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Idea: Choose Your Path


chuckdm

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First, let me say sorry if this is in the wrong forum.  My idea described here is part adult, part not, and would even (probably) integrate with sexlab, so it could go anywhere, really.  Anyhow...

 

So I have a crazy idea for a mod.  A totally batshit insane idea since the work required would be massive (albeit all writing and scripting - shouldn't require any graphics work at all, really) and I don't know papyrus.  I suppose that means it's a request, but if someone who DOES know scripting/papyrus has some good idea how to implement half of this, I'll happily learn it and do the other half.  I write PHP from scratch so it can't be THAT hard.

 

The idea is an alternative to the existing (and totally awesome) alternative start mod.  Basically, rather than choosing a unique starting point and then proceeding to play the game basically the same after the first hour, Choose Your Path would instead alter your entire playthrough.  The basic idea is that, on starting a new game, you pick what you want to do - and within reason, you remain locked into that path until you achieve a certain "ultimate quest."  At that point, you are reincarnated (or however else you'd like to think of it, idc) and allowed to pick another Path.  There would be at least 20 paths to choose, and they range from Dragonborn, to Hold Guard, to Traveling Merchant and even perhaps Tavern Wench and/or Prostitute, and each Path might be very specific.  For example, there might be one path to be a whore at the local inn, and another path entirely with the goal of sleeping your way up through high society until eventually you become the Jarl's mistress and, if you play it just right, his wife - essentially a "trophy wife path."  While these might both revolve around sex, obviously they are not the same, and the trophy wife path won't advance by sleeping with more people, but rather by sleeping with the right people, etc.  Each path would consist of at least 20-30 quests, and all are mutually exclusive, though at some point if you failed enough in a given path you could reincarnate early.

 

Lastly, any Path that does not directly involve battle would disable your character advancing any combat skills.  That is, if you choose to be a Traveling Merchant, you will be unable to train any weapon or armor skills, and probably be barred from both destruction and conjuration magic (in theory, Illusion and/or Alteration have economic uses, and a good healer could charge people for their services.)  To make these more survivable in a world filled with hostiles, any Path that doesn't involve combat will allow you to hire special hirelings that are unavailable to warriors - basically hirelings specially geared for defending others, like Housecarls.

 

Of course, choosing the Dragonborn path basically just starts a normal game - helgen, the main quest, etc.  Choosing anything else both locks out the main quest (and shouts, too) and sets up a whole new series of quests, perks, and gameplay mechanics specific to the path you chose.  So without further adieu...here's some of the potential Paths I thought up, as examples.

