We don’t have detailed info about the guilds in Skyrim yet (we hopefully get the details around E3) but it is quite safe to assume that the previous system of guilds that you join, advance in ranks by questing and eventually become guildmaster will return in Skyrim.

I would like this topic to focus on what happens after you reach the highest rank in a guild. What particular gameplay features would you like in Skyrim specially designed for guildmasters? How far should they go with the management options that you unlock by becoming guildmaster?

Here are some questions to get the discussion started:

• should the player be able to lead all the joinable guilds at once, or there should be guild rivalries that force the player to choose at some point for each playthrough?
  
• should the player’s guildmaster status be permanent, or should there be rivals that will periodically try to take our place? Should our influence in the guild be maintained (bribe, persuasion, gifts, murder) with some sort of real time indicator of our current support within the guild?
  
• should the guildmaster receive special items/gold for the function? How many, how much, how often?
  
• should a guildmaster have duties as well? Attending meetings/ceremonials/participating in missions/advancing members in ranks/buying assests for the guild? Not accomplishing our duties should degrade our status (hardcoe mode?)?
  
• should the player have diplomacy/politics options towards the other guilds? Should they be in a menu-like window or actually transposed into the dialogue options when we talk to the other guild leaders?
  
• should the player be given access to the guild treasury? Should we manage the guild budget, with visible consequences in the guild halls decorations/guild members numbers/ guild members outfit?
  
• should the guildmaster be given the choice to establish another headquarters/ build and decorate one from scraps?
  
• should the player be able to send subordinates in missions? How would those missions be generated?
  
• should the player have the option to recruit guild members to assembly himself/herself a party? What about quests that are not specific to that guild, should the party members detect them and refuse to help?
  
• should the guild’s life be influenced by random events independent of our management (ie the members of a guild hall in a city converted to a rival guild > we must fight to conquer our possessions back)?
  
• should the player be a part of guild recruitment process? Should we have an option in dialogue to invite any npc of our liking to join the guild? Should npcs be able to change their default factions?
  
• should the guildmaster be able to know at any time the current number of guild members? Should this number fluctuate? What about a real time list of all the members, with name, rank, age, race, city, missions accomplished, current status?
  
• should there be any kind of guild wars planned by the player? Should we be able to sabotage the other guilds welfare? To what degree, should we be able to force a guild to close its hall in a city from lack of members/resources? What about war in the open, until the extintion?
  
• should the guildmaster be able to resign/assign another guildmaster in order to join/advance/rule another guild? Should there be any possibility that your bad management/politics would make ALL the guild members ask you to resign/kick you out of the guild?

(Note: I am aware that these options would cause conflict of interests in case the player is head of more than one guild at once. To be honest I’d trade any day the possibility to "rule" more guilds like we did before for the depth of management described for just one guild per playthrough. Feel free to propose other player options that are more suitable for leaders of more guilds)

^^This
Being master of all guilds cheapens the very notion of guild leader in my opinion. I like your list, especially giving orders, assembling mission parties, diplomacy dialogue with other guilds, recruiting new members. I'm not sure about guild wars though, what happens when your guild beats all the others, recruits their members, and all the cities become 100% thieves guild? What will they steal? There should be a limit how many members you can have.

[*] should the player be able to lead all the joinable guilds at once, or there should be guild rivalries that force the player to choose at some point for each playthrough?

No the player should not be able to join all guilds at once , atleast not to certain level ...> THere should be rivalries .... Guild A might not like Guild B ...

[*] should the player’s guildmaster status be permanent, or should there be rivals that will periodically try to take our place? Should our influence in the guild be maintained (bribe, persuasion, gifts, murder) with some sort of real time indicator of our current support within the guild?

Depends on the guild I would say murdering (except dueling), isn't really a deal for a fighters guild but for a thieves guild, bribing and the like might be more or less 'normal.

[*] should the guildmaster receive special items/gold for the function? How many, how much, how often?

Yes the guildmaster should earn some cash, on weekly or monthly bases I assume, I am not sure about how much .... or how many ..

[*] should a guildmaster have duties as well? Attending meetings/ceremonials/participating in missions/advancing members in ranks/buying assests for the guild? Not accomplishing our duties should degrade our status (hardcoe mode?)?

Yes , I love this idea .. Being Gray Fox in the Thieves Guild doesn't make much sense, being Listener of the Dark Brotherhood I didn't even need to visit the Night Mother, she didn't care ...

[*] should the player have diplomacy/politics options towards the other guilds? Should they be in a menu-like window or actually transposed into the dialogue options when we talk to the other guild leaders?

Yes by far I loved Morrowind with the houses system I can remember being into service of House Hlaalu walking around in a Telvanni Port 'where watching you (Hlaalu), Scum.

