In Need of Mod Suggestions

[EyeOfArgonia]

I'm currently working on my first real mod. One that I plan to have uploaded someday.

 

This is a mod that will add an entirely new guild to the game. I have all the NPC's finished, except for the dialogue and the scripting.

 

My guild is of both archers and spies. I figured you'd receive a bow as a weapon when you join the guild, and will have to assassinate someone using that bow to go up in rank. However, I'm thinking that may be getting to close to being like the Dark Brotherhood quest line. So, I figured I could just make a lot of quests where you simply spy on someone, and that will make the guild more unique. But, does spying on a bunch of random people really seem all that exciting? So, I will really need suggestions on how to keep the idea of archers and spies without creating a dull quest line, or making it too close to the Dark Brotherhood.

 

Also, a hyperlink to a good scripting tutorial would be well appreciated. It's hard to have a guild without any scripts.

[TheAmazingTortoise]

This sounds like a good concept, and I have a couple suggestions on how you could make it a little different.

 

You could make quests similar to the "Unfriendly Competition" quest, in which you have to try and gain information from Thornir, eventually you have to trail him to a meeting place, observe the meeting and then trail a new guy.

 

By making your guild and quests in a similar format, you can offer the player a great side story (perhaps political?), while making the quests challenging. For instance, you might have to intrude into a violent/hostile place in order to find some item of piece of information mentioned while trailing a quest target.

 

This would make a lot of extra things to include, and hopefully make the questline interesting and challenging. Though you might want to find a way to make the quests truly worth the troubles of reaching the top. Similar to how the Thieves Guild gives you an additional identity.

 

These are just a few ideas of my own that I literally came up with while writing this post. I'm sure others will have more ideas as well as be able to offer more assistance with actually getting this done. I, unfortunately, have absolutely no experience with modding or scripting. So I hope you can make this a great mod, and I most definitely will look forward to it's release.

[Confessore]

I, like Tortoise, have no where near as much modding knowledge as a lot of other people. In fact, I probably couldn't script something as simple as an NPC drinking mead (if that's even easy). But I will gladly try to give as much ideas as I can to improve your mod.

 

First off, perhaps a storyline would be nice. Other guilds usually have one, whether short or extended, and I see a lot of potential for this one. Perhaps one with a huge turn-around. For example, you start off with small, unimportant spy quests and requests from various citizens that need spying on someone else. Then, after completing a couple of those, you are assigned to a much more frivolous task due to the low amount of available spies. A quest during which you discover major details, such as a conspirator in a certain castle, or a planned attack on a city. After that, you are given tasks only the best spies receive, during which your entire guild depends on you. But, after a few of those, some lower graded guild members take you away from the guild to give you the task of actually spying on your own guild's higher ranked members (your superiors). Whilst you may be skeptical at first, you quickly notice that the guild leaders are planning something nasty- as for that, I let you decide (not that you have to follow all or some of what I suggested).

 

Another suggestion would be to have varied spying tasks; not just spying on person A, then reporting to person B. Sometimes, it could vary to spy in a dungeon for activity, and determine if its safe for a treasure hunter to go in. Or, when two guilds/clans/groups are in war, and one of them charges you to spy on the adversary to note important details, you may turn around and change camp, deciding to instead spy on the clan that first requested your help. There are many similar ideas that I feel would work; you just need to figure out whom or what to spy on, where to do it and what limitations there are.

 

Finally, instead of assassinating people, your guild may work hand-in-hand with the Dark Brotherhood, so when you receive certain requests, you first spy on someone, report to the requester and go find an assassin to finish the job. Some of them may have better chances of killing the victim, depending on how much you can afford to spare of your reward. On the other hand, if you feel up to the task, you may simply kill them yourself and keep the whole pay.

 

I sincerely hope this project will go further, because I am positive the concept would work.

