Book Incentives

[MachanStripes]

I've noticed that, in vanilla oblivion, I, and probably many others, never read ANY books. I only picked them up if they were worth a lot - pretty much all of those were skill books. I was just thinking, what if there was some sort of incentive to reading book - perhaps some ulterior mystery enshrouding all the books, or a treasure map in one that was ona page 2/3rds of the way through. Maybe even a blatant treasure haul location, but put into the text...EG and then he buried his treasure near point X...even if that only happened to a couple of books, if it was said in the readme, then it would give people a reason to read EVERY book, ALL the way through. OR, of course, it could just be a reward for those who do read books. Hows that?


Thanks,
MS

[jucklesjenk]

I've noticed that as well.

Maybe we could add unmarked quests like in Fallout 3.
eg Jiggs' Loot - You go to the museum of technology, work out the terminal codes, unlock the safe, get a note telling you where to go, you go and find the best Chinese Assault Rifle in the game.

Do a version of this in BM, for example - you read a mythology book with scrawled handwriting at the back saying to an intended reader (not the PC) where to go; you go there and pick up a trail of clues showing where this guy has been such as notes, diary pages etc.; you eventually find his body and some final clues; you follow the clues; kill some massive creature and get a rare artifact, all of which comes from actually reading a book manually rather than opening it and getting a quest update. The downside of unmarked quests, however, is a damn lot of scripting.

There were plenty of artifacts that had to be physically found rather than being quest rewards in Morrowind, which was part of it being such an enjoyable game - there was just so much to do.

[Deeza]

Good ideas, people! I would like to see them developed more specifically though.

There will certainly be a lot of gameplay information hidden in some of the books - for example the ones about Bhuru magic and the powers of the Hist will include some hints about how to do certain things in the game. The idea is to make players work for these things a little, as some of it is quite cryptic.

[MachanStripes]

Thanks. I wouldn't have a clue as to what to do though, I just saw that people like you has written loads of books, and it would be a massive shame if they were just used as filler...

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Some of the filler stuff really fleshes things out though for those who are inclined to read. Some stuff, like the rootworms, offers vital background info to the beasts themselves and could be used as 'must-have' reads for the PC. I also have a Shadowscale quest that has just needed to be edited for a while now. It involves using a character's diary...but the story builds gradually and the whole thing is quite text-based. I think if you lead a player to a book then they'll discover its relevance in line with the plot and they're more likely to read it. It's just a case of guiding the reading in a way that supports the quest they're currently on. Hopefully, we can keep our writing and quest-making quite tight in this way....as Bethesda's method seemed a little arbitrary at times.

[Koniption]

Another idea I had as incentive to read the books, is for the player to have to read the books in order to answer the questions on a test or quiz given by a scholar or mage... I guess as part of the process to be admitted into that guild or whatever.

Koniption

[jucklesjenk]

Yeah, just like that quest in Morrowind for the Legion where you have to read the Red Book of Riddles and physically memorise it to answer the riddles correctly to the person.