Quests? Adventure? *WARNING* lots of Screenshots!!

[raggidman]

Well now, how popular is this wine? You might look at the opposite way too:

If it is much loved, then no one wants the vineyard destroyed - vines are notoriously fragile, and anything can harm the taste of the wine. People in areas where there are vinyards are aware of this.

what if the tavern owner is not actually liked, but people put up with him because they like his tavern?

If we are going quest here then you might want a title that keeps the sense:

'the last straw'

or to keep it in the wine/tavern mode:

'the final bottle'
or
'the last glass.'

and nice one Remux for tackling the question...

[X23]

Good idea, at first everybody thinks he's normal, and if you ally with him, all the bad stuff you do will be covered up with no disposition hit. But if you ally with Vaniken you expose the truth, and the tavern owner leaves before he is arrested. One of the quests on either side would have to do with the Vineyard (Defend/attack) You can go out of the quest and tell the guards and they will resolve it, and you will get a +5 disposition boost for the town, or you can continue the quest and ally with one.

Vaniken is also popular, so the town wouldn't think theyy are having a dispute, but the town likes his wine, so if they knew what the tavern owner was trying to do (Put Vaniken out of business) They'd be mad. If you ally with Vaniken, at the end you put the tavern owner out of business and he leaves town, and gets replaced by another Khajiit. If you ally with the tavern owner Vaniken simply leaves and moves his vineyard and nobody knows why because you help cover up what was happening at the end.

If you tell the guards the tavern owner won't be liked, but the people will put up with him because he owns the tavern (Like raggidman said)

I might want to go with remux's idea, because that was good too. I have to discuss this more with Shunoshi after we can link interiors to exteriors, and the Vineyard gets built.

[shunoshi]

Both approaches are completely viable. It just depends on who we want to make the bad guy here. Ra'Viir (the tavern owner) does seem a better fit as the bad guy here, especially if we want to bring the questline outside of town to the vineyard. Regardless of how you look at it, hiring thugs to attack someone property seems evil in my mind

So, I would have to side with your current concept, X23. As soon as we can merge esps we can start preliminary work on the quest, but it will definitely need a bit more fleshing out before we try to start scripting it. We should try to come up with some more task ideas for each side of the quest, such as: stealing the family recipe, uncovering the tavern owner's shady dealings, stealing wine, protecting the shop, maybe even protecting Vaniken should Ra'Viir send thugs to rough him up.

We'll also want to think about starting a flowchart for quest progression.

[X23]

We have to have multiple ways to start the quest. Either you can hear it from Vaniken, hear it as a rumor, or see what is happening when you're walking around at night adn Ra'Viir is sneaking around. Maybe if you see what Ra'Viir is doing you can opt to join him and you'll skip the quests where he doesn't trust you and is trying to see if you are trustworthy.

Maybe he even calls the Dark Brotherhood to attack Vaniken when he gets desperate, and you have to protect Vaniken. That can be one of the near end quests since it would be tough.

Also we can have a way if you have a high personality rating, if you have high personality, and speechcraft. You can get them to discuss there problems.
But you would need high personality. To all quest designers make sure to make a way to be a diplomat as an alternative to fighting or sneaking. It would make it so you can actually be a non combat, diplomat character.

[shunoshi]

Hmm, Dark Brotherhood, that would be an interesting (and possibly quite difficult) twist. Now, if you were protecting Vaniken at the time that a DB assassin showed up and you killed him, would the DB then hunt you down or would they just chalk it up as a loss? I guess I don't really know enough DB lore to understand how involved they would get should one of there contracts fail. Being hunted by the DB could be a nasty, unforseen consequence should the PC try to help Vaniken in that case.

Interesting....anyone know of any lore surrounding the DB regarding failed missions (if there is any)?

Originally posted by X23
Also we can have a way if you have a high personality rating, if you have high personality, and speechcraft. You can get them to discuss there problems.
But you would need high personality. To all quest designers make sure to make a way to be a diplomat as an alternative to fighting or sneaking. It would make it so you can actually be a non combat, diplomat character.

