No More Petty Karma

[peterjwest]

I'm looking to make a mod which removes all minor and repeatable karma changes and replaces these with a few positive karma quests.

 

Although Bethesda believe in the idea of redemption, I don't believe that someone should be able to murder a family and then redeem themself by giving 10 bottles of water to a homeless guy, or 1000 caps to a crazy cult. Its simply not good role-playing to be able to change your alignment infinitely through the course of a game.

 

In fallout 1 & 2 karma seemed to be a device which was emergent: you play a character and the options which become available to you through the game are based on the good/evil decisions you have made up to that point: you are not told overtly about karma changes you simply experience the consequences of your decisions. In fallout 3 karma feels instrumental: you raise or lower your karma to get what you want and you are much more aware of how specific actions affect your karma. To me this seems to undermine the very idea of karma.

 

From a gameplay perspective having to perform repetitive tasks to raise your karma after stealing is irritating and dull. Any part of a game which frequently requires you to do something repetitive and time consuming is probably a bad idea. This is why you only have to walk somewhere once and then you can fast travel, and why there is a 'take all' button. Anything else should be varied enough not to feel repetitive.

 

Finally the water beggar quest is one I take particular exception to. This is the most jarring, immersion breaking quest in the game (as far as I know) and makes me think I'm playing Oblivion again (this is a bad thing). Not only does their unquenchable desire for purified water not make sense, the water beggars are designed to be passed by the player when entering several major game areas, which makes them hard to ignore, however they have almost no dialogue and are virtually identical (clothing, posture, permanent residence outside a city). I don't understand why Bethesda would put their least interesting and most repetitive NPC characters in such a prominent position.

 

So this is my plan:

Part 1

1. To remove karma penalties from stealing (with possible exceptions for the very poor)
   
2. To remove the karma bonuses from donating to the church (possibly allow one single bonus)
   
3. To remove the karma bonus after giving more than 5-10 scrap metals to Walter
   
4. To remove any other karma effects from repeatable quests (please tell me if there are any others)
   
5. Possibly to disable the gained/lost karma notification
   

Part 2

To remove the water beggar quest and replace it with a unique positive-karma non-repeatable quest for each beggar:

1. For Micky (outside Megaton) I'd like to give the option to give him some water, then some food, then pay someone in megaton to have a shack (which will be added to the wasteland) repaired for him to live in. Finally the player would be able to set him up as a junk trader who could support himself and become a useful trader for the player.
   
2. For Willy (outside Tenpenny tower) I'd like the option to give him some water, food then get him some good clothes and somehow get him into Tenpenny Tower as a resident
   
3. For Carlos (outside Rivet city) I haven't thought of anything unique yet... possibly the player could convince him to move a town such as underworld and escort him there (this could use the same route that Sydney takes)
   

Obviously Part 1 will be much, much easier than Part 2 so I will release Part 1 without the water beggars until I can re-implement them.

 

I would appreciate any feedback anyone has about this idea! Also if you have any of your own ideas on this theme I would be happy to hear them. Although I should note that I'm not looking to add significant content or gameplay, just to replace the repeatable karma quests with real quests.

 

Edit: sorry! meant to post this in the general fallout modding talk! Could a mod please move this post?