Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Talk about the mods you'd like to see in Daggerfall Unity. Give mod creators some ideas!
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Silence
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Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Post by Silence »

While I think that having separate reputations and legal systems for each kingdom is awesome — it does give the game a sense of being huge — it is also a bit hard to believe that you could be a total sociopath in one place and then just cross the border and have all consequences be ignored.

I'm thinking there are a few ways this could be amended:

1. Upon having sufficient bad reputation, the nobility of that region should set a bounty on your head. Bounty hunters would start following you. This is incremental: if you accumulate bad reputation in more than one place, both of them would send their bounty hunters. If you go around leaving a trail of criminal records, you are bound to eventually be overwhelmed by pursuers — as only makes sense. Everyone would want to capture the famous criminal X.

2. If you took a loan and didn't repay it, the bank should send bounty hunters after you. This is actually being discused in another thread.

[Edit: as a small side effect of both points 1 and 2, it would make sense that there would be occasional proposals from bank staff and local nobility to go bounty hunting someone to a different kingdom. The target of the bounty should probably be quite high-level and have quite a bit of loot on them, to mimick a player's character.]

3. This is more subtle, but in my oppinion, even more interesting: reputation should extend slowly. There's apparently freedom of movement through Tamriel, so evidently people move occasionally from one place to another. There are merchants, travellers, etc. News slowly spread by. If you robbed lots of shops or killed many, perhaps a merchant will warn a friend when they visit, bringing news from distant realms with them: "There was for a while this famous murderer back home who killed ten people and a hundred guards in three days! They looked like so and so, or so people say".

In practical terms, the consequence of #3 would be that, while reputation is kingdom-limited, if it gets high enough it would start to bleed to the neighbouring kingdoms. Every month your reputation in nearby kingdoms would decrease by a fraction of your bad reputation in the originating kingdom.

This should be slow, but not as slow as reputation healing. If you misbehave enough, you could stain your reputation in a large area over a lot of time. Of course, if you do the deed in two neighbouring kindoms their effects will stack — you'll get your reputation depleted by two sources of badmouthing instead of one.

#3 also makes border-crossing still effective (guards will not pursue you) but not as nice (no clean slate).

I'm not sure how feasible this is, however. What do you think?
Many knights Silence unsat / from the saddle, with her lance / Had they known truth as it was / that the one who made'm fall / possessed naught of being male / but the skill and tools of trade! / Livid witnesses they'd be / of Nurture's triumph over Birth

daggerdude
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Re: Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Post by daggerdude »

Sounds good!

Jeoshua
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Re: Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Post by Jeoshua »

I would really love a mod where debt and criminal acts in a certain province would lead to globally being hunted by bounty hunters, along with being able to take up these contracts and travel across the entire game hunting bounties of powerful people with great reward.

Lokkrin Zhataros
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Post by Lokkrin Zhataros »

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Last edited by Lokkrin Zhataros on Wed May 26, 2021 3:34 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Silence
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Re: Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Post by Silence »

Lokkrin Zhataros wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2020 5:09 pm Your criminal reputation should follow you everywhere, at least if the law is aware of your crimes.
Well — no, not quite.

I do like that different kingdoms have different legal systems. It makes the world feel large and fractured. It is nice (and realistic, in a pre-information age) that you can escape the law by fleeing to the neighbouring country. This used to happen a lot in Europe, for example, just some 50 years ago.

My point was that it should be somewhat subtle, hence the idea of reputation «bleeding» from one kingdom into the other. It's not so much that you can be prosecuted universally for every crime. Rather, that if you accumulate sufficient bad reputation in one kingdom, stories will start to spread to the neighbouring ones (meaning, having common frontiers, not on the other corner of the map).

Eventually citizens or the justice there may decide that it's good diplomacy to do a favour for their neighbours and deport you, or perhaps just jail you down or kill you preemptively, so that you don't do the same there. At the very least, people may not want to have any dealings with you. Nobles won't want to be seen associating with your kind -- that stuff.

But the bleeding of reputation should be slow. You should be able to go into a murderous spree once, somewhere, and run away three kingdoms and get away with it. It may mean that you don't get to come back to the first kingdom, though, and that you have to be very careful in the general neighbourhood of that kingdom. But do it twice, thrice... and then definitely a man-hunt would start to brew.

