 Faction/Quests: Courts & Courting |
The Old Ye Bard
Princess
Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,663
Location: Post-Feminism
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| Faction/Quests: Courts & Courting |
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(Ideas came about after a lengthy conversation with Tabber).
Every Major city has it's own Court, and within that Court are the
Nobles of that Kingdom, ranging from Barons, to Lords, and even to the
Kings and Queens themselves. The critical part of these Courts is the
power struggles, nobles grasping for power at any chance they get, and
more often than not, the most effective way to rise through the Courts,
is to Court a noble Higher than ones self -if the Courtier is
succesful, then they marry into the titlement of there new spouse, e.g.
a Lord may become a Duke by marrying a Duchess. This can play an
important part in the quests of Highrock, and is an easy way to give
depth to the Courts -allow the player to Court certain Npcs, and be
able to rise through it, either by being 'promoted' in Courtly rank by
the King or Queen of the Kingdom via quest, or Court an Npc and attain
their rank via marriage.
The system for Courting would be as follows:
1) Player must either have a reputation over 50/60, or have gained a
rank in the High Rock courts prior to asking formally to Court an Npc.
The Npc the player wishes to Court must actually like the PC, or
otherwise will decline any advances.
2) Once the player meets the prerequisites for Courtship, the player
will be able to formally ask pre-determined Npcs to Court, the Npcs
being able to either accept or decline the players advances. If the Npc
accepts the players formal wishes for Courtship, a quest will start for
Courting that particular Npc (e.g. "Courting Lady Benoch"), and will be
added to a visible faction called 'Courtship of Highrock' (or something
similar), given the rank of 'Courting'.
3) Courtship of any particular Npc works like any other quest, in which
the player may be asked to do certain things to gain the approval of
the Npc (give them presents, e.g. a rose, get them infomation, even go
an assasinate other Nobles, if the particular Npc the player is
courting is evil). Once the player has reached a certain disposition
with the Npc, or has completed a neccesary quest stage, the option to
marry said Npc will appear in Dialogue (the disposition cannot be
altered by bribing, or the disposition game).
4) Once the Marriage option appears in Dialogue, the player can then
propose to the Npc (if they have a Wedding Ring), which they can accept
or decline depending on variables. If accepted, the players rank in the
Courtship faction will change to 'Engaged', and the option to have a
wedding will then become avliable once the PC has the necceasry funds
(depending on what courtly rank you and the Npc are, Lord, Baron, etc,
the amount of Gold the player needs to place down for the wedding will
be less or more), the player also needs to own land to be able to have
the wedding (in High Rock).
5) Once the player has met all the prerequistes for having a Wedding,
the player can finally get married, and their rank in the 'Courtship of
Highrock' faction will change to 'Married'. The player then will
receive wedding gifts (e.g. armour, magical items, gold, etc), receive
shared titlement of any land the Npc owned, and if the Rank the Npc
held in the Courts of Highrock was higher, the player would take on
said title. The Npc will then move to the Wealthiest home that is in
your shared ownership (either remaining in their own, ormoving to one
of yours).
6) If the Npc is to have an 'accident' or any sorts, and dies, and it
isn't proven that the player killed them, then the player inherits all
of the shared land, extra money, and is moved to the rank or 'Widow' or
in the case that it is found out that they killed their spouse, they
are given the rank 'Black Widow'. The player can then go back to
Courting other Npcs, and attain even higher ranks (once the PC starts
Courting again, they go back to the Rank of 'Courting/Courtier'.
The Npcs whom would be involved in Courting, would be a set amount, and
pre-determined, so you could only Court Npcs designed to be Courting,
not just any Noble in High Rock. Each Npc would be individually
tailored, have their own personalities, and the quests for each could
easily be very differnt. Most of the Npcs would only support
male/female courtship, however a much smaller amount would be open to
same sex courting (with the quests involved posibly relating to how the
Courts would view such a pairing).
Alpha Rank Icons:
    
Courtship can also be used via external quests, or the MQ, where a
King/Queen may ask you to gain favour within their Court, either by
doing quests for Nobles, or actually attaining power within the Court
by Courting Nobles.
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by The Old Ye Bard: 2008.10.28 23:27.
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2008.10.28 11:20 |
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Coinneach
Knight
Registration Date: 2007.01.31
Posts: 77
Location: Alba
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nice ideas 
I know I'm not part of the team, but I'll post anyway and watch to see how quickly my post is deleted or I'm pmed to shut up 
The idea is really good - it opens up so many possible avenues a quest
could take. The inheritance of land part opens up many possible
exploits though, so personally I feel that it should be limited to two
marriages in a lifetime for the PC.
