Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-71.61.178.23-20130722105712/@comment-10056803-20131020032132

TheMindOfMadness wrote: Any other ideas on how to refine this^ concept to make it realistic? (in the TES sense of the word) How so? I have some random ideas, but nothing concrete.


 * Allow the player to base the guild in their house. As in literally give them a spare set of keys and let them live in your storage box that you bought or acquired. If not preferable, you could clear out some ruins and deploy, hire out a small settlement (about the size of a small Skyrim-size village area or smaller) into becoming a guild hall, bribe a government figure to let you use their basement, or if you're buddies with Sanguine he can give you one of his spare party realms as a guild base. Or be regular, and buy an empty buiding off a city's hands and convert it into a guild hall. You can later expand it to other locations. Like your other houses. Or other unused buildings. Or build them from the ground up!


 * If followers are handed out like candy with no relevant backstory (such as hirelings, housecarls, and postquest rewards from Skyrim), you could persuade them to move in with your guild. Otherwise, you could do a series of minor hiring quests to get some people.


 * Give it an almost formulaic Guild Focus based on multiple factors and skill trees that lets you expand the guild outside things normally considered guilds: Fighter (similar to actual Fighter's Guild, having your entire focus be this means you're effectively competing with the other fighter guilds. Can specialize into specific types like beserkers, heavily armored shield people, etc.), Mage (can specialize into the schools of magic and offer according services, or be a general mage's guild), Thief (basically a thieves' guild ripoff), Assassin (as Dark Brotherhood), Cult (pick some deity entities and get worshipping, which nets you a new shrine in your place), Merchant (general trading), Craftsmen (Every crafting tree. Smithing. Alchemy. Enchanting. You get the point.), Bounty Hunter/Mercenary (Kill things for money in standard RPG format, exploration probable), Social (Basically you're the hip new social organization and you schmooze up to aristocrats, diplomats, and the rich in hopes of influencing them.), Food (Get into the food production industry!), Inns, Taverns, And General Hotels (Make restaurant/inn/tavern. Get rich. Not responsible for awkward glitches like Azura sweeping up and offering customers fine wines while orcish mercenaries sing bard music.), Mining (go diggy diggy hole), etc. Combining various specialties results in mixes of guild types. For example, a cult to Sanguine that specializes in Social and Hotels would basically be a big 24/7 party club with individual buildings all around Tamriel. A Thief/Assassin combo would kill people and take their stuff stealthily. A mage/craftsmen combo would provide lots of enchanted equipment and high-quality potions sold at all the towns you set up shop in. Thief/Fighter/Craftsmen/Mercenary would be a form of ranger's guild. A lot of configuration settings determine what your guild is about, basically. With the right settings, you can make obscenely weird things like a cult to Vaermina that offers hotel rooms that give you different nightmares and stuff. Or Sheogorath's restaurant that specializes in cheese. Or be regular, and have an actual guild dedicated to mercantilism, crafting things the droves of adventurers and soldiers are going to need and you could actually use during your adventure (Am I going to need thirty copies of fur armor with a very weak protection from fire enchantment, or could I use a few health potions to swig mid-battle and reduce my injuries? HMM.), and manipulating the upper and lower classes to achieve your ends.

Any ideas?