Miscellaneous Quest and Dungeon Overhaul

[Dovahkruziik]

Skyrim was made with the idea that quantity is better than quality. Yes, it is a quality game, but it is missing something. Yes, i could do infinite quests, but no one, at least not me, wants to do a SINGLE fetch quest, a SINGLE clear out this dungeon quest for an arbitrary reward... Skyrim is packed full of content, but it is just so boring and repetitive at times. Whether I want to spend a weekend in my man cave doing nothing but play Skyrim, or whether i play it for 20 minutes one day, I don't want to be doing a mindless task, following an arrow, clicking a button, and following the arrow back. I'm not a lab rat, i am a human being who wants adventure, wonder, and excitement! Why else would I play a game? I don't want any part of my experience to be "filler" or cut and paste. Now, I could rant and argue about this all day, but luckily I am a modder, and I can do something about this! We all can, and we all have been. Bethesda gave us a shell of a game, and now we are tasked with making it into the game we REALLY want to play. That is not a bad thing...

 

So one thing I am changing is all the miscellaneous quests. every single one. Go kill a random bandit leader in a random cave? boring. There has to be a better and more creative way to use the radiant story system.

 

let me give an example of a quest I am changing.

 

Mine or Yours. Shor's Stone. You arrive in Shor's Stone and talk to the smith. he tells you spiders have overrun the mine. you go in there and kill some weak spiders and get whatever the reward is. Pretty straightforward. Could it be better? I'm glad you asked!

 

You arrive in Shor's stone, and a miner runs screaming out of the mines, yelling incoherently about legs and webs, and then falls unconcious on the ground. as this happens, some spiders rush out of the mine and attack the guard standing watch. after these spiders are killed, you are approached by Filnjar the smith. From him, you learn that the ebony mine here is the lifeblood of the town, trading with the nearby windhelm, supplying the stormcloak army with valuable ebony while insuring survival for the town, and that several miners were in there, including his own son. He pleads with you to help clear out the mine.

 

You then have a CHOICE: accept or decline. If you decline, the quests ends, and Shor's stone falls into ruin and is overrun by spiders, and the other two miscellaneous quests in the town become unavailable. if you accept, you are accompanied into the mine to slaughter the spiders. It is easy at first, but you soon realize what has happend: the miners have delved too greedily for ebony, and they finally broke through into another cave. All of the miners are dead, or strung up. Filnjar's son is missing. you travel through the tunnel, chopping at dozens of spider webs. You reach Filnjar's son, strung up and screaming for help. Filnjar starts to try to free his son, and once he is free, a torrent of spiders will come rushing from behind him.

 

The outcome of this fight depends upon your level and your luck. If you are not powerful enough, Filnjar will die (his son won't either way). His son will react accordingly, and if you finish the quest he will become the town blacksmith, but will be depressed and suffer from PTSD. If both of them manage to survive, Filnjar will take his son home, leaving you to explore the rest of the cave. you soon come upon a deep pit filled with destructible webs. to reach the bottom you must cut through them all. at the bottom waits a giant spider boss. If you leave it and run, the spiders will respawn and eventually take over shors stone. if you kill it, the quest is complete, and you can go back to Filnjar and the townspeople, who are so very grateful, and will actually thank you for what you did every time you return to the town, offer you free room and board. If both father and son survived, you get a discount at the smith shop. I forgot to mention that the chamber the giant boss spider was in will be basically made out of ebony ore, and the town will prosper from it.

 

 

This story should get across the basic idea of what i want to do with quests.

1. There should be more than one outcome, stemming from elements of choice and/or skill.

2. Quests will also affect each other. In vanilla all quests are self contained, you can do them ALL at any time, and the world will not change after completion. here, depending on the outcome, certain quests will become available or unavailable and certain aspects of the world, like disposition, town survival will change.

3. Exciting scenarios. This includes better and updated dungeon designs, fights, scripted events, each tailored to the specific quests.

4. speaking of tailoring, every quests should be hand crafted with love and purpose. This is where i need YOUR help!

 

I could do all of this by myself, but that would not make things very interesting! and it would take forever. the more people, the more ideas, the faster it gets done. So here is what i propose!

 

Anybody who wants to, either individually or collaboratively, sumbit your ideas! Choose a miscellaneous quest, and make it yours, own it. Take the basic idea, and like i did above, expand it into something that is far better! Start with the quest idea and design, move on to dungeon design, character design, and other things if applicable, and figure out how it will affect the world of Skyrim! Once you have that it is time to start making it real. Either request it to be done, or do it yourself! I believe a collaboration like this from the community will make a night and day difference to this game, turning it from a lifeless beta into the game we really want to play! I am starting with miscellaneous quests, because they have the smallest impact on the game, and I want this idea to be thoroughly tested before I move onto the "real" quests and start making every NPC and dungeon unique and interesting in the same way as the quests.

 

If you like this, make an effort to help out and contribute! I really want to see this accomplished, but if i have to do this by myself I can promise i wont ever finish it completely. Let's get this thing going!

 

(Some ideas to get the juices flowing:

-Bounties are for unique bandits, limited in number (trash the radiant system until a better use is devised).. maybe you could join them instead of killing them, and raid the people who left a bounty on their head? replace the bandit chief?

-A nord holiday tradition, getting ready for this holiday where everyone runs through town naked in a giant brawl, the winner gets a prize.

-Retrieving and delivering items... who am i a courier? im the freaking dragonborn. either make up a whole new quests,OR, roleplay. You ARE the dragonborn, champion of the people, helper of the little guy. do people favors and you will get favors in return and your fame will spread. or are you a power hungry dragonborn, too busy for the likes of beggars? let them know, and watch as your fearful reputation spreads through skyrim. this could be a whole nother mod... fame and infamy. or at least PEOPLE RECOGNIZING YOU ARE THE DRAGONBORN!. c'mon.

 

Edited April 21, 2013 by Dovahkruziik