Custom Race - Yay or Nay?

[Lollia]

I have a few NPCs that are supposed to be different races then the ten allotted to us by Bethesda, and I'm just wondering--should I go ahead and create custom races for them?

Right now they're set to whatever happens to be the closest default race to what they actually are, but with the advent of all these new dialogue mods where NPCs are acknowledging race among other things, I wondered if I should create custom races or just leave well enough alone. Perhaps attaching custom keywords to them would be sufficient?

[YouDoNotKnowMyName0]

Depends on what you intend to do.

If "keeping things compatible" is important to you, then the answer will be no.
But that also depends on how these "other mods" handle "aknowledging the race".

It also depends on how important it the "custom race" aspect is to your mod.
The average player will probably not care about how things are implemented.
They will look at your NPCs and say "yeah, those are XYZ race NPCs" without loading up the CK or xEdit and having a in-depth look at the mod.

 

This is always one of the big questions of mod creation: keeping compatibility vs. doing things how you imagine them.

And there is never a "correct answer".

[Lollia]

On 1/6/2025 at 8:46 PM, YouDoNotKnowMyName0 said:

Depends on what you intend to do.

If "keeping things compatible" is important to you, then the answer will be no.
But that also depends on how these "other mods" handle "aknowledging the race".

It also depends on how important it the "custom race" aspect is to your mod.
The average player will probably not care about how things are implemented.
They will look at your NPCs and say "yeah, those are XYZ race NPCs" without loading up the CK or xEdit and having a in-depth look at the mod.

 

This is always one of the big questions of mod creation: keeping compatibility vs. doing things how you imagine them.

And there is never a "correct answer".

 

Thank you very much for the feedback.

I agree that there are no correct answers when it comes to modding.

The mod I am working on has grown a lot over the years, so deep down I know that no matter what I decide to add, remove, or abstain from, it's never going to please everyone. I have a tendency to worry about every little contingency years in advance, and it's slowing down my progress. Best to leave well enough alone.

[Lollia]

Apparently this still bugged me enough that I decided to make a test esp with some of the custom races in it. What surprises me is, I'm not seeing any conflicts. Just new records.

Maybe it's a remnant dating back to the time of adding new hair colours directly to the existing race sectors, but I was expecting a sea of red conflicts in xEdit.  If this is how it normally works, then I might just go ahead with it.   I'll make sure I don't keep anything tagged as Playable in the final form, however.