I figured i'd put out what i've done so far so people can play with it and tell me what needs to be adjusted and refined.

What i've done so far is add in twelve companions to most factions. three of three ranks at each questgiver, generally. Great Houses have only nine, but they provide services. the East Empire Company only has three, and they are all merchants. You can only have one of my followers at a time. they will deny services unless you outrank them by two ranks. they will not offer the travel together topic until you outrank them by two. when you select the travel together topic, you can tell them to follow you, which will enable companion share. if you leave them with negative profit, they will deny services, stop following you, and you will incur a bounty equal to their lost profit. telling them to wait makes them stop following and disables companion share. dismissing them will have them stay where they are for three days, then they are transported back to their spawnpoint. they will not follow you during this time. if killed, they will respawn in three days,but no one will follow you for three days after that.

my next step is adding in guildmaster functions, starting with the Fighter's Guild. you'll be assigning jobs to these minions, the chance of success will be based on the mission you assign and which underling you assign it to. things like that. i'll also make necessary adjustments to the minions. first off is a dynamic spawn version for folks that dont mind merging leveled lists.

comments and suggestions are welcome. if you'd like to contribute by making NPCs less generic, let me know. there is a whole lot of room for character development.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35483

new version uploaded to nexus. it uses leveled lists, so be warned about that. refined the minions a bit as well. added a "greed" system i'm kinda proud of.

Sounds cool. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Will it work with MCA?

it should, if you merge the leveled lists. i havent attempted either way.

Hey, this sounds interesting to me. I'm curious to see how this mod progresses.

i hate copy/pasting from my readme, but it's the quickest way of explaining the update.

If you are Master of the Fighters Guild, you can send any member of the Fighters Guild out
to "Find Work." In a few days, the member you sent out will return, and give you a
contract for work. Take this to the Fighters Guild Steward in Vivec, Guild of Fighters.
He will let you select which minion to send on this contract. You cannot have a Fighters
Guild minion as a companion while the job is in progress. Your journal should update when
this job is complete. Harder jobs take longer, and pay better. Each class is good at one
type of job, but bad at another. Should the job fail, every member of the Fighters Guild
should like you less. If you do not complete at least one job a month, Fighters Guild
members will like you progressively less and less.

again, i've been fairly arbitrary with payoffs and difficulty. feedback on these values would be appreciated.

also, if there is some sort of functionality you'd like to see added to a faction, suggest it to me... i can create something for everyone, but in some areas i just run dry on ideas.

next up is the Imperial cult, which will implement half of a "contest of the faiths" mechanic, to be completed with the Temple's additions.

Drat. When I saw the title, I was hoping this would be something to make advancing in factions take more effort. This idea is cool too though.

that'll be part of the "polish" once i add in "everything" i plan on doing. as this may take awhile, i recommend useing http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6036 with http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=1277 or http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1138759-btbs-game-improvements-the-topic/ in conjunction with my mod until such a time as i get to the "polishing" stage.

bit of a heads up, next revision will contain both Imperial Cult, and Tribunal Temple.

i bring it up because i plan on making these two factions somewhat mutually exclusive. if you progress past a certain rank in one, you wont be able to progress further in the other. to lead either, you must leave the other.

these two are going to be a bit more expansive than the Fighters Guild. the Temple and Cult will be struggling against each other for the hearts and minds of the population. as leader of either faction you will be able to go to selected population centers and collect tithes. you can either take the tithes for your own use, or give them to your steward in Vivec/Ebonheart. you can then allocate the funds you gathered in different areas to gather more converts. the more people you have, the more you earn in tithes. once you have the majority of three of the four contested areas per faction, you will be able to push your faction's agenda, politically. this will modify NPC reactions to you in many ways, depending on what you do. each point of your agenda you push through will cost tithes, though i am thinking of allowing the PC to supplement it with his own wealth at a premium.

i also plan on tightening advancement requirements for the Fighters Guild in the spirit of the mods i listed above.

in my own playtesting, i've noticed that i seem to level much slower than usual if i start out using a companion as soon as i have the rank to do so. my testing character is currently on his way to Vos with trusty RAK_fgba_t1minion (the nord associate). i'm level 2 and he's always 5. might have to squander my gold on training because i already lack the skill for further advancement. is anyone else in a similar situation?