[*] should the player be given access to the guild treasury? Should we manage the guild budget, with visible consequences in the guild halls decorations/guild members numbers/ guild members outfit?

Yes there should be certain consequences even a majordomo or guild steward who says to you 'this needs to happen' , 'how do you want to short this out, guildmaster' ... Reminds me of Baldur's Gate where you could be head of thieves guild, head of a castle, or head of a Wizard Sphere, but being head you needed to do a couple of things wich might cost you money ...

[*] should the guildmaster be given the choice to establish another headquarters/ build and decorate one from scraps?

That is interesting havn't gived a thougth ...

[*] should the player be able to send subordinates in missions? How would those missions be generated?

Yes, interesting I have some thougths about this ...

[*] should the player have the option to recruit guild members to assembly himself/herself a party? What about quests that are not specific to that guild, should the party members detect them and refuse to help?

Interesting ... I can Imagine if you work for the murderer's guild and the thieves guild and you are on a murder mission that a subordinate might say 'no i am not a murderer, i refuse this' ...

[*] should the guild’s life be influenced by random events independent of our management (ie the members of a guild hall in a city converted to a rival guild > we must fight to conquer our possessions back)?

Interesting ...

[*] should the player be a part of guild recruitment process? Should we have an option in dialogue to invite any npc of our liking to join the guild? Should npcs be able to change their default factions?

Also very interesting ...

[*] should the guildmaster be able to know at any time the current number of guild members? Should this number fluctuate? What about a real time list of all the members, with name, rank, age, race, city, missions accomplished, current status?

Also very Interesting

[*] should there be any kind of guild wars planned by the player? Should we be able to sabotage the other guilds welfare? To what degree, should we be able to force a guild to close its hall in a city from lack of members/resources? What about war in the open, until the extintion?

.... I like you idea's really but I can't answer them rightly ...

should the guildmaster be able to resign/assign another guildmaster in order to join/advance/rule another guild? Should there be any possibility that your bad management/politics would make ALL the guild members ask you to resign/kick you out of the guild?[/color]

Yes .... they should

I really love what you mention you are thinkin' what I want, I agree on many points .... I found it rather illogical that you can be the head of a fighters guild , arch mage of the unversity, listener of the dark brotherhood, gray fox of the thieves guild. head of a knights order (if you play kotn), and mad god on the seem time ... Sounds awefully much to me ...

I think the guilds aren't opposed to each other...

I think it should be that Fighter's guild hate Marauders, thieves' guild hate bandits, and of course, mages' guild hate necromancer. That way, you could send subordinates to try and conquer lairs of some sort.

And yes, being guildmaster should have more quests and duties, because in the previous games, you become arch mage, and then what? Nothing.

The player should never be a guildmaster.

I like your list.

I have to agree though with whats been said that we should only be allowed to lead one guild. This would add a whole lot of replay value as well. With the supposed responsibilities of leading a guild it really doesn't make sense to rule them all. Besides someone will make a mod where you can anyway if you feel you have to do it.

No way :nono:


yea, we wish this is Bethesda we're talking here. Everything must be accessible to everyone, or else some will get angry that the game won't let them be Teh Godz.


Interesting suggestions I admit, some kind of Skyrim meets Civilization meets WOW. But to be honest I don't quite see Bethesda putting that level of polish into one single marginal aspect of the game. I'd settle for much less options, but clearly improved from Oblivion which was a let down in this respect. At least some regenerable quests, recruiting members, removing members...

I loved how AC:Brotherhood handled duties actually with the assassins. You have individuals who you choose what location and mission for them to do and you send them off. This worked well for maybe like 10 different people but I don't know how the guildmaster of the Fighters Guild would be able to do this unless you went by individual locations instead of people. Each location (i.e. Windhelm, Solitude etc...) should have a list of missions and a percentage that those succeeding. You can then group different locations together to raise the percentage.

But knowing Beth they'll probably come up with something a bit better. And not just a re-hash of Brotherhood.

Personally, I don't think the player should be able to become the Guildmaster of any guild.


Being Guildmaster involves decades of single-minded dedication to utterly mastering the field of focus for that guild. Along with gaining seniority, politicking to get ahead of the other potential masters, etc. It's not something that you just give to Some Random Hero who solved some of your problems and helped out a bit.


Sure, gain some rank, or be awarded with a "special aide" position by the current Guildmaster. But the player actually becoming the master of any guild, just by doing some sidequests over a few weeks of game time? It's honestly more irrational and "immersion breaking" ( :banghead: god I hate that phase) than most of the other minor trivia that people keep complaining about.