Bounty hunting would be a complement to this, not an alternative. Definitely bankers should try to hunt you down if you default on their loans. But if you fend off some attempts, they may just find it not worthwhile the cost.
Many knights Silence unsat / from the saddle, with her lance / Had they known truth as it was / that the one who made'm fall / possessed naught of being male / but the skill and tools of trade! / Livid witnesses they'd be / of Nurture's triumph over Birth

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BadLuckBurt
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Re: Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Post by BadLuckBurt »

Silence wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 6:13 pm
Lokkrin Zhataros wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2020 5:09 pm Your criminal reputation should follow you everywhere, at least if the law is aware of your crimes.
Well — no, not quite.

I do like that different kingdoms have different legal systems. It makes the world feel large and fractured. It is nice (and realistic, in a pre-information age) that you can escape the law by fleeing to the neighbouring country. This used to happen a lot in Europe, for example, just some 50 years ago.

My point was that it should be somewhat subtle, hence the idea of reputation «bleeding» from one kingdom into the other. It's not so much that you can be prosecuted universally for every crime. Rather, that if you accumulate sufficient bad reputation in one kingdom, stories will start to spread to the neighbouring ones (meaning, having common frontiers, not on the other corner of the map).

Eventually citizens or the justice there may decide that it's good diplomacy to do a favour for their neighbours and deport you, or perhaps just jail you down or kill you preemptively, so that you don't do the same there. At the very least, people may not want to have any dealings with you. Nobles won't want to be seen associating with your kind -- that stuff.

But the bleeding of reputation should be slow. You should be able to go into a murderous spree once, somewhere, and run away three kingdoms and get away with it. It may mean that you don't get to come back to the first kingdom, though, and that you have to be very careful in the general neighbourhood of that kingdom. But do it twice, thrice... and then definitely a man-hunt would start to brew.

Bounty hunting would be a complement to this, not an alternative. Definitely bankers should try to hunt you down if you default on their loans. But if you fend off some attempts, they may just find it not worthwhile the cost.
Some kingdoms are allied with each other so it might stand to reason that your reputation would increase / decrease faster if you're in bad / good standing with a kingdom's ally. Could probably be handled by a multiplier to control the 'bleeding'
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Silence
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Re: Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Post by Silence »

BadLuckBurt wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 6:24 pm Some kingdoms are allied with each other so it might stand to reason that your reputation would increase / decrease faster if you're in bad / good standing with a kingdom's ally. Could probably be handled by a multiplier to control the 'bleeding'
Absolutely.

I didn't want to make the idea overly complicated because I'm not sure how easy it is already to identify "neighbor kingdoms" in game logic. But it does stand to reason that alliances and relative relationships between kingdoms (and other factions perhaps?) would modulate the result.
Many knights Silence unsat / from the saddle, with her lance / Had they known truth as it was / that the one who made'm fall / possessed naught of being male / but the skill and tools of trade! / Livid witnesses they'd be / of Nurture's triumph over Birth

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BadLuckBurt
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Re: Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Post by BadLuckBurt »

Silence wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 6:51 pm
BadLuckBurt wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 6:24 pm Some kingdoms are allied with each other so it might stand to reason that your reputation would increase / decrease faster if you're in bad / good standing with a kingdom's ally. Could probably be handled by a multiplier to control the 'bleeding'
Absolutely.

I didn't want to make the idea overly complicated because I'm not sure how easy it is already to identify "neighbor kingdoms" in game logic. But it does stand to reason that alliances and relative relationships between kingdoms (and other factions perhaps?) would modulate the result.
I came across a list of alliances in the code before so the information is available but it could always be implemented later on. Just figured I'd make the suggestion :)
DFU on UESP: https://en.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=T ... fall_Unity
DFU Nexus Mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity
My github repositories with mostly DFU related stuff: https://github.com/BadLuckBurt

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Silence
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Re: Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Post by Silence »

BadLuckBurt wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 7:02 pm I came across a list of alliances in the code before so the information is available but it could always be implemented later on. Just figured I'd make the suggestion :)
And it is s good suggestion! :D
All we need now is someone who will implement it.
You mention browsing the code. Would you be able to?
Many knights Silence unsat / from the saddle, with her lance / Had they known truth as it was / that the one who made'm fall / possessed naught of being male / but the skill and tools of trade! / Livid witnesses they'd be / of Nurture's triumph over Birth

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BadLuckBurt
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Re: Consequences for breaking the law — bounty hunting and reputation

Post by BadLuckBurt »

Silence wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 11:57 pm And it is s good suggestion! :D
All we need now is someone who will implement it.
You mention browsing the code. Would you be able to?
Thanks, I don't have time to help out with this further though. There are several things I need to finish and put out so I'm not exactly looking for new things to do :)
DFU on UESP: https://en.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=T ... fall_Unity
DFU Nexus Mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity
My github repositories with mostly DFU related stuff: https://github.com/BadLuckBurt

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