Hi. After reading the tutorial and watching a few videos on YouTube I feel confident in my ability to make a basic follower (big thanks to Bethesda enabling idiots like me). However, what I don't know how to do is to create an NPC that will only become a follower after you have done them a favor. If someone out there could tell me how to do this, or point me to the already existing directions that I've obviously already overlooked I would really appreciate it. Thank you for your time!

Well, that sounds like you want to do a quest for a potential follower NPC. You'll need a quest giver (the follower probably) and then the player goes and does the quest and then the follower would consent to go with the player after the quest is completed. You can set that up via dialogue (the conversation with the potential follower ahead of time to give the quest and then how they would agree to the follower relationship after the quest is done to launch the follower stuff). You can look at the quest tutorial in the wiki for how to set up quests and you might look through the CK itself to see how the little quests are set up for the NPCs in the game once you've done the tutorial and you'll have an idea of what to look for.

There are also some stickied video tutz at the top of the forum and I thought doug's were really good. I watched them all and I don't like video tutz.