Cautiously putting forth a mod idea: "Starting a bandit gang".

[Goujoe]

I've been mulling over and developing in my head an idea for a series of quests for a while now, and I figured I might put some of them out there to find out from the community whether or not they're as interesting as I find them as well as just how much effort it might take to tackle. I'll start out by saying (on the off chance that this generates some interest) that I have absolutely no modding experience, texturing/modeling programs, or any other experience or means when it comes to the technical aspects of mod making. However, I do have plenty of experience (and I like to cautiously think talent) when it comes to writing and story telling, for whatever difference that makes.

 

I suppose I'll start by going into a little detail as to what inspired this idea. After downloading the so far wonderfully interesting mod "The Golden Crest" (a pirate themed quest mod that I would highly recommend even though I've yet to finish it) I started a pirate/bandit themed character to play it. As I played with this character, for one reason or another I began a bit of meaningless fun by gathering companions (using the brilliant CM Companions system) and starting a "gang" of sorts. I would gather these followers, outfit them all in a "uniform" (Blood Leather cuirass, boots, and gloves, along with Dark Leather greaves and hood, topped off with an oh-so piratey cutlass. I can't quite remember which mods the armors came from), and purchase the various houses to fill with a small crew of these gang members. Aside from the pointless fun of this, it gave me plenty of readily available manpower for whenever there was a tough dungeon or quest that I needed some backup to tackle.

 

Anyway, this little self-given quest got me thinking: How fun would it be to actually have the chance to start your own gang? Complete with characters, quests, a story, and rewards? Soon enough, my little brain was wallowing in the ideas, possibilities, and potential fun this could bring! Now I should note that I'm trying my best not to get too ambitious, I do have an inkling of how difficult even a simple mod is, let alone how difficult a faction mod likely is. Which is why I'm testing the waters and asking for advice before getting too committed to the idea of starting something that I may not get any support on.

 

SO! I figure if I am going to have a chance of getting anyone interested in helping with this, I should describe the story I have in my head so far. To begin, the player would find one way or another (maybe through rumor, a journal, or some other means) a cave near a town or village that is rumored to be haunted. As the player goes to investigate, they would find a relatively modest cave perhaps filled with a few rats or such. However, as they explore deeper the player would stumble upon the skeletal corpses of perhaps four or five unfortunate men. As they investigate, they suddenly spot a ghostly dunmer in the room with the skeletons! Instead of attacking though, the ghost approaches the player and begins to speak with them. As they converse with the oddly non-hostile ghost, he would tell the player about how he and his comrades met their early end. In life, they were a group of roguish friends and petty criminals who decided to forgo the "rob from the rich, give to the poor" philosophy of the Thieves Guild (Which actually rather bugs me. When I want to be a rogue or theif, I want to be an actual criminal, not some damned Robin Hood wannabe!) and set out with high hopes of forging their own bandit crew that would eventually rise above the other chaotic and disorganized gangs throughout Cyrodiil and grow into the richest and most feared criminal organization in all the empire! Fate, however, had other plans for them. Just a day or two after declaring themselves the (insert gang name here) and ambitiously starting their career by making their first robbery of a small travelling caravan, the entire group was promptly cut down by a single lucky adventurer who happened to be passing along and responded to the caravan master's plea for help. The ghostly bandit was never quite sure why he stayed behind while his companions moved on to the next world, but should the player be of like mind, he sees an opportunity for the both of them. With that, has asks the player if they wish to carry on in his stead, to bring to fruition the dreams he failed to carry out in life, and to re-found his gang in the hopes that this time around it might become many times greater then what he and his companions ever could have achieved!

 

There you have it, the initial story that starts things off. I have ideas for the further story line and quests (such as making contact with his now somewhat older brother-in-law who is a crooked imperial watchman in order to gain his protection. Or seeking out the various core member of the crew such as a hedge mage, blacksmith, fence, and so on) though I think for now I'll spare the details, as I've rambled on about the story aspect long enough. I don't plan for this to be a hugely epic quest line, but rather something a bit more humble for the roguish, role-play minded player who's looking for a few financial (among other) opportunities in lue of the more lofty save-the-world quests. Along the way they would develop the cave into a base of operations (and a simple but functional home for themselves and their companions) along with explore perhaps some non-linear endevours such as robbing travellers, raiding villages, combating rival gangs, avoiding the rath of the Imperial Legion, and so on.

