First off, this idea isn't actually my own-- someone posted a thread about it not that long ago, and I thought it was a good idea, and decided I would give it a go; I can't find that original thread right now, but if someone can, I'd be happy for the link. I don't know how far this Mod will go, since right now it's just a bit of fun, but hopefully it will be completed

The premise is simple: A *Reason* for the PC to butcher NPCs in a violent and cruel manner. What the Mod aims to do is simulate the urge to commit murder through a series of Buffs/Debuffs based on the PC's "Mental State"-- as time passes, your mental state drains, and you need to kill in order to regain your Mental State.

Mental State has three Levels:
- Normal - A typical person. During this time the PC can function correctly in society, and seems to be perfectly normal.
- High - After a Kill, the PC is feeling on top of the world, is more confident and better able to engage with life's hardships (i.e., has Buffs)
- Low - Too long without killing negatively affects the PC's ability to function, making it harder to blend in (i.e., has Debuffs)

It's only early days, but the idea is that the system will randomly generate your "killer profile" when the Mod first loads-- it will determine which Gender your PC goes after (Male, Female, or Either), which of the Ten Vanilla Races (or all of them), the "high" they get from a kill and how fast their mental state drops (which affects how often they need to kill); also it will determine how they react to having a bounty-- do they get confident, or do they get nervouse; does it make them need to kill more, or less?

Roleplaying is, of course, involved-- you'll need to define your own story about how the PC copes, the Mod just aims to make it more fun, and challenge you a little (by deciding your victim profile)

Note: Obviously I know this doesn't represent the true complexity of real mental conditions which can cause people to become serial killers, but the idea is to try and make it fun/playable, whilst also making it an interesting alternative style of gameplay.

One thing: you should make sure it takes few kills before the player becomes a murder, or give the player a choice. In my noble warior file I once killed that woman in the Siren's Diseption quest before she attacked me even though we were in the fight and the game thought I was a murderer and made Lucien lachance come. It's an unlikely occurance but there are probable a few other ways to do it and it would be a bit rubbish for the game to think you were a phycotic murder and give you a debuff for the rest of ever.

Anyway, this would be great fun for assasin characters. It would certainly give you something to think about at the end of the DB questline.

A serial killer could maybe be a former DB member who got kicked out for whatever reason...Now he is freestyling it.

This is something I have been wondering about for some time now. With this I have a reason for randomly killing people besides lowering my lag.

Which makes me remember, the Dark Brotherhood has a hatred for freelance assassins and serial killers since it can affect their (already bad) reputation. And because they want to keep control of assassins and killers under their roof.

Thus, Dark Brotherhood assassins who ambush you while sleeping could be nice, if you have performed too many freelance murders.

Cliffworms - reminding us all of Daggerfall
When the Brotherhood was willing to do all sorts of killing
But looked askance at killing freelance.
When you're asleep, the Brotherhood creeps
Up close to you to say that it knows of you
And your deeds, and now it needs
An answer: Will you chance, sir,
To go it alone? Or will you become one of the Brotherhood's own?

gothemasticator

Sounds like an interesting idea... I may, later, look into circumventing the DB join Quest until you kill enough people... But that's for later

Right now, I have the first part of the system set up: Oblivion correctly generates a Killer Profile, and marks the relevant Targets (so for example, if you got "Gender=Female" and "Race=Argonian", all Female Argonians would be tagged). I may add a .ini file, so you can choose a Race, or let it Randomly Generate one for you (for better Role Playing), but right now I'll stick to the random system for ease of coding/testing.

What I'm planning is to have it highlight the NPCs as your need to kill becomes more intense. The idea behind this is that the aura around them becomes a "destraction" and represents the PCs constant awareness of the target (i.e., "Those Breton's... They're everywhere... All of them... All the time..."). Kind of like your PC's need to kill getting in the way of other things. This would only happen, however, at the lower end of the Debuffs-- so when you're really suffering from not killing enough.

Right now, you can go 3 Days from Maximum High to Maximum Low (it's actually 10,800 Seconds/180 Minutes/3 Hours/90 Game Hours - At Default Time Scale of 30). But After 2 Days without a Kill, you'll begin suffering the first signs of Low Mental State.

2 days? Ouch. With a mod like this however, an ini would be very useful.

Anyway, I'd definately download this if it works fine. It'll give me and excuse to start a new character.

Well, at the moment I've got it set as follows:
3 Possible Mental State Drain speeds - Slow, Normal, Fast
Slow - 3 Seconds Per Unit (So 3,600 per 3 Hours)
Normal - 2 Seconds Per Unit (So 3,600 per 2 Hours)
Fast - 1 Second Per Unit ( So 3,600 per Hour)

So it should work out something along the lines of (from Maximum High to Maximum Low)
Slow - 9 Days
Normal - 6 Days
Fast - 3 Days

At fast, each "State" should take one day-- so kind of like:

[--- Low State---][--- Normal State ---][--- High State---]     24 Hours            24 Hours                 24 Hours