Hey, for absolute beginners I'm wondering if someone could point me in the right direction where I could do some reading for when the construction kit comes out.

I am not looking to add anything to the game that's not there in terms of objects, abilities, graphics etc. I am interested in adding a very large questline to the game and am curious at what's possible for someone who's new to this/what kind of commitment or skills I'd need to make it happen.

I feel like a sticky at the top of the forum going over some very rudimentary guidelines would help reduce threads like mine heh. Thanks in advance.

Keep an eye on http://tesalliance.org/forums/ once the CK is out we'll be diving into the Skyrim Classes, will be a great place to start

Thanks. Bookmarked it. I guess there is a lot of quest planning/writing I have to do anyway but I don't want to wait until the CK is out to learn about that as well, so if anyone has any advice as far that goes that would also be appreciated.

Read the wikis for the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Main_Page and the http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Main_Page. There'll be some changes for the new toolkit, but the basics should be the same.

Bethesda usually creates a separate subforum for requesting help and sharing tips on their construction sets for each game--reference such subforums in the other game areas of this site (Oblivion, Morrowind, F3, F:NV). That's why you won't see such a sticky here; I imagine they'll be creating a similar subforum for Skyrim when the Creation Kit is released. This forum is, or rather will be, more for modders to announce and support their mods.

Ahh, thanks guys.

Writing and fleshing out detailed design work is the best way to get any idea off of the ground. Do your "research," (the Bethesda term) spend time fleshing out a professional design document and people will come to your aid in droves. Almost any idea is possible, just be on the lookout for elements already found ingame that you can recycle.

You should consider diving into this book. It is like a bible for game design:
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Bob-Bates/dp/1592004938

GECK or CS tutorials on quest design are your best bet for practice. Also remember that Bethesda said that they will release video tutorials with the CK in January. If you're lucky, one of those videos will tackle quest implementation.

Theyre making a new wiki site with guides to release when the CK comes out. If you have Oblivion or Fallout 3 you could do some exploring with their modding tools to get used to things because Skyrim uses the same basic engine and likely a very similar creation tool.

http://www.bethblog.com/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

Appreciate all of this.

Right now I am focusing on writing the general ideas I have before fleshing them out and figuring out how I'll turn them into a cohesive questline. Then making some flow charts so it'll be easier to visualize and focus on completing separate sections before putting it all together when the CK does come out. After that I'll write as much of the text as far as dialogue, notes/books, quest descriptions etc. that I can that don't require anything other than a pen and paper (or Microsoft Word.)

I own New Vegas and Oblivion so I'll definitely play around with them.