Some of the quests could also involve things like asking the parent's
permission, finding lost family heirlooms etc. The player could also be
hampered by a jealous rival, who seeks constantly to stop the player
and could try and disprove the PC's land claims.
This could be a unique part of the MQ: the PC could marry the heir of a
citystate and eventually become King/Queen depending on how the MQ
ends. The fragmented nature of High Rock politics could be a backdop
for the unification of High Rock through a combination of conquest and
marriage? (e.g. player becomes champion of one state, king dies in
battle beside him without an heir, player proclaimed King by troops,
then marries into a royal family of another state to unify 2
kingdoms... ok il stop before I confuse myself more than I have you lol
:yes
__________________
Writer, Ideas, Concept
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2008.10.28 13:11 |
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nick_op
Baron
Registration Date: 2008.05.02
Posts: 446
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I think this is an excellent idea. It will definitely be a nice change from the usual Oblivion quests.
Nice work on the faction icons. I love the simplicity of the designs and I think they'll fit in with the vanilla icons.
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2008.10.28 16:59 |
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Coinneach
Knight
Registration Date: 2007.01.31
Posts: 77
Location: Alba
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yeah I suppose your right about the whole king thing, I got carried away 
still, it could be useful to incorporate this loosely into the MQ?
__________________
Writer, Ideas, Concept
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2008.10.28 19:46 |
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The Old Ye Bard
Princess
Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,663
Location: Post-Feminism
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Tabber42
Yes, lol (and noone will tell you to shut up Coin haha)
The rival suitor subject did pop up and I like the 'asking the parents permission' sort of thing.
I dont think the player should become a King/Queen though, it would not
fit the lore, and the player would hold too high of a position that it
would not fit lorewise in any future games. (The changes would be too
drastic)
Edit: Should they be allowed to marry if they are caught killing their
spouse? It would give them a horrible reputation amongst the other
nobles, so I doubt anyone would really want to chance their lives with
the player. Or possibly just make it more difficult to win the other
noble's hearts if they do. |
'Good' nobles would stay away from the player, and in general the
disposition of nobles would be down with you (and you'd get Dialogue
reflecting this 'oh, I heard that you killed your last spouse...'),
however evil Npc's, or ones grasping for power would be fine with it,
or even like you more (and it's more than likely that if you end up
marrying an 'evil' Npc for power and wealth, that if you sleep in the
same house as them, there's going to be very high percentage that they
are going to try and murder you in your sleep 
).
| quote: |
| still, it could be useful to incorporate this loosely into the MQ? |
As mentioned in the first post, you may be asked in the MQ to gain a
fothold within a certain King/Queen's Court, which can either be done
by doing some general quests within it, or Courting/Marrying a Noble
within the Court.
| quote: |
| The
idea is really good - it opens up so many possible avenues a quest
could take. The inheritance of land part opens up many possible
exploits though, so personally I feel that it should be limited to two
marriages in a lifetime for the PC. |
Each time the player tries to Court a Noble after marrying, it becomes
harder each time -the player could marry about 5 times, however they
would have to have extremly high dispositions within the Court, maxed
out Speechcraft, be rather wealthy, and never have been caught killing
a spouse. There would also be a limit to the amount of Nobles within
the game that are infact Courtable anyway. Though if the player did
manage to marry an excessive amount of times, they would get to the
nickname of 'Casanova', or something similar. Also, another side effect
of marrying too many times, is that you'd get Assasins after you! More
so if you were a Black Widow, and they know you've been killing your
spouses.
| quote: |
| Nice work on the faction icons. I love the simplicity of the designs and I think they'll fit in with the vanilla icons. |
Thanks! I've had some practise designing them before, so I know how to make them fit with the stock ones
They are only Alpha designs though, and I'll most likely be updating them, not to mention making a few more (atleast two more).
| quote: |
| I know I'm not part of the team, but I'll post anyway and watch to see how quickly my post is deleted or I'm pmed to shut up
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It's an open forum, and your suggestions and comments are very much
appreciated! You don't need to be part of the 'team' to contribute, be
it posting on our boards, to doing modding, or anything you so choose
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2008.10.28 22:30 |
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nick_op
Baron
Registration Date: 2008.05.02
Posts: 446
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| quote: |
Originally posted by The Old Ye Bard
Thanks! I've had some practise designing them before, so I know how to make them fit with the stock ones
They are only Alpha designs though, and I'll most likely be updating them, not to mention making a few more (atleast two more).
