I've been collecting materials and testing out scripts for what I hope to be my first "epic" mod for oblivion. Previously I have just done house, companion and quest mods for my own use but now I would like to do something for the community that I have taken and enjoyed so much from.

Basically what I intend to release is an alternate start mod that gives the player a chance to start the game the way they want to, allowing them to choose from a variety of scenarios that will eventually tie in to the main quest. For those of you familiar with the Alternate Beginnings mod please don't say this has already been done, what I intend to do is quite different.

When you start a new game using my mod you will be given a choice via dialogue box for what kind of life your character has been living. These choices will place the character in various locations around the world of Tamriel and initiate a sort of "Induction Quest Line" for your character. Hopefully this will add emersion to the game and allow players to roleplay the way they want to.

For eg. I have already decided and started working on some start scenarios:

Mage's Apprentice : Your character starts as the apprentice of a member of the Mages Guild who is studying in seclusion. Your initial quests will be seemingly mundane tasks such as collecting alchemy ingredients, contacting the guild on your master's behalf or purchasing supplies and you will be rewarded with spell knowledge for your efforts. Following this quest line will eventually lead into the main story through some event such as a clairvoyant dream of the emperors death or something (I haven't really decided yet) and send you on your way as a fully inducted member of the mages guild. Along the way you will make choices that effect what kind of mage you intend to be, leaving roleplayers open to create a back story for their battlemage, sorceror, wizard or even necromancer.

Small Settlement Hero : Your character will begin as an above average resident of a small settlement I have created. They will spend the first few days benefitting the community with tasks such as hunting, blacksmithing, farming (I actually intend there to be a few paths branching from this start so I won't go on) until, once again, the quest line drops them into the Main Quest. This start would be suitable for rangers, thieves, bards, treasure hunters and pretty much anyone who wants to come from that background.

Knight's Squire : Similar to the mage's apprentice. This will obviously be a path for warriors. They will start off serving a knight as his squire and work their way up in duties until fully trained and equipped as a knight (or similar) with ongoing duties that eventually lead into the main quest line. I don't intend this path to bring them in league with the fighter's guild as it really isn't a mercenary type of story path, but maybe I will leave that option open to the players. Either way it's not that hard to become a member of that guild anyway

These are my three main paths I feel are the best jumping off points for the game that I hope will cater to any kind of players role play fantasy, but what I really want is to hear what YOU the community would like. Please post here any ideas that you have and go into as much or as little detail as you wish. I will continue working on this mod and my current ideas and incorporate as many of your ideas as possible along the way. Hopefully I can have this out within 3 months (before Skyrim comes out and noone cares about Oblivion anymore )

Sounds good .

Best to start with these three though, as they aren't simple tasks

I personally prefer just being dumped somewhere, but this should turn out interesting.

As far as suggestions, I think there should be a start as a smuggler from Morrowind. After all, there is that lonesome camp of thugs just asking to be expanded on (though I do think I saw a mod that does so, but still). You could even tie it into the Mehrunes Razor DLC if you wanted, I'm sure those people could have used smugglers for something. This could be a quest start for thieves, thugs, or maybe even characters from that life that want to reform. I wouldn't start the character with a bounty though, I'd like to think they were either good at what they did or lucky thus far. Or maybe they weren't, and they left because they accidentally killed someone or something and had a bounty in Morrowind and had to get lost. If doing that, I'd make the crime vague though, only mention it as that thing that happened so that the player can decide exactly what that thing was.

Speaking of Mehrunes Razor DLC, if you did want to tie into it I have another idea. You're a former assassin of the Morag Tong, for whatever reason you've left. Maybe you were unhappy with it, maybe you were expelled. But you left for some reason. That's probably another thing you should leave open for the player. You know a guild member was captured in his attempt to assassinate someone in there, so you go and help him. But maybe that's silly, how exactly would you know? Anyways, you could give the player one of the lower levels of the Morag Tong armor, maybe an unenchanted version?

