Gol Mok NPCing

Asset Progress: 

100

Status: 

Asset Type: 

Merged into: 

Description

Preface:
-The map 4 dialogue placeholders are out of place in some instances (a lot of them), but I made do
-this is my attempt at vigilante NPCing an area
-One NPC has a greeting that sounds like a quest, because it is. I could develop the quest further but I thought I'd upload it here first, hence the 90% completion.

Attached are two files:
1. an esp containing the full NPCing of Gol Mok with greetings, backgrounds, some rumors/secrets, and a mini quest.
2. my "design document" I wrote out before I implemented anything, which will be posted below:

GOL MOK
=============
i4-415 (Salvani Manor)
Bol Salvani - Hlaalu House Father; enjoys his post but can't help but feel his talents are being wasted. Spends a lot of time watching ships stop in Andothren to deliver his expensive wine. Ex-Hlaalu mercenary who rose through the ranks from his military prowess and some slight nepotism from his family in Narsis. Soldiers don't normally become nobles.

Aure Salvani - wife to Bol; thinks her husband should try to get another post but doesn't want to rock the boat. 

Two Hlaalu guards - one inside the manor one outside

i4-420 (Serul Farys' House) Locked
Serul Farys (outside) - simple fisherman

i4-421 (Ferila Telano's House) Locked
Ferila Telano (outside) - thinks Drala Hlaren is young and naive, she'll be back

i4-422 (Drala Hlaren's House)
Drala Hlaren - starry-eyed dunmer who dreams of leaving after reading books at the Andothren temple. Possibly sets up a quest to arrange travel and a job for her?

i4-423 (Grum gro-Shalug's House) Locked
Grum gro-Shalug - clumsy fisherman who dropped his pole in the water, miniquest to retrieve it

i4-424 (Roggard's House)
Roggard - old nordic warrior who chose to spend his remaining days relaxing and fishing by the river. Knows a few nordic tricks to catch fish ("Get down real close to the water. Once you make eye contact with a fish yell as loud as you can. If you do it right, the fish will jump right into your net."

Merging notes:
remove the boat, extend the pier out (add a boat with travel only to OE?), change int names, lock the ints mentioned above

To do:
Bol Salvani liquor closet (second floor)
Drala Hlaren moving out quest?
===========
End document

AttachmentSizeDate
Plain text icon gol mok doc.txt1.61 KB2017-05-17 05:35
Binary Data Clean Clean tr_m4_golmok_npc.ESP11.4 KB2017-10-13 22:01

Comments

Impromptu Review: Clean: Yes

Kevaar's picture

Impromptu Review:
Clean: Yes
Section File/Placeholders Used: No?
Map Filter Scripts: None. All NPCs need this added.
#ofNPCs matches #ofInteriors: Yes, three empty huts and three NPCs outside. However, the boat has not received NPCs either inside or out. REDACTED: boat slated to be removed.
Dialogue fits quest claims: Yes, well enough, Hlaalu noble sounds bored enough to do Hlaalu, Hetman, and Squirmy Scrib Pie quest.
Diaogue fits their NPCs: Yes, lol at the Nord advising to use Shouts to fish.
Names/Appearance of NPC fitting: yes
NPCs appropriately levelled/geared: No. Bol Salvani has ebony armor and weapons. These should be downgraded/removed. Fishing orc should probably have some fish on him. Could also scatter 5-20 gold pieces on the commoners, or low level potions.

Grammar Fixes:
latest rumors: "It's a shame she doesn't have any opportunities elsewhere. She'll probably end up staying in Gol Mok." Turned run-on sentence into two sentences.
fishing pole quest journal grammar fix "From the sounds of it, this is a common occurrence." Added comma

Topic/Condition Fixes:
Condition any responses to common topics with the Local TR_Map (4) variable, to prevent Vvardenfell specific responses from showing up.
Roggard's "little advice" topic would probably get lost. Might suggest to moving to own topic, or tagging as common to all Nords.

