I'm curious how other people are playing Skyrim. I'm having a bit of a crisis in figuring out which character to stick with right now, so I decided to finish the College of Winterhold with my mage, then I created a warrior for the Companions, and possibly the MQ, but now I want to create a thief/assassin for the Thieves Guild/DB quests. I've only been playing for a week so needless to say I haven't gotten that far. I finished the CoW quests, but have only gotten to Whiterun with my warrior. Tomorrow I may start a thief and see how that goes. I like the flavor of a thief/assassin more than a mage or warrior right now.

So anyway, I'm wondering how everyone else plays the game. Do you create one character and do as much as you can? Do you create a character for a specific purpose, like a mage for CoW, and then you're done with her? Have you not even done the MQ yet? Or do you do it with every character? Stuff like that, because I know there will probably be about a million different answers.

I finished MQ only two times, and I have more then 1k hours by now I think. I play like.. Switching characters a lot. Nearly any of my characters have their purpose, but some are just random, but I will never end up with single character who will finish all the guilds or look for Daedric artifacts. Depends a lot, but in total, RPing, switching characters, taking a break every few days, and playing on Master all the time, is what keeps me in Skyrim for months. I just never get enough of it, especially now with all these DLC material. I think I'd "survive" 4-5 months more without new DLC, and I don't even play on PC. I don't know, just limiting myself with gametime does most of the trick for me, I always want more.
As for characters I really tried loads of builds and different playstyles, and I don't favour any, I like them all. I do miss spellmaking though, but I manage somehow to stay in this.

I have done full MQ 2 times and have done all faction/guild quest completions at least once. did a pure mage with heavy armor and enchants (personal) and a warrior duel wield, then change to sword and board cause it was to easy

i am a more jack of all trades player when it comes to covering content, considering you do NOT need to specify in anything to do ALL factions/guilds

thief / assassin in my eyes is to easy and boring because of the huge bonus u get for hitting some stealth, everyone will be a 1 hit kill even dragons if you can stealth hit them with a dagger it is like a 90% atk + crit bonus or something crazy like that
dont get me wrong archery stealth is fun, but can get boring quick when you one shot EVERYONE because of the bonus for stealth hit
but this is me i know many people LOVE thief / assassin role playing

try the thief / assassin and if you find that you stop playing if after awhile like u did warrior and mage, do a mix character.
battle mage = weapon with destruction for ranged, no archery or stealth just hit with a fireball throw a fire rune on the ground and let that bi**h come to you and mess him up with a few slices, use heavy armor AND cloth
spell sword = conjuration weapons and destruction with light amor and just do the same as a battle mage but more magic based
Paladin = sword and board or 2h with restoration for healing
Knight = same a paladin but no restoration, basically a warrior but rotate with board and sword duel wield and 2hander
So many other and granted everyone has different names for each class like battle mage and spell sword but these are my definitions of them

Personally i like mixing some of them up, but if you really want to get into the game and play the right way make sure you role play with your character, give him a back story and a cool name, for example some times i make up saying when im done a fight or in the middle of a fight, it really does make the experience so much better.

Step 1. Make a mage
Step 2. Level destruction and conjuration.
Step 3. Find a pathetic, poorly defended, dirt-smeared village with quests for me.
Step 4. BURN THOSE PITIFUL INSECTS!!! THEIR LIVES AND HOMES ARE BUT KINDLING FOR MY AWESOME POWERRRRR!!!
Step 5. Raise their charred corpses as my undead slaves.
Step 6. Level up and find a slightly less poorly defended village.
Step 7. See Step 4.

I'm glad to hear this, actually, because I plan to really RP my thief, and so it seems much more realistic that a single backstab would kill someone, rather than having to hack at them over and over until they die. I want to specialize in daggers and assassinate that way. I probably won't be much of a dungeon crawler, too dangerous for me. I'll be lured more to the big cities, with all those houses waiting to be picked over. But if I happen to stumble into trouble along the road, then a single well-placed arrow or sneak attack really *should* kill something, without a fight.

I was going to make several characters and then divide the different questlines between them.
But I've only made two characters, an Imperial male that plays through almost anything and an Altmer male for the Dark Brotherhood.

One of the reasons why the Imperial does all the quests is because a certain quest forces you to join some of the factions in order to complete it, another is that my brother did it this way and I thought, why the hell not.

So my first character is now in the process of playing through all of the factions except the DB. Since Skyrim is ridiculously easy I've had no problem with making him a jack of all trades and master of ALL. I would recommend you to stick with your plan to create different characters for different factions and/or playstyles, as I think it's much more fun to play different characters who do different stuff than having one character that does everything and is a master of everything.

After I'm done with the Altmer character I'll have plans to create a character - a Nord female - who'll participate in Operation Put Ulfric on the Throne (as opposed to Operation Deliver Ulfric's Head on a Plate to the Imperial City, which the Imperial male participated in). I was gonna leave the Companions to this character but like I said, my Imperial decided to complete everything in sight, and so I started this questline this month.

I do have other characters planned - a Dunmer who fights for the memory of Resdayn and the Dwemer, wears Dwemer armor and does all things Dwemer; an Orc who lives in Orc strongholds and avoids civilization; and a Redguard adventurer who travels light, fights without armor and carves down his enemies with his scimitar.

I don't know if any of these characters will ever see the light of day, though.
But well, there you have it. My rambling account on my characters.
Oh, and about the main quest: I have never played through a TES main quest twice. I've only played one character in Morrowind, in Oblivion I avoided it because of those damned Oblivion Gates, and in Skyrim I've avoided it on my Altmer because of those damned dragons that can swoop down at any time.

Haymon Camoran, is that you?

The sneak perk tree allows you to go invisible for a few moments when in combat and you back to stealth mode (some thing of this nature at least) and allows you to get back into a assassination mode. dungeons will also be your sweet spot considering you can sneak up on all your monsters and mobs. Although nothing would be sweater in your case then to kill a guy in public in front of people and no one see you do it. true assassin, dark brotherhood will be waiting for you my young killer.

1st character: Went everywhere, did everything, great fun.

Current character: Dawdling around, done very little, bestest fun...absolutely no pressure (Hey, Alduin will wait for ME!), no hassles.