 

I think I've gone on long enough for the time being. So I would love any feedback that anyone could provide, along with advice. And would jump for joy if this actually seems interesting enough to attract some people with more expertise then I who are willing to undertake this with me. Oh, and thank you kindly if you've actually taken the time out of your day to read all of this, heheh.

Edited December 14, 2010 by Goujoe

[Goujoe]

Just how difficult would a quest mod like this be? Am I just way out of my league? Edited December 16, 2010 by Goujoe

[NellSpeed]

Really hard-- but certainly not impossible, especially if you work with vanilla content instead of trying to implement all kinds of custom content. What you might want to do is consider putting together sort of a proof of concept-- pick one very small quest, maybe just your prologue:

 

As the player goes to investigate, they would find a relatively modest cave perhaps filled with a few rats or such. However, as they explore deeper the player would stumble upon the skeletal corpses of perhaps four or five unfortunate men. As they investigate, they suddenly spot a ghostly dunmer in the room with the skeletons! Instead of attacking though, the ghost approaches the player and begins to speak with them.

 

This requires 1 NPC, 1 location, 1 edit of an exterior cell (entry point for your cave), a few minor combat possibilities, and speech options. Ta-da! You've got a stand-alone quest to start with (a story arc, maybe a minor reward of some kind), something to whet people's interest, and-- most importantly-- the proof that you can do the work to support your idea.

 

Mind you, ideas are awesome, but you have to be able to put some work behind it. Just read through this forum for the dozens of idea posts people make... then compare that to the number of actual mods that get done. Too many people post something like "I've got this awesome idea but I don't know how to mod, so I need someone to make the world and do the scripting and create new armor and and and and." Modders learn by modding, not by getting others to do it for them... and, well, most people who do their own mods want to tell their own stories, not someone else's.

 

Whew, okay, almost done with the wall of text, here. FWIW, I think you have a genuinely interesting idea, especially since it's not some giant epic adventure, but more a workaday world series of quests. Very well considered of you.

[Goujoe]

Really hard-- but certainly not impossible, especially if you work with vanilla content instead of trying to implement all kinds of custom content. What you might want to do is consider putting together sort of a proof of concept-- pick one very small quest, maybe just your prologue:

 

As the player goes to investigate, they would find a relatively modest cave perhaps filled with a few rats or such. However, as they explore deeper the player would stumble upon the skeletal corpses of perhaps four or five unfortunate men. As they investigate, they suddenly spot a ghostly dunmer in the room with the skeletons! Instead of attacking though, the ghost approaches the player and begins to speak with them.

 

This requires 1 NPC, 1 location, 1 edit of an exterior cell (entry point for your cave), a few minor combat possibilities, and speech options. Ta-da! You've got a stand-alone quest to start with (a story arc, maybe a minor reward of some kind), something to whet people's interest, and-- most importantly-- the proof that you can do the work to support your idea.

 

Mind you, ideas are awesome, but you have to be able to put some work behind it. Just read through this forum for the dozens of idea posts people make... then compare that to the number of actual mods that get done. Too many people post something like "I've got this awesome idea but I don't know how to mod, so I need someone to make the world and do the scripting and create new armor and and and and." Modders learn by modding, not by getting others to do it for them... and, well, most people who do their own mods want to tell their own stories, not someone else's.

 

Whew, okay, almost done with the wall of text, here. FWIW, I think you have a genuinely interesting idea, especially since it's not some giant epic adventure, but more a workaday world series of quests. Very well considered of you.

 

Very good advice, thanks a ton.

 

Yeah, I suppose my philosophy when it comes to any mod is to avoid over-the-top-ness, you know what I mean? Sometimes it makes sense for a particular character to have some super powerful sword or huge manor when it comes to role play, but I try to keep that sort of thing to a minimum. I like simple and setting-appropriate homes, interesting but not outlandish races, unique but feasibly functional armor (as in not skimpy as hell with huge areas of exposed skin that just scream "stab here for insta-kill") on my female characters, and quests that don't make you feel like you have to save the world every other day.

