Why so few BDSM mods from dominant perspective lately?

[Mars1991]

Seems more or less all story/narrative mods involving BDSM focus around submissive experience. There are a few, like Slaverun, that have a dominant questline but seems like none in the last few years, especially from the male perspective. even those few mods that have something bordering on dominant playtrough (which also tend to start you off from submissive position and work your way towards dominant) are entirely female focused.

 

There are plenty of modders resource to make it happen but seemingly nobody does. I wish there were more mods like Slaverun, intricate, story driven mods where you can go completely evil and use and abuse NPCs any way you want.

[Hex Bolt]

PC in the dominant position tends to be much less impactful and not very interesting.  Tie an NPC's hands and it doesn't really react.  If your hands are tied, you can't fight and you might have trouble interacting with various things.  It makes you feel helpless.  Watching a bound NPC stand there like nothing happened feels pointless.  Blindfold an NPC and it just goes about its business.  If you're blindfolded, you have trouble seeing.  It affects your gameplay experience.  That leads to the next point.

 

Most of the people here are experienced gamers looking for a challenge.  You'll see many difficulty mods, but not many overpowered easy mode mods.  Captivity, bondage devices, and being ordered around all present challenges to overcome, assuming that you're actually trying to play Skyrim (and that seems to be most of us here).  Being powerful quickly becomes dull.  Overcoming challenges is interesting.  Overcoming sexy/erotic challenges can be very interesting.

 

Being in the submissive position, or at least having to deal with restraints, imprisonment, a master, or sexism in general (mainly for female characters) all pose challenges, and they're interesting because they typically involve sex, nudity, or erotic themes.  It's more impactful, challenging, and just more fun to play a character who's on the receiving end.

[Grey Cloud]

7 minutes ago, HexBolt8 said:

PC in the dominant position tends to be much less impactful and not very interesting.  Tie an NPC's hands and it doesn't really react.  If your hands are tied, you can't fight and you might have trouble interacting with various things.  It makes you feel helpless.  Watching a bound NPC stand there like nothing happened feels pointless.  Blindfold an NPC and it just goes about its business.  If you're blindfolded, you have trouble seeing.  It affects your gameplay experience.  That leads to the next point.

 

Most of the people here are experienced gamers looking for a challenge.  You'll see many difficulty mods, but not many overpowered easy mode mods.  Captivity, bondage devices, and being ordered around all present challenges to overcome, assuming that you're actually trying to play Skyrim (and that seems to be most of us here).  Being powerful quickly becomes dull.  Overcoming challenges is interesting.  Overcoming sexy/erotic challenges can be very interesting.

 

Being in the submissive position, or at least having to deal with restraints, imprisonment, a master, or sexism in general (mainly for female characters) all pose challenges, and they're interesting because they typically involve sex, nudity, or erotic themes.  It's more impactful, challenging, and just more fun to play a character who's on the receiving end.

Nice answer. I'd never looked at it like that. ?

[Scrab]

Theres also the issue with properly managing the AI which can be quite a pain

The way I design my content, I usually want to give the Player choices on how they do things but working out just one dynamic scenario with a NPC is extremely painful. Even if you get the gameplay somewhat dynamic, it always feels a bit plain seeing a NPC doing something, no matter what it is. Its just simply more interesting to put the player in heavy restraints and tell them to walk from A to B, then having the Player tell a NPC to walk from A to B. We all know how obnoxious it is to follow a NPC around and wait for them to reach their Goal, it wont be any different for a submissive NPC

 

Ive been told that something people want for a dominant PC is a Storytelling mod and while Im interested in doing something like that, its a lot of work to get everything going. When I think of a "quest driven adult mod" I think of something like Slaverun and while I dont want to insult Slaverun here, but that mod would never work for a dominant Player, simply because 90% of its content is running around and spaming SL Scenes. A dominant Player would just sit around and do nothing, waiting for NPCs to finish their Scenes and then force the next one. That aint fun

