I am in the preliminary stages of putting together a mod for New Vegas and would like to get some opinions from the modding community. The mod is going to be set up as just another side quest in New Vegas, no new textures, or modifications to the script, or anything like that. I plan to construct the entire thing in GECK, although I have no previous experience with the software. Is it very difficult to write a quest in the GECK? I would just need to create a couple of areas in the game, and some dialogue and basic movement for the NPCs. How difficult would this be, and is it possible to do if one has no previous modding experience?

Also, I am wondering what you guys think about the potential audience for a mod like the one I am intending. It is going to have a much larger focus on character than most quests in New Vegas, and the evolution of the plot in my story will be based not only on the player's actions, but also on how these people who I am writing for the game would realistically behave. Of course, all of the big decisions will be left up to the player, that's what makes video games fun!

I was also planning on fully voicing the mod. How hard is it to get the character models to lip sync in the game? I read somewhere that you have to make the lip sync file in the Oblivion Construction Kit and then somehow move it into the New Vegas mod so that the characters will lip sync. Could somebody possibly clarify how this process works? If it's too complicated, it's not necessary that my mod be voiced, it would just make it much more engaging.

Define 'highbrow'? I don't think anybody specifically wants to play quests with no depth where the characters act solely as dummies for the player to run between, but equally people don't want to feel like side-characters in somebody's fanfiction. Basically your description sounds good, but self-labelling it as 'highbrow' does raise a few negative flags.

Writing quests is relatively easy if a tad fiddly once you get your head around the quirks of the GECK- unfortunately the New Vegas GECK is more quirky than the Fallout 3 one, particularly the 'they disabled the error messages' bit (there's the GECK-Power Up NVSE plugin that returns them). There's a large number of tutorials on pretty much everything on the Nexus and the GECK wiki, and video tutorials on Youtube (including official ones). The easiest thing to do is just dive in and try messing around with things to see what you can make- then, when you've got some experience and made a few small things, attempt your project. If your first few creations are being driven by what you discover you *can* do, rather than being an exercise in trying to do stuff and finding out you can't and don't know why, then you're going to have an easier time making your big project later.

Any quest mod of good quality will be appreciated if it's built well. I think TheTalkieToaster's advice is sound. I think your big focus, at first, should be learning to use/starting to work in the GECK. None of what you want to do is hard, but it can be frustrating to learn, as info can be hard to find when you want it. Starting on little stuff to learn your way around the GECK will be great practice. The lipsyncing, btw, is dead easy, although it's the most boring task I've ever had to do for a mod. There are tutorials that can help you do that when you are ready for it.

I suggest you spend some time with http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Main_Page if you haven't already.

:) llama