So basically you're saying that SS should work as hard reset for any DF/DCL/whatever situation the PC might be in? With corresponding device-related quests returned to initial stage?

 

Under that logic the enslaved PC should also be stripped of all titles and property rights, marriage dissolved etc. It is consistent with both Roman and Scandinavian law, and fits the narrative.

16 hours ago, cat013 said:

Under that logic the enslaved PC should also be stripped of all titles and property rights, marriage dissolved etc. It is consistent with both Roman and Scandinavian law, and fits the narrative.

Holds are largely independent, so it could be made in a way that you only lose property, rank and title in the hold where you are enslaved. I mean, if you get kidnapped by bandits, you don't get enslaved, you get trafficked, so you wouldn't legally lose any property and titles, and if you can prove your identity, you would be removed from slavery, assuming you are a citizen of the hold you are in. So, basically, a slavery mod would need to track your legal status, and also remember who your captors are, and what they can do. Outlaws can't change your legal status, so if you get "enslaved" by bandits, they wouldn't be able to sell you to a hold where you already have a status.

Historically the idea was that if you are say a roman merchant captured in a faraway land - you would lose all your rights in Rome.  Yes, Celts in the woods can change your legal status, or rather the roman law will gladly oblige on their behalf. The rationale is that if you kept your rights your captors would simply extort all your property from you.

 

I am not saying we shall thoroughly implement the Twelve Tables for historicity's sake, it's just that the historical approach makes more sense.

Regarding confiscation of property and revocation of titles and privileges, I wasn't writing about those extended mechanics, but only about fixing obvious problems that occur during and immediately, or shortly after the auction, but...

 

Yes, I do have a soft spot for mechanics that would take away accumulated rewards on enslavement and would add legal consequence.

 

I wrote one of my all-too-infamous walls of text on the concept of "legal slave" in Skyrim, and there is even a faction for it in SLAX.

 

However, I think something like that should be optional, and while SS is a perfectly good place to put it, it could also work well as a standalone mod.

Keeping your house and all the riches in it is absurd in some cases, but logical in others.

 

If you're enslaved by Falmer and escape, there's obviously no legal slavery.

If you're sold in Riften, do they even know who they're selling? 

If you're wandering around in ToH telling everyone you're a slave, ToH already has the consequences built in to it.

 

 

So, the most useful place for such a feature is in SS, but being sold in Riften might not always impact your legal status elsewhere, at least not for opposing civil war factions.

That is a gap in SS: there should be two auction houses, one for the Stormcloak faction and one for Imperial faction, and maybe something else again for Whiterun.

 

More auction houses would help normalize slavery in Skyrim from an immersive perspective, so it feels less tacked on, but could also improve things for SD+, and other mods, real, or theoretical, that make you walk to the AH as part of the gameplay.

 

The natural consequence is that you end up making more meaningful and interesting slavery features, beyond the rape-heavy random tasks for SD+ and the very basic features currently in DF. But that is new content. Just taking away a house or a thaneship is one thing, but what is the rest of the gameplay?

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

I wrote one of my all-too-infamous walls of text on the concept of "legal slave" in Skyrim, and there is even a faction for it in SLAX.

 

This would be interesting read. I believe LL needs some framework to handle crime and guard behavior - multiple mods would benefit from it.

 

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

If you're enslaved by Falmer and escape, there's obviously no legal slavery.

This is called restitution - how does PC regain her rights and titles once free. In this particular case simply getting to the surface does the trick. I mean, the one danger the Dragonborn will never face in Skyrim is being dragged into family & estate litigation.

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

Just taking away a house or a thaneship is one thing, but what is the rest of the gameplay?

TBH I did not even think about it, I simply wanted to get rid of the weirdness of prancing around in pony boots and slave collar while being a thane in the same city.

 

One thing to do as a legal slave - and you wrote something about it in your TiR post - would be this. Remember how the British used to chain prisoners to a cannonball in the old days of imperial glory? Allegedly the goal was to alter prisoner's gait so that he stands out even when not wearing uniform.

 

So, imagine a maria-edenesque motion controller. It would serve as a framework for various mods that deal with kneeling/crawling, but it needs to be more fine-grained than that. Now introduce posture and etiquette training - not unlike Devious Body Alteration but for behavioral patterns. Because slaves are supposed to behave not only before their masters but also before general public. See, if you don't train enough you're bound (pun intended) to break some rules and get in trouble. However if you train too good - it will stay with you long after you're no longer a slave, which is also trouble-bound.

