Simple Start Overhaul
It's a working title, hopefully it isn't already taken as I didn't find anything by that name. This is a rough draft but anyways here's the idea for the mod.
Instead of doing an Alternate Start or skipping Helgen, this mod is about changing some of the things you find in Helgen Keep and making some choices before you're actually on the Cart. Like most mods of this nature, you're put in a room where you get to make some choices about your character. Choosing your Race, Sex, Appearance and Name as normal. As you're in a room you do have a chance to just wait and let your mods settle. You get to do your set up without having to wait through the Intro Sequence.
The First choice is about Spells and Robes. I think it'd be appropriate if we got to choose some novice spells to start our journey with. Not any spells from mods or specific quests, just the normal ones as they feel very appropriate for an inexperienced mage. We could learn all the novice spells if we wanted to, or even just hold onto them to sell later, the important thing to me is that it's unrestricted. I'd rather it be open to exploitation than put arbitrary limitations on it like “You can only take X number of Spells, or you can only take spells from up to 3 schools of magic “. It’d also be cool if we removed Flames, Healing, and any of the spells granted by race like Dark Elves getting Sparks, I'd rather have the option to not have them than just ignore them the whole playthrough if I'm not gonna use them.
Then we get to choose a school of magic that will get us the appropriate novice robes and a single Apprentice level spell of our choice from that school. However, unlike the Novice Spells we have to go and get them in Helgen Keep, the Robes and spell are in the cage with the dead mage in it in the place of the generic novice robes and Sparks spell. I think this is a cool way to allow an extremely low level character to have a slightly more advanced spell they might not even be able to cast yet as well as having an appropriate set of robes for whatever their favored school of magic is.
Second is about Armor and Weapons. If you choose Heavy Armor, Gunjar will be wearing a full set of Banded Iron Armor instead of his Stormcloak uniform. If you chose Light Armor instead, there will be a Dead Adventurer in the Part of the cave with the Frostbite Spiders near the Iron Mace wearing a full set of Leather Armor. In the torture room, the Iron Shield will be replaced with a Banded Iron Shield or an Imperial Light Shield depending on your choice. As for the Weapon, it will be a Steel Melee Weapon of your choice, it will also be on or near Gunjar’s Body. You can choose anything from a Dagger to a Warhammer.
Fourth is Clothes. There's a Dead person near the Bear. Maybe they were a Farmer, a Merchant, worked in a Tavern or were even a minor Noble. This is purely about flavor, regular clothes don't have any practical uses unless you're enchanting them as a mage, and the ones that are actually going to be worth carrying to sell are the Noble’s clothes, but I'm not concerned with the Balance of these choices as this is a mod more about giving a nice kickstart for Roleplaying without just dumping a bunch of equipment in a single chest in Helgen which would more or less accomplish the same task on paper, but with none of the immersion.
After you make these choices, we can start the intro sequence as if we had hit New Game. The idea is to preserve the intro as it was meant to be without there being a bunch of notifications in the top left or any weirdness from your weather mod activating during the cart ride. In addition, there are some other universal changes that I think would be great that have nothing to do with the choices you make in that starting room.
A full set of Imperial Heavy Armor in the barracks where Hadvar cuts you loose. This is primarily just for people that side with Hadvar but still want access to Heavy Armor that is on theme.
On Gunjar's Body in addition to the Iron War Axe he has a Hunting Bow with 24 Steel Arrows, along with whatever you chose at the start.
Lastly, instead of the Longbow you get from Hadvar/Ralof it's going to be an Imperial Bow. You're already guaranteed to have a Hunting Bow from Gunjar, it seems appropriate that you get an Imperial bow from your temporary companion as an alternative.
I'm not a modder and I don't always know what's in the realm of possibility for Xbox mods. If some of the things I asked for need to change slightly from how I've described the mod functioning, so be it. The idea of this mod is to instead of replacing or skipping the Vanilla Intro, just polish it up a little bit and also make a nice little area where you can set up your character and most of your mods. Apologies if the post is too long, I've given this a lot of thought.