So I know nobody has posted on this particular topic in quite some time but I thought I'd add in here since the quick read over seems relevant. I've been looking at the CK and some of the things you can do with quest creation and scripting, and I think that to an extent what Guns is talking about is actually possible with enough work and debugging. Here's how I think it could be done: ESP contains book and potentially other items placed in the Keep at Helgen (central chamber with Gunjar's body, or possibly torturers cell as those would be most likely lore wise to have evidence chests or such). Book would trigger activation of settlement quest, other items in box could be initial stock of construction supplies to get PC started once out of Helgen. Since the game never explains the circumstances of what you were doing upon your capture, it's roleplay friendly in that you could have simply been on your way to establish the settlement all along, from where the PC hails from at creation (the materials for that could just as easily be used for establishing a basic military camp- hence confusion and association with the Stormcloaks). I would use a book because you could then use the quest trigger as your tutorial/ user guide for how to use the mechanics of the mod. You could do this quasi-RP friendly as well by couching it as words of advice from a friend/relative/aid whatever ("quasi" because there isn't an easy way to explain which hotkeys do what in the mod without breaking the 4th wall *shrug*). Upon exiting Helgen, PC now has supplies and an established questline for the opening portion of the Settlement. Finding a site can happen whenever-wherever but once found this is how I propose it happens: An item from the Helgen chest will be marked as quest essential (0 weight of course) and will be used to summon an NPC. In all honesty, this could actually be a summon dremora (or anything really) spell effect or lesser power given when the player first reads the book that simply has the spell cost reduced to 0 or no daily cooldown. That keeps inventory clutter to a minimum, but it's modders choice. So this NPC will be a named, packaged, quest essential non-follower with dialog (voiced or not, either works). I envision a title of Steward since it's lore friendly and actually fits the concept rather well, but modders choice. This dialog would (RP friendly) provide access to construction options, mod settings, NPC recruitment and anything else the mod required. Dialog can be attached to menus and formlists, which in turn feed scripts and activators so that when PC tells Steward "This looks like a good spot, lets set up camp here" it spawns a modder defined static/activator of a town square (i'm partial to the fountain/ mezzanine in Whiterun) at the players cursor. Auto-assigned hotkeys (creatable with scripts that detect when conditions say actionable object is under cursor or has been selected with any number of different actions) allow PC to move across X,Y,Z axis and rotate to desired position, then place object into the gameworld. Since RTS has already done this in FO3/FNV/Skyrim it's merely a matter of finding a cleaner way of doing it. This static would be a generic mesh (anything will do, be it an Anvil, a pile of rubble, or a shed of some sort) that the player can interact with a hammer or such and create progression via the "destructible" mechanic only operating in reverse- when the PC hits the object enough times to cause it to be "destroyed" it triggers a menu item (and pauses the game) that alerts the PC that the item has been built (By design this will allow the system to update the "destructible" mesh with the mesh for whatever building was selected by the PC, triggered in actuality by the PC clicking "OK" in the message box). As I see it, this building should (at least in the beginning phases of mod development) be a standard texture from the main game, there are plenty to choose from anyways so why make it difficult by trying to repackage the various building block meshes into something new. The exterior of the building is now complete and placed in the game world, since it used an existing base object from the game it's also navmeshed, collidable, and can be assigned to display on local and world map views. Now, for the interior space- Once PC selects "OK" and the exterior mesh is placed into the game world, script enables the spawn of a door that is specific to that exterior mesh type (not frankly an expert at Papyrus but if/then statements are pretty much standard in any scripting). Door is tagged as being an activator and portal to an interior cell space created for that building. Again, every building in skyrim that has an exterior mesh has an already created Interior cell space as well, everything in the game world is still happy. Modder can add or remove clutter, change the interior space however he wants, and from what I can see there are actually ways to make formlists and randomly generated inventories (i'm thinking leveled lists, similar to what the merchants use. Tie that to spawn triggers that tell the game to spawn x item at y marker when z formlist says it exists and you have something akin to randomized clutter in buildings.) For instance, the loot in containers can be leveled/randomized based on any number of different "get" conditional functions, which can be assigned to evaluate the player level, class, race or other values, the in game time or date, or any number of criteria (to include whether there is a dead body within a certain radius, which could also be a small percentile random chance Rat spawn in the interior cell for instance). I could go on but my point is that I've dug deep into the capabilities of what CK can do, and I think the right group of Modders could turn out a DLC-esgue settlement mod that would not only be RP and lore friendly, but actually worth playing and with enough time and attention to detail it could even be fully incorporated into the main game processes. I saw nothing in CK that would prevent execution of mods that allow a PC spawned village/PC spawned NPC's from being packaged and scripted such that a trade run between village and Hold generates extra merchant gold in both locations, creates the possibility of escort quests for each, spawns the creation of a "Merchants Guild" allowing the PC to perform trade and exploration quests and attain guildmaster rank, PC facilitated rebirth of the Blades faction complete with advancement quests, recruitment of members, Radiant "Dragon Hunting" missions, random encounters involving Blades Faction seeking, fighting dragons... All of this is feasible in the CK and if properly scoped and planned, with phased implementation and maximum use of in game material it could be done relatively clean and easy. That's my take, feel free to tear it apart and find the holes.