10 hours ago, cat013 said:

So, imagine a maria-edenesque motion controller. It would serve as a framework for various mods that deal with kneeling/crawling, but it needs to be more fine-grained than that. Now introduce posture and etiquette training - not unlike Devious Body Alteration but for behavioral patterns. Because slaves are supposed to behave not only before their masters but also before general public. See, if you don't train enough you're bound (pun intended) to break some rules and get in trouble. However if you train too good - it will stay with you long after you're no longer a slave, which is also trouble-bound.

This is an idea that I love. I have had some thoughts like this. YPSIF and Devious Training skim the surface of this, but don't focus on it.

There are a few mods that change how the player moves, or impact on movement, such as Barefoot Realism, but they don't alter how NPCs react to the player.

 

Changing NPC reactions is one of the hardest things to do well in Skyrim.

It's probably the most important, and most overlooked, part of SLS. It's intrinsic to so many SLS features, but the player isn't focusing on it.

 

The question is, how do you implement it well?

With DF, I also have he problem of implementing consequences of low willpower that aren't directly tied to the DF. I really want that, but there are no quick easy wins there in terms of feature development.

 

There are mechanical elements, things that SLD could modify, either currently supported, or planned for addition:

• vendor prices
• whether vendors will trade at all
• relationship level (though this is by no means easy to mess with safely)
• thaneship
• potential follower faction

 

SLS adds:

• guard reactions
• enforcers
• npc comments
• what items you are allowed to carry
• collaring of PC by default due to lack of magic license (I don't really like this mechanic)

 

STA adds:

• npc spanking

Skooma Whore adds:

• addicted are scum - thrown out of inns

 

 

In STA, NPC spanking does not pay any mind to PC stats like willpower or reputation, but perhaps it should?

A patch to STA adding willpower requirements for random spanks would be sensible, I think.

 

Let's say we had all of the above features in a mod, 

 

What would we want to see more of to get a feeling of the NPC being treated as lower class?

I put factions in SLAX to make this feasible. I will probably add a few more.

 

Firstly, what sort of complaints might NPCs raise against the PC:

• You are a slave
• You are (or were) a breeding slave
• You are a whore
• You are a skooma addict
• You are an alcoholic
• You are a sex addict (or cum addict?)
• You are (or were) infected with chaurus (or spider)
• You are a milk addict
• You have sex with animals
• You have sex with same gender
• You are a female but not married
• You are pregnant and unmarried
• You have children and are unmarried
• You are a thief
• You are a cow
• You go around naked
• You go around in bondage items
• You go around covered in cum
• You are property
• You are tattooed
• You are scarred
• You have abnormally large breasts or other sexual features
• You are female and an adventurer

 

Some of there would be different if in the past: e.g. You were a slave, is somewhat different to currently being one, though some NPCs may not make much distinction.

Others are basically a memory of past action as well as present: e.g. You go around naked ... it's different to "You are currently naked".

It's possible to break those all down individually, and would probably need to if it's about setting up dialog conditions, so that current state and overall reputation are distinct.

 

If we can assign a reaction or multiple reactions to each of these states, then there's a working system that can punish the PC.

That's step one...

So, let's say you are considered a thief, it doesn't matter if you currently have a bounty... And as a result of modifications, vendors don't trade with thieves, except for fences.

 

In this case, is the gameplay being damaged too much?

 

Say, you have a reputation for going around naked. How to NPCs react to that? Maybe female NPCs will not trade with you, and have their relationship rank reduced to neutral. It's quite harsh. You're locked out of many vanilla quests due to your poor relationship rank.

 

Can you fix it somehow?

And is there a workaround?

Is it too harsh?

 

For each state you need to think about the consequences. Is the consequence too much? Can it be worked around? How can it be removed or cleared?

 

For example, the addicted are scum mechanic is too harsh if you have DF and SLS. You cannot pay the big bribes, so you cannot sleep, and most beds are locked off. Only Whiterun has a place you can sleep for nothing. Your follower becomes extremely obstructive due to lack of lives and you can't fix it.

 

For many of these things, producing a distinctive consequence beyond NPC comments is probably unworkable.

However, NPC comments can be pretty good. SLS does well with them. The main problem is avoiding being repetitive.