  • Hold Guard - Exactly what it sounds like.
    • As a Hold Guard you will begin as a guard in one of the outlying villages for your chosen hold.  For example, if choosing to be a Whiterun Hold Guard, you will begin in either Riverwood or Rorikstead (this will change at random.)  Your job is to keep the town safe from anything and everything, be it bandits or giants, dragons or even thieves.  Randomly 2 to 4 times a day, villagers will approach you and inform you of a crime that will either happen soon, has just happened, or is in progress.  Depending on the type of crime and what state it's in, you must bring justice to the land.
    • All guards are paid once a week, based on a formula: (rank * crimes solved * 100 / number of other guards at your rank).  This means you make more money by ranking up, by solving more crimes, and by having fewer guards at your current rank to split the reward with.  However, without sufficient help, many of your crimes are all but guaranteed to kill you, so you have to strike a balance between splitting your money with too many fellow guards, and getting overwhelmed and killed because you didn't have enough to help you.
    • Progression as a Hold Guard is done by rank.  There are 4 ranks, but the 4th is Captain of the Guard, who is essential and whose rank you cannot attain.  You start as a Recruit, and the path leads through Lieutenant to Commander.  To progress from one rank to the next, you must achieve different criteria for each rank.
      • Advancing from Recruit to Lieutenant simply requires that you solve 50% or more of your cases for 7 days straight.  This will be re-checked once a week until you do it, or if you fail to do so for 10 weeks in a row, you can reincarnate.  If/when you do, a courier will give you a letter telling you to report to the Captain of the Guard and upon doing so, you will receive your promotion.  Becoming a Lieutenant entitles you to recruit 3 additional Recruit rank guards to serve under you, in addition to giving you command of the other guards.  However, Lieutenants cannot dismiss/fire guards, they can only recruit them, and the potential recruits can refuse (i.e. they're recruits, not conscripts - see below.)
      • Advancing from Lieutenant to Commander has many more requirements.  First, you AND every Recruit under you must solve ALL of your cases for a week.  Upon doing this, you will receive a letter via courier from the Captain of the Guard requesting that you relocate to the Hold Capital.  Once there, you are tasked with solving a deviously complicated crime committed recently by a master criminal.  The exact crime is either serial murder, serial rape, or a secret cult involving at least one affluent member of society, chosen at random.  You are given 1 week - and 3 weeks pay in advance (calculated based on your last paycheck before the letter from the Captain) with which to solve the crime.  This money can be used to loosen lips, pay a mage to divine a random piece of information for you, or even to frame an innocent person for the crime, but if the case is not solved in 1 week, you will remain a Lieutenant and be sent back to the sleepy hamlet from which you came.  If you do manage to solve the crime - including potentially framing an innocent person - you are granted a house (or land) in the hold and promoted to Commander.  Now all Lieutenants in the hold are required to obey you (as well as their Recruits.)
      • In order to Finish the Path, you must maintain your post as Commander for 1 to 2 in-game years.  During this time, many crimes will happen in many towns all across the Hold, though at a far lower rate than they previously occurred - you may optionally personally help solve any of these crimes for a monetary bonus, but you will get the same base salary even if you don't.  In this time, you are granted freedom to leave the hold and travel abroad, doing things like getting married and whatnot.  You are also granted 2 new job perks - you may conscript 9 people into the guard, and you may fire up to 12 people from the guard.  However, at least once, a criminal you locked up earlier in your career will finish their sentence, be angry, and attempt to kill either a family member of yours (if one is available) or you.  (Optionally, if the player has sexlab, this former convict might prefer to kidnap and then rape your spouse instead.)  If you are not at home when this happens, you may be unable to save your spouse (or even son/daughter, if it's murder.  No kid rape, obviously.) so you have a strong incentive to stay home and keep watch.  Either way, you must either prevent this criminal from succeeding, or if they do, catch them and put them down permanently, saving your kidnapped spouse in the process, if possible.
    • Aside from ample defensive combat, the Hold Guard Path also gives you a chance to end battles peacefully (any time an attacker/suspect yields, you may arrest them and take them to jail.)  Killing an attacker/suspect once they yield is dishonorable, and causes you to forfeit your pay for the entire week, so if/when an attacker relents, stop killing them immediately!
    • Hold Guards lack all magic skills and spells.  All.  Every last spell is permanently unavailable to you.  In addition, you may wear light or heavy armor, and begin with 50 skill in both those, blocking, and all 3 weapon skills.  However, you are unable to wear any enchanted gear.
    • In addition, you may choose to either accept bribery, or reject it and tack on additional bribery charges.  With sexlab, these bribes can be either monetary or sexual.  Otherwise they're always monetary.  The guard may also commit rape against any enemy that attempts to bribe them to "teach them a lesson" but ONLY if the enemy tried to bribe them with sex.  Not all criminals will bribe you at all.
    • The chance for them to attempt a bribe is based on both how much money they have and how much you're fining them.  If they have more money than your fine, they will simply pay the fine.  If they have half the money for the fine, they will attempt a monetary bribe.  If they don't even have half, there is a 50% chance they offer sexual favors, otherwise they will either fight to the death (25%) or submit and go to jail (25%.)
    • Lastly, as a Hold Guard, you have the option to refuse a fine outright if the bounty is over a certain amount (default would be any bounty over 2,000 septims.)  In this case, the same percentages apply as the "don't even have half" scenario above.  This means that truly violent criminals won't be able to pay their way out of trouble, IF you choose so.
  • Trophy Wife - a path that revolves around fucking your way up the social ladder, and doing it discreetly.
    • As a trophy wife, your goal is to become either the mistress or the wife of the Jarl in any given hold.  You may choose any hold you like to do this in  - and switch between them freely - but progress for each hold is tracked separately.  Whether mistress or wife is your goal is up to you, i.e. both are considered equal for the sake of the Path.  It's not about the ring - it's about influence over the most powerful dude in the Hold.
