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Alternative Start Arrive by Ship

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[Siegfried_Schtauffen]

Not bad ! Really cool, I can't bear the vanilla start !

[Avego]

Seems impressive, trying it later.

Good luck with any future projects!

[Avego]

Oh...Suggestions, Well how about an option to begin as veteran Legion soldier, starting with meagre money but with decent enough equipment for the start of the game.

Or a mage, perhaps adding an option for the player to select two or three additional spells from a menu, I'm no scripting wizard so I'm not sure how complicated this might be.

Great mod by the way, just fired it up.

[Robert_evrae]

Not bad ideas at all...not bad at all.

Perhaps I could add secondary menus for some options, so that when you select, for instance, warrior it gives you a couple of varieties.

The scripting shouldn't be too difficult though...

I shall ponder this.

Thanks for the comments guys!

[holliberri]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Perfect medium between the rather forced 'freedom' of the other alternate start mods, and the limitations of the original start.

What's great about this is:

• I'm not forced to have the undroppable AOK from minute 1;
  
  
• It is recognized that I have (had) a life/career prior to my appearance in the game (I can be a Skilled Craftsman! Hurrah!!, which is what I always considered my character to have been before being railroaded into jail by politics), but my life is changing (due to travel from my mysterious origins), so I don't have anything (like a house or whatever), which feels more natural than the other alternate start mods. My problem with both the original game and most of the alternate start mods was always that since my character was not an infant, I had a history (especially if I played an older character), but the personal history I'd created for my character was ignored by the default game as if the PC had just sprung from the thigh of Zeus five minutes before, or inconsistent using alternate start mods which made it hard to reconcile my story with the presenting evidence, such as the fact that I owned one of the buyable houses and had to be shoehorned into the MQ somehow. Seriously, what would the 'alternate' escaped prisoner be doing outside the ownable house in Cheydinhal? How the heck did he get there, and why would he? Why would your PC go to the IC and commit a random crime just to get thrown into prison if you were roleplaying a knight or paladin?;
  
  
• I get to start in the IC (and not ******* Anvil), which doesn't disturb the expectations of the original game design (where the IC is the first city you're expected to visit if you don't fast travel immediately to Chorrol);
  
  
• Reminds me of the Morrowind start; even though you're not starting as a prisoner, as is traditional in TES, you are starting in a way similar to the previous TES game by exiting a ship;
  
  
• Reminds me of the Morrowind start (2); having a prophetic dream that suggests that you're special and have an important, if not completely clear, task to perform is very Morrowind-ish. Funny how much more I now appreciate the Morrowind start which used to annoy me-- or so I thought-- now that I've experienced (many times) the OB tutorial dungeon, which taught me the true meaning of 'an annoying pushy tutorial';
  
  
• The 'clues' to starting the MQ (or getting the AOK to trigger the MQ, at least), seem much more 'natural' both w.r.t. a TES game (love Patrick Stewart, but that whole forced business with the Emperor was fairly painful), and with regard to an alternate start-- I know I won't feel as 'guilty' about not immediately following up on a strange dream I had, even if it seems to 'mean' something, than I would about ignoring a dead body on my doorstep. What might be nice is if you did have the dream again at various points throughout the game, perhaps with increasing frequency as you leveled up, if you had not gone to pick up the AOK. Prophecy is not so much meant to be ignored (thus a recurring dream), but at the same time, can be (thus, not recurring often or in a way that you aren't too much 'bothered' by it so much as 'nudged'). The only other thing that really annoyed me about starting the MQ in the tutorial is that if you don't follow up on it, nothing happens, even though you have either witnessed, or have been otherwise indicated to be a critical factor in large and immediate events which you'd normally expect to affect your life in some visible way.

This sounds great; I always wanted to start as 'just a regular person with a regular past' (rather than a prisoner, since being an escaped prisoner makes no difference whatsoever, except to your self-opinion; again, a difference from Morrowind, where you were a released prisoner), but in the IC, without more than basic resources based on your social class, free to make my way from the ordinary start point without having to twist my roleplay backstory into a pretzel.

I'm very much looking forward to giving it a try.

[Robert_evrae]

Prizmatica

You appear to have got me there! I haven't, but I'm going to have a look and see if there is anything I can do about it (I'm not too good with the conversation side of the construction set though). Now you mention it, that quest also mentions your escape elsewhere.

Thanks for the heads up.

Holliberri


All I can say is - Wow!

I never thought anyone would like it that much. I've never played Morrowind, so I'm not familiar with any similarities there. Your other reasons for liking it are pretty much the reason I made it - I hate artificiality. While some is unavoidable, its best to have a (good) reason for evrything, while dictating as little as possible.

That I appear to have made someone that happy has made my day. Thank You.

[hoots7]

Great idea Robert Evrae, now I can pretend I’m just coming back from Morrowind.

Quote from Holliberri:
4 Reminds me of the Morrowind start; even though you're not starting as a prisoner, as is traditional in TES, you are starting in a way similar to the previous TES game by exiting a ship;

5 Reminds me of the Morrowind start (2); having a prophetic dream that suggests that you're special and have an important, if not completely clear, task to perform is very Morrowind-ish. Funny how much more I now appreciate the Morrowind start which used to annoy me-- or so I thought-- now that I've experienced (many times) the OB tutorial dungeon, which taught me the true meaning of 'an annoying pushy tutorial';

6 The 'clues' to starting the MQ (or getting the AOK to trigger the MQ, at least), seem much more 'natural' both w.r.t. a TES game (love Patrick Stewart, but that whole forced business with the Emperor was fairly painful), and with regard to an alternate start-- I know I won't feel as 'guilty' about not immediately following up on a strange dream I had, even if it seems to 'mean' something, than I would about ignoring a dead body on my doorstep. What might be nice is if you did have the dream again at various points throughout the game, perhaps with increasing frequency as you leveled up, if you had not gone to pick up the AOK. Prophecy is not so much meant to be ignored (thus a recurring dream), but at the same time, can be (thus, not recurring often or in a way that you aren't too much 'bothered' by it so much as 'nudged'). The only other thing that really annoyed me about starting the MQ in the tutorial is that if you don't follow up on it, nothing happens, even though you have either witnessed, or have been otherwise indicated to be a critical factor in large and immediate events which you'd normally expect to affect your life in some visible way.


Your mod ties in to the Elder Scrolls Cannon (lore) better than Bethesda does (except for the minor detail Prizmatica pointed out).

[MoCus]

This is a really great mod =) finally an alternative start mod that is actualy worth the bandwith.... (=

theres one thing on my mind though
what will happen if i get to Kvatch before i recieve the amulet? hmm?

on reply to Prizmatica post i suggest that perhaps... make him meet you on the boat... he can actualy be your... tutor? =) or just a mean male without a father ya'll enjoy to slay later on
and just erase the phrase when the DB member tellls you that you are the only one who'd escaped from the prison... if i recall correctly its the last one at the conversation

on account of starting packages why dont you make class-based packages like a bow and a dagger for the archery fellow and a set of robes and some lowly spells for thy mage (probably good to add a low-level staff cuz you get one on the tutorial as well, the shaman staff) and a fine longsword for the adventurer knight

(=