I think having the ability to promote your faction member would be cool. Or is that already implimented?

nope, the companions i've made are meant to be generic minions. as you gain in level, you'll start seeing higher ranked companions.

it's my way of avoiding doing complex "companion level up" type things.

that, and the ranks are part of their names. it's be kind of wierd if "Fighters Guild Associate" was really a Guardian =D

it might be something for me to look into when i'm "finished," but for me to do that, i'd probably need someone who would want to make the companions less generic, something i'm not really interested in.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35483

again, chopping from my readme:

You will not be able to join or advance in the Tribunal Temple if you are rank 5 (Adept) or higherin the Imperial Cult, or vice-verse. This is solved by getting expelled from the opposing faction.If you lead either faction, four areas start producing tithes. For the Temple, these areas areBalmora, Ald-ruhn, Gnissis, and Molag Mar. For the Imperial Cult, these areas are Fort Moonmoth,Fort Buckmoth, Gnissis, and Wolverine Hall. Every week (seven days) of gametime, these areasProduce tithes. Tithes are collected usually from questgivers, or NPCs you can talk to to jointhe faction. You can tell that there are tithes to be collected in the area by the presence ofa "collection plate" in your inventory. Tithes are given in a sealed sack. This sack's weightdepends on the total amount of tithes held. You can "equip" the sack to use it, and get a promptto take the gold for your own personal use.You can turn the sack of tithes in at your faction's Steward, located in Vivec, High Fane for theTribunal Temple, and Ebonheart, Imperial Chapels for the Imperial Cult. Also at your Steward,you can set the tithe rate for each area from 10-50% in 10% increments, or donate your own goldin amounts of 100, 1,000, and 10,000. When you spend tithes (donated funds count as well) you mustuse the entire amount to one area. Doing so will increase your influence in the area, and eventuallygain you more converts. High influence also has less of a chance at incurring an influence penaltybecause of tithing rate. To put it simply, you will lose influence if your influence is belowyour tithe rate. If the opposing faction controls over half the population, you will lose influence.Using Collected tithes is more effective at increasing your influence than using funds you donate.The first time you Collect tithes, you will receive a "tithe ledger". This scroll will tell you exactlyhow much you are carrying in tithes, and give you the vital statistics for every area. Anytime you collecttithes from then on, if you do not have a ledger, you will be given a new one.I have changed the minimum requirements for joining and advancing in the Fighters Guild, Imperial Cult,and Tribunal Temple.

well, i regenerated my test version after that mess up with TEStool, tweaked some things, and managed to get everything working. i now understand how to script new criminal acts. if anyone is interested in that, we can discuss it in my scripting woes thread, or just ask in my thread at GHF, i'll watch both and explain if needed.

what i also got working is every peice of functionality needed for the thieves guild workover. in brief, you can send any guildmember out on one of five or six jobs. you can extort any peasant or merchant not in the Thieves guild. you can take any NPC of the class Noble hostage. failing extortion or a kidnapping attempt are crimes. NPCs will call the guards, and quite possibly attack you. if you succeed your kidnapping attempt, you will have to lead the NPC to any of the Thieves Guildhalls, without getting too far from your hostage. if you get too far away, te noble will balk, and you will have a day to attempt to kidnap them again, or they will return to where you first took them. if you do manage to get the noble to the guildhall, he will wait there for two or three days, at the end of which, the noble returns to the spot you took him, and the guild member who pays your bounty off will have the gold from the noble's ransom for you. the thieves guild also has had their requirements worked over to match those of the other factions i have worked on.

Very cool.

it's not dead, just resting!

the tediousness of my current modwork has sapped a little desire to work on it, and new vegas snagged be for a little bit, but i am back to actively working on this. it seems the only thing i'll be adding is patrols for the legion. you can lead (or just authorize) patrols from legion forts to nearby cities. this update will likely be released within a week of me overcoming my current script hurdle.

Keep going on this project!

thanks, the encouragement is heartening. never fear, i am still making progress.

anyone have any suggestions for features and functions? any commentary on what i've done so far? bugs or conflicts with other mods (aside from obvious choices, of course)

aside from promoting and demoting faction members, that is. i MIGHT include such a feature somewhere down the road, but i want to avoid overlap with Antares' big mod.

also, i'm planning on doing the mages guild next, this should increase the difficulty of the overall game quite a bit, because you'll need mages guild rank to buy spells (i'll likely do the same to temple and cult, then telvanni when i get to the great houses) i also may or may not go about eliminating most "independent" spell merchants.

