Devious Followers has been a staple in my load order for quite some time now. It's a great mod that does - mechanically speaking - a great many of worthwhile things to the game. It adds a gold sink into a game where gold is often otherwise way too abundant. It adds a sense of progression of time to the game and an aspect of time management with the recurring (and increasing) debt - which plays exceptionally well with survival mods, which require you to spend time on sleep and tending to your needs. In my playthroughs, the devious follower is also the main, reliable way for my character to remove particularly difficult Devious Devices, especially when said character is away from the cities and deep in some long-forgotten dungeon.

And that's all without even mentioning the actual kink factor of the mod, which is one of the few that manage to set a constant and progressive corruption/lewdification curve into the game. The steepness and tone of said curve can be argued about, but the groundwork and the idea is there, and when you mess with the settings a bit, it can work quite well. The fact that the writing is quite decent is also a strong factor. It manages to do all of those things while at the same time being surprisingly simple. It simply expands on the vanilla follower system by adding recurring payments and lewd consequences if the player doesn't meet them. Of course there's more to the mod than that, but that's the base premise of it. From a gameplay design perspective, I may even dare to say that it's my favourite mod on this website.

At the same time...

It's not really very good. Putting all the bugginess aside, since that's one of the things that can (and will, thanks to our dear @ponzipyramid finding some time to start a rewrite of the mod) be fixed, the main problem of Devious Followers is that it... well, tries to expand on the vanilla follower system. And the vanilla follower system is pretty crap, especially once Devious Followers forces a companion onto you.

For some issues that followers tend to run into, that I can think of at the time of writing this post:

• They mess up stealth sections and get hurt by traps
• They don't work with a number of quest mods (or are recommended to be left behind)
• They block doors
• They either suck at combat or are overpowered in it
• They get stuck in combat... or bleedout... or both
• They stand and watch with blank expressions as the player character is getting raped
  • While at the same time messing up defeat mods
    • And messing even harder slavery and prison mods
• They generally make a number of (mostly non-consensual) scenarios set by other mods feel weird without some head-canon forced by the player
• (DF) They force-greet you in the middle of an important scene you were trying to pay attention to.
• They are sworn to carry your burdens
• And so on, and so forth...

I personally find Skyrim gameplay to be much more enjoyable without having a follower stumbling about by my side. At the same time, I really want that Devious Followers experience, and all those benefits that I listed before.

So what can we do to fix it?

Well, the first answer that comes to mind is "make the followers better!" If you've been in the modding scene for even a while, you likely know that that's an impossible ask. Sure, we've had 'fixes' for stealth and traps that make followers be ignored by those, and there's mods that allow you to tweak damage and statistics to make them a little more balanced with the world, but those are all bandaid fixes as well. A lot of the follower issues come from the way Bethesda's engine (poorly) handles NPC AI, and likely cannot be fixed without some mastermind modder rewriting the entire thing from scratch. Not to mention, a number of those are just narrative issues, so unless every modder from now on makes the extra effort and accounts for the player having a follower in their writing, these problems will no doubt still persist.

So no, fixing the followers does not really seem feasible. But what alternatives do we have? Removing the follower aspect altogether?

Indeed, my second option, and one that I've been toying with for a while, was to make a spin on the Devious Followers idea, and turn the NPC into more of a... 'sugar daddy' kind of character - someone persistent to whichever major city you are currently in, who helps you with your devices, potentially supplies you with adventuring equipment, maybe gives you a way to satiate your survival needs. The issue with this idea is that in the end it strays away too much from what Devious Followers is - that being a follower mod, and doesn't end up fulfilling the same design goals.

Sure, you can implement a lot of the gold/time management aspects, the kinky corruption curve, and perhaps even have the benefactor send someone to, at some cost, rescue the player character from peril, should they need that, but ultimately, not having the Devious Follower follow the player really takes away a lot from the concept. Besides, what if the player character just decides not to visit anymore? There's valid reasons why they would have to be away for some period of time and/or not be able to come back. I do think that the "lewd benefactor" idea has a lot of merit still - just perhaps in a different mod, supplementing rather than replacing Devious Followers.

So, we're at a bit of a conundrum. The follower aspect of the Devious Followers is core to how a mod like that needs to work. At the same time, Skyrim followers are crap - crap that's near-impossible to get un-crapped. So is there no way out?

What if I told you there's a third, secret option? And it involves me talking about the other great game that I've wasted way too many hours into already?

