: https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/trash-can Created by Freepik - Flaticon

=== SOUNDS ===

Ocarina samples were recorded and kindly provided by urm! <3

finalize_draft.wav: writing_pencil.aif by rui_aires -- https://freesound.org/s/365890/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

boo1.wav: CRWDAngr_Booing, Angry_ShaneVincent_GSC24_XY-AKG214-96k.wav by ShangusBurger -- https://freesound.org/s/763807/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
boo2, boo3.wav: Crowd Boo.wav by deleted_user_2104797 -- https://freesound.org/s/324893/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
boo4.wav: S Disapproval - .wav by Processaurus -- https://freesound.org/s/440087/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
clap1.wav: Crowd Clap.wav by GB01 -- https://freesound.org/s/177083/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
clap2.wav: small crowd cheering and clapping 2.wav by Tomlija -- https://freesound.org/s/99633/ -- License: Attribution 3.0
clap3.wav: MORECLAPS.aif by nickrave -- https://freesound.org/s/245639/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
clap4.wav: Applause Small Crowd 2 by qubodup -- https://freesound.org/s/169943/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
clap-polite.wav: Light, slow uncomfortable clapping by TurboFool -- https://freesound.org/s/561020/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
hurl.wav: Hurling.mp3 by SnowFightStudios -- https://freesound.org/s/643654/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
cough1.wav: Cough1_Mono.wav by johncanyon -- https://freesound.org/s/645991/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
cough2.wav: Cough by Duisterwho -- https://freesound.org/s/638581/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
coin-one.wav: Coin Dropped by kermite607 -- https://freesound.org/s/368203/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
coin-few.wav: coins-falling-022.wav by Gerent -- https://freesound.org/s/558991/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
coin-many.wav: Coin Drop by Universfield -- https://freesound.org/s/750240/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

equip.wav: Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/item-equip-6904/
gohome.wav: Rapid Footsteps Upon Gravel by ExplosiveTamale -- https://freesound.org/s/448357/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

musbox-start.wav:
Wind_up_musicbox.wav by jobro -- https://freesound.org/s/172208/ -- License: Attribution 3.0
Winding Up a Music box by BM007 -- https://freesound.org/s/540958/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0
musbox-loop.wav:
Ratchet (ratchet2.wav) by sgossner -- https://freesound.org/s/375709/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

=== SONGS ===

(Any not listed are my original compositions)

bwv997.mid: Transcribed from https://musescore.com/user/17040701/scores/5435954 (CC-BY-NC-SA)
bwv997-adv.mid: Transcribed from https://musescore.com/user/4459451/scores/5034251 (CC-BY-NC-SA)
beg3.mid: Transcribed from https://musescore.com/jakerussell/scores/1724406 (Public domain)
int1.mid: Modified from https://musescore.com/user/34711090/scores/22831834 (CC-BY)
int3.mid: Based on Turkish folk song "Ah Bir Ataş Ver", https://musescore.com/user/1185841/scores/5707125 (CC-BY)
cadence1.mid: Based on "Jig 2" drum cadence by Oak Mountain High School drumline

The following are adaptations of urm's compositions from the mod "Songs of the Ashen Winds":
wondrouslove.mid

The following are my own MIDI arrangements based on Daggerfall OST songs. All credit for the original compositions belongs to Bethesda and Eric Heberling.
int4.mid: Snow is Falling/Snow over Northmoor

The following are my own MIDI arrangements based on Elder Scrolls Online bard/music box songs. All credit for the original compositions belongs to ZeniMax and their talented composers.
reddiamond.mid: Chim-el Adabal / Diamond Melody


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