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Would you be willing to offer me some general advice regarding this? I'm doing the faction icons over at Project Windfall, and while I've managed to complete one set (you can check it out (final and WIP)here), I still have another set to complete. Feel free to PM me if you'd rather not clutter up this thread.
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2008.10.29 00:30 |
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The Old Ye Bard
Princess
Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,663
Location: Post-Feminism
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2008.10.29 01:11 |
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nick_op
Baron
Registration Date: 2008.05.02
Posts: 446
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| quote: |
Originally posted by The Old Ye Bard
I like what you've done there quite a lot, my only advice is that
rather than have them all have the same cutting into the background,
have them all unique shapes following the foreground image
And with your colour palete for the foreground image, open up stock icons, and sample the colours
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Cheers.
I went with the blue/gold colour scheme as those are the colours of the
faction, and kept the shding with hard edges as it seemed to fit better
than a gradient. I might revisit them at some point, but for now I'm
working on another set which will be more in line with what you
suggested. |
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2008.10.29 22:54 |
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The Old Ye Bard
Princess
Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,663
Location: Post-Feminism
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| Courting Quest/Npc Development |
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Okay, it seems as though everyone is happy with the general concept
(excluding Braggi and Gyssar atm, due to their absences), so to keep
things on the move, I say with move onto the stage of planning the Npcs
whom will be Courtable, the Quests surrounding them, and begin
development on the retextures, models, etc that will be needed for the
Quests. The quests need to follow the basic struture mentioned in the
first post, but need not neccearily follow them to the letter, however
gameplay wise some of the steps are in concrete when designing a quest.
Please feel free to post any ideas you have for possible quests or Npcs, no matter how small the suggestion is!
Cheers,
The Old Ye Bard
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2008.11.01 22:57 |
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Tabber42
Knight
Registration Date: 2008.06.22
Posts: 81
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Here's what I thought for Wayrest...
The Wayrest People:
Karethys, Dunmer, female, young Sorceress. She apparently was a
mistress to King Helseth and is in the Mages Guild (which may be good
for people who are also in the Mages Guild). She is most likely an evil
NPC. Most likely she holds little standing in the court.
Lord Darkworth, Breton, male, middle aged, Noble. He is the head of the
Knights of the Rose. Most likely a good NPC and holds high standing
within the court of Wayrest.
Lord Kilbar, Breton, male, Noble (Wasn't actually in Daggerfall, merely
a political faction). My thoughts is that he would hold a good status
within the court. I'm thinking he should be relatively good.
Alderael, High Elf, male, Castle Mage. He could be a possible suitor
(instead of Kilbar?). I doubt he would have a very high 'public'
standing, but he would have quite a bit of influence over the Queen
hidden from the eyes of observers.
Maria Petit, Breton, female, young Noble. She would be of the Petit
Family, which has been decided to be in Wayrest (which as in my other
post, is falling under hard times due to their money being squandered).
She would have little to no morals and would merely be interested in
increasing her status and wealth. She would probably require you to
marry someone else, have them killed off, and marry her.
Unfortunately I do not have Daggerfall and cannot check for other
interesting people, the UESP only lists off the 'more important' people
of the game
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Tabber42: 2008.11.02 06:04.
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2008.11.02 06:02 |
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The Old Ye Bard
Princess
Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,663
Location: Post-Feminism
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Tabber42
Here's what I thought for Wayrest...
The Wayrest People:
Karethys, Dunmer, female, young Sorceress. She apparently was a
mistress to King Helseth and is in the Mages Guild (which may be good
for people who are also in the Mages Guild). She is most likely an evil
NPC. Most likely she holds little standing in the court.
Lord Darkworth, Breton, male, middle aged, Noble. He is the head of the
Knights of the Rose. Most likely a good NPC and holds high standing
within the court of Wayrest.
Lord Kilbar, Breton, male, Noble (Wasn't actually in Daggerfall, merely
a political faction). My thoughts is that he would hold a good status
within the court. I'm thinking he should be relatively good.
Alderael, High Elf, male, Castle Mage. He could be a possible suitor
(instead of Kilbar?). I doubt he would have a very high 'public'
standing, but he would have quite a bit of influence over the Queen
hidden from the eyes of observers.
Maria Petit, Breton, female, young Noble. She would be of the Petit
Family, which has been decided to be in Wayrest (which as in my other
post, is falling under hard times due to their money being squandered).
She would have little to no morals and would merely be interested in
increasing her status and wealth. She would probably require you to
marry someone else, have them killed off, and marry her.
