Starting this month I will begin spotlighting two mods each month that I consider to be top quality mods worthy of being supported with Nexus endorsements and donations. I am also putting my own money where my mouth is by donating $10 to each spotlighted mod. This month's MOTM titles are Mod Organizer (MO) and Interesting NPCs (INPCs) for Skyrim.
MO is a streamlined, full-featured mod management utility loaded with essential tools for installing, sorting and troubleshooting mods. The core feature is a virtual load order that's organized into custom profiles. It allows you to safely install, activate and deactive, and change up the load order of mods without fear of overwriting or deleting any mod assets. LOOT, an ESM and ESP sorting tool, is fully integrated. Any other mods tools such as Wrye Bash, TES5Edit and Bodyslide can be loaded from within MO where their generated files are deposited into a virtual overwrite folder where they can be optionally saved as permanent edited "mod" files. MO requires a little bit of learning to master but there are a number of helpful, easy-to-find tutorials available on Youtube that walk you through every step. In short, no serious Skyrim mod user should be without MO to manage their mods.
INPCs is a large content mod that fills Skyrim with dozens of new, fully-voiced NPCs eager to share their thoughts with the player. They all have unique backstories and personalities that allow the player various roleplay-friendly interactions ranging from friendly to hostile. In many cases, NPCs will be available as followers and they may have quests of varying size of their own for you to assist them with. A few "super" followers such as Zora Fair-child will be location and quest aware, which means they'll comment on vanilla or INPCs places, events and characters you encounter on your travels. They may even be available as a spouse. INPCs has been around for over three years and in that time has grown substantially from its humble beginnings as more NPCs, custom voice dialogue and quests are continually added. My only gripes are that some of the lines of dialogue can be a tad overlong compared with vanilla NPC dialogue and depending on the character you're interacting with, it may not always be interesting to the player. There are a few NPCs I tend to ignore because, frankly, I don't care for what they have to say or for their personality. In this way, the mod is more realistic and immersive than the vanilla game because as in real life, there are always going to be people we choose to avoid for the same reasons.
The beauty of INPCs is that it doesn't force any of these characters on you and you are free to interact with them on your own initiative. As for finding these NPCs, you can either wait to encounter them as you travel or you can immersively activate quest starters with map markers by talking to innkeepers about rumors or news. Voice work is consistently professional from what I've heard after meeting over a dozen characters from the mod. All in all, this is an excellent mod that adds a lot of immersive, roleplay-friendly content including quests, followers and unique NPCs with rich dialogue. As for compatibility, the mod community has stepped up with numerous patches to make INPCs play well with other popular mods although you won't likely find many game-breaking conflicts regardless.
MO is a streamlined, full-featured mod management utility loaded with essential tools for installing, sorting and troubleshooting mods. The core feature is a virtual load order that's organized into custom profiles. It allows you to safely install, activate and deactive, and change up the load order of mods without fear of overwriting or deleting any mod assets. LOOT, an ESM and ESP sorting tool, is fully integrated. Any other mods tools such as Wrye Bash, TES5Edit and Bodyslide can be loaded from within MO where their generated files are deposited into a virtual overwrite folder where they can be optionally saved as permanent edited "mod" files. MO requires a little bit of learning to master but there are a number of helpful, easy-to-find tutorials available on Youtube that walk you through every step. In short, no serious Skyrim mod user should be without MO to manage their mods.
INPCs is a large content mod that fills Skyrim with dozens of new, fully-voiced NPCs eager to share their thoughts with the player. They all have unique backstories and personalities that allow the player various roleplay-friendly interactions ranging from friendly to hostile. In many cases, NPCs will be available as followers and they may have quests of varying size of their own for you to assist them with. A few "super" followers such as Zora Fair-child will be location and quest aware, which means they'll comment on vanilla or INPCs places, events and characters you encounter on your travels. They may even be available as a spouse. INPCs has been around for over three years and in that time has grown substantially from its humble beginnings as more NPCs, custom voice dialogue and quests are continually added. My only gripes are that some of the lines of dialogue can be a tad overlong compared with vanilla NPC dialogue and depending on the character you're interacting with, it may not always be interesting to the player. There are a few NPCs I tend to ignore because, frankly, I don't care for what they have to say or for their personality. In this way, the mod is more realistic and immersive than the vanilla game because as in real life, there are always going to be people we choose to avoid for the same reasons.
The beauty of INPCs is that it doesn't force any of these characters on you and you are free to interact with them on your own initiative. As for finding these NPCs, you can either wait to encounter them as you travel or you can immersively activate quest starters with map markers by talking to innkeepers about rumors or news. Voice work is consistently professional from what I've heard after meeting over a dozen characters from the mod. All in all, this is an excellent mod that adds a lot of immersive, roleplay-friendly content including quests, followers and unique NPCs with rich dialogue. As for compatibility, the mod community has stepped up with numerous patches to make INPCs play well with other popular mods although you won't likely find many game-breaking conflicts regardless.