To achieve the top of the guild position should take a lifetime of dedication, in my opinion, and not something our character capable of achieving in such a relatively short time. Simply a very prominent position that allows our character a say and an opportunity to affecting the guild's policy would be just enough for me.

been waiting for a thread like this

If there's skill requirements (e.g. 100% mastery of blade/block/armor etc. gives you mastery of fighters guild), then the player character should be able to be a guild leader.

But being a guild leader should give you the impression that you are actually a leader. you should bump into your men doing jobs around the place, and so on. I think it would be fine to be a local leader (e.g. second in command to some other NPC) and then they give you random jobs for money. (go here. Kill stuff. or steal 3 diamonds/kill *random npc* at *random location* and so on) There should probably be more involvement with other members of the guild as well. There should also be some kind of, INCREDIBLY sporadic competition from other NPCs who think they can do your job better, based on how much time you've spent away from your headquarters (you can choose and change your Headquarters, but it HAS to be a guildhall)

Nicely said, I like the sugestions :goodjob:


I guess yes, I know others would like to be threatened by subordinates but I wouldn't like to feel like a chore to have to guard my back all the time like in San Andreas for exemple where I have to re-possess the streets over and over again it becomes tiring. But yes inside the guild quest line I'd like a few rivals that I have to outwit or sabotage or even kill why not.


That implies we have meetings and ceremonials in Skyrim in the first place. For us to have so much freedom and duties there must be a lot of scripting running in the back.


Hell yes!


That depends on how advanced the AI is. I hope it it that advanced.


Cool idea :goodjob:


Of course. The missions would follow a pre-scripted pattern (make money, train yourself, move to another city, clear a cave, ect) and your parameters that you can pick from a list are: what cave, what city, what skill or weapon, what sum of money. Of course the npc would have some freedom to choose where he trains, at a dummy or in the wilderness? With a sparring partner or with real enemies? Will he travel to the assigned city on foot, on horse or take a carriage? Will he bring you the required money by stealing, extortion, selling his wares, clearing a dungeon or by practicing a profession and selling the products for money? Of course this is complicate and again, needs a lot of AI involved. The Ai would better be what they showed in E3 Oblivion.

I like that answer, but people want to be the head of the guilds. I suppose it could be played out like the Blades were in OB, you could join, do missions, but the leader is the old guy that's been there forever and dedicated his life to it. Or like the Dark Brotherhood. You were never really made head of the Dark Brotherhood, just a leader of a small local group (that suddenly needed members).

If the guilds in ES-V are these old ancient Nord guilds then being allowed to join, in and of itself, should be honor enough I suppose.

I like this subject, it's one of the things people have been asking in the suggestion threads after Oblivion. Being a guildmaster should have much more weight than in Oblivion. Some micro-management would be great, especially considering the huge amount of time people like to spend in the game world after completing the main quest and the factions.

The new Radiant story system is a powerful tool that could help this. Having a built in system monitorizing all the player actions and changing quest parameters according to the playstyle is pretty advanced in my opinion, so asking for more in depth guild management could not be that hard to implement now. After all, prolonging a guild's life after we finish the quest line could be easily done by adding a system of repeatable quests, with randomly generated location-enemies-reward. We could do these quests ourselves, or alongside guild members, or simply send a member-a group of members to complete the task. The reward would go into the guild's bank.

I like your idea of having an indicator of guild reputation for the character. If it's going down it means it's time we go adventuring a little for the guild benefit, bribe the important members into liking us, or donating to the guild bank (I like the donation feature in games like Patrician or Port Royale, it buys you time and reputation if you're lazy and not in a mood to throw an expensive party for the community).

Having rivals that try to steal your position would be great. I don't mind if it's scripted, it just adds to the simulation of a real life organization. Rivals could hire paid assassins to get rid of you. If you can use non-lethal attacks on the assassins you could find out who's behind the plot and confront him/her and duel/kill/expell that rival out of the guild.

The relations between guilds are probably the most important thing for creating a believable war atmosphere, especially now that it's civil war and the Nord clans could be like the great houses in Morrowind. I hope they have big surprises for us in this department, guild wars where you're free to take sides and fight the other clans to their extinction would be just purely awesome. Maybe you can occupy rival territories by winning skirmishes.

That's what I'd like as well.

I want to be able to be the guildmaster of everything at once, save for any guilds that are mutually exclusive, such as the Great Houses in Morrowind. Rant realism all you want, it is up to the player to decide his or her own involvement and how far he or she wants to take realism. If you want to be really hardcoe with your roleplaying and all, then why are you trying to get to the top of all the guilds in the first place? Why join all guilds at all?

If I can join a guild, it's pretty much tradition that I can be the leader of it by the end of the questline, and I think that's great. What better accomplishment in the guild than being named the leader of it? If I could never be a guildmaster, I'd be left feeling unfulfilled. I'm just a high ranking member for the rest of my life? What if I want to be guildmaster? And for those who want to just be high ranking all the time, you don't have to become guildmaster.