Unfortunately I do not have Daggerfall and cannot check for other
interesting people, the UESP only lists off the 'more important' people
of the game |
Lord Kilbar gets assassinated in Daggerfall, and Karethys is the Court
Sorceress, so Alderael couldn't also hold the position (though could
have a differnt role in the Court, or be apprentice to Karethys).
About 3 people is all we need for each city (and all we can really
handle), so Alderael could be made un-courtable, however integretated
into the Quest for Courting Lady Karethys
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2008.11.02 07:07 |
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Tabber42
Knight
Registration Date: 2008.06.22
Posts: 81
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Lord Kilbar doesnt exist in Daggerfall according to UESP Wiki, he
merely is a political faction. (You were thinking of Lord Castellian
who was assasinated by the enchanted robe, or possibly Lord Woodborne)
Alderael is the current Castle Mage as I have in my Wayrest doc., and I
think I will keep that (after all, Elysana wouldn't have someone on her
'team' who was on the side of her enemy).
As for there being quite a few people on the Wayrest suitors list,
these were merely suggestions and I was hoping to have them critiqued,
I do not intend to have them all, but I was listing off a variety of
people so that there is somewhat of a choice here, lol.
Personally, I think Maria Petit, Lord Darkworth and Alderael should be
the three myself. Lord Kilbar could be a suitor for anywhere really, I
see nothing that states what city he is from (so he could be a sort of
filler, should we need it).
I'm assuming that Karethys and Alderael would have basically similar
quest lines, they both want to keep (or take back), their position, and
would have quests to show that the other was less than worthy of that
position. Supposing Karethys was made to be a suitor, she would
probably have a power struggle w/ Alderael, and vice versa for
Alderael, he would try to prove why he should keep his position, while
crushing her.
EDIT: About Alderael being Karethys' apprentice, that could also work,
but like I said, I doubt Elysana would keep someone who is rumored to
have been a mistress to her rival for the throne of Wayrest. It might
work, I will think about that for my outline for Wayrest.
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Tabber42: 2008.11.02 21:57.
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2008.11.02 21:54 |
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Deeza
Editor
Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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Rather than having them all Lords and Ladies, I think that in Wayrest
at least, some of them should be from powerful merchant families.
In Wayrest the merchants are much more powerful than in the other
states, so its probably the only one where they would be influential at
court.
All of them would of course be desperate to gain titles (which as
commoners they wouldn't have, no matter how rich they are), so for them
the marriage would be purely a business transaction. Provided the
player already had a title of some kind, they would pay good money to
have them accept a son or daughter's hand in marriage. |
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2008.11.02 22:25 |
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Tabber42
Knight
Registration Date: 2008.06.22
Posts: 81
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That kind of fits in with the Maria Petit concept I already have going.
And I will have to talk with Braggi about if there are any major
merchant families, I am not sure I like that idea though. After all, my
thoughts on the whole courting idea is to increase your status among
the nobles of Wayrest.
And as history dictates, only very rarely do nobles marry commoners, so I cannot really see it fitting into this.
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2008.11.02 22:37 |
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Deeza
Editor
Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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Actually, historically in Europe at least, powerful merchant families
from the middle classes very often became nobles by marriage.
The Medici family in Florence, Italy, for instance, started out as
alchemists, or possibly doctors (nobody knows for sure). They later
became immensely wealthy through their banking and merchant activities,
and were soon able to buy up the titles of various noble families that
had died out. From then on, they married their way into the ruling
families of Florence, eventually taking over the city, and then, again
through cunning marriages and alliances, took control of most of
northern Italy and inserted members of their family into every Royal
Family in Europe. Just shows how far you can go with ruthless ambition
and a lot of cash.
Remember, lots of nobles in medieval times had their titles but little
other possessions. Many had castles and land, but no money to maintain
them, meaning they fell into ruin. A lot of Dukes and Lords in Europe
were effectively beggars, living off the charity of other people by
promising favours at court. And, of course, selling their daughters to
rich commoners desperate to gain noble status.
But please, don't include it if you're truly unhappy with it and it
spoils your vision, Wayrest is your city and you choose. Just thought
I'd set you straight about the history.
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2008.11.03 00:05 |
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Tabber42
Knight
Registration Date: 2008.06.22
Posts: 81
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Lol, well now I feel dumb haha, oh well, not like thats new.
And thanks for correcting me on that (not sarcasm if it may sound like it lol, I'd rather be corrected than live in ignorance).
And a good point about the poor nobles and such like that. I shall have
to look into it and stuff (it's not that I dont like the idea, I'm just
trying to find a way to fit it in, because I wouldn't really care if
Lord Darkworth 'gets the boot' so to speak, I'm just wondering how that
would play out.
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2008.11.03 04:07 |
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