atwsite Posted February 23, 2011 Share Posted February 23, 2011 So I used to be a huge Ultima Online fan. I'm in the process of getting back into Oblivion when I realized how much I used to love Ultima Online. One particular aspect I loved was that in town, there were usually 2 types of NPC's entitled simply "<Name> the Noble" and "<Name> the Seeker of Adventure." These NPC's, once asked the simple command "destination," would then tell you where, exactly they wanted to go and how much they'd pay you when you got there. Nobles usually wanted to go to towns, and Adventurers usually wanted to go to a dungeon. I've done a decent search among the mods on both Nexus and Planet and have only discovered the "Damsels in Distress" mods (which I have used before and love) and of course numerous Companion mods and the alternative definition for the word "escort." I would think a mod like this would be simple enough (though outside my expertise). Simply rework the coding for "Damsels in Distress" and add generic "noble" and "adventurer" NPC's in random cells throughout all the towns and/or wilderness that seek randomly-generated destinations. The only stipulations that I personally think would be the cherry to this little sundae would be the following: -Escorts would give you more money depending on the distance they need to go to get to their destination.-Fast-traveling will automatically boot the NPC from your party, forcing the player to travel by foot.-Nobles would be wimpy and wear "high class" clothing and use ornamental weapons, making them useless in combat. Always needs escort to towns.-Explorers would wear more practical clothing/armor and functional weapons, sort of a "middle road" NPC that is decent in combat. Alternates between escorts to town and/or dungeons/forts.-Adventurers would be meat tanks, wearing good/great armor and weapons (sometimes enchanted) and great in combat. Always needs escort to dungeons/forts. Other ideas could be that nobles pay not only gold, but also gems. Explorers and Adventurers could also pay with enchanted gear, items, etc. Of course there would always be the option to just flat-out kill the escort in the wilderness and loot them, but the reward for completing an escort is randomly-generated at the END of the escort mission, so that if murder/death occurs, the player won't get the full benefit. Of course upon their murder (if discovered), the same penalties would be incurred as if the crime happened in town and was discovered. If a mod like this exists, I would love to give it a go. If not, I just think this would make an interesting addition to an already incredibly immersive game thanks to an awesome modding community. Thanks, everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChaosApostle Posted February 23, 2011 Share Posted February 23, 2011 In general the idea is a good base for people who want to know how to make an effective, additional side-quest to the game. I could see several NPCs throughout Tamriel who you could by chance encounter upon through their daily routines and would have the option to ask them about a location that is a preset topic after they introduce themselves and you can opt at any time and multiple times to do a dungeon crawl or as you have lined out, simply ensure the noble gets to their desired destination, maybe even have NPCs seek you out when you enter their town area. I think this could go further though, and implement your fame and infamy stats. Thus, any law abiding NPC, such as the nobles, will not hire you to escort them between towns if you have bad infamy, but some may ask you to do political assassination (maybe a commoner overheard some juicy information and needs to be silenced), or simply obtain things for them, but want you to meet up with them in private to discuss these matters. Bandits would maybe hear of your infamy and in fact be willing to truce with you and befriend you if you could assist them in some tasks, such as looting dungeons for them to obtain some luxurious loot, which they may back stab you after the job is done, or you have the option to back stab them. Unless you kill a town person though, it will not lower your fame and increase your infamy by 1 point each (nobody needs to see the murder for your infamy to follow you, you will just have that air of infamy about you). Heroes of course may thus request you for clearing out areas where baddies have emerged and are terrorizing locals, find missing people, etc. This would lower infamy and raise fame by 1 point each. I could see a lot of variance and potential in such crafting of quest/NPC/dungeon mods. It would be nice to have more player/NPC team ups and interactions aside from simply having the defaults that tag along. I could also see you being a transporter, having to ship goods between towns... but the catch being you need your horse (finally a solid reason to have one). But you want to see more repeatable quests to escort people between towns as a source of income I think, which I agree, it would be nice to have some jobs available that do not require OBSE to do them. Maybe if I ever get that far I'll try my hand at at. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draconicsoul Posted February 23, 2011 Share Posted February 23, 2011 I actually like this idea as was originally posted as well. I would love to see some quest mods that incorporate the simple idea of "escort this person from point A to point B and ensure they don't die in the process". Yeah, I'm going to second this request - this would be a fun mod for as simple as the idea is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NellSpeed Posted February 23, 2011 Share Posted February 23, 2011 In theory, this is pretty straightforward: Create an NPC, place it in the world, tell it to stay put. Give it a conversational topic-- "Ask if s/he needs to be escorted to somewhere"-- that gives a randomized reply ("Yes, to X location for Y gold.") and give the player the option of accepting or refusing. No == no, yes == triggers a follow AI package. On arriving at X location, a new topic is added to the NPC's menu-- "We're here!", which leads to the PC receiving payment, and the AI package being switched from follow back to no-follow. In practice, it could go very silly very quickly as the AI can be... flaky. But frankly, that might be part of the fun. For instance, the NPC might insist on stopping in mid-journey for a snack, a nap, or just to rest. Or if the player has one of the many mods installed that makes travel more dangerous... that's comedy gold, there. Heck, I'd be tempted to do something that's tailored to the 28 Days and a Bit mod, since that's one of my all-time favorites.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atwsite Posted March 11, 2011 Author Share Posted March 11, 2011 I'm just going to bump this once. I'd really like to see this be a reality! Please? ... Please? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fg109 Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 I think I can do this. Give me a couple of days and let me see what I can do. Just a warning though, it probably won't be that great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fg109 Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 (edited) I finished making it, anyone want to test it out? I've tested it a little, but more opinions is always better. Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?41ebzp49p83lpj9 Basically all it does is to randomly choose one out of 60 NPCs to give the quest, then randomly chooses one out of 9 locations to put them in, and randomly chooses one out of 29 destinations. You have to get the NPC to his/her destination in 3 days or you fail the quest. The quest reward is 1 fame point and a gold amount dependent on the distance from start to finish. The quest is repeatable, so a quest NPC will spawn 7 days after the last time you completed/failed the quest. Things that I think still need work on would be the fast travel and maybe tweaking the reward amounts. I didn't disable fast travel for the player, since that would be very difficult for a player with lots of quests and traveling to do. I tried to detect whenever the player is fast traveling and if so, to leave the quest NPC behind or else move them back to their last location. As for the rewards, I like how it is now, but I'm not sure whether or not I should make it level dependent as well. There are no voice files so the dialogue skips by very fast. But the only place that matters is when you consider whether or not to take the quest, and I'm too lazy to make any files anyway. EDIT: I also made sure not to use any OBSE expressions so that you can still play it if for some reason you can't run OBSE. Edited March 24, 2011 by fg109 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkInMKUK Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Use Elys universal silent voice addon to give longer for the dialogue options Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fg109 Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 I changed some stuff (decided to just disable fast travel instead of trying to detect when it's used) and used the silent voice add on to make silent voice files. I've uploaded it here: http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37734 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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