[WIP] RealRacism - Race-Based Dialogue and Prices

[snackerfork]

Get it here: RealRacism v0.02

 

What?

Skyrim! The frozen land of the Nords! A land ravaged by a xenophobia-fueled civil war, where fear and hostility greet you at every corner, and where the man across the room may be more dangerous than the dragons in the sky! At least, that's how it's supposed to be. But why is that merchant that wants you out of his country so open to fair trade, so willing to give his enemy weapons for the same price as he would give them to his countrymen? Why can an Argonian haggle as easily with a Dark Elf as he can with an Imperial? Why is that, when you feel unwelcome in this land, it's only when your supposed friends scream "SKYRIM BELONGS TO THE NORDS!" while lopping the head off a bandit?

 

This mod, which I'm calling RealRacism, seeks to change all that, and in a way that is completely seamless. There's no configuration and no message boxes, so after the mod has been started, you'll completely forget that these changes weren't part of the vanilla game from the start.

 

How?

 

Race-Based Buy and Sell Prices

This is the big feature. In short, any adult merchants you deal with who are the same race as you will give you a 10% better buying and selling prices, similarly to Allure. Being a different race than the merchant, however, will usually give you a 10-15% buying and selling detriment. The exact amount of the detriment varies depending on the races of both you and the merchant, and it disappears altogether if you become friends with the merchant by any method. Here's how it all breaks down:

 

• Nords buy and sell at 10% worse prices to other races, with the exception of Imperials. However, certain NPCs tagged as Stormcloaks and Stormcloak sympathizers (currently only Solaf) buy and sell at 15% worse to every other race and 15% better to other Nords.
  
• Imperials buy and sell at 10% worse prices to all other races, with the exception of Nords.
  
• Argonians buy and sell at 10% worse prices to most other races, but 15% worse to Dunmer, Nords, and Imperials.
  
• Dunmer buy and sell at 10% worse prices to most other races, but 15% worse to Argonians, Altmer, Nords, and Imperials.
  
• Altmer buy and sell at 10% worse prices to most other races, but 15% worse to Dunmer.
  
• Khajiit are the only race that buys and sells at neutral prices to all other races, increasing the significance of traveling caravans.
  
• Breton, Bosmer, Redguard, and Orc merchants buy and sell at 10% worse prices if you are not the same race as them.
  

 

The goal is to not only strengthen the themes of Skyrim by representing them in gameplay, but to unintrusively add much-needed flavor and interest to trading, and all in a way that is based entirely on in-game lore and behavior. Currently, however, these price changes don't apply to inns, houses, horses, bribes, or other dialogue-based prices. This is something I'd like to change in future versions.

 

Race-Based Dialogue and Battle Cries

• The battle cries "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!" and "Your kind has no place here!" are now only yelled by Stormcloaks, Stormcloak sympathizers, and Nord bandits.
  
• The other various racist battle cries ("I'm gonna wear that tail as a belt!") are now only yelled by Stormcloaks, would-be Stormcloaks, and people who the game doesn't consider your friends. Now only your buddies that are huge racists are huge racists right in front of you!
  
• Some quests are more difficult for certain races! In Before the Storm (currently the only quest changed), for example, the guard at Whiterun's gate will be suspicious of your story if you are a Dunmer, Argonian, Khajiit, or Orc. Fortunately for the Dragonborn, money talks...
  

In future versions, I'd also like to see if there's a way I can modify NPC disposition or dialogue to make certain NPCs more obviously hostile, but I don't know how to do this yet. I may end up doing it manually by modifying greetings directly, but that's a last resort.

 

What's this compatible with? What should my load order be?

- It is not fully compatible with vampires. If you're a Vampire, non-Vampire NPCs of your race will no longer consider you the same race, significantly altering the prices you receive from them. To some degree, this makes sense, so I'm not currently sure how much I'll change this behavior.

- It has not been tested with Dawnguard or Hearthfire and makes no changes to anything in them, because I don't have either of those yet. Please tell me if you have any issues!

- RealRacism should be fully compatible, to my knowledge, with any mod that modifies the base value of items or makes merchants more cutthroat.

- It should also be compatible with any mod that adds merchants, towns, or other areas to the game.

- Mods that modify certain NPCs (Solaf, Bolund, Rolff, Angregor, and Elda Early-Dawn) may not be compatible. The only one I know of that does this is Realistic Room Rental, which works fine, but I recommend placing RealRacism above them just in case of issues.

- Quest changes are not compatible with mods that modify the same quests. Currently, only the Whiterun guard who stops you in Before the Storm is modified. RealRacism should also be fully compatible with mods that modify the player dialogue, such as Khajiit Speak. I recommend loading any mods like these after RealRacism.

