New mod: Crime, Corruption, and the Consequences.

[drewsbrew]

Hello, all. I've been working on a mod for some time now and am getting ready for a bare-bones release fairly soon-ish (probably within the next couple of months or so). The overarching idea behind the mod is that it is an overhaul of basically everything having anything to do with crime in Skyrim... even some things that aren't instantly obvious, such as the price of certain items you may want to steal, for instance.

 

Anyway, although I have big plans for the mod, here is what I hope to have in the first release;

 

An expansion of all the jails in Skyrim: all of the jails are getting a redesign. The long-term plan is to have things to do in prison; jobs you can work at, NPCs to interact with, quests to do, etc. Eventually, I'd like to disable the ability to simply activate a cot and magically pass time to the end of your sentence so once you go to jail, you are actually 'in' jail and have that experience for anyone who wants to role-play as a thief/criminal character. There will also be areas of increased security, basically, the typical design for most of the jails is that the vanilla cells are standard/minimum security area, you go down a level and that's the medium security area, and down one more level is the maximum security area. What I'd like, is that for certain levels of bounty (or after a certain number of escapes) you'd be sent to the areas of increased security instead of the vanilla cells. In any case, in the initial release, this is all just going to be cosmetic. it'll be there, you can explore if you want, but it's just a foundation to build on. The jail experience will still be pretty much the default, vanilla experience, except you may have a cellmate(s) in some prisons. It'll also be harder to escape from some of them due to the redesigns.

 

The second main feature is that I'd like to add secret ways into cities so you don't have to go through the main gate. this can be handy, especially with a high bounty.

 

Also, I'd like to add fences to every major city in Skyrim (except Riften) that you can use whether or not you are in the Thieves Guild.

 

Lastly, and I am still on the fence about whether this will be in the initial release or not, I'll be adding sewers to Whiterun, Markarth, Solitude, and Windhelm... weird, all of the cities that you have to do a Thieves Guild special job to gain a foothold in that town... I'm sure it's just a coincidence, there sure aren't any long-term plans there, nope ;)

 

The mod currently also has a variety of miscellaneous features, but those are all done already (and working smoothly, I might add) so I won't be mentioning them here. Also, with future releases, there are many more features I'd like to include. But for the time being, I'm just focusing on what is probably going to be in the initial release.

 

As far as what is done right now, a fair chunk of the redesign work is done for the jails. There aren't many NPCs in the jails yet (except for Riften, which is the closest to being done), and I'll admit that I am having a fair amount of trouble getting the NPCs I have to do what I want. I'm kinda a n00b when it comes to stuff like that. But, honestly, for the initial release, I'll be happy with a basic schedule.

 

There aren't too many secret ways into the cities yet, but those are easy to do so I'm not overly worried.

 

I have a fence in Whitrun, I have a good idea of what kind of character he is going to be, he'll be a nice, unique fence... if I could get him to actually buy stolen goods, that is. Once I figure that part out, I'm sure it'll be easy enough to add fences to the remaining cities. I don't have specific ideas in mind for what kind of characters the fences in each city will be, but for the initial release, I'm totally fine with just having generic fences in the cities. If possible, there are some characters that I'd like to become fences once certain criteria are met. Belethor, for instance, could be persuaded to buy stolen goods with a high speech skill. I don't know how to do that yet, unfortunately. It's just a plan I have at the moment.

 

The mod is being developed on Oldrim, but I'll be porting it to SSE.

 

Anyway, here is a screenshot of the kitchen to give you some idea of the quality (or lack thereof) of the food you'll be eating in jail. Enjoy! :)

 

[QuagaarWarrior]

One thing that holds back alot of new mods is lack of compatibility with other popular, already established mods. People are often reluctant to drop one of their favourite mods to try something new.

With this in mind I would try to ensure compatibility with certain mods.

Do you changes to the jails only affect interior cells? If the change the exterior that could make them incompatible with town overhauls.

Also are your Riften jail changes compatible with Inigo?

How about Populated Prisons?

How about Skyrim Sewers?

It sounds like an interesting project though and if it is built with compatibility in mind you will get more people downloading and trying it.

Best of luck

[drewsbrew]

One thing that holds back a lot of new mods is lack of compatibility with other popular, already established mods. People are often reluctant to drop one of their favourite mods to try something new.

With this in mind I would try to ensure compatibility with certain mods.

Do you changes to the jails only affect interior cells? If the change the exterior that could make them incompatible with town overhauls.

Also are your Riften jail changes compatible with Inigo?

How about Populated Prisons?

How about Skyrim Sewers?

It sounds like an interesting project though and if it is built with compatibility in mind you will get more people downloading and trying it.

Best of luck

 

Thanks for the advice! :)

 

Yeah, I am thinking about mods like Inigo, in particular, but honestly, I'm guessing compatibility patches will be needed in many cases. The changes to the jails (Riften, especially) are extensive. The secret ways into the cities necessarily have to make changes to the exterior of towns, so that will, of course, make it incompatible with any mods that also make changes to the exterior. But, the changes are minor and fairly out of the way, so I'm guessing it'll be easy enough to make a compatibility patch.

 

As for Skyrim sewers... I haven't used the mod myself, but the entrances to the sewers I'm adding are fairly out of the way places, and the actual sewers themselves are interior cells, so I suppose it would indeed be possible to have both sewers mod wise, though that may be a little strange from an immersion standpoint.