 

An example of an issue I regulary face when thinking about giving the player a dominant role:

One Event in my mods will be centered around a Ritual, this Ritual will be prepared by a "dominant" NPC and all the Player does is just waiting for it to complete and then participating in it as a "sacrifice". That sounds easy, right? The player isnt doing a lot, and the NPC is following a strict pathway but the PC as a "sacrifice" will still feel involved. That works

Now lets go the other way around: The PC as a dominant character here, would have to prepare the Ritual. A question that is utterly irrelevant for the submissive PC but extremely important here now would be: How does this ritual look like? That alone makes the Event much, much harder to design. Simply teling the PC to get 2 void salts and a fire salt and mix it together with a grande gem.. is kinda.. lame.. non? - and your reward for that? You watch the submissive NPC being used as a sacrifice - which is the sole highlight of the entire Event. I dont know about your opinion here but to me, it looks like that would ruin the Event in a way, non? 

 

Another one would be: Imagine the Player as a pimp for a prostitute. How exactly would that play out? I tell you: Not at all. The actual system would be easy here, Id just need to move your prostitute near you and make a forcegreet "Hey daddy, heres your share" et voilà, youre done. I cant have the NPC work as a proper prostitute, I give them money through Scripts, they dont work, they just get the money for free since I cannot simulate them doing their work while youre away and while I may be able to write a Sandboxing Package to make those Prostitute do their work while youre around, what gives? You probably wont be stalking them doing their thing anyway

I may add a few Events where you can interact with them, give them a Beating or w/e, but that just sounds really dull to me. Wheres the gameplay? Youre not really confronted with anything here, its just free money

Player as a Prostitute one the other hand: You have to work for the money. You have to actually make that money. You have to report back to the pimp. You are being put in danger when talking to those people you sell yourself to. There is much, much, much more potential here and its much, much, much easier to design high quality events too

 

 

Quest driven dominant Player mods perhaps, but Radiant mods are just not really a possibility. There are too many issues that make the dominant player feel very dull imo

 

 

[Mars1991]

35 minutes ago, Scrab said:

Theres also the issue with properly managing the AI which can be quite a pain

The way I design my content, I usually want to give the Player choices on how they do things but working out just one dynamic scenario with a NPC is extremely painful. Even if you get the gameplay somewhat dynamic, it always feels a bit plain seeing a NPC doing something, no matter what it is. Its just simply more interesting to put the player in heavy restraints and tell them to walk from A to B, then having the Player tell a NPC to walk from A to B. We all know how obnoxious it is to follow a NPC around and wait for them to reach their Goal, it wont be any different for a submissive NPC

 

Ive been told that something people want for a dominant PC is a Storytelling mod and while Im interested in doing something like that, its a lot of work to get everything going. When I think of a "quest driven adult mod" I think of something like Slaverun and while I dont want to insult Slaverun here, but that mod would never work for a dominant Player, simply because 90% of its content is running around and spaming SL Scenes. A dominant Player would just sit around and do nothing, waiting for NPCs to finish their Scenes and then force the next one. That aint fun

 

An example of an issue I regulary face when thinking about giving the player a dominant role:

One Event in my mods will be centered around a Ritual, this Ritual will be prepared by a "dominant" NPC and all the Player does is just waiting for it to complete and then participating in it as a "sacrifice". That sounds easy, right? The player isnt doing a lot, and the NPC is following a strict pathway but the PC as a "sacrifice" will still feel involved. That works

Now lets go the other way around: The PC as a dominant character here, would have to prepare the Ritual. A question that is utterly irrelevant for the submissive PC but extremely important here now would be: How does this ritual look like? That alone makes the Event much, much harder to design. Simply teling the PC to get 2 void salts and a fire salt and mix it together with a grande gem.. is kinda.. lame.. non? - and your reward for that? You watch the submissive NPC being used as a sacrifice - which is the sole highlight of the entire Event. I dont know about your opinion here but to me, it looks like that would ruin the Event in a way, non? 