    • You start as the wife of a local merchant.  You and he (or she - depends on your orientation, selectable during chargen) have been married for a year already, and he has suspected for a while now that you are having an affair.  You are.  Your first order of business is to supplant the wife if your affair target - a noble chosen at random who sits on the Jarl's court/counsel - before your own husband/wife has proof and publicly divorces and shames you, which by default will happen in 2 weeks.  You can go about this several different ways.  You can do up to a dozen radiant quests to prove your loyalty to your spouse, each granting you a 3 day extension before he/she divorces you.  Most of these quests will be sexual in nature, though some will not and may even take more than the 3 days they buy you in order to complete.  During this time, however long it is, you must have sex with your affair target at least twice as often as their current spouse does.  The day before your would-be public shaming and divorce, the game will check to see if you have.  If so, your affair target will divorce their current spouse and marry you.  If not, you will be served with divorce papers the next day, thus failing and hitting early reincarnation.
    • Upon your marriage to the nobleman, your next goal is the Jarl himself/herself.  The same process as before applies here, but there is a twist - the Jarl is a Jarl!  Accordingly, all of your sexual acts with the Jarl must be committed in secret.  If anyone spots you, there is a 50% chance they will tell your nobleman spouse, who will shorten the days until they divorce you by 2, a 25% chance they will blackmail you with money to keep it secret, and a 25% chance they will blackmail you with sex to keep it secret.  You may also pass a persuasion check to convince them to accept either money or sex even if that isn't what they intended to do.
    • Upon marrying the Jarl, you have a new problem to deal with: the other trophy wives!  For the next 1 to 2 years, your goal is to both out-fuck all your Jarl's other mistresses (he/she may have up to 4!) and when possible, blackmail them to stop seeing your Jarl, thus lowering the amount of fucking you need to do.  In addition, your weekly stipend is reduced by 15% for each mistress the Jarl has, up to 60%, so it costs you a lot of money to let him screw around!  (See below.)
    • Finishing the Path consists of either eliminating all the Jarl's mistresses for 6 months in a row, or simply remaining married to him/her for 2 years without being divorced.
    • As a trophy wife, you are expected to look hot at all times!  Accordingly, you are given a weekly stipend from your current husband.  This stipend is based on the formula: (number of loyalty acts performed * 250 / (30 / number of days remaining until divorce)).  This amount is then doubled upon becoming the Nobleman's wife, and doubled again upon becoming the Jarl's wife.  In addition, prior to becoming the Jarl's wife, your current affair target will give you random gifts ranging from jewelry to potions once every day, but not money.
    • Trophy wives don't fight, though, so you may not spend any of your money on anything with armor rating, or any weapons other than daggers, and your one handed skill is locked at 20 and cannot be improved.  Accordingly you are a horrible fighter.  You may use all novice level destruction spells, and all illusion spells.  You may not use any other spells.  However, in exchange you have a 100% success rate on all persuade dialog checks, and you start the game with all enchantments unlocked and an enchanting skill of 80, which you can improve to 100 as normal.  However, since you lack access to Soul Trap and cannot fight well anyway, you are more or less restricted to purchasing already filled soul gems from merchants.
  • Master Blacksmith - Craft your way to fame and fortune.
    • Most, though not all, of the Paths have access to Blacksmithing.  However, all except the Master Blacksmith Path lack any perks beyond Advanced Smithing and Steel.  Only the Master Blacksmith may craft armor and weapons beyond those.  As a Master Blacksmith, your ultimate goal is to craft a weapon and some armor for your Jarl that is superior to anything else he owns, thus being appointed the official Hold Blacksmith.  As you have limited combat skills yourself - all combat skills set at 50, but unimprovable, and with a very small selection of perks - many of the more rare materials you need will have to be bought, and Daedra Hearts don't come cheap!
    • To achieve your goal, you'll have to do a lot of mining, and often in some dangerous areas.  With limited combat skills of your own, you really have only 2 ways to attain the materials you need.
      • You may hire Mining Mercenaries at the local Inn, one in each Hold Capital.  These mercenaries will delve into Dwemer ruins and Draugr-infested caves alike in search of rare ores.  They offer you three options for payment for their services.
        • First is to fund their expedition for 2000 septims and they will split any ores they find with you, 50/50.
        • Second, you may choose to accompany them for 500 septims and mine the ores yourself.  They will have a party of 3, including themselves, making you the 4th member.  Regardless of which they are, the party will consist of 1 warrior, 1 archer, and a healing mage.  They will choose a radiant location and you are expected to meet them at the entrance, from where they will rapidly fight their way through the ruin or cave, expecting you to keep up on your own - that is, they won't stop and wait around for you.  This is cheaper than the first option and usually will yield more ores, but also runs the risk of leaving you stranded in the middle of a cave with minimal combat skills if you either fall behind the group, or the group simply gets killed.
        • Third, you can pay them in trade.  Once a day, they will ask you to craft them a specific piece of armor or weapon, and give you the exact raw materials needed to do so.  Upon returning with the finished item, they will not only pay you the standard sale value for the item, but also grant you an exact copy of the materials used to create it, to do with what you will.  The armor they request is random, but is always something you have the requisite perks to craft already.
      • In addition, you also have access to special Hunting Contractors.  Similar to mining mercs, professional hunters will offer you their services.  You may hire them to bring you 5, 10, or 20 pelts of a specific kind (wolf, saber cat, or bear) and they will go hunt for them.  The time it takes to do this varies based on what you asked for, where gathering 20 wolf pelts, 10 saber cat pelts, or 5 bear pelts will take 1 full day.  However, there is a catch.  You must pay for these pelts up front - but if the hunter is killed before he finishes your hunt, you get neither your pelts nor your money back!  The likelihood the hunter dies goes up with the time and cost, so asking for 20 bear pelts has a 50% chance of outright failure, whilst asking for 5 wolf pelts has a 95% chance of success.
      • As a Blacksmith, your primary source of income is, of course, selling your wares!  You have many methods for doing this available to you.
        • Imperial Quartermasters will visit your forge once per week and buy all imperial gear you have crafted for 150% of its normal sale value.  Make sure you craft some before they arrive if you need money!
        • Khajiit Caravans will buy things from you once a week as well, but their purchase works differently.  They will instead buy your 8 cheapest pieces of armor (or weapons) for 250% of their normal sale value.  Accordingly, you'd be wise to store the cheapest gear you want to sell and have only your best pieces on display (err...in your inventory) when they arrive! 
        • And you can sell your wares to any standard game merchant, of course.  Since you are a blacksmith, you sell all weapons and armor to normal merchants at a 25% discount, so you only get 75% of the normal sale price this way.

