My WIP is meant to be a stealth-based low level adventure, at higher levels loot and monetary and xp rewards would be unappealing, there would be no challenge for the player if there are mainly easy and very easy locks, and no opponent is above 3rd level. Companions would make no sense story-wise and so on.

The current concept is that my mod plays during the player's trip to Goodsprings, near Death Valley, halfway between Goodsprings and New Reno. You make a stop at a small village there (or even pick up the Platinum Chip in the local Mojave Express outpost) and are asked to help the good folks, who were raided and robbed recently. When the story is finished, you continue the journey, the original New Vegas Intro starts, and you wake up in Doc Mitchell's House. The Pip-Boy is yours to begin with, and the doc just gives you the stuff you "acquired" while playing my mod.

One downside is that I obviously can't make a nifty CGI intro. The best I can hope for is to piece together a couple of Ron Perlman quotes to get some proper narration for a slideshow or cutscene intro. The other, stronger, argument against that idea is that there can be only one alternative start mod, with my mod I would compete with anyone who had a similar idea. That not everyone wants to start a new game to play a mod is a feeble argument, it's already decided that this mod aims for low level characters, there wouldn't be much fun playing it with mid or late game characters.


I'm still at a point where I can easily change the concept. An alternative would be making the quest-giving village be Goodsprings, and you get my quest after proving yourself by taking care of the Powder Gangers. In this case I'd have to find a suitable place for the main stage of my mod: A pre-war retirement home, meanwhile tidied up and inhabited by a guy who could be described as Tenpenny's liberal (but capricious) cousin and his hired muscle (who raided the village).

The downside with Goodsprings is that I'd need some voiceout for at least one of the major NPCs (Trudy, Sunny or Doc Mitchel), and need to edit the main Worldspace. The advantage (for me) is that I need to do less tedious world-building.

So before I start working on a new worldspace, just to make an alternative-start mod nobody wants to play, what do you think? Is it okay to have an alternative start for a quest mod, or should I rather expand Goodspring's story?

while i would REALLY like a good alternative start to be more than an options menu, i feel that Goodsprings could use fleshing out more. also, maybe a way to get the quest regardless of whether you side with Ringo or the Powder Gangers.