The obligatory Baldur's Gate 3 section

Baldur's Gate 3 is easily one of the best game to come out this past year, and has, by many, been declared to be one of the, if not the best game of all time (or at least the past few decades). While I have my own thoughts on that debate, there's no doubt that there's a lot that BG3 does really well. But while a lot of the praise focuses on the story, the writing, and the freedom of choice, I want to bring attention to a different thing, one that does a lot of heavy lifting from the back rows - the party camp system.

The party camp system is nothing novel to the CRPG genre - Dragon Age: Origins was perhaps the most famous in its use, and it's been used in many games that came after, and likely a number that came before as well. The idea is simple - your party has a limited size, but the recruitable companions are many, therefore you need a space to "store" them when you're not traveling with them. The party camp is a little more than that - it's a hub world, a place to swap your companions, have story events and interactions happen, and also regenerate, and reorganize your party's equipment and resources. It plays a major role in the player's experience of the game, no matter at which point, or in which physical location they are.

And here we come to the crux of my deliberations - aside from just your party members, the party camp is often also home to some NPC characters who do not join you in active adventuring - "camp followers" if you will. Sandal in Dragon Age will be happy to yell ENCHANTMENT at you, Withers in BG3 will resurrect your fallen comrades and speak to you in beautiful Shakespearean. Do you see where I'm going with this? Followers who do not have to actively join the player in the adventure, who are still going to be often interacted with by the player as they go back to their camp as a part of the 'daily' routine. We still have our cake, and it was damn tasty when we ate it.

Camp followers in Skyrim
In case that wasn't actually clear, what I'm proposing is to introduce the party camp idea into Skyrim, and have a Devious Follower concept that would occupy the spot of this "camp follower" NPC trope. A character that will help the player with their restraints, maybe procure them some basic gear if they're defeated, and fulfil Sexlab Survival's requirement of not being able to leave a major city alone (for those of us who still use that mod). Alternatively, if we want to stay more true to the original mod, the party camp can serve as a way to "stow away" the mandatory Devious Follower when they're too obtrusive to the actual gameplay (for example when playing a quest mod that doesn't support followers), while still keeping them around and having their mechanics affect the player in the same way they do when they're an active follower.

The issues with this approach are obvious. Skyrim does not have a party camp. Moreso, even if it had one, Skyrim does not have resources or anything that would motivate the player to return to their party camp. Unlike the games mentioned before, the Bethesda ones don't really have a gameplay loop that involves regularly returning to a hub space, and when you are forced to return to one, it's usually just to sell your gear and pick up some new quests. Neither of those really work too well with the idea of a party camp.

I think these issues are solvable though. Temryuu, the creator of Dynamic Campsites, has made the first step by creating a base system of an almost-always accessible party camp that you and your followers can rest in (and with some really well-made environments too), and an appropriately-set survival mod setup, or the incentive of hub-space services that wouldn't be accessible otherwise (such as removing Devious Devices while you're stuck in the depths of Blackreach) can partially solve the issue of having the player regularly return to their camp. Making it a mandatory part of the core gameplay loop would probably require some more effort, but I do think it can be done. And it could open the door for some interesting possibilities, both in SFW and NSFW modding.

I personally like the party camp as a setting - a safe, intimate and remote space, where some boundaries can perhaps be pushed, and some actions are easier to explain narratively. In that manner it also adds another step or layer to the potential player corruption curve. Having the player agree to be bound or naked in a public space or wilderness could be hard to justify, but in their personal camp, where it's just them and a few trusted followers?

Afterword

It's hard for me to say how good this idea actually is. It seems like a relatively large undertaking to try and solve an issue that I'm not even confident many people find as problematic as I do. I personally (obviously) like it. I like the idea of a party camp and of camp events, and I think, even outside of the NSFW context, that they would be a good way to replace what most people tend to use force-greets for - having a follower talk with you about their backstory works better when you're in a safe, rest-focused space, rather than inside a dungeon or in the middle of a shopping spree. That being said, having the Devious Follower relegated to a role of a camp follower may go against the idea of the follower being the better, stronger, more dominant character between them and the player - if all they do is sit at your camp, what even is it that you're actually paying them for?

If you read this far - thank you - and please let me know what your own personal approach to both Devious Followers and my musings is. I'm curious if it's something more people find frustrating, or if it's just a case of an old man (me) shouting at clouds, as well as if you have any thoughts of your own on introducing a system like that into Skyrim. While you're at it, send @ponzipyramid and take a look through their creations - they're likely the main force in modernizing the NSFW Skyrim modding portfolio, and bless them for that. I do hope that you're having a great night/day/indiscriminate moment in time. Peace!