LE Focused alternate start

[Jackstonethefirst]

Hi all!

I'm about to start another playthrough and since i hate the main quest i usually give my character some general miscellaneous motivation so if I start to dawdle i general know where I should head next.

What I'm getting to is an alternate start mod with situations that give your character motivation, not just situational context (i.e. "you are a merchant living in Solitude"). For example, how awesome would it be to wake up in the temple of kynareth or some random good Samaritan's cabin to find out your wife/husband and child have been murdered whilst you miraculously survived. You get given a map marker to 'your house' which has been sacked, looted and burnt to the ground, with two grave stones out the front. Then you would receive a quest simply saying "get your revenge", with no map markers or anything. You could then look around the area for clues as to who is responsible (maybe faction related item gets left over, assassination contract left behind, or a unique weapon which you can show to people in various towns to see if anyone knows who it belongs to). You could even just ignore the quest and use the situation for back story, explaining why your character goes around killing every bandit you see, it would add a sense of tragedy and meaning to the way people generally play the game.

 

The culprit should be high level so even if you find out who it is early you have to train before confronting them, plus it would make defeating them even more satisfying.

Of course there would ideally be other situations, maybe someone has stolen a family heirloom, maybe you're seeking to learn a specific type of magic, maybe you're the sole survivor of a village wiped out by thalmor or whatever. The most important thing is that it is emotionally grounded with a more-or-less clear path to resolution. Also for revenge based backstories the culprit should be randomized for replay value.

 

Ideally you would pick your backstory then create your character so you could make the playthrough more thematically coherent but that's just nitpicking.

I realise I can just 'use my imagination' (which i already do), but if something like this can be created then why settle for less?

 

Also before anyone asks yes i did get the idea after watching the Revenant the other day haha.

 

TL;DR

 

There should be an alternate start mod with more active character motivations, and if someone wants to make that (or even suggest how it should be done) i think it would be worthwhile in increasing the replayability of an already huge game.

I hope someone can help!

Edited January 24, 2016 by Jackstonethefirst