» Tue Apr 07, 2015 4:08 am A little background: I'm working on an update to http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49369, which sets region-specific prices and merchant supplies for various items. In addition to the general immersive flavor of seeing things sold in greater quantities and at lower prices in the regions where they're most common (and vice versa), the mod also creates a gameplay mechanic of making a little profit as a traveling merchant. In the original release of the mod, I planned on folks figuring out these profitable trade routes by just looking at what was for sale in each Hold, and maybe buying some things and then seeing how much they would sell for in various other Holds. But I've gotten some feedback that I maybe underestimated how tedious it is to do that for all of the possible routes.
The purpose of this thread: I'm going to add clues in the form of journals and notebooks scattered around the world, and I'm looking for feedback on the text that's going to go in those journals. The idea is that they should seem like fairly natural additions to the existing game world, agreeing with (or at least not contradicting) any other existing information or lore about their owners. But within that context, they also need to give the player some specific clues about how to make a profit as a traveling merchant in my mod. The mod description only states that:
- There is a primary loop which visits all 8 mainland Holds except Whiterun, plus optionally Solstheim, Elsweyr, Wyrmstooth and/or Falskaar if they're installed;
- Each route on the primary loop involves buying something at its cheapest price anywhere, and selling it for its highest price anywhere;
- Consequently, each primary route will tend to be pretty long (like all the way across the province), and almost definitely never between neighboring Holds;
- There is also a secondary loop which visits every Hold including Whiterun and the same optional DLC/mod regions;
- Each route on the secondary loop involves a slightly lower profit (such as buying at second-lowest and selling at highest, or buying at lowest and selling at second-highest);
- Consequently, each secondary route is always between neighboring holds, so even though the profit per route is lower, you can potentially make more profit per hour.
My hope is that after finding all of the journals and piecing together their clues, along with the general knowledge of how the mod is designed (above), you should be able to deduce exactly what to buy in each Hold, where to take it, what to buy there, where to take that, etc. for both the primary and secondary loops.
What I'm looking for here: Any feedback! It's been awhile since I did this kind of writing (i.e. "flavor text which also supports gameplay design"), so I'd welcome any comments or suggestions. But in particular, I'd like to know:
- Do the journals all seem natural and reasonable to have been written by their owners? Or is there anything that makes you think "this doesn't sound like something that character would think/write"?
- Are the journals reasonably lore-friendly, to the extent that the game contains any other existing information about these characters and their circumstances? Or is there anything that makes you think "this contradicts what we know because of this other existing note/dialogue/event/etc"?
- After reading them all, how much of the primary and secondary loops can you figure out? If there are routes that a lot of people have trouble figuring out, I can add more clues.
In the posts below (because I'm not allowed to put so many quote blocks in this post), each journal's text is shown in a quote block under its author, and there are also a few general notes about who the author is and any other information about them that's relevant to the journal text. Thanks in advance for any comments!
