» Thu Sep 13, 2012 1:06 pm
It's nothing terribly special. I'm waiting on the USKP 1.2.1 release, mainly, but it's almost complete.
I got so tired of the inexpert "no essentials" mods that I decided to make one myself, that attempts to remove an actor's essential status when quests involving them are complete. Important NPCs, or those useful to the player in some way, are protected rather than being essential, and killing an NPC will fail what quests they're involved in.
So once "Dragon Rising" is complete, the player can kill Balgruuf and Hrongar will become acting Jarl in his stead. Hrongar has appropriate dialogue to fill Balgruuf's shoes for the main quest and the civil war quests, and Ulfric and Tullius speak of Hrongar rather than Balgruuf.
Unfortunately, Hrongar's rather weak stat-wise, so the siege of Whiterun is a cakewalk once you get to the throne room. Oh well.
The only trouble is that it makes odd decisions like helping Ulfric take Skyrim and then killing him viable. I also didn't edit any dialogue, so NPCs will still talk about other formerly-essential NPCs being alive.