Heya! Just thought I'd pop in quick to let you know that I'm rather intrigued by your work so far!


It's a cool idea... and sadly, we've lost a lot of our Morrowind Mod cool idea people over the years. Some have passed away, others moved on to greener pastures... but it's good to know that we've got folks here with some imagination and the determination to -go- and undertake things like this!

I'm currently in the process of gathering up mods for my Morrowind game, as I've only just recently installed it on my new computer.

Once I've had a chance to get all that settled, I'll pop back in and take a look at what you have here. As far as ideas go... I've got tons of them... but I guarantee that they're fairly hit-and-miss, as I tend to be something of an idealist.


Anyways. Awesome work so far. I've read through the description and the read-me...

... I'll keep an eye on this!

-Cheers!

thanks for the encouragement!

what can i say, in areas where i cannot find something i like, and i have the tools available to make something i like - i will.mods that do thing remotely like what i'm doing seem to be few and far between.

now if i could only get these legion patrol scripts operating correctly...

The thing that this mod keeps bringing back to mind is the collection of mods created by Archmaestro Antares which allow some truly cool factional privileges as you increase in rank. I'm actually beginning to wonder how well this would play with those mods... as they do seem to have a similar goal in mind, of making it more interesting to be a member of any given faction. That's something that I really like, as the factions in Morrowind and Oblivion alike were quite painfully STATIC once you'd completed their missions. Their overall purpose, after such a point, becomes little... if anything.

And that should -never- be the case! There should always be more than just some cool 'reward' for becoming Archmage of the Mage's Guild... you should be given all the duties, responsibilities, and priviliges of the rank. Mods like Antares' and yours... they do precisely that.


Now, I'll share a few of my thoughts on the matter of your mod so far... or at least the version which is currently up over on the Nexus:



[The Fighter's Guild]

I love that you -require- the Master of the Fighters Guild to keep the jobs coming in if he wants to retain any kind of popularity. This is absolutely realistic. The Master of the Fighters Guild is the person responsible for making sure that the members of his or her guild are getting work. Without work, there's no money. Without money, your members are going to be going hungry.

If you are achieving this affect through some sort of scripting... then I would also suggest that you apply unique dialogue to the members of the fighters guild who become increasingly pleased or disgruntled with you. This would do volumes of good in terms of keeping the player feeling immersed. We all want to feel like our Guild respects us. Some dialogue to reflect how well or poorly we're doing would be wonderful.

Now... the one thing that I don't really like... are nameless, faceless minions.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that sometimes it seems necessary to create characters that can just be written off. People who are only there to fill a role, without providing any real enlightenment or character development. But as a general rule, I really liked that Morrowind avoided using this kind of 'throw-away' character. Even the "generic" mercenaries, thugs, thieves, smugglers, and slavers had names. They were people, too... even if they were just criminals who would try to kill you just as soon as look at you.

Now, mind you, that made their dungeons incredibly limited... because for the most part... if it was an NPC filled dungeon... then you killed everyone, and it remained empty.

So I freely admit that that is solely a personal opinion.

However... imagine that, instead of sending nameless faceless minions out to do the job... you could send -any- member of the guild. Just think about the possibilities that that could open up. Especially if you could 'add' new members to the Guild through recruitment, and then train them. Send a member out on a job, and they make money. Maybe they even have a random chance to find some cool loot while they're doing it, like a fancy sword or a shield or some armor.

If they fail... or worse... if they get killed while on assignment... it matters. Not just to the guild... but to the player as well. It becomes more than a matter of disposition being lost. Maybe you lost a gifted swordsman. Maybe you lost a -friend-.

What does the player care if some nobody without a name dies? If the NPC is generic, and their weapons and gear are all generic... and they never expand, or have any kind of personality to them... then the player is left without any reason to feel for the character at all. Sure, we feel a bit more like we have some power and responsibility to the guild... but we don't really feel like we're dealing with people who matter.

Just a thought, again... from someone who has been playing Morrowind since Day One.




[The Imperial Cult / The Tribunal Temple]


I like everything I've heard so far about how these two function... and the idea of them competing for the 'faith' of the Island is rather interesting.