- Load order shouldn't matter otherwise.

 

Where do I start? How can I help?

At the moment, only from the link above.

 

I've only tested it myself, so before publishing it, I'd like to make it available here to see what problems crop up and what suggestions people have about these values or about what Nord NPCs should be tagged as Stormcloaks or otherwise hostile to other races. Currently, only Solaf, Bolund, Rolff, and Angregor are specifically tagged, and all members of the game data's Stormcloak NPC faction automatically have these changes.

 

The install process is standard and, if it worked, you should get a "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!" message in the top left corner of the screen when you start a game or load a save. Uninstalling and reinstalling has not been extensively tested yet, but prices will return to normal when you uninstall. However, since this is the first release, I recommend being careful about adding this to a save game in progress! Make sure you back up that save first!

 

Thanks for reading this and for supporting me :)

Edited January 17, 2013 by EProsperity97

[Deleted1308005User]

I like the idea.

 

We discussed about this at some threads long time ago.

 

Skyrim needs more racism!

[snackerfork]

Quick question: how do people feel about making Thieves Guild fences (those in the JobFenceFaction) also buy and sell at neutral prices to different races? I think it'd work well as a way of encouraging roleplay-minded players towards the more lucrative life of crime, where your guild is your family, goods speak louder than words, "usual guild rate", etc. At the same time, it doesn't make much sense that all fences would immediately put aside their prejudices and always offer you better deals than equivalent merchants.

 

It may not be necessary anyway, since you unlock Khajiit fences who will do this by default, as well as the ability to sell stolen goods to all merchants. Thoughts?

[snackerfork]

RealRacism v0.2 is out (in this thread)!

 

Here's the changes:

 

- Heading to Whiterun in Before the Storm? Well, if you're not one of the more well-liked races in Skyrim, you might want to scrounge up some extra gold first.

- All the other racist battle cries ("Die, you Orc filth!") are no longer said by your non-Stormcloak friends and followers, who have at last learned basic tact.

- Added exceptions to Babette and Skuli, who will always sell you to at neutral prices. I'd say it's the innocence of childhood, but, you know.

- Added Elda Early-Dawn to the Stormcloak sympathizer list, so she now buys and sells at a total of 15% worse prices to all non-Nords.

Edited January 17, 2013 by EProsperity97

[OzmaHD]

Make an Gender Biased mod too, women and men price differences also. Women get better sales (Based off looks and Class) and Men Get better prices by status (being rich and poor).

[GoodfellowGoodspring]

This is something i wanted in the game and is one of the reasons why i think Bethesda failed in making Skyrim a truly 'epic' game, i blame it on dumbing down the game to please the masses and make more money, fears of possible accusations of racism towards the company -but this would be extremely stupid and the game not being realistic enough in general.

 

However, onto the good stuff. Its great that someone has finally picked up this sort of mod and i will look forward to any developments you make on it!

 

The main things ive wanted:

 

- More hatred towards beast races, including higher bribes to enter cities, weekly 'tolls' for the player to enter cities as a beast race, of cause after 'becoming' the Dragonborn (certain fame status) any beast PC would no longer need to bribe or pay these tolls. Beast races being followed/stalked/mobbed/harassed etc but this would require non existing npc dialog for the full effect. Guild and Jarl quests would require a bribe or radiant quest to convince them of your worth before allowing you to begin there questlines. Beast races should also find it harder to gain disposition upon any non-beast race, exemptions would be any 'friendly' npc and mostly non-Nords as well, those not in major settlements are more welcoming in general etc. Non consensual brawls while in any major city (Solitude could be classed as being too civilized for this sort of activity.)

 

- Propaganda posters showing support for Nord heritage/Stormcloak recruitment and 'Your Empire Needs YOU'/empire recruitment.

Edited January 18, 2013 by GoodfellowGoodspring

[calfurius]

Why do the Altmer hate the dunmer so much? Their both elves and while they might not be best buddies, they both are, in a sense, "elven brothers". It'd make more sense for the Altmer to hate the nords. Elves and Nords have never really gotten along, the Great War just made it worse.

[snackerfork]

Make an Gender Biased mod too, women and men price differences also. Women get better sales (Based off looks and Class) and Men Get better prices by status (being rich and poor).

I considered it, but it doesn't feel to me like Skyrim (the land, not the game) has as many problems with sexism. Yeah, the story of the game is still largely about dudes and all the major characters are dudes, but the developers were actually much better about giving various roles and fair treatment to women than many other fantasy games and films. Though simulating misogyny seems realistic, that indicates to me that the land of Skyrim was written as more egalitarian gender-wise.

