Lore Research Mod (Brainstorming)

[ocdcoder]

Hi, all!

 

First time poster who's really nervous about discussing mods with all of you amazingly talented creators out there, so go easy on me, please. :ermm: And while I'm at it, a HUGE thank you to all of you for what you do. I play a heavily modded game and your work continues to make the game feel new to me after all of these years. So again, thank you.

 

Sorry in advance, I know this is going to get very very long. But I've given a good bit of thought to this and would rather share all of that than just a few sentence summary.

 

So this idea first came up when I last played a couple of years ago and I've been watching a lot of lore videos on youtube lately, so I'm again feeling this is a mod that really needs to be made. (Although when I start playing, I practically need a 12-step program to stop, so it's probably a really bad idea for me to be thinking about this...) I heavily RP when I play, so this initial description of why I would love this mod is going to be written in a RP style. Feel free to skip the indented text if you like.

 

My character, a very young Nordic girl, led a very privileged life before the attack on Helgen, but during all of that chaos (during which her family was killed), she was kidnapped by bandits, who ultimately turned her in for a bounty in Windhelm claiming she was a thief. She was finally released when her innocence was discovered, but she lost everything. Her family was dead, she had not a septum to her name... but she was tougher than she realized, and she ended up not just surviving, but thriving in this terrifying world.

How did she do this? Books. Books taught her how to protect herself, both offensively and defensively. (The book The Importance of Where she considers one of the most valuable books she read during that time, or perhaps even ever.) She had been sheltered from the harsh realities of the civil war, so she read every book she could find on the subject. She was sure there was a mistake when she was named Dragonborn, and again she turned to books, although initially they gave her no answers. She'd have been happy to give over the title to the one in Solstheim who also claimed it. She read every book she could get her hands on, and learned histories of areas, secrets of tombs... She took no orders from anyone - Greybeards, Blades, Jarls - without first learning all she could, and researched all that was available before starting any other quests, if she could find such information.

And somewhere along the way, she did begin to understand why she had been chosen as the Dragonborn.

Basically, my character spent as much time reading as she did adventuring, and it added such depth to the game! But I kept thinking there had to be a way to make her research easier (besides Google...) The topics of many of the books are obvious, but some aren't, and some connections only made sense upon a much later re-reading. She spent way more time flipping through wrong books before finding the right ones, then when something new would come up, could spend ages trying to remember where she read it.

 

When you go to the College of Winterhold, Urag gro-Shub will bring you the books he has on Elder Scrolls if you are ready. I'd like to extend that to much more extensive areas of research. I have a very basic idea of how this could be done, but I would love to hear thoughts on this. Note that this isn't a mod request, I have made mods, just in the past they've been for personal use. I'm not looking for assistance, although obviously that would help get this out sometime in the next decade, but more thoughts at this point. Here are some of mine:

 

• The Topics: There are obviously websites that contain the text of the books. I'd think the easiest way to start would be to go through the books on a website or otherwise available list, and let people tag them with all of the topics they contain. I think multiple people would be best for this part, as information may fit together in ways not immediately apparent. Also, there are some amazing lore channels on youtube, and the depth with which they explore subjects makes me think they must have their own lists. I think this part would be a great collaboration for all of the Skyrim lore experts. Eventually the books would be added to various lists in the creation kit.
  
• How: I picture this as a library with an NPC. The character requests a topic, the NPC brings over all of the books on the topic. I found the Scholar's Library which seems like a perfect mechanism for something like this. The character doesn't get to keep the books, but simply puts them in a book return when finished so they are returned to their appropriate place for the next inquisitive adventurer. This could, of course, be expanded for the mods that add books from other Elder Scrolls games, and should be, although I admit I find the idea of actually adding all of those books individually to shelves a bit extremely daunting.
  
• Where: The idea came from the exchange in the College of Winterhold, and while that would be an ok place for it, this knowledge shouldn't be limited to mages. I keep thinking it would fit perfectly in the Legacy of the Dragonborn (Dragonborn Gallery) since that mod has you already collecting and displaying books, and it seems to fit perfect with that theme. Granted, that would mean it would be up to the player to find the books, which I alternately find appealing and limiting. I think you'd be long done with the game before you found every book, and I'd really like the focus to be more on learning lore, not chasing down books. And collaborating there (if the author were even interested) would obviously require downloading a huge mod that players might not want. I'm not sure if the Bard's College, even with their collection of books, is hugely focused on research, but that's another place I considered. And obviously, it could be a standalone building anywhere.
  
• Issues: The biggest issue I see is that this is going to be a HUGE mess of data entry. That's one reason it would be nice if other people joined in, if for no other reason to check each other's work. But for the most part, I know this is something I could do, it would just be a matter of time - lots and lots and lots of time. But the one problem I haven't solved in my head is how to present the available topics to the player. It's easy enough to ask an NPC to bring all the books that explain the war, or the legends of the Dragonborn, but all of the races have their own lore, as do all of the guilds, groups, etc. What if a character just wanted to research Ulfric Stormcloak?
  
