Roriksbork

In response to post #44674385. Most people who have played through Skyrim's vanilla intro about two hundred times won't mind seeing Alternate Start three or four times later on.

Here's another idea, meant to be played late in the game (level 50+, main quest/faction quests complete). It's also meant to give you a real choice, not just 'being the good guy'. - One of your coastal settlements has longboats appear in front of it and you're called by radio to defend it. - The raiders turn out to be 'Vikings', a new faction based on the Vikings (pretty brutal coastal raiders, quite strong and with good armor and new heavy melee weapons). Two short quest lines. 1. Destroy the Vikings and make North America's coasts safe. - You repair the longboats and head to a frozen Nova Scotia with some support from your chosen faction. - First you need to take over some outlying settlements and defend the settlers from Viking counterattacks.- Eventually you have to make a huge push into Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the Vikings are based in an old church converted to a longhall, and kill their leader (maybe have a real boss fight this time). - As a reward, you get all of the Vikings' settlements and some of their tech (but nothing special). 2. Join the Vikings and share in their spoils. - You find the raid leader (the Viking leader's son) and come up to him. He's surprised that someone has the guts to actually look him up, sees you're tough and offers you a place in his army. - You go to Nova Scotia with the Vikings, meet the leader and learn that the people in the surrounding settlements have revolted against the Vikings' cruel rule. They've built quite an alliance for themselves. - You help the Viking leader put down the revolt, which should be made incredibly hard. - As a reward, you get significantly better armor and melee weapons as well as the 'governorship' of several profitable settlements outside of Halifax itself, but the settlers will resent you and occasionally revolt (forcing you to massacre the town's inhabitants and attract new settlers).