And...now I'm going to abruptly end this post because I've been writing it for almost 3 hours and I'm sleepy.  But if I wake up and there's some interest in the idea, I'll totally finish it tomorrow!  I promise :)

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I love the combination of adventuring and wild sex life. But, as I said, your idea is very good. If you can combine it with sex adventure, something like corrupted guard that is running some brothel or renting man and women for wild sex parties or something, maybe you'll find more followers. :)

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The idea is lovely but it has a problem that lots of huge and complex mod ideas being posted on LL have: they're huge and complex.

 

You described it in lots of detail and even included specific numbers and stuffs and that would be oksies if you were making the mod.... but if you'd like someone else to pick up these ideas doing things like that is the perfect way to immediately scare off modders ^^

 

Modders are modders because we don't like things the way they are and want to fix or improve or change the game according to *our vision*. I don't think you can convince a modder to start working on something she or he wasn't going to do in the first place and especially if it involves months or years of complex work, frustrating testing and debugging and then stressful PR and customer service work that never ends. Aaaaaand what you described sounds exactly like that. It would be a complete overhaul of the game that would involve quests with branching paths, dialogue trees, scenes, AI packages, variables to track various things and scripts that do everything and would be so huge and complicated that if a bug happens tracking it down would take 2 forevers and a day.