  That also brings up the issue that not all lore is found in proper books. The information in the dossier at the Thalmor Embassy is also really important, but at the same time, it's meant to be found during a quest. Maybe the library provides books and players can provide extra material? I admit I'd even like to include letters and journals from individual quests. I think the Frostflow Lighthouse is one of the saddest stories in the game and those journals and letters deserve way more than to just be shoved on to a random shelf in a random player home. I'd like this to be a repository of all of the stories of Skyrim. Although that causes even more of a problem when it comes to asking an NPC for books on a subject. Probably better, the letters and journals found in-game and stories behind them could be put in a separate section, with perhaps extra info added if it is known. Basically, this could end up being kind of a in-game version of many of those "secrets of Skyrim" videos.
  
  And finally, all of the miscellaneous, or "fluff" books. I think every book probably has some important knowledge within, although I'm not sure where The Cabin in the Woods and The Lusty Argonian Maid belong as far as requesting information from an NPC. (That second series might belong in a curtained off section in the back of the library. LOL)

So, thoughts? I know it's ambitious, but while I admit to not being an expert mod creator, I have done some pretty impressive (to me) things, and I've have been programming my entire life and ambitious doesn't scare me. But do you all think this is something enough players would want to make it worth the trouble? And, while, like I said, I didn't come here looking for assistance, but would anyone be interested in teaming up on something like this?

 

Apologies again for the really long post. (Although maybe appropriate for a mod of this scope...) Comments very welcome. Just like I said, please go easy on me, I feel quite out of place among the great mod authors I know already hang out here. :sweat:

 

[simtam]

Where: Apocryfa from Dragonborn DLC

 

How: a single cell with 26 extra doors/portals, one for each letter of english alphabet. all of them on activation put you back to the starting point, where the currently selected letters are shown, forming a word that you query for. Another activator to clear it and start over. A target quest marker points to a book containing selected key word (it can be set a random instance of that book in the game, for a better challenge)

 

Data entry: automate everything. write some code to index the content of the lore books... write some code that generates you the Papyrus code for the finite state automaton described above.

[candlepin]

The portal idea seems like a lot of work. I'm pretty sure SKSE provides the ability to log keystrokes; that would be much easier (and more logical).

[ocdcoder]

So 26 doors, you walk into, say, door D, and when it teleports you back to the starting point, there's a D somehow indicated there? That seems a bit dizzying, but it did give me the idea of a big table or rock with 26 buttons on it. This would have to be a Dwemer build. I could see the Dwemer doing something like that. (For some reason, this made me think of Ouija boards. Dear Coder, Skyrim probably doesn't need Ouija boards.) Although the Dwemer wouldn't have done it in English...

 

And now this has led my brain off into adding the ability to take rubbings of dragon walls and daedric runes and translate them in a similar way. This could be the Skyrim Research Center. (I did at one time really want to apprentice for Calcelmo. Alas, I settled for just looting and decorating my home with everything I could...)

 

And yes, auto-indexing the books would be a great start! Although there would still need to be manual connections made for related subjects that aren't actually mentioned by name.

 

As for Apocrypha, that's actually a really interesting idea, although I think that would only be really usable by the most dedicated (and well-guarded!) of researchers. Not exactly an easy place to pop into when you're just trying to figure out what in the world a Hagraven is...

[ocdcoder]

The portal idea seems like a lot of work. I'm pretty sure SKSE provides the ability to log keystrokes; that would be much easier (and more logical).

 

I'm trying to remember past mods I've used. I renamed my wolf follower via menu but I seem to remember it brought up the console. I could be wrong, though, that was my character before last. The mod that let me get so much into the RP aspect, Take Notes - Journal of the Dragonborn, that definitely allowed keystrokes, but just saved your text, nothing else that I know of.

 

Oh, wait! Jaxonz Renamer. If the method that mod uses can rename items, I'm sure it could also use the text for some kind of search.

 

I wonder if you could talk to an NPC and have it trigger a dialogue box? Unfortunately I can't play around with this now because my primary computer is down and I'm working on an ancient laptop that if human, would have its drivers license by now. (Off-topic, if any of you hardware geeks out there want to PM me and advise me on cheap but decent motherboards, I'd hugely appreciate it. I got my recently-blown one in 2008, I think, my bar for "decent" isn't very high.)

[DanielHodge]

In case you need an npc, why not mora himself?

here is my voice impression of the character. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOzpx-sFZKQ&t=27s

 

An idea i had is, now since you are the champion, maybe some of your new duties are finding remaining books of lore hidden about the world and returning them to apocrypha? and mora rewards you for each book returned. kind of like the shalidor quests. and as the errad guy you get to read them if you choose along the way. Maybe every 10 or so books you find earns you a dragon soul or something.