If you couldn't tell before, I liked the Mehrunes Razor DLC. Then again, I'm not sure that the benefits of tying into DLC is worth the trouble and dependencies.

I'd also suggest having an option to start normally and an option that just drops you off at the Imperial City or Anvil docks with no quests attached. On top of that, I wouldn't make them all have to tie into the main quest. Quite a few of us download an alternate start mod so that we don't have to do the main quest stuff and our characters have no affiliation with the main quest.

Evercharmer thank you for your input! I was hoping to do this mod using only materials I provide and vanilla oblivion as not everyone has DLC or even the expansions (!) but your ideas have got me thinking and I'm sure I could work in something along those lines without going to far off my already established ideas. My settlement option is gonna be the big one and will branch off in a few directions as you progress, this could easily tie in to it. I don't think I'll be adding an option for the vanilla start or just being dumped somewhere, though, as you can already do these things by using Alternate Beginings or just not using a mod at all!

Thank you also to Alithelord for your encouragement. It is a big task but I find working on it backwards allows me to add more as I go. build the quests then build the alternate start scripts. I think it's gonna work (I hope) :S

I like the idea of this, mainly because I feel it has a Dragon Age: Origins feel. I really like how each little beginning was different, even though they all led to the same path. So it sounds good.

To be honest it would probably be easier to do all the quests first, and then the scripts. The start up script should be pretty straight forward, and you can get "inspiration" from the many others out there. Quests, however, are more time consuming to do.

My point about doing that, though, is that this would probably be incompatible with the other alternate start mods. I would assume if you had already written the needed scripts to do so, it wouldn't be to difficult to do.

If you want a quest to involve the docks, though, it could start the character as a traveling merchant, and have a small quest for each where you have to finish a certain trade, either because helping out the people who brought you to Cyrodiil was part of the bargain, or because you went to do the trade yourself and decided to stay in Cyrodiil.

Here are some additional ideas:

Stranded on the Blackwood shore after your ship was burnt by pirates off the coast, and you escaped.

Stranded on the Anvil shore after your pirate/merchant crew mutinied, and left you to the sea on a boat.

Starting out of a farm settlement/village in order to sell goods to one of the city merchants. Not a town here, but rather an errand boy/girl.

Starting out as a beggar/drunkard in a city who has decided to adopt the Nine Divines religion and make his amends with the Gods by starting a pilgrimage.

My ideal alternate start would be to have the character start in a world where Mehrunes Dagon has already won, and the Empire is in ruins. There'd be a lot of potential there! (But a lot of work as well.)

Earthling immigrate: you wake up in the morning with the worst headache you've ever had. You find yourself in a cave, you manage to get out of there and find some supplies along the way. As soon as you're out of the cave you find a pool of water, you look down at your image in the water and you don't recognize yourself! [character selection starts here]. You don't have a clue on what happened, but one thing you know for sure you're stuck in this strange world and you're not supposed to go back home anytime soon. You're forced to make your way in a strange land alongside strange people and follow the rules of a world which you don't know anything about. MQ disabled ; )

Perhaps as a pickpocket, in the Imperial city or Bravil, that gets caught by a thieves guild member and told follow me. They then get mentored by this person, taught the skills every foot-pad should know, and eventually introduced to the thieves guild itself.

That's great I was thinking of something like that myself! I like all your ideas, thank you to everyone for showing interest.

Awesome idea! Also, don't ever be afraid to do something "that has been done before" as you always have the opportunity to do it different, and even better Otherwise we'd have no choices in our mods! Besides, this kind of thing is what I thought all of the Alternate Beginnings mods that I've played (which is two ) have lacked.

Also, I like the ideas you have so far. The one thing I worry about, though, is the Mage one. I never really play mage characters but I know that the Mages guild his really hard to get into, and you have to do quests for each city's guild hall before you get in. Are you going to be doing away with that completely? I honestly don't know how easy that would be. Something to consider, though.

But I really don't have any good ideas right now, haha, good luck! I'll be keeping an eye on this =]