Since the Dunmer have about 50% of the population, it would be easy to see how this could even be rather challenging to accomplish... given Dunmeri xenophobic tendencies.

Since my feeling towards generic NPC's is universal, I won't make any more mention of it here unless you directly -ask- me how I feel they could be better handled in this instance. As a general rule, we can assume that although they are not my favorite thing... I can easily overlook them.



[The Thieves Guild ]


I definitely like it... it's a good design. Those who want to follow in the footsteps of Gentleman Jim Stacey and the honorable thief can... while those who wish to follow the more underhanded tactics of the Commona Tong can do so, as well.

Where could this go wrong?




Anyways... it's very cool. Very cool stuff indeed. Keep at it. I look forward to seeing how you handle the Legion and the rest of them!

in response to your feedback (which i very much appreciate by the way, because it's the first detailed feedback i've received) i'll just answer a few points, so that you understand why i've done what i have. generics - i wanted to keep minions as generic as possible as they are respawnable. i wanted minions to be something of a perk for raising in rank, and i wanted them to always be available. that, and i am far more interested with the factions themselves along with scripting and game mechanics than character development. if anyone else wants to make them individuals, i'll gladly take the changes and go back to a "static spawn" version with an improved MWSE script handling the minions.

for the fighter's guild, i have a neat trick for making the guild disgruntled with you when you dont give them work. there's a hidden faction i created that has a very low reputation mod for the fighters guild more than any vanilla faction has with another vanilla faction. you are automatically joined to this faction when you become Master. each month you neglect to give the guild work, you gain a rank in this faction, lowering disposition. i suppose i can go back and add in some specific dialog for this situation based on your rank in this faction, but i thought i could slide by with default low disposition dialog, lol.

my original intent was to make any member of the guild a companion, but this is not only impractical (would have to script every guild member) but it's also not a very good idea at all. most guild members are quite unsuited to leave town. by the time the player is Master (especially with my increased requirements for advancement) pretty much every guild member would be a liability, rather than an asset. my "high rank" generic could probably beat most guild members in a fight. so rather than go through hours of painstaking work so players can depopulate their factions looking for a companion who can actually survive the hazards a high level player is likely to encounter, i made generics.

i'm not all the way done with the Temple and Cult. i'll be expanding them a bit more when i start work on the great houses. when i do Hlallu, i'm going to do an economy overhaul, and with all three factions you'll be able to ban items from trade, much like moonsugar and skooma.... granted you have enough support to convince the Duke that he should enforce it.

glad you like the concepts for the thieves guild, i defiantly had a blast making them =D

On generic NPCs:


As a general rule, I completely understand where modders come from when they create these... and where game developers come from in using them liberally. My opinion on them is entirely limited to the fact that they are seldom interesting, utterly devoid of depth, and lack any of those characteristics which makes them... well... a character. In my eyes, they are filler. And while filler is alright, as a designer of characters and a lover of character interaction... I am never quite satisfied with sending another poor 'red shirt' off to his untimely end.

It's not something limited to Morrowind, and certainly not your mod. It's just a preference of mine in regards to all all manner of RPG... and I entirely understand why such characters are not only important, but necessary.


Now... were this my mod (alas, I have no mods at the moment), I can tell you a few things which I would have done differently. Just as an example, of course.


The general members of the Fighters Guild are all rather ill-suited to going out and adventuring as a general rule.

For one, they're painfully poorly equipped. Most of them hardly have anything in the way of armor at all. Mind you, I have this nifty little mod that lets me recruit anyone... and then another that lets me engage in companion share with them... so I actually -can- take any member of the guild out with me... but still. They would die.

And my goal is not to kill off members of the guild... (or any guild, save for if my character is playing an enemy of said guild)... so I can understand why the next thought might be to make new characters who are more suitable to fighting in the wilderness. It's an excellent idea, at heart. Generic NPCs might die... but it's not going to bring the player to their knees if they do. They'll just loot their crap back and go about their way.

It works. I admit. It's a bit spartan... but it works.

However, there's also a compromise. Instead of creating constantly spawning generic characters with whom the player can go off and adventure with... no matter how many times that character may get killed... you could also create a handful of both potent -and- interesting characters, who FEEL as if they have been a member of the Fighter's Guild all along. Thanks to some of the truly advanced scripts available out there for companions, they're capable of doing everything from healing themselves (and sometimes -you-) to learning new spells, skills, and leveling up.

