On a related note, since I haven't been finding nearly as many bugs as I thought, would you enjoy seeing the troubleshooting section replaced with a more broad-based behind the scenes section where I talk about how the different mod interactions played out and get into some of the "director's cut" events that didn't make it into the story? 

oh oh, I'm lurking around for tech insights and mod testing.

What should I choose ?

22 minutes ago, donttouchmethere said:

oh oh, I'm lurking around for tech insights and mod testing.

What should I choose ?

I'll post an example of what I have in mind when I do the next chapter. I don't plan to stop discussing mod compatibility issues entirely, just frame it as part of a broader discussion of the way the setup behaves and the 'behind the scenes' aspects of playing through the story.

I am not following your blog but just sometime I click on stuff to see if it might be interesting for my tastes.

I check out stuff that is related to mod technology. Even the things that are not my fetish and are strange to me.

Because they often have new ideas and alternative approaches to problems. 

Or I simply learn something new that might be useful later.

About the stories:

I might be a bit special as I m only interested in stories that have consequences(positive and/or negative). 

Emotional investment, Pregnancy risk,...

This might be in conflict with the part of the audience(or your interests) that is here for carefree stories.

If the story does not suit my taste I only check it out for screen archery points and checking out new mods.

14 hours ago, ZI0MATRIX said:

I am not following your blog but just sometime I click on stuff to see if it might be interesting for my tastes.

 

I check out stuff that is related to mod technology. Even the things that are not my fetish and are strange to me.

Because they often have new ideas and alternative approaches to problems. 

Or I simply learn something new that might be useful later.

 

About the stories:

I might be a bit special as I m only interested in stories that have consequences(positive and/or negative). 

Emotional investment, Pregnancy risk,...

This might be in conflict with the part of the audience(or your interests) that is here for carefree stories.

 

If the story does not suit my taste I only check it out for screen archery points and checking out new mods.

Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback - I especially appreciate it since you aren't a regular reader. Getting an outside point of view is always valuable

The mod technology is also something that drives a lot of my interest. I probably wouldn't be blogging this if I wasn't deep into setting up a large load order, and I find that a lot of the fun surprises in this sort of game are the ones that happen when two or more mods interact in an unexpected way.

I do agree with you about the value of consequences. While NSFW Skyrim (and even SFW Skyrim) often requires some suspension of disbelief because of the goofy way the Dragonborn behaves, I enjoy imagining - and writing - the characters in a way where their actions make sense in the context of their world and where what they do isn't meaningless. It's funny you mention pregnancy risk because while you don't see it in game (I use the console command TM to hide the UI when taking pictures), I have Fertility Mode running and it is definitely something that could potentially impact my character in the future.

4 hours ago, gregaaz said:

The mod technology is also something that drives a lot of my interest. I probably wouldn't be blogging this if I wasn't deep into setting up a large load order, and I find that a lot of the fun surprises in this sort of game are the ones that happen when two or more mods interact in an unexpected way.

 

I do agree with you about the value of consequences. While NSFW Skyrim (and even SFW Skyrim) often requires some suspension of disbelief because of the goofy way the Dragonborn behaves, I enjoy imagining - and writing - the characters in a way where their actions make sense in the context of their world and where what they do isn't meaningless. It's funny you mention pregnancy risk because while you don't see it in game (I use the console command TM to hide the UI when taking pictures), I have Fertility Mode running and it is definitely something that could potentially impact my character in the future.

One of the most interesting challenges when writing about Skyrim is explaining both weirdness from the game engine and mods in general.  For example, how can I hold a small moon worth of gold in my backpack?  Also, where am I keeping all this armor?  For mods - how is this bikini protecting me from instantly dying?  Because I wanna see my character's skin, that why!  Also, magic.

Where does my stuff go when I transform into WW or VL (that's easy, I just used the D&D Druid polymorph explanation).  

As someone who has played female characters extensively and written about it, Fertility Mode adds SO MUCH IMMERSION.  Consequences for banging anyone and everyone, my current character has two FM children, and one adopted one (Damien, son of Sanguine; Fenrir, son of Ulfric Stormcloak; and Runa Fair-Shield, the only girl at the orphanage).  It can be a lot of fun for storytelling.