Misc. Fixes:
Add a small reward to fishing pole quest. Maybe orc can give player a fish.

Note: None of these changes have been made to the base file yet.
 

The Solstheim response will

Parker's picture

The Solstheim response will show up everywhere on the mainland because of how Bethesda didn't filter the topic. It think it would be best if any solution to this should be handled on a mainland -wide basis. Otherwise, we'll end up making the same fix over and over for each new location.

The Morrowind lore problem also sounds like something that should be fixed for whole mainland.

This is very nice work. The amount of dialogue is fitting for a small village like Gol Mok. Here's a few things I noticed, but otherwise this looks good to go.

- Bol Salvani calls himself a Hlaalu House Father, but I believe the name of that rank is set to change. It would be safter to have him say: "I am Bol Salvani, Hlaalu %Rank of Gol Mok." That way the game will automatically fill in his rank if it ends up changing.
- Shouldn't there be a Gol Mok topic? Most settlements have their own generic topic to desribe what the town is like in basic terms. Here's an example from the original game:

Pelagiad
The Empire built a little fort here to guard the roads between Vivec, Seyda Neen, Balmora, and points north. And then some veterans took their mustering-out pay and built themselves some little farms here. And pretty soon there's a few shops and a tradehouse. It's a pleasant little village. If you didn't know better, you'd think you were in Daggerfall or some other High Rock town.

I believe our backstory for Gol Mok was that its people trace their ancestry to the Indoril fortress across the river where Old Ebonheart stands today. Maybe that could be worked into a brief topic.
- One of the latest rumors seems a tad too short and adrupt. Might I suggest expanding it like this:
"I wonder what's inside that Dwemer lighthouse above Andothren? No one in Gol Mok would risk going there, but there might be something valuable up in those ruins."

The Hlaalu house ranks will

Atrayonis's picture

The Hlaalu house ranks will be kept at vanilla names. The handbook is unfortunately out of date since nobody updates it. Agreed with setting to to %Rank though, in case these are shuffled around in the future.

That's disappointing. The

Parker's picture

That's disappointing. The ranks we came up with were far more interesting, being unique to the Hlaalu, rather than generic ones that any House could use. But I supposed it doesn't matter all that much. It does make compatibility with the vanilla game easier. It does make me wonder why even bother coming up with cool, new lore when it’s not going to be used after a few years.

I'm not sure how much cool

Atrayonis's picture

I'm not sure how much cool new lore is being held up by having to use the vanilla titles. I guess we could rename them in TR_Factions if that is preferred, but then you'd have to go over vanilla dialogue and see if it uses the older titles instead of %Rank, and adjust it accordingly.

What I meant is the ranks

Parker's picture

What I meant is the ranks were designed specifically to characterize the Hlaalu as a Houe of tradesmen and mercantile officers and tell the story of the player's rise through their ranks. Like, the Tradesman rank is where the player becomes an independent trader within the house, House Contractor is where they begin working for the Hlaalu Council directly, and becoming a Gnostic Officer is when learn about the Hlaalu's secret plans. You could still theoretically tell the same story with the vanilla ranks, but the player's role in the questline's various steps wouldn't be as clear.

Granted this does make integration with the Vvardenfell quests a bit more challenging, but it's never been particularly clear how we're going to make those work properly alongside our own questlines. But I suppose this isn’t the proper place to talk about Great House questlines. What I think we should do is add time to review our planning documents to future meeting agendas. Everone needs to be on the same page for what is in the Handbook if we're going to keep the project going without constant confusion and setbacks.

all npcs have filtering

Mortimer's picture

all npcs have filtering scripts
removed hlaalu noble's ebony bracers and 2 darts, he still has an ebony shortsword and a single dart. he was a decorated soldier, after all.
fixed grammar
added misc items to npcs
added more dialogue filtering
moved the fishing line to a new topic "fishing advice" linked in a greeting
fishing pole reward now gives fish
moved all dialogue into placeholders (when I made this originally they weren't created yet)