That is a good point too, it would actually give a solid use for speechcraft and personality.

[X23]

Originally posted by shunoshi
Hmm, Dark Brotherhood, that would be an interesting (and possibly quite difficult) twist. Now, if you were protecting Vaniken at the time that a DB assassin showed up and you killed him, would the DB then hunt you down or would they just chalk it up as a loss? I guess I don't really know enough DB lore to understand how involved they would get should one of there contracts fail. Being hunted by the DB could be a nasty, unforseen consequence should the PC try to help Vaniken in that case.

Interesting....anyone know of any lore surrounding the DB regarding failed missions (if there is any)?

Originally posted by X23
Also we can have a way if you have a high personality rating, if you have high personality, and speechcraft. You can get them to discuss there problems.
But you would need high personality. To all quest designers make sure to make a way to be a diplomat as an alternative to fighting or sneaking. It would make it so you can actually be a non combat, diplomat character.

That is a good point too, it would actually give a solid use for speechcraft and personality.

I played through Oblivions DB questline and I heard nothing about what happens if you fail. I'd Imagine they'd send a silencer (A high ranking Dark Brotherhood member part of the black hand) after you instead of sending another low-rank (Who are still tough so imagine how hard a listener would be!)

[raggidman]

The thing that I keep considering is that Vaniken Ri is a most unusual name - almost oriental - as if say he was from another continent.

So maybe he has another side to his character and his business - a rare wine grower / import / exporter would be a fine cover for communicating with those far off, and that could add a very dark twist to the tale...

He may be personally charming, but have purposes that produce unexpected reactions. If he is a spy, then whatever the situation he will likely sacrifice whatever he has to to ensure that he lives and no one knows what he is, so that he can continue with his real business.

In this situation it could be that the tavern owner is the scoundrel, but that Vaniken Ri will want to prevent a nasty situation getting worse, even at his apparent own expense, provided that in this way his real purposes remain hidden. To accomplish this he might even do thongs that make others see him as 'saintly'. But what is he really?

[Razorwing]

Just a quick note to say that the character's last name is spelled "R'i".

The unusual name was invented for TES I: Arena, presumably before Bethesda developed any kind of influences in names. It led me to think that the character could be made to be from Akavir. I suggested that to shunoshi, and I think it was reflected in the character's face, which indeed bears a striking resemblance to east oriental folks.

[tombofsoldier]

I'm not very good with quests (don't know why) but you could have Garreth (home: Garreth Manor, RPC14, claimed and done by me) try to help out and fail miserably at it. He would try to help because he is a knight, and he fails because he's a sodden drunk (have him show up, then drain his fatigue for a couple minutes, I.E. he passes out drunk.) I think it would be funny as heck, and show that the pc isn't the only hero around (though maybe the only competent one.)

[raggidman]

Assuming that R'i is from an Akaviri background, then we have the Tavern Owner attacking a popular figure who appears to be totally innocent in the circumstances, but may turn out in a later quest to have been something unsavoury = immediate popularity, but later problems for the hero...

I do like the Garreth idea. If done he must be hilarious to be really effective.

aside: I wonder what would happen if Garreth met up with Razorwing's two reprobates? Comedy of errors? Could be that the tavern owner gets together with Razor's wood abusers? Thinking that they are just the sort to do the dirty and provide a distraction from the real attack. But they attack a neighbouring farm and meet up with Garreth and our hero can sit back and enjoy the confusion - while keeping an eye out for something worth his attention.

If our hero is specifically forbidden from leaving the area he is guarding then he/she can witness the whole encounter without interfering, which would leave all three NPCs alive for future adventures...if the neighbouring farmer's widow shoos the heavily armed and armored dodgy duo off with a broom, and then is mighty impressed by Garreth's bravery! I can see him sitting there on her patio, the wounded hero, with a glass of wine, bread, meat, etc, surrounded by treats and comforts as she mends his wounds...?

Then back to the real attack (which the brave Garreth is, between his injuries, the wine and the attentions of the avid widow unable to assist with) to which Garreth is a witness.