 

Anyway, making a separate reverse Allure mod would be extremely easy, but it sounds more to me like you're looking more for a classism simulator mod than a sexism one. I don't know how'd you do that... based on clothing, maybe?

 

This is something i wanted in the game and is one of the reasons why i think Bethesda failed in making Skyrim a truly 'epic' game, i blame it on dumbing down the game to please the masses and make more money, fears of possible accusations of racism towards the company -but this would be extremely stupid and the game not being realistic enough in general.However, onto the good stuff. Its great that someone has finally picked up this sort of mod and i will look forward to any developments you make on it!

Thanks! Those are some great ideas, so let me respond to all of them:

 

- I'm strongly considering making it so that you have to pay a toll to enter every major hold city as certain races, not just Whiterun. If I did, I don't think I'd make it recurring because that'd become annoying to the player. However, I would make it much larger in Windhelm and Riften, where racism and corruption are much more of a problem. I also agree that getting to a certain point in the main quest should make you immune to tolls you haven't already paid, with the exception of those two cities.

 

However, I don't really like the idea of making it more difficult to do Jarl or Guild quests. By adding a toll to the cities, I'm already making it more difficult to access content, so it seems redundant to make it a bribe. Making it require a quest (Radiant or otherwise) would also require new dialogue to not be functionally identical to the existing quests, which I'd like to avoid.

 

- I'd definitely like to make a rare "hate crime" event, and have been thinking about how to do it for a while. I don't think I'd like to make it a brawl, because those are buggy and it's a little goofy that you'd defend yourself with hand-to-hand combat. If I did, I'd make it a random event: either a rare wilderness encounter with hostile Nord farmers or Stormcloaks, or an even more rare nighttime encounter in a major city (probably in Riften or Windhelm). I'd make it so that the player is warned before being attacked, but I'd like to make either rare enough that players are likely to see them at least once in their journey but unlikely to see them many times.

 

- I'd like to figure out how I can script on-the-fly disposition changes without making it so that they're permanent, or else you might get weird things like otherwise total strangers showing up to your wedding and giving you inheritance money, but I have no idea how to script this yet. Working on it!

 

- Propaganda posters are a fantastic idea and I'd love to do it, but I think I'd make it a separate mod so that people can get it without this one. Making it separate would also mean less conflicts. First, however, I'd have to figure out how to add posters to cells without modifying the original wall textures, something I have no clue how to do. I'll keep it in mind though :)

 

Why do the Altmer hate the dunmer so much? Their both elves and while they might not be best buddies, they both are, in a sense, "elven brothers". It'd make more sense for the Altmer to hate the nords. Elves and Nords have never really gotten along, the Great War just made it worse.

It's based on a couple of things. Mostly, it's just the kind of tropes they represent - the two arrogant xenophobic elf races, one of which are "pure blood" and the other of which was magically cursed eras ago? Neither the Dunmer nor the Altmer consider anyone their brothers, elf or otherwise, but with that factor they're pretty much destined to come to blows.

 

It's also heavily supported by in-game dialogue and lore about the relationship between the Thalmor (and other Altmer) and the Dunmer, including that the Thalmor may have orchestrated the Argonian invasion of Morrowind, which this thread does a very good job of summarizing. Finally, it's supported by previous games: in Oblivion, which had racial disposition bonuses, Dunmer and Altmer both had -10 disposition against each other.

 

If anything, it should be worse! However, you might be right about the Nords... I'll have to think that one over.

Edited January 19, 2013 by EProsperity97

[Oubliette]

Actually - none of the Mer are exactly big on the other races. Each of them thinks themselves to be extra special. That includes the Dwemer right down to the Orsimer. The only real difference that I've seen is that the Bosmer are more likely to let you think they like you - right up till they eat you for dinner and everyone looks down on the Orsimer who are often 'mistaken' as a beast race of limited intelligence and skill - despite their prowess in battle and armor. The one time a Mer race reached out to another for help, they were poisoned, enslaved and nearly wiped out by their 'fellow' mer. Edited January 19, 2013 by Oubliette

[ripple]

Oh I like this. Having finished The Witcher 2, Skyrim's so-called 'racism' was a joke and a half. It just struck me as so funny that the Stormcloaks' xenophobia, supposedly a rallying point for galvanizing native Nords to ignore their differences and channel their anger towards outsiders, amounted to little more than lip service in game. What to do about people using custom race mods? Call me a masochist but if I was using a custom race, I'd want to be treated as the worst possible scum, just slightly better than the 'beast races.'