I'm not entirely sure if such a thing would actually remove the feeling of the character being 'locked' to your player's level... but it would certainly go a long ways to allowing the player to bring some interesting folks along with them. Furthermore, in the creation of the scripts which allows you to send those characters out on jobs... you could actually then code in a random chance for that character to level up while on a job, or find some interesting loot...

... or alas, perish painfully.

And then it could suddenly become -your- problem. If you get a character you're fond of killed... you feel bad. Characters like those become a RESOURCE, as a opposed to an endless tool of destruction you can send out again and again without concern. When a character becomes a valuable resource, we tend to treat them a little better than we treat other characters who just stand around doing nothing.

And if you create a few of these types, they could be virtual CLONES of one another, in terms of scripting and putting work into them. It would essentially come down to deciding their race, class, face, and hair... then equipping them with whatever default clothes and gear you want. The companion script applied to them would handle everything in terms of making them functional companions, unless I'm mistaken... so then you could just focus on creating interesting, quirky, fun, annoying, in-depth characters. Characters whose lives have some meaning.

If you do -that-, then the PLAYER becomes responsible for keeping them trained, equipped, and alive. It becomes more than just a numbers game of keeping the disposition of the guild a certain level. It becomes about keeping your best warriors alive... and training your new associates to become tomorrow's Champions.

Your mod is putting so much responsibility and authority into the player's hand that... to me... it just seems like it's be a shame if the characters and companions we're responsible for didn't have the same kind of importance. That's all.

It's not that I think you're lacking depth. It's that I think your mod is so good... that just this one small aspect stands out so glaringly by comparison to the rest of it. And so really, it's more of a compliment that I critique the random NPC's than anything.

I seriously think your concept is TOO GOOD for them...

How's -that- for an ego boost?

more than i could ask for, really. gotta be careful about boosting my ego. a decepticon with an overactive ego is never a good thing =D

i've avoided pre-built companion scripts, as cool as they may be with leveling up and teleportation and such for the experience of doing it myself. this is my first mod after all. i'll likely expand on the minion's functions after i cover all the factions. i just didnt want to spend too much time on the minions when the goal of the mod is factions. and of course, i'll likely accept any "fleshing out" (names, unique dialog, etc) so long as it's lore friendly and meets a reasonable standard of quality.

alas, "leveling up" NPCs is not as easy as it seems. you can change their level, but it does nothing for their stats. you have to manually manipulate those. it's a real pain in the afterburner, to say the least. something that can wait till the "polish" stage of development (something that i said about changing advancement requirements, and yet now i'm changing those as i work on the related faction)

i can definitely understand your points, and i dont want to come off as defensive... you've brought up good points and given me a few ideas on how to remedy your concerns and likely make my mod better in the process, somewhere down the road.

and for the record, i love redshirts. especially the morrowind variety. i was rather attached to RAK_fgba_t1minion (the nord fighters guild associate) and he got killed. spent a bundle equipping him, took him on as soon as i had the rank to lead him, kept him always till i outleveled him by two (leveling with a companion takes a bit longer, it seems) and in a cave i was sneaking around in, he takes off after a pair of conjurers who quickly bring him low. seems i forgot nord fighters are not the stealthy type. i'll likely take him on as a companion more than any of the other Associate level minions.

but i agree, i'd like him a lot more if i could guide his rise through the ranks and install him as my second in command.

i guess once i finish the great houses (my planned last factions to hit) i'll go back and see about implementing some of the ideas you've inspired in me. mechanics wise, at least... character development is not my forte.

quick update, my motherboard crapped out on me, and i'm using a crappy box that cannot even play flash videos, let alone run morrowind. i wont be able to work more till i get a replacement, hopefully by the first or second week of next month.

This seems like a cool mod!! Before I download and try it out I have two questions for you, however:

1) Is this meant to be an alternative or a complement to Antares Big Mod?? His mod fleshes out the factions in a lot of very interesting ways. It would be great if yours could work in tandem. I especially like the idea of adding companions. While Dracandros' Voice does the companion thing too in a way, I've been hesitant to download it after hearing that it's a bit buggy. By creating separate npcs for companions, you're avoiding a lot of potential conflicts.

2) What are you planning on doing with the "mage" factions, specifically House Telvanni?