It doesn't have much meaning though, so something like acting in a slave-like way needs a bit more consequence.

 

 

The guard scenario in DF is largely unpopular. People don't like being accused of being a slave and accosted by the guard. That might be a problem with how it happens, or it might be that people don't want that in their game at all.

 

These things can also be tiresomely self-reinforcing. If being a slave makes it more likely you'll be enslaved, it starts to get difficult to be anything else other than a slave.

Maybe that's OK if there are ways to continue playing the game like that.

 

 

Making these things work well involves creating a lot of content.

For example, you need slavers, but you also need people to counter-balance all the negative reactions.

You need people who will befriend and help you because bad things happened and you are trying to overcome them.

There could be NPCs who will reliably help and shelter runaway slaves.

There could be NPCs who will create a safe place for characters with a history of nakedness, bondage devices and sex-addiction.

Maybe some of those NPCs also exploit you in their own way, but we're into a world of new content.

Making content is a slow business in Skyrim, but it is a kind of gameplay, and can lead to other Skyrim activities.

 

e.g. If Laura (of the bondage shop) took you in and sheltered you, she would reasonably expect not only sex, but require you to perform bondage activities, and you would have a genuine immersive reason to help her that didn't have to be contrived out of the ether. This might mean journeys, quests, retrieving items from crypts... It's the sort of thing you find in Delzaron mods. It's a pity he never tried to interoperate with mods besides SS.

 

However, only the author of Laura's Bondage shop can add this sort of thing to her, and there is no way to link it all up yet.

The SLAX factions are the first step.

I don't think there would actually ever be any cooperation between LBS and SLAX, let alone cooperation with me, but it's a good example, because the right kind of NPC character/personality is present there - a potential helper for distressed PCs - and it's a mod that could interoperate more with others if the will existed.

 

I can't add those features to that mod. I, or somebody else would need to make a similar mod with a similar character, which would be an incredibly bad idea in so many ways. This is the place where the politics of modding become an obstacle. Even if people are friendly, it doesn't mean they want to add that sort of feature. They might not like the underlying agenda, let alone the people proposing it, or the means of achieving it... So, we remain where we are, with a handful of over-productive modders building walled gardens by intent or by accident, and things only work together in limited ways.

11 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

There are a few mods that change how the player moves, or impact on movement, such as Barefoot Realism, but they don't alter how NPCs react to the player.

AFAIK Barefoot Realism did alter NPC interaction. As in "chica, you saved us all from Alduin and shit, but look at those dirty feet!"

 

I must confess in advance that I am not exactly a modding expert. So I will fantasize as to how I believe this whole thing should work and you tell me whether it is at all feasible.

 

First there needs to be some looks & behavior assessment module that tries to deduce what NPCs should reasonably think about PC based on observable factors such as attire and posture. Some factors might override the assessment - citizens of the holds "just know" their respective thanes, but not the nobles from other holds. (BTW the one medieval figure we're definitely missing in Skyrim is a town crier.) Of course prior knowledge only applies if they can identify you (reference to various masks/hoods/blindfolds). The module is shared by all NPCs.

 

It is open in the sense that other mods can register various factors they believe should affect the assessment. E.g. YPS gets to have consequential ingame tradeoffs for all the effort instead of relying on addiction mechanics.

 

So if you're assessed as "dangerous" random bandits might decide you're above their pay grade and let you pass. Conversely they might go Robin Hood on a starving slave girl. If you are flagged as "suspicious" (armed commoner, a dunmer in Windhelm, somebody who is dressed as a noble but behaves like a slave) guards will stop you for body cavity searches. "Lewd" flag... well, you get the idea.

 

More importantly NPCs will try to judge your social status with respect to their own. Imagine a society that is not only sexist but also rigidly hierarchical. Women owe subservience to men, but on the other hand commoners owe subservience to nobles. So as a female thane you curtsy before the jarl, but get to boss commoners around, demand they bow before you etc. Then when you're a slave expect to hear "oh I remember what a bitch you were when you had the power..."

 

If you look like NPC's peer you get vanilla dialogues.

 

If you look superior - the NPC is switched to deferential mode. It is the same vanilla decorated by "will your grace be so kind..." The game here is that every now and then NPCs will commit a random social gaffe. You  decide whether to bitch on them or to let it slide. Bitching is richly rewarded by free stuff and other benefits. But you need to correctly recognize a gaffe because groundless bitching is never a good idea.