Also, my favorite thing is when mods interact with each other in unexpected ways.  Randomness is the most fun thing about running a lot of mods.  I am enamored with large, meaty load orders.

Also, I am 100% stealing your Table of Contents sidebar concept.  *yoink*

4 minutes ago, EnragedBard said:

Also, I am 100% stealing your Table of Contents sidebar concept.  *yoink*

Happy to share! 

8 minutes ago, EnragedBard said:

 

One of the most interesting challenges when writing about Skyrim is explaining both weirdness from the game engine and mods in general.  For example, how can I hold a small moon worth of gold in my backpack?  Also, where am I keeping all this armor?  For mods - how is this bikini protecting me from instantly dying?  Because I wanna see my character's skin, that why!  Also, magic.

Yeah, I always try to follow the events in the playthrough, but I'm never afraid to either edit out events that don't fit or rephrase how things happen so they make more sense for the specific character. It's always a balancing act because if I cut too much we start to drift back to just describing the vanilla Skyrim experience, but if I include every single noteworthy thing it invariably starts to death spiral into extreme weirdness.

8 minutes ago, EnragedBard said:

Where does my stuff go when I transform into WW or VL (that's easy, I just used the D&D Druid polymorph explanation).  

Sounds like a very sensible approach. I try to avoid explicitly describing inventory whenever I can because it's one of the most egregious abstractions in favor of playability in the whole game.

8 minutes ago, EnragedBard said:

As someone who has played female characters extensively and written about it, Fertility Mode adds SO MUCH IMMERSION.  Consequences for banging anyone and everyone, my current character has two FM children, and one adopted one (Damien, son of Sanguine; Fenrir, son of Ulfric Stormcloak; and Runa Fair-Shield, the only girl at the orphanage).  It can be a lot of fun for storytelling.

That's awesome! The early encounter with Edippa kind of steered my current story towards mostly girl-on-girl action, but I still keep FM on because it's just such a well designed mod. When I was working with LE I was always so frustrated with how Beeing Female constantly failed, crashed, and corrupted my game, and I'm delighted that FM overcame those issues. 

On a related note, that's awesome that you were able to conceive with Sanguine. That's quite an accomplishment!

8 minutes ago, EnragedBard said:

Also, my favorite thing is when mods interact with each other in unexpected ways.  Randomness is the most fun thing about running a lot of mods.  I am enamored with large, meaty load orders.

Agreed. The advent of the ESL flag and the switch to a 64 bit runtime opened so many doors for Skyrim modding. I'm continually surprised and delighted with the emergent scenarios that play out in my games.

8 minutes ago, gregaaz said:

That's awesome! The early encounter with Edippa kind of steered my current story towards mostly girl-on-girl action, but I still keep FM on because it's just such a well designed mod. When I was working with LE I was always so frustrated with how Beeing Female constantly failed, crashed, and corrupted my game, and I'm delighted that FM overcame those issues. 

 

On a related note, that's awesome that you were able to conceive with Sanguine. That's quite an accomplishment!

 

Agreed. The advent of the ESL flag and the switch to a 64 bit runtime opened so many doors for Skyrim modding. I'm continually surprised and delighted with the emergent scenarios that play out in my games.

 

Yeah, sadly, Hearthfire Children Grow Up does not hook into FM in any way.  But I used Project Proteus to just create children and age them as the story goes along when I learned that.

My character is not very discriminatory.  Men, Women.  Just now, werewolves.  She married Sanguine via mods!

1 minute ago, EnragedBard said:

My character is not very discrim

 

Yeah, sadly, Hearthfire Children Grow Up does not hook into FM in any way.  But I used Project Proteus to just create children and age them as the story goes along when I learned that.

 

My character is not very discriminatory.  Men, Women.  Just now, werewolves.  She married Sanguine via mods!

I had a character a while back who joined the Companions and ended up becoming a serial werewolf lover. That was a hoot. 

Too bad about HCGU. I'll have to keep that in mind down the road and see if I can either find an alternative or patch up the mod, though I have no idea how complex the behind the scenes work would be to accomplish that.