Integrated/Immersive Followers Mod Idea

[shebop]

Can a quest be assigned to an NPC?  I am curious because I have an ambitious idea for an "integrated follower" mod creation utility.  It was inspired by browsing through the huge number of follower mods on  that exist on nexusmods and noticing that a SIGNIFICANT number look like teenagers (at least half of the girls in the harem mods for example) and I though... hey, since there aren't any official teenagers in Skyrim, I have an idea..  I don't know exactly what the "cultural age" of adulthood is in Skyrim but I think that anyone at or near adulthood could "apprentice" with the Dragonborn to become a warrior (see below). It would be interesting if a mod creation utility (something that would work with zEdit or similar) were to allow a person to

1. attach followers to families in skyrim... like a teenage (or older) son or daughter.  (this would define where they sleep, or at least hang out at night time)
2. associate the follower with an NPC with whom they are apprenticing (at beginning of the game), with someone (this would define their daytime packages and place they go during the day)
3. Spend some time practicing fighting at the towns practice dummies or something like that... (an extra ai package).
4. Create a "singles" faction for any teen or adult that is still single for the sake of #5.
5. randomly develop relationships with other, younger NPCs (if they exist) in the same town/city.  (This might determine where they spend their weekends or something like that).
6. If the player asks such one of these Follower mod NPCs to be a follower, they stop their current apprenticeship, become  a follower, and apprentice with the Dragonborn.

 

My first question (at the beginning of this post) relates to feature #5.  I am curious about getting this to work.  I am assuming quest aliases would be the best way.  That means the mod would need a "template" quest that can be applied to any applicable "teen" or "single"  on random chance where they are assigned a lover and spend time with them until they either break up.  (Or get married if that would be possible).

Edited January 7, 2023 by shebop

[sen4mi]

Quests can have NPCs do things, but some of what you have planned would require additional scripting work.

 

(But the player only finds out about things the player sees. So, if you want the player to know about an NPC's progress you would have to find some way of showing some of it to the player and/or finding some way for the player to hear about it. And game efficiency means that stuff out of sight of the player needs to not burden the system. So, I guess you would want some kind of quick resolution mechanism - maybe just waiting for time to pass - for use when the player is elsewhere.1

[shebop]

8 hours ago, sen4mi said:

Quests can have NPCs do things, but some of what you have planned would require additional scripting work.

 

(But the player only finds out about things the player sees. So, if you want the player to know about an NPC's progress you would have to find some way of showing some of it to the player and/or finding some way for the player to hear about it. And game efficiency means that stuff out of sight of the player needs to not burden the system. So, I guess you would want some kind of quick resolution mechanism - maybe just waiting for time to pass - for use when the player is elsewhere.1

Honestly I think that the script for determining relationship status would only need to run once a day or week (in game... like every Monday morning for example), something like that.  Guess that fits what you are saying towards the end there.