 

If you look inferior you get into subservient mode where the game is to either convince the NPC they're mistaken or to avoid your own gaffes - primarily by proper training. Also you get duplicate dialog lines with different addresses (correctly choose between "your grace" and "your lordship") etc.

 

The motion controller needs to handle not only slave/subservient postures, but also noble/defiant, lewd and imposing.

 

By the way this system can handle not only slavery, but also emasculation/forced feminization or male chastity/cuckolding narrative. Underrepresented fetishes, despite having various gender-bender mods and chastity belts in every barrel.

 

As for NPC memory aka reputation. I agree that it is very important but at the moment I have no idea as to how to even approach it. Imagine we have very primitive system where named NPCs remember your apparent status at your last interaction. So you used to be a hooker in their eyes and now walk in as a noble. What should they do about it? I don't know. Many seem to think that "do her" is proper go to reaction, but I doubt it is conducive to immersive game experience.

 

There was this mod called Sexual Fame that had some weird stuff (anal fame???) and some promising features like rumor spreading (read: potential blackmail scenarios). But it didn't fly for some reason.

Let's elaborate on mechanics a little bit. First we establish a social ladder, for example

 

==== Upper class ====

Royalty
Nobility

=====================

 

=== Middle class ===

Upper commoners: property owners, blacksmiths, military (civil war dependent), Companions, Winterhold mages, bandit bosses
Commoners: traders, guards
Lower commoners: other townsfolk

Servicefolk: peasants, bards, maids, waiters

====================

 

=== Lower class ====

Lowlife: criminals, regular bandits
Lewd crowd: hookers, pregnant unwed women, nudists
Gutter: beggars, drug addicts, circus freaks (late stage MME, bestiality pregnancy, humiliating DF devices)
Slaves

=====================

 

Women are held one rung below men of the same standing. Outed sissy (should someone implement such fetish) would be one rung below yet. But note that noble women are still above commoners. All slaves are equal.

 

So, NPC first finds his own place on the ladder and then tries to pigeonhole the PC into one of the categories. The rung difference defines how specifically subservient/patronizing the player is expected to be.

 

Then the mod needs somehow to intercept vanilla dialogue output and doctor it to make it condescending or deferential (purely scripted substitutions, no actual quest rewriting). As for the PC dialogue lines they need to be laced such that some lines exactly correspond to the original lines whereas others (trap lines) have a side effect of getting you in trouble.

 

Note that this mod is only supposed to focus on social assessment and etiquette enforcement. Everybody is allowed to to anything, the mod only calculates how nicely they would have to ask. Other mods are welcome to impose restrictions based on apparent PC status.

 

There is of course another can of worms - willpower mechanics. Because the social ladder only shows how things are supposed to be. How will things actually go, especially in a private conversation between PC and her follower is entirely different story. May be a lady and a chauffeur kind of story.

10 hours ago, cat013 said:

AFAIK Barefoot Realism did alter NPC interaction.

Yes. It does. Though it's optional, and is partially avoidable just by washing your feet.

 

It becomes stupid and broken when you're trying to buy shoes and the vendor with shoes/boots won't trade with you because you have no boots.

 

The comment above is a result of changing my chain of thought mid-way through.

It is, like SLS, a mod that manifests it's more important effects through alteration of vendors.

 

While that is a way to get some impact, it's a narrow way, and - like making the character walk slowly - it's one of those "go to" mechanics that is becoming a point of conflict due to multiple mods using it.

 

SLS also has other mechanics, but the guards are only a problem if you carry weapons or pick locks; their comments, like those of other NPCs are flavor, not gameplay.

 

STA has some similar comments, that are very good, and more on-point than SLS, and while I really like them, they don't add any gameplay.

 

 

On to the important stuff...

 

  

10 hours ago, cat013 said:

First there needs to be some looks & behavior assessment module that tries to deduce what NPCs should reasonably think about PC based on observable factors such as attire and posture.

This is reputation tracking. My preferred solution is to indicate it through factions. This allows reputations to apply to any actor, not just the PC, though perhaps only the PC's reputation is tracked ... perhaps not ... or it might be a hybrid approach with tracking for some things for all actors, and an extended, larger set for the PC only.

"Sex Lab - Sexual Fame" [sic] is an example of a mod that does tracking, but it only tracks sex acts and being naked, not other things.