I don't want to be forced into multiple playthroughs just to see what it's like to be the head of different guilds. That's limiting freedom.

A chore? But it's life, it was you who wanted to be leader, nobody forced you, there must be strings attached to such an important position! There are so many other members, some may be older and definitely older members of that guild who want and definitely deserve to be leader.

I think that if you are leader of one guild, the highest rank in another guild should be second in command.

Nicely said but I wasn't talking from a roleplaying perspective, I was only concerned about how it translates into gameplay. I wouldn't like to have to defend my rank every week or so :shrug:

I just don't want it to end after I'm the Guildmaster, thats just boring. What use is an assassian when all he does is deliver messages?

Nice good original topic...

I think the Guild should at least run like some sort of business once you reach guild master with decisions you make affecting the guild's revenue and the number of guild members. This aspect of ES has the potential to be the (much better) Elder Scrolls equivalent of Mass Effect's Normandy and Assassin's Creed II's villa which people loved so much. There should be a variety of decisions you should be able to make as Guild master that will affect the Guild's power and these decisions will affect the variables of guild which include...

1. The Guild's BUSINESS MECHANIC: with the all the usual sections of that: revenue, costs and profits... this is the main mechanic of the guild with each of your decisions directly or indirectly (through other variables) affecting the guild's business position. E.g Taking particular contracts gains a set amount of money for the guild based on difficulty: increasing revenue, certain contracts could come with some bonuses such as a town giving more money for removing a threat etc., expanding the guild would cost gold increasing costs and a set amount would be paid each week or month based on the number of guild members.

2. Guild POPULARITY: this would be affected by several things including casualty rates in the guild, taking morally controversial contracts on, hiring low quality mercenaries and taking contracts on that will benefit society as a whole and the amount of wages that you pay your guild members. Popularity in turn would affect several things... the chance of hired mercenaries staying on a permanent members, the frequency or the sources from which the guild gets contracts (e.g disreputable questionable sources in popularity low, counts/hold leaders if popularity high) the cost of expansion in certain areas and the rate at which people join your guild.

3. NUMBER OF GUILD MEMBERS: this would be affected by popularity, guild's overall power and death/capture rates (depending on guild) in your Guild. Having larger numbers of guild members would increase the number of contracts you could take on, ensure casualties are replaced to keep the guild running but a higher number of guild members would mean increased costs for wages (this is cancelled out by the fact you would be earning more money).

4. Guild POWER: this would be affected by how much money you have put into expanding the guild through decisions such how many Guild halls you own and what quality weapons you have equipped guild members with. Guild power would affect the maximum number of guild members you could have, the rate at which members join, what magnitude and difficulty of contracts you receive etc.


CONTRACTS: That's the main guild mechanics out of the way but now for the contracts.... when accepting a contract several variables would be shown to you....
- The total number of guild members to carry out the contract
- The total amount of revenue gained from completion
- The affect the contract would have on popularity (moral or immoral)
- Difficulty rating or potential death rate of the contract (decided by quality of weapon/armour shipments bought for guild members and the contract's difficulty)

This is just an idea though and this system could easily be simplified on certain elements removed where applicable...(could make this as a mod maybe?)

I think if when you were Guild Master you handled people in your guild like you do in your brotherhood in AC:B that would be cool, as I think that was done really well in that game.

Well thought thread :thumbsup: I'll copy these posts for the Tes VI suggestions threads :thumbsup: Not that I'm sure none of it will be included in Skyrim, but still...
Anyways, here's my contribution to your list:

- Only the similar guilds should be mutually exclusive (lunatic assassins vs mercenaries, nordic house X vs nordic house Y). I prefer to be able to lead the thieves and the mages at the same time, suposing I have the necessary skills and competence for both.

- I would like to choose (in a guild management window) what should go on automatic and what I want to influence directly. For example, maybe I want to take care of member recruitment and advancement, but I want to leave the budget, mission assignments and buying guild stuff for others to take care of. I want all the options to be toggleable, and if I somehow forget to perform guildmaster duties I want my subordinates to cover for me with no penalty. Seriously, I don't want the game to punish me for being a lazy guildmaster :laugh:

- I want the guild to have a well simulated life with or without me. Everybody should go about their business, make random groups for randomly generated quests, and it's completely my choice if and when I interfere with an order or simply join a group in a quest or form a group of my own. I want the guilds (all of them) to be alive not just puppets standing there waiting for me to do something.

- I'd like the option as a guild master to have much more influence in the community than before. I should be seen as an important person for that status only, independent of when or if I complete the main quest and save the world. i mean, I am the head of the mages or the head of the bards, I shouldn't be arrested for eating someone's apple, a little respect please.