 

Maybe there is a modder who would be so dedicated to another person's idea and jump at this but I think chances of meeting someone like that are like one in a billion. If it was way smaller, simpler and less ambitious the chance would be a little higher (maybe one in a... million) but with a huge idea like this I don't think you'll ever see it happen unless you start working on it yourself

 

Which you totally should if you really want that! that's how modders are born! ^^ If you feel something is missing and should be made if you decide to learn modding and at least try making it it will bring it a little closer to reality! Even if you don't succeed I think making some progress and maybe learning something from it is way better than not starting at all

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On top of the hugely complex nature of this mod, doesn't messing with the storyline quests have a tendency to severely damage skyrim?  I thought I saw something like that on one of the overhauls on the nexus, so if someone were to try to implement something this ambitious they'd need to find a way around that.

 

But because throwing ideas around for mods is fun, and because actually making this thing is already shaping up to look like a WWII enigma machine, encrypted using hieroglyphs, hidden inside a Chinese puzzle box wrapped in a Celtic knot made from titanium, I'll chip in an idea too.  After each route, a copy of your character is left behind as they were when it finished, to just wander around as an NPC (I don't think copying the PC like that during the game is actually possible for this kind of thing, but you know, I'm just having fun here).  Pointless, yes, but just sort of there to show you what you've done and how you did it.  Then when you finish one path and start the next, you redesign your character so there isn't a bunch of the same people running around occupying all the positions of power and such.  It would be a feature that would, admittedly, have almost no real benefit and would likely bloat the save fairly noticeably, but it would be kind of interesting.  Then if there's some kind of (probably non-dark brotherhood) assassin path where you get assigned to take out a random NPC, the game might end up rolling one of the very characters you already played (Queue dramatic music)!  Or you know, at least they might end up interacting in some way with the next path, depending on what it is. 

 

That aside, a quest overhaul like this would certainly make Skyrim interesting, but it would be... titanic in scale, I'd imagine.  It might almost be easier to just make a completely new video game.  Of course, there have been some total overhauls of various bethesda games, and I think they worked pretty well, so who knows?

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Unless you are a master storyteller or are hiding something behind the concept of reincarnation story line or both where eventually it all ties back together.

You are looking at a mod that is essentially stand alone but only borrow the Skyrim worldspace for a limited time.

 

If I am reading it correctly you start as a pre determined character in the world and follow a pre determined quest line, locking out all other vanilla quest. Rather you fail or you succeed in the end, that's the end of the mod, game is over.

At least that's similar to an idea that I have in mind... :P

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As others have said it is a neat idea but it would be a massive undertaking. Sure if anyone ever tackled it and got it far enough along I would try it. I would just honestly be surprised if anyone did, unless it was a team effort of several modders.

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If I am reading it correctly you start as a pre determined character in the world and follow a pre determined quest line, locking out all other vanilla quest. 

I wouldnt lock out all of them. Simple reason, If you make all vanila quests unavaible then you either would have nothing to do with such char after few hours, or if you would try to create a mod that gives you brand new questline for 50 hours for example for 10 different paths then development of this mod would require several thousands of hours.

 

Side quests should stay, most of them. For example companions quest line should be unavailable for non combat paths.

Civil war quest should stay.

Dragon invasion quest should stay for some paths - but be available later that from very beggining. For example once you are commander of the guard already you would be send as an escort for general Tullius to Helgen (or you would be escorting Ulfric when he got captured) - and this would start dragon invasion/dragonborn quest - basicly to avoid the mess i guess you would have to choose the side in civil war before this quest would start.

 

For non combat paths you could make it that you dont fight yourself but you have an option of hireing bunch of mercs that would fight for you (having like 2-3 followers supported by you should allow you to complete most of the vanila game). By support you sure would have to be allowed to use restoration magic. Alteration and illusion would be nice too.