There's a mod "Skyrim Reputation" that tracks all kinds of things, but none of them sexual at all. It pokes its nose into too many areas that people couldn't reasonably know about, and makes some questionable moral judgments. I don't like it. I would play a game with it to experience the changes, but I wouldn't keep it long term.

 

 

Reputation tracking is demonstrated in several existing mods, but they don't track enough detail, or track inaccurately. 

SLD makes a lot of measurements of the PC, so it's a logical place to add the tracking.

It doesn't track everything needed at the moment, but the extensions are logical for its own needs.

 

 

It can be completely decoupled from a mod that applies any consequences.

 

 

  

10 hours ago, cat013 said:

It is open in the sense that other mods can register various factors they believe should affect the assessment. E.g. YPS gets to have consequential ingame tradeoffs for all the effort instead of relying on addiction mechanics.

Adding the ability to register something isn't needed if we use shared factions. YPS can simply set the faction values itself, and any mod (including itself) can then make use of them. It's simpler, and lets mods take care of their own areas of interest.

 

10 hours ago, cat013 said:

(BTW the one medieval figure we're definitely missing in Skyrim is a town crier.)

I think Inconsequential NPCs adds one to Solitude. He's present in my game at least; I think that's where he came from. I thought he was from Interesting NPCs, but apparently not. He is voiced (which makes sense). It would be hard to integrate a crier due to problems of dialog customization. Maybe not impossible, but hard. I probably wouldn't bother, but with the faction approach he can be a completely stand-alone mod if you want.

 

10 hours ago, cat013 said:

More importantly NPCs will try to judge your social status with respect to their own. Imagine a society that is not only sexist but also rigidly hierarchical. Women owe subservience to men, but on the other hand commoners owe subservience to nobles. So as a female thane you curtsy before the jarl, but get to boss commoners around, demand they bow before you etc. Then when you're a slave expect to hear "oh I remember what a bitch you were when you had the power..."

In principle, yes, but what interactions with vanilla NPCs would change? Any? How exactly? Would this mean editing thousands of lines of dialog to change their conditions? Probably not viable, and would be a contention horror.

 

This is really only practical in terms of:

• extra dialogs that may add to everyone, or broad classes of character
• dialogs on NPCs added specifically to drive this mechanic

  

10 hours ago, cat013 said:

The motion controller needs to handle not only slave/subservient postures, but also noble/defiant, lewd and imposing.

 

By the way this system can handle not only slavery, but also emasculation/forced feminization or male chastity/cuckolding narrative. Underrepresented fetishes, despite having various gender-bender mods and chastity belts in every barrel.

Might be possible if we could push Sexy Move animations onto the male skeleton somehow.

Other animations just don't exist and would need to be made.

Overrides are a costly, limited resource, so need to be used efficiently. 

  

10 hours ago, cat013 said:

As for NPC memory aka reputation. I agree that it is very important but at the moment I have no idea as to how to even approach it. Imagine we have very primitive system where named NPCs remember your apparent status at your last interaction. So you used to be a hooker in their eyes and now walk in as a noble. What should they do about it? I don't know. Many seem to think that "do her" is proper go to reaction, but I doubt it is conducive to immersive game experience.

Yes. Well I don't think we need to distinguish past from present to make the system workable. You look at the factions that are present and apply them in a logical order.

Some factions only describe current status, so current concerns overriding general reputation are already a concept there.

 

As for the "do her" problem. Yes. There's far too much public sex in Skyrim to feel immersive. It becomes exhausting and intrusive if you aren't careful. I removed, or largely disabled all my rape mods for this reason.

 

SLS results in the player deciding to abuse random animals outside of your control, and I'm not sure that is a good mechanic.

Mechanics where the player is made to do something without the player choosing it are uniformly brittle and prone to break vanilla quests, other mods, trading and scenes in general.

 

I am against implementing such features except in a limited way, where they add real game-play, such as force-greeting enforcers, slavers or guards.

 

You'll notice that in DF, you ask to be spanked. While some players have asked for spanks to just happen, I don't think spanks are important enough to break your game for them.

One of the great "tricks" of DF was it replaced forced mechanics with mechanics you forced on yourself.

SD+ has to use a magic collar to enslave you. DF gets you to enslave yourself. Up to a point anyway...