 

Another one would be: Imagine the Player as a pimp for a prostitute. How exactly would that play out? I tell you: Not at all. The actual system would be easy here, Id just need to move your prostitute near you and make a forcegreet "Hey daddy, heres your share" et voilá, youre done. I cant have the NPC work as a proper prostitute, I give them money through Scripts, they dont work, they just get the money for free since I cannot simulate them doing their work while youre away and while I may be able to write a Sandboxing Package to make those Prostitute do their work while youre around, what gives? You probably wont be stalking them doing their thing anyway

I may add a few Events where you can interact with them, give them a Beating or w/e, but that just sounds really dull to me. Wheres the gameplay? Youre not really confronted with anything here, its just free money

Player as a Prostitute one the other hand: You have to work for the money. You have to actually make that money. You have to report back to the pimp. You are being put in danger when talking to those people you sell yourself to. There is much, much, much more potential here and its much, much, much easier to design high quality events too

 

 

Quest driven dominant Player mods perhaps, but Radiant mods are just not really a possibility. There are too many issues that make the dominant player feel very dull imo

 

 

This are all good answers (goes for the ones above too). Maybe one way to make it more interesting would be to give the player moral choices throughout the quest. Exactly how evil do you want to be, and have the NPCs respond to them in turn. The main issue i have with Slaverun, in dominant role, is that sometimes i don't really agree with certain actions by NPCs, and i am basically forced to be either a total monster or a total milk drinker. I'm a level 81 engine of destruction, i should be able to throw my weight around. Needles to say the mod would have to be pretty self contained, as you said, there is not that much interaction with the overall world, apart from maybe people expressing their dismay that their hero turned out to be such a monster.

 

One big issue i have with submissive side of Slaverun and other such mods is that it meshes poorly with the main theme of the game. Why would a mythic heroine that eats dragons for breakfast tolerate being pushed around by a bunch of two bit slavers, also in case of Slaverun why would strong female NPCs like Aela go along with it? So in my playtrough i create a fresh female character using Alternate Starts, and RP it as completely unrelated character who is not in fact the dragonborn.

 

EDIT: Thinking about the case you presented the gameplay of that quest, from a dominant position, would not be in getting 2 frost salts and 1 fire salts. Instead the choice would be whether you are actually willing to go trough with it. Are you going to actually go on and sacrifice the sacrifice, while they plead for their life, are you going to stop at the last second, and turn on whoever may be with you to save the sacrifice, are you going to laugh in  their face and taunt them while you cut them open. Those could all be legitimate choices. And even if you feel like being a total monster, the very fact that you had the choice not to be makes the choice to go trough with it more meaningful. If you only have one choice then that kinda absolves you of your actions, since the game made you do it, Dominant questlines should be all about making choices IMHO.

[sweforce]

The idea of playing a pimp and wanting immersion can probably be fixed to an extent.  Any form of prostitute npc that just stand on their posts are unimmersive indeed. So how do we fix that? Well sometimes they are NOT on their post because they are of with a customer somewhere. Local npc's can also be scripted to seek them out occasionally so they can have a chat with them/negotiate. Talking to to these prostitutes and they will talk about what is going on like "I really hate Torgal, he is really creepy, please boss can we be allowed to tell him to go away?" This could lead to a further discussion who this Torgal is and why he is creepy. As their pimp you can then either tell them to suck it up or reassure them that "I will have a talk with Torgal", then through a fistfight give him a lesson so he stay away from your girls. Extra fun if this is an standard npc and not one added by the mod.

 

Definitely that prostitutes should have some gossip, rumors, observations etc. If you are not their pimp then you could still use them as sources of information as was done in both the original Bauldur's Gate games. One of them even helped out with a murder investigation but you had to pay for her time.