Looking for a solution to a charity/gold sink problem.

[SmedleyDButler]

Hi folks,

 

So, in my current playthrough I went for the old cliche of the crazy woodland hermit thief ranger type. I don't trust no city folk, big buildings scare me, and so on.

 

Now, part of this is the basic game challenge this comes with - I want to stay poor, hunt a lot of my own food, etc., to pretty much be scrabbling for money the whole game and if I need something bigger, like a horse or paying a trainer I want to actually have to scrounge the cash.

The lack of end-game gold sinks in Skyrim is pretty well a known issue, so to try and address this, I'm running Trade and Barter and other mods like Expensive Investments that make merchant rates worse or stuff more expensive (this civil war's driving up prices, man!), I also don't loot everything I come across anymore, and buy food and gear for myself and my followers as much as I can (I do hunt a lot, but a straight diet of nothing but venison chops is silly too and buying food helps to give me a steady cash drain). Still, it's impossible to not build up some money eventually, especially when I have nothing to spend it on (and the fact that I'm not going to buy any houses makes this even worse). Most of the mods that try to address the lack of sinks go in the opposite direction from where I want to go - buying masses of property, dealing in real estate, running shops, mines, farms, whatever. I know there's a couple of taxation mods, but... they're all mainly based on you owning property! And cranky fearful woodland hermits don't pay no goldurned gummint revenooers anyway. :wink:

What I was really hoping for I was hoping there would actually be a good mod that let you just donate to charity for an effect. Ideally if you could fund an orphanage for all these homeless kids in Skyrim, without adopting them yourself - my character is a loner, but that doesn't mean they're a misanthrope (and the idea of the ranger saying "Ahhhh I don't need this money garbage, here you take it" fits well, I think), but sadly there isn't a mod like that. There IS a mod that lets you give away money to anyone (Give Gifts to Anyone in Skyrim, so I can actually GIVE the money instead of just dumping it all in a barrel which would be beyond lame), so that's something. But if I just give all my gold away voluntarily it seems kind of pointless - why loot or make money at all? And if I can just arbitrarily decide how much gold I want to give and when to give it, there's no pressure to make a goal or meet some requirement the way there is with having to buy food every day or pay trainers. Essentially there's no in-game challenge.

 

What I want to do is have some kind of mechanism where demands can be made of me. I'm not the kind of guy who's going to post "HEY WOULD SOMEONE MAKE THIS BIG COMPLICATED MOD JUST FOR ME PLZKTHX!". so I'm hoping some of you might help me come up with a way I can use existing mods and maybe some external program (like a random number generator) to create costs, or NPC needs (like a charity drive). With the war on, maybe Danica or Maramal needs money for a widows and orphans fund. Maybe there's a drive to help a town recently attacked or damaged by a dragon or as part of the civil war, things like that (good RP ideas are appreciated). The variables that may or may not be affected could be:

 

- Who needs the money (Townsfolk? Orphans? Dunmer refugees? Travellers robbed by bandits? Beggars?)

 

- Why? (Emergency support or rebuilding after a disaster, dragon attack, or a civil war battle? Orphanage building for children, or money for education or trades for older impoverished childen? Food or shelter for beggars or refugees? Religious tithes? Resettlement fund for people not from Skyrim who are trying to go home? A fighting campaign, like Stendarr vigilants asking for money to support them against the vampires?). It's possible you could merge this with the above point - some would only have one "why?" while other groups would have multiple entries.

 

- Where are the affected people? (Riften? Rorikstead? Solitude?)

 

- Who's ASKING for the money (A priest, priestess, or other religious figure? A civic figure like Jarl, Steward, or Housecarl? A member of the affected community? Some charitable agent or someone acting on behalf of a charity?)

 

- How much do they need? (of course)

 

- WHEN do they need it and is there a deadline?

 

The last one is crucial. I wouldn't want there to be demands every single day - better that they come up randomly from time to time. But as we know, the game isn't very alt-tab friendly, so I'd need something to run in-game every day with a randomized chance of a "demand" appearing. Everything else can *maybe* be handled by using a random number generator or even just roll dice if I get desperate (but there are dice-rolling apps, so I'm sure I can find *something* workable for this) and an excel spreadsheet. So the process might be as follows:

 

1) In game random event generator runs each day with a yes or no toggle. If a yes comes up, then I can save and hop out and run a random number generator

 

2) Use the numbers to consult a table in Excel

 

3) The Excel sheet will tell me who needs the money, where, why, how many days the charity drive is open, etc.

 

4) Optional: Penalties or rewards for failure? I don't mean a reward worth money, but maybe you get a thank you note or some kind of light bonus enabled via console or something (but not "The Gift of Charity" because it's almost entirely negligible and - more importantly - is really only used to help you make more money!). Alternately, maybe something bad happens? Really not sure how a penalty could be implemented so maybe I won't have any consequences for failure other than "Your character feels real bad".

 

A bit clunky, but like I said, I can't write this as a mod for myself (I'm sure some people immediately thought "Why don't you try and write this?", but honestly it would be beyond my sludgy, backwards brain) and it's not fair to ask someone else to do something like this. Maybe it sounds like playing this way would be a hassle, but I'd only need to check it if the in-game alarm went off and I was thinking the shortest interval would be a day or two and the longest a couple of months, but on average something like two or three in-game weeks.

 

So anyway, I'd love to hear thoughts about this, or suggestions for mods that maybe weren't intended for this, but can be repurposed to enable this or something like it. Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!

Edited June 27, 2016 by SmedleyDButler

[Elias555]

 

I'm not the kind of guy who's going to post "HEY WOULD SOMEONE MAKE THIS BIG COMPLICATED MOD JUST FOR ME PLZKTHX!"

And yet you did.

 

There's a speech mod(immersive speech iirc) that allows you to do things like give gifts to get people to like or forgive you. Another is using trainers and mods that make black smiths and enchanters useful. Those are some good money sinks.

Edited June 27, 2016 by Elias555

[SmedleyDButler]

And yet you did.

 

 

With respect, no. If someone does want to talk about that possibility, then hey, that's fantastic and we can move this conversation to the mod request forum, but I have zero expectation of that. If you read my post again, I'm only asking for suggestions about existing mods I can use in unintended ways.

 

At the most basic level I just want to know if there's a mod - that already exists - that creates randomized notification messages, or in-game flags, or markers, or anything, so long as they don't have consequences attached and take place not too often over a wide time range. The messages don't have to be anything to do with my idea, I just need something to provide a randomized in-game "trigger" for me to go outside the game and play with an excel table - without breaking other things in the game or causing other obligations that have nothing to do with my idea. For example, the Earthquake mod (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32288/?) does this more or less, though the interval is far too short and an earthquake that staggers you every two minutes probably gets really annoying!

 

If there are mods that bring me closer to what I want to do without having to do as much outside the game, that's great, but would purely be a bonus.

 

I'm already using trainers as much as I can, but they can only eat so much gold. The gift giving mod you mentioned may be the same one I mentioned in my post? Give Gifts to Anyone in Skyrim: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37495/? I would be using that as the method of giving away money with my idea to donate money charitably.

Edited June 27, 2016 by SmedleyDButler