For a while now, I have been looking for a way to become the ruler of Skyrim. But I haven't quite found the right mod for it, and I'm dreadful at modding myself (despite several attempts following all kinds of tutorials, I can't even get the Creation Kit to open properly). Considering how popular the player is near the end of the game, and how many people owe the player their lives, it shouldn't be a big leap to become High King of Skyrim and Jarl of Haafingar. There is, of course, this mod. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41087/? However, there are some specific things about this mod that I find unsuitable for my idea, namely: - It adds a new city in a strange location (in a mountain just outside Solitude), and makes you rule from there instead of the Blue Palace, which is supposed to be Skyrim's seat of power. - Instead of being chosen by the jarls, you just talk to a guy in Markarth, pay a small amount of gold, get a few signatures on a petition and get told that you're now High King. - It exudes too much wealth. Skyrim is a remote, relatively poor/backward part of the Empire, so it doesn't make sense to just be able to walk into a brand new city with a huge palace and have stacks upon stacks of gold ingots, a palace with dwemer technology everywhere and nearly endless soldiers waiting for you. Part of what I'd want from a mod is that it still stays realistic, so your seat of power should be Skyrim's seat of power, your palace shouldn't be disproportionately opulent and your soldiers shouldn't be fully armored and overpowered. Main elements of mod - It's meant to be installed/triggered after you've done most other things in the game, like the main quest, the thane quests and the Blue Palace quests (to avoid unnecessary quest breaking). As the title says, it's the 'Crowning Achievement' for a character who's seen it all and done it all. - It can be an alternative for the Civil War quests - an informal Yes Man option where neither the Stormcloaks nor the Imperials win, but a separate faction that stops the infighting. - You can become High King by persuading (if they like you) or bribing (50,000 septims per jarl) more than half of the Jarls. - The Blue Palace becomes a player home and Castle Dour is turned into headquarters for your army. - You can hire officials to deal with day-to-day affairs, and you can talk to them to make decisions. The Blue Palace as a home - Once you seize power, the Blue Palace becomes a player home, non-respawning so you can decorate it with your treasures. Some new rooms are added within the interior if possible (no loading screens, because the rooms are quite modest) to house your staff, Elisif, and followers. There will be a table with a book explaining how to rule next to the throne. - Elisif will move to one of the new rooms, and her quarters in the palace are now the player's quarters. She will no longer sit on the throne, as that is now the player's throne. - You are able to change some things in the Blue Palace, like banners/rugs/room decorations (so if you're a vampire you might choose a coffin, or if you're a Stormcloak at heart you might choose Stormcloak banners and blue rugs). At the same time, the palace shouldn't be too grand/opulent, but reflect the state of the rest of Skyrim (a country that's sparsely populated can't support a gigantic palace/court system).- There are merchants from several countries attending the court. They will serve as merchants during regular hours, and go to The Winking Skeever at night. Public Finances - You have a new guarded room in the Blue Palace basement that contains a big chest. In that chest you can find the public finances.- There are three tax rates with corresponding daily incomes. Low (500 gold per day), Medium (1000 gold per day) and High (3000 gold per day). If taxes are set to high, assassination attempts can be made when you're outside the cities, and if taxes are set to low sometimes you'll receive small gifts from thankful citizens.- You can pay money into the coffers or take money out of them.- With money from the chest, you can buy goods/services from your advisors. The Advisor System - You have to hire several advisors that cost a few thousand gold each (worth it, because they're experts). These will take care of the day-to-day affairs in your kingdom.- The Domestic Advisor is the one who receives petitions and passes them on to you. These can be simple decisions that cost or give you money, but also requests for you to deal with bandits, that you can either deal with yourself or pay the Military Advisor a few hundred septims to deal with. Through him, you can also appoint new jarls for certain holds, as in the Become High King of Skyrim mod. He also changes your taxes.- The Military Advisor can deal with kill-bandit quests for you for a few hundred gold. He can also send scavenging expeditions (you pay a few hundred septims, and some random loot spawns in a chest in your treasury later on). Through him, you can buy disposable, generic soldier followers (who come at three quarters of your level, equipped with the standard equipment for the guards at your hold) at a price of 500 septims each. He can change the equipment of the various hold guards if you want.- The Diplomatic Advisor gives you radiant/repeating decisions to make about the rest of Tamriel. These decisions impact your relations with other countries. For example, you side with Morrowind in a dispute with High Rock, increasing your relations with Morrowind and decreasing your relations with High Rock. Relations can range between 0 and 100, and if you're above 50 relations with a country the merchants from that country at your court will allow you to buy special items from their country at reduced prices. Morrowind will sell you Dunmer clothes, food, drinks and maybe pottery. Alinor/Summerset Isles and High Rock will sell you high-end magic items. Valenwood will sell you high-end bows and arrows. Anequina/Pelletine and Black Marsh will offer you skooma, sleeping tree sap and alchemy ingredients. Cyrodiil will sell you special wines/potions with varying effects. Well, there's my idea.

That's also something I'm really looking forward to. Generally, with almost any game developer that allows for mods, players can make worlds/objects with a better 'atmosphere' than the developer itself (it's the same with The Sims 2/3 furniture and worlds). But as Boombro said, the DLCs will add new features that modders can exploit. After that, I think the game has a few good years ahead of it with players making new content, including DLC-sized worldspaces with voiced quests and all that. I also can't wait until there are new, more fleshed-out companions (though I wonder how that would be made to work with the new voiced player character system), like Vilja/Inigo/Arissa/Sofia in Skyrim.