SLS already has enough reasons for you to molest animals without it being a forced mechanic. The forced cum drinking adds a fragile mechanic that was never needed.

The same with skooma whore addicted and DiD's forced addictions. I'm tiring of those mechanics fast.

It's better to offer carrot and stick and let the player choose the actions themselves. If they want to drink skooma, the mod is working. If they avoid it and suffer horrible penalties, that's their call. But having the PC just drink skooma, or steal it and get a bounty, becomes annoying after a while. DiD will have my PC demand drinks from innkeepers when she has an inventory full of booze! It's not a mechanic I want to keep in my game long-term.

 

  

6 hours ago, cat013 said:

First we establish a social ladder, for example

 

In terms of the social hierarchy, we can realistically only implement some crude differences. There's a limit to the amount of dialogs its practical to add and the changes its possible to make without it getting impossible to manage.

 

If we take your three categories and replace them with four - and make no distinction within those categories - it would make something realistic to aim for.

Within any category, males are always more senior and better treated than females, but the category matters more. As suggested, female nobles are still nobles. A commoner who thinks he can "do her" with one is asking to be hanged. Noble females are Karens raised to the power of ten, and they only need to say some beggar threatened them to earn that beggar a near fatal beating.

 

e.g.

• Upper Class: Jarls, Thanes, Thalmor with titles, leaders of reputable guilds, and petty nobility that the game treats as nobles without good justification, like Nazeem.
• Commoners: everyone except beggars, slaves and criminals
• Scum: beggars, suspected thieves, prostitutes, unwed mothers, female adventurers, etc.
• Slaves: a class to itself. These aren't even treated as people, they are livestock, but even here males would be treated better than females. This isn't necessarily very realistic "historically", but it's what people usually want in Skyrim LL mods. 

 

I don't think that the gap between Scum and Slaves needs to be large, and for many dialogs they might be the same. There isn't much room for airs and graces at the bottom of the shit-pile.

 

Actual criminals, like bandits, aren't really in any of these categories, because they are "kill on sight". What is the social status of a draugr? It doesn't have one, it's kill on sight. Same with bandits... But, let's say you are in a bandit camp, the bandits will have their own hierarchy. The leader will be upper class, the rest commoners, and the slaves and prisoners will be "slaves." There may even be some scum: crippled failed bandits, honeypots or whores that aren't slaves, feeble old geezers, etc. If SD+ releases you from bandit slavery due to joining the bandits, that's where you'd be, and you'd have to work your way up to a commoner status with them.

 

 

This raises some issues about Female Dragonborn.

 

If you want to play a victim, don't play the Dragonborn. Use a mod that removes Dragonborn-ness (weak girl thread goes on and on about this).

 

If you are killing dragons and earning thaneships, you're a de-facto male; that's the only way the "LL-joke-sexist-culture" can rationalize it, and so really we want gender in dialogs as a faction, not using the simple tests that Skyrim provides. That's a big change. I don't think there is any mod, except maybe Sky Fem that would even think of this as an issue, and it doesn't have to deal with it, as everyone is female.

 

The Dragonborn kills ancient dragons, kills Alduin where legendary heroes failed, goes toe to toe with Dragon Priests without breaking a sweat, and solo-clears draugr crypts and near mythical Dwemer ruins filled with Falmer, including solo trip(s) to Blackreach - an underdark most Skyrimmers don't even know exists. Could such a character be a weak-willed slave? It stretches willing suspension of disbelief, that's for sure. If you're a bandit and you catch someone like that, and you saw how they fought, you kill them. Keeping them alive is suicide unless you're Madenach or somebody who thinks they are a king. The Devious Cidhna Dainty Sload scenario is proof of this. There's never been a time I didn't kill every one of those pirate/slavers. A mountain of bondage gear does not save them.

 

If we manage Dragonborn as a faction, then being in there should make you equivalent to a male noble, even if you aren't one in the town you're in. But that's just my take on it  

People have other ideas, like the DB being hated and treated as a target. That is battling uphill against just about every encounter in vanilla that doesn't involve Thalmor.

 

Well, now I realize that I need to finally figure out how Skyrim factions actually work, because I'm not sure I even understand correctly what you're saying.

 

Just one thing I want to address now.

 

On 7/18/2020 at 10:53 PM, Lupine00 said:

If you want to play a victim, don't play the Dragonborn. Use a mod that removes Dragonborn-ness (weak girl thread goes on and on about this).

