Radiant story is the quest-writing system. The team is trying hard to not "Talk it up" like they did with Radiant AI in Oblivion.

From what I understand, Radiant Story's function is twofold. First of all, it is used as a "Failsafe" for quest-givers. Allowing many of the games' quests to have multiple start-targets. This greatly reduces the chance of breaking quests by creating redundancies in the system. (Example given: If you kill a shop-owner, their Daughter may inherit the business and still provide any quests/services previously available)

The next, and arguably more important function of Radiant story, is to direct the player's actions in a less obvious way, and provide rewards relevant for their character. For example, Radiant story can place quest targets in dungeons not previously cleared or visited, cause the player to encounter certain events (Such as enraged family members seeking a blood-penance for a murder you probably commited) and then rewarding the player with say, a bow and some high-quality arrows, if their highest skill is Archery, as opposed to a Sword of equal quality if their One-handed skill was their highest.

That's just fan speculation on my part though.

To my understanding the purpose of Radiant Story is to not lock out side quests because of pc decisions, but mostly to force players to explore the map. In Morrowind there was none of this pansy *** quest marker and showing the place neatly on your map-you had to explore, and for hours and hours to find some places. Thankfully you can turn off these stupid markers and explore the map like a true gamer.

The link is in my sig,,,

Radiant story is to Skyrim as Radiant AI is to Oblivion.

Wait, so Oblivion had Radiant AI system? I didn't notice the quests being any different on my other playthroughs and I thought that Bethesda said this was new to TES

According to the new achievements list, there are things called miscelaneous objectives. Maybe RS hands out randomy little tasks or something :shrug: