LogIn"Todd's rule was always 'humor has no place in games.'"
Out of the hundreds of books, notes, ledgers, and diaries you can find and read in The Elder Scrolls games, I doubt there's a single piece of in-game literature more iconic than The Lusty Argonian Maid, part of a play by the one and only Crassius Curio that first appeared in TES III: Morrowind and went on to become one of the community's most well-known memes for reasons… well, you can just read it yourself to understand why:
Bethesda
As recently revealed by Morrowind Writer and Quest Designer Mark Nelson, the real-life author of The Lusty Argonian Maid, the smashing hit among House Hlaalu nobles and TES players alike could have easily been removed from the game and left as a scrapped idea on the cutting room floor by Todd Howard – for whom Morrowind was the first mainline The Elder Scrolls game he directed – if only he had noticed it before release.
As revealed by Nelson – whose notorious play is, by the way, the only in-game book he ever authored – in a recent 8-hour interview with Morrowind's developers shared by Filmdeg Miniatures (timestamp 2:26:25), the only reason he managed to sneak the book into the game was that "no one was paying attention."
Had anyone actually noticed, he said, it likely would have been cut, as Howard was reportedly in a no-fun-allowed mood at the time, which is actually understandable, considering that Bethesda's very existence depended on Morrowind being a success.
"Todd's rule was always 'humor has no place in games.' That's Todd's rule. So, of course, that became 'humor has no place in games, if Todd doesn't catch it.' And that's where things like The Lusty Argonian Maid came in," Nelson commented, adding that he doesn't remember why the story was written in the first place. "I probably was like, 'I need a break, I've been scripting or creating something kind of boring. I'm gonna write this stupid little story.' And we had a perfect character for it [Crassius Curio]. That's where it came from."
With a revelation like that, one can't help but wonder if this dialogue with Maar Gan dremora Anhaedra also had to be kept hidden from Howard:
Watch the full interview here and don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.