All you RPers out there - and I know there are a lot of you like me - might want to pay attention to this challenge.

I think everyone already knows that you can check the date and time when you go to the menu screen. Well, when you start a New Game from the main menu, (and after you play through the beginning on the cart to your execution) when you pull up your menu I'm 99% positive the game starts you off in the middle of the month of Last Seed.

Well, for those of you well versed in the lore of Elder Scrolls, you might remember that "Last Seed" is the equivalent month of August for us (you can see all this kind of stuff at The Imperial Library). I'm going to have to check on what specific day of the month it is, I'm pretty sure it's around the 15th or so, but here's my thought for you all who want to do something unique and, in my opinion, awesome:

Start a new character on that date, and play only one day at a time in the game each day to keep your character at the same pace as in real life. I would suggest not fast traveling (as that skips time ahead), and trying to do things that you normally would such as walking through towns, sleeping every night that you can, and so forth.

I did this exact thing in Oblivion 5 or 6 years ago and it was an incredible experience for me. I literally took one character on an adventure for around 3 or 4 months and completed the main story. I took it very serious in the fact that I tried to things that would seem to make sense to an adventurer. Like sleep every night in an inn if I didn't own a house at that town, try to sleep at a campsite if it was getting close to midnight and I was still on the road, I would eat and drink something most nights, not leave towns for the next one until the morning and travel by day, etc.

This has been too long already but I'm interested in hearing your ideas on how else you could make this realistic and if you like the idea. One last thing I'll include is this: you might be thinking there will be days when you can't play. That's not a problem either. What I did on those days was just assume my character was staying in that given city for a whole day not doing much of anything except maybe people-watching, and then the next time I would play, I would just sleep or wait for 24 hours or however long it took to catch up with the current date.

Let me know what you think if you're interested. I'm going to find out what exact date the game starts on.

Or you could possibly slow down the timescale in Skyrim so that the days last as long as normal days or at very least a little longer than they currently do.

And leave the game running all day erry day?

This is a neat idea. It's the 17th of Last Seed when it begins, I believe, as I started a character with a journal a while back. Granted Tales and Tallows (3rd of Hearthfire) was the first day she was able to find a quill, ink and a blank book to write in, which was about two weeks later, but all the same.

This is actually a really good idea. I may give this a shot - thanks!

The 17th is next Friday so we have a week and a half to think about what character is going to start this grand adventure...

Nice idea. I'm going to make myself and play her... I mean me DiD style.

Hopefully she'll (you'll) survive more than a few days!

Wish I had time for this, but it is a really nice idea!

Hopefully she won't run into any cabbage carts...

Finally some Role-Playing seen , great idea !

I really wish my playstation was working now. This is an awesome idea. =< I wish they let you write your own books as standard in the vanilla game, partly because we'd finally have a use for ink, quills and etc, and also because it would make things like this even more deep and meaningful. Being able to take the time to stop and write about what happened that day would be a great feature.

I have thought about doing exactly that, keeping a short journal with a paragraph for each day. Because after each day, you really haven't done a whole lot.

ex. "Fredas, 17th Last Seed: Went to the Bannered Mare this morning and the maid told me (rather enthusiastically) about a bounty from the Jarl's men. So I journeyed to Halted Stream camp north of Whiterun to clear it out. After a couple hours of fighting, I mined