[KaotikKreator]

I agree with all of the ideas presented above, and would like to add my own two cents:

 

Using Thoronir's quest as a base, you could easily make 4 or 5 quests that are similar to it, but nowhere near the same. I think that it would prove to be a good method for setting up some smaller quests.

 

Where Confessore mentioned spying on NPCs for other characters, Arvena Thelas and Quill-Weave come to mind. Even though they've been used in the Fighter's Guild rat quest, I think that you could come up with something rather intriguing on that.

 

Again, Confessore's idea on assassinations would fit very well. I can see several quests from that. And if somebody chose to, it could work the other way: your character is a member of the Dark Brotherhood who gets called on by this new guild.

 

Hope all of these ideas help, and I can't wait to see this mod released! :turned:

[zprospero]

I like this idea. There's not really a guild for 'rangers' so to speak.

 

Here are some links to tutorials:

 

This one's kind of a series: My First Script

 

This is for scripting spells: My First Spell

 

If you want to be adding dialogue you'll need to learn about Quest making. You didn't ask for a tutorial, but I'll link one anyway.

 

This one is (in my opinion) the best: Click by Click Quest Tutorial

 

In general, if you want to learn how to mod for Oblivion, the Oblivion CS Wiki is the place: Link

[tesfallout]

I like the ideas that you have for this mod, and it actually sounds like something I may be able to personally help you with, I know a fairly good amount about scripting, spellmaking, questmaking, etc... and would be happy to help you create your mod, just send me a link to the file, and what you want me to do, and I'll see what I can get done. I haven't modded in a while because of life, but I'd really love to get started again. If you want to see any samples of my work, just search my name in the nexus.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Tesfallout

[NellSpeed]

You probably already know this, but-- plan.

 

Plan, plan, plan. Seriously-- this will save you trouble from the start. If you have a standard system for naming variables, scripts, topics, etc, and if you have an outline of what you want to do before you even open the CS, you will save yourself MUCH time & aggravation.

 

Also, beware feature creep. If you keep having ideas about interesting new features or bonuses or little side-quests, think long and hard before putting them in. I found that the more I learned about scripting & building conversations & quests, the more little odds & ends I wanted to put in, and that way lies madness... not to mention difficulty in completing the core concept.

[Deleted1848331User]

Heres an idea for a quest (not a bunch but it can evolve :P)

 

(in creepy voice lolz)

You are sent into a fort, which, hidden deeeeeep within has a piece of information that, if it isn't taken, could literally destroy teh whole guild. You are given the mission. You have to steal a scroll that has the names of all of the operatives of your guild written on it, along with their day-to-day routines. You have to spy on someone to get to it. In order to get to the piece of info, you walk either behind or above them, and then they get to a secret door (which looks like a wall, similar to the KotN shield retrieval one) and it opens with a glow. Then you can kill them. After you get past em you can grab the information. If you kill them before they get to the wall, the mission ends and you are kicked out of the guild, and shortly after everyone is killed (you know, just to show it was a serious mission lol.)

[stars2heaven]

Oh, I like the idea of spying! You could be like a guild of private investigators, payed to collect information for whoever you client is. Of course, you if you arent permitted to kill, or if it is frowned upon, then you could set up misssions where you have to sneak in and out of places trying to discover whatever it is you were sent to find.

 

In this way you are kind of like the thieves guild but you dont steal and you are permitted to kill sometimes, depending on the mission, though it may be prefered that you dont and rewards could be based upon whether you are discovered at any point during your mission or have to get violent. Missions could be sneaky where stealth is needed, or undercover, like one of the Dark Brotherhood missions is, where you have to maintain your cover for a period of time under difficult circumstances.

[stars2heaven]

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:A_beginner's_guide

 

There is a lik to a place where you can learn how to script, btw. I would follow it beginning to end though, since the scripting part only makes good sense in the context in which it is being used...atleast for the beginner.

 

Other than that just think of what you want to do and then think of situations in Oblivion where you have seen something similar happen. Then try to look that up in the CS and find out how it was done. That is basically how I taught myself to script.