Thats a dangerous world - rich traveling merchants surely would love to have armed escort.

Same goes with trophy wife - you get an escort of guards given to you by your rich partner. The richer partner the stronger escort.

Same goes for prostitute - once you become something more of a courtesan than lowly street whore you would like to hire some bodyguards.

 

For dragon invasion quest i guess it would be better to block this quest at some point - unless it would be possible to allow PC to enter Sovngarde together with hirelings.

 

Idea is very interesting and for paths like thalmor agent for example i would be willing to learn scripting myself and help in any way i can. Becouse that was something i missed alot in vanila game. What I've missed the most was a path of becoming the dragon priest and serve Alduin :) Definitely i would do my best to help make this happen.

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I wouldnt lock out all of them. Simple reason, If you make all vanila quests unavaible then you either would have nothing to do with such char after few hours, or if you would try to create a mod that gives you brand new questline for 50 hours for example for 10 different paths then development of this mod would require several thousands of hours.

 

That's the point of the mod I am talking about. It is a totally different take from the typical Elder Scroll style game where you play for hours and hours exploring and doing hundreds of quests. It will most likely be significantly shorter, but at the same time give the creator more control over its content.

 

Like I mention earlier rather you succeed in your quest or fail, that game is done. If you fail you can load to a previous save under that same mod, but after you succeed you have "beaten" that mod, it is for all intent and purpose, over and done with.

 

I know it sounds kind of limiting and boring, but essentially it is using the game as an engine to craft a home brew story.

 

If you are familiar with h-game especially h-rpg, rather than using rpgmaker, use Skyrim's engine.

 

How much content can be in there and how long it is depends on the time and skill of the creator. But look on the bright side, art is done, music is done, sound effects, and animation all exist for the most part. You can use as many or as less framework as necessary or have every event scripted. Compatibility is not an issue since it will be a stand alone mod that is not meant not seep into other mod or even the main game.

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I wouldnt lock out all of them. Simple reason, If you make all vanila quests unavaible then you either would have nothing to do with such char after few hours, or if you would try to create a mod that gives you brand new questline for 50 hours for example for 10 different paths then development of this mod would require several thousands of hours.

 

That's the point of the mod I am talking about. It is a totally different take from the typical Elder Scroll style game where you play for hours and hours exploring and doing hundreds of quests. It will most likely be significantly shorter, but at the same time give the creator more control over its content.

 

Like I mention earlier rather you succeed in your quest or fail, that game is done. If you fail you can load to a previous save under that same mod, but after you succeed you have "beaten" that mod, it is for all intent and purpose, over and done with.

 

I know it sounds kind of limiting and boring, but essentially it is using the game as an engine to craft a home brew story.

 

If you are familiar with h-game especially h-rpg, rather than using rpgmaker, use Skyrim's engine.

 

How much content can be in there and how long it is depends on the time and skill of the creator. But look on the bright side, art is done, music is done, sound effects, and animation all exist for the most part. You can use as many or as less framework as necessary or have every event scripted. Compatibility is not an issue since it will be a stand alone mod that is not meant not seep into other mod or even the main game.

 

 

Sure thing but in Skyrim if you want to level up and gear up your character than it takes around 50 hours of gameplay.

To level up some combat skill you do need to kill hundreds of enemies and there is no way around it - well, at least if you wont go full throttle into abusing game mechanics.

So you need to be provided with enough enemies to kill.

Of course this can be adjusted by modder - it can be done that the quests, till the end, would be easy enough that ppl lv 10 geared in basic equipment would still succed. But i would rather see some epic battle at the end.

While I would find being a Thalmor Agent amazingly awesome, It would definitely mess with the storyline unless there were dialog options to renounce said allegiance....but then that would kind of defeat the purpose of the mod

 

Not rly i think. I would do it in a way that by series of quests civil war would never be resolved and both sides bleed each other as much as possible.

You wouldnt be recognised as thalmor, you would pretend to be loyal stormcloak and imperial at the same time.

There would hell lot of pretending that you support one side or the other while in reality you secretly backstab them in most critical moments.

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