I definitely do not want to play a victim. "Assume fetal position and cry, devices permitting" is not a particularly rich game. I want to play someone who is too weak to charge dragons head-on, but the dragons still die.

 

There is one basic fact of psychology: you cannot fall from the floor. A loss (of freedom, of power, whatever) only hurts if one had something to lose in the first place. If your only options are whoring in a slave collar vs. whoring without a slave collar... What I'm saying is that the weakest possible girl is in fact a supergirl in kryptonite handcuffs. Also the loss shouldn't be permanent, the goal is to keep the player in anger - bargaining stages (I'm referring to the infamous cycle of acceptance - acceptance is gameover in my eyes).

 

On 7/18/2020 at 10:53 PM, Lupine00 said:

If you are killing dragons and earning thaneships, you're a de-facto male; that's the only way the "LL-joke-sexist-culture" can rationalize it, and so really we want gender in dialogs

Yes, gender was absolutely a factor in my initial design, but I'm not ready to take on this yet.

On 7/18/2020 at 10:53 PM, Lupine00 said:

If we manage Dragonborn as a faction, then being in there should make you equivalent to a male noble, even if you aren't one in the town you're in. 

If she gets credit for it, and it's a big "if" in a sexist world.

4 hours ago, cat013 said:

I definitely do not want to play a victim. "Assume fetal position and cry, devices permitting" is not a particularly rich game. I want to play someone who is too weak to charge dragons head-on, but the dragons still die.

That's not quite what I meant by "victim"; I used some shorthand to keep things brief. As already noted, this has been examined in excruciating detail in the weak-girl thread, and that's probably the place to discuss it further if there's a need. SLS has a lot of victimhood, but you aren't hard-limited to life as a doormat. The struggle to prosper despite disadvantages is the thing.

On 7/18/2020 at 10:53 PM, Lupine00 said:

In terms of the social hierarchy, we can realistically only implement some crude differences. There's a limit to the amount of dialogs its practical to add and the changes its possible to make without it getting impossible to manage.

 

Still not ready to discuss this subject in a big way, but I'd like to drop one observation for the future.

 

When we shift from hack and slash vanilla game to heavy social interaction, having single generic speech skill becomes grossly inadequate. I've been reading about the old Fallout series development and it turns out that originally they planned to have multiple speech-related skills that would be applicable in different social contexts: streetwise, etiquette, carousing, etc.

 

Benefits of this approach for LL modding are obvious, but is this at all feasible?

3 hours ago, cat013 said:

Benefits of this approach for LL modding are obvious, but is this at all feasible?

It's not particularly huge to add "made up skills". Frostfall adds "make up Perks" that do not live in the regular world of Skyrim character advancement, or on the usual perks purchase screen (though I wish they did). 

 

The problem with such mechanics is that they don't tend to be adopted beyond the mod that created them.

You'll need to deal with the several followers systems... and, if it's nedded, to sell as slaves the followers too.

I don't think we have some mods which can manage slaves NPCs from another mod...

 

Yes, some skyrims mods are dating now... it's why I'm back on mines... with a true lack of motivation (Total war warhammer 2 ?)

The more I see going wrong with mods that try to deal with followers, the more I feel that there needs to be a mod that manages the very core of follower management.  Something made that other follower frameworks can be built upon.  This would require it to replace the vanilla follower management and allow custom followers to be managed without compromising the custom follower.  This base framework does not need to be all encompassing, just needs to manage how followers are added, tracked, and removed.  It should really handle those tag-a-longs as well.   It does not need to, for example, manage outfits, or homes.  I mean it could.  Would be nice to have one really good follower management mod instead of the current mismatch of options we have currently.  They all mostly do the same thing, just have slightly different approaches.  Sometimes more is not really better.

 

This framework would have the appropriate settings to allow the user to customize the framework to their preferences .  Quite honestly, it is something the developers should have added to game from the start.

 

The framework should also allow modders some tools.

 

I am not sure if something like this is even feasible.  One would have to study how the vanilla system works, including Serana.  Study what those custom followers do.  Study all those follower frameworks.  Then the challenge is to be good enough to get others to use the framework and build upon it.

 

It does really bums me out during a defeat scene to see one or two of the followers being processed, but the rest either standing around or interfering.

 

Is this something worth going to the trouble of trying to design and implement, or will it fail because of the independent nature of the modding community?