 

I suppose I'm just a bit anxious to take that first big step due to the chance of it turning out to be completely out of my grasp. However, I do realize that making models and textures and scripts completely from scratch is more then I could hope to undertake as it stands now, so I hope to "scavenge" as much as I can from the vanilla game and existing mods, and maaaaybe try to piece together one or two things frankenstein-style using existing stuff (much in the manner of the simple but interesting Dragon Skin armor).

 

Oh, there's a couple things I have in mind that I'm curious as to the difficulty of. First of all, just how much of a process is it to get voice acting into an oblivion mod? That always lends a huge amount to making a mod come to life, and would help with this one a great deal as I plan on many characters with distinct personalities and such (I like to think I have a good voice for such things, and voice acting is one thing I do have some experience in). Also, a bit of a possibly more complex thing I have in my head that would really flesh out the fact that this is your crew is the concept of improving things for them through minor quests. One of which I have in mind is that once you're decently established, when you talk to your gang's mage, he tells you about how he was forced to leave his alchemy set behind when he had to flee as the Legion raided the base of the last bandit crew he was with. He then goes on to tell you that with some new alchemy equipment, he will be able to start brewing potions for you and the other gang members, which would allow them to drink those potions and heal in battle. The potions he could make would then be able to grow more powerful as you get him better alchemy sets (the initial quest being to get him a besic set, then up through jorneyman and eventually master). Along those same lines, if you talk to one of the members of your crew, they complain about how most of the members are getting tired of sleeping with bedrolls on stone, and talks to you about expanding the cave to make room for a proper sleeping area. You would then be sent to recruit (through greased palms or with threats of pointy implements) a group of miners to bring back and make said expansions (allowing for more areas to be opened up for other uses besides just the sleeping area). You then take things further by aquiring by one way or another some proper beds for your men to sleep in. The end result of that particular quest being a better looking base along with something like a bonus to a couple of the stats of all of your men (maybe Endurance and Agility) due to more restful sleep. If it's possible to impliment something like that, I would love to make that concept a large part of some of the minor quests, things to improve the effectivness of your gang members (getting training dummies to improve their strength and weapon skills, securing better sources of food to improve health and fitness, aquiring some barrels of booze to make them more content and happy, etc) which would then in turn improve the amount of money they are able to make for themselves and for you.

Edited December 17, 2010 by Goujoe

[NellSpeed]

Rule of thumb: If you can already do it in the vanilla game, you can do it in a mod. The trick is figuring out how they did it in vanilla!

 

Voice acting: I use TESGecko's silent voice generator option, since I don't do voice acting. Keep in mind that sound files (even silent) will expand your filesize, which may or may not be an issue. As far as I can tell, you need to manually assign a voice file, and a lip file, for each and every line of dialogue. This obviously isn't impossible (and cs.elderscrolls.com explains how it works), but it's hugely time-consuming.

 

Improvements - What you're describing sounds like a combination of house upgrades (buying X item gives you Y results in your in-game house) and using variables and maybe factions and / or quest stages to affect what an NPC does. For your mage, I think it might work like this:

 

 

 

magealchemy == 0 ; He has base equipment & can only make basic potions.

magealchemy == 1 ; He has journeyman equipment.

magealchemy == 2 ; He has master equipment.

 

The variable is set based on what equipment you've managed to get for him; and it's called by dialogue.:

 

event: Getting the equipment, then ->

script: checks to see if you have the equipment. If yes, then ->

Journal entry: I've acquired better equipment for my mage!

result script: set magealchemy to 1

 

Mage dialogue opening: What can I do for you?

PC question: Can you make some potions for me?

 

if magealchemy == 0, then

Mage dialogue: Sure-- but I can't do much with this equipment. Sorry!

 

if magealchemy == 1, then

Mage dialogue: Of course! I've got slightly better equipment, so I can do (XYZ), but if I had something better....

 

if magealchemy == 2, then

Mage dialogue: Absolutely-- I have the best equipment available, so I can make you the best potions you can imagine!

 

 

 

NOTE: That's not an actual script, obviously-- just a very, very, VERY Rough example.

 

But you can maybe see why big projects take a LOT of time and committment. Nothing in that example includes placement of objects & NPCs, creation of cells, or even just the writing.