When I was walking near Kingsport Lighthouse with Cait earlier, she suddenly said something along the lines of "I wonder what it's like on the other side of the pond". This one's far-fetched, but imagine for a moment we're going to Ireland. - You take a boat out of Irish Pride Industries shipyard and sail east. - Climate shouldn't be much different. - Ireland wasn't hit as much, so maybe there are more trees there (thick, mysterious forests) and fewer radstorms. - Society still collapsed, so people live in smaller and more dilapidated settlements. - 'Druids' in messed up labcoats lead creepy, swampfolk-like cults out in the woods and you need to save settlers from being sacrificed. - You can unite or destroy various tribes (like the New Vegas families gimmick) and become High King of Ireland. Or, we can explore the Sea of Tranquility. - A military space travel facility is found. - The chief engineer for your chosen faction tells you they can get the rocket working again if you recruit a bunch of people all over the Commonwealth. - You take the rocket to the moon. Set up a pod system to transport people (fast travel, like from Solstheim to Skyrim). - Start a moon base. Go out in special power armor to gather stuff, explore the moon, see the Earth and the other planets. - Turns out the Zetans are back and they do not look friendly. You have to defeat them in a new Battle of the Sea of Tranquility. Naval warfare/piracy. - Pirates start raiding the coast of the Commonwealth. You, being basically in charge of the Commonwealth, are called on to stop them. - You go to the Irish Pride Industries shipyard, clear out Rory and his pets and start building/fixing a good boat - maybe with customization options, like faction paint jobs and a separate-cell interior (think GTA Online's yachts combined with Home Plate). - You assemble a small crew (a rugged former pirate, an over-eager rookie, a scientist - just a motley crew). - You sail out, finally making use of those underused rocking boat physics (as you see in Libertalia). - You can encounter pirate vessels of increasing size and strength, and kill their crew to steal their loot. - Eventually you learn that the pirates have a stronghold at Martha's Vineyard. You assemble a force in the Commonwealth, sail there and wreck the pirate stronghold in an epic battle. EDIT: Aztec/Mayan scenario. - Jack Cabot, or in one specific conditional case a generic archaeologist, sends you an invite to come to Cabot House. - A caravan up from Central America has brought a fascinating new 'alien' artifact, and he wants you to take the caravan back there with him. - You arrive in the jungles of Central America, in a small shantytown built by descendants of the people who fled into the jungles when the bombs fell. - There are all kinds of different mutates animals and monsters in the jungle, as well as eccentric raiders in feathered outfits who build 'cargo cult' like temples out of scrap and sacrifice traders. - From there, you can explore various temple complexes and assist with digs. - Eventually, you come across an ancient alien site underneath one of the Aztec/Mayan temple sites.

This is something I found in one of the hospitals. I didn't change any of this myself - it's how I found it.

If I somehow managed to make it through the first part of the main quest, I would probably side with the Institute. The first time I played, I was appalled by the clothes the settlers wore, and the way they tolerated huge holes in their roofs and rubble and garbage just lying around. They seemed not incapable, but unwilling to improve their own lives. The Institute is probably the only place in the Commonwealth that still has standards. Where people don't go around dressed in rags, and where they clean up their piles of garbage.

There are two things that I believe need to be said if we're comparing the two. Two things in favour of the Institute. 1. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but when I was walking through the Commonwealth I came across an Institute patrol fighting off a bunch of raiders. I got the miscellaneous objective 'help defend the checkpoint' and helped the synths kill the raiders. There was a suit of power armor there, X-01. If you take that to a power armor station, it allows you to put a jetpack on the torso for that. So, even if you side with the Institute, you can probably still get a jetpack. 2. If you're the leader of the Institute, then - at least as far as canon goes - you decide what happens. If you want the Institute to stop replacing people with synths, you just need to order it. If you want them to do their research underground for the good of the people on the surface, for example by making better crops or prefab housing, you just need to order it. And if they resist, remind them that you basically brought them victory single-handedly and could take them all out just like that (by the time you're level 40 or above, no one in the Institute poses a threat, not even an army of Coursers).

What if Father is a synth based on Shaun's genetic material (which would explain his appearance and perhaps his monotonous voice and cold nature), and the child synth is a copy of the Father synth, but the real Shaun is long dead? I only finished the game once - siding with the Institute out of interest - and what I noticed was that after Shaun had died and the ending cinematic had played, his deathbed and his body were nowhere to be found. They seem to have been disposed of almost immediately by the good (cough) people of the Institute. Is it possible, perhaps, that the question of what really happened to Shaun will be settled in one of the DLCs? For example, if Shaun died of a rare, aggressive form of cancer, perhaps it had something to do with him being a 'pristine pre-war specimen, sealed tight', but being briefly exposed to the changed conditions of the new world before being taken underground. This would mean that the player could develop that particular form of cancer as well, look for a cure, and in the process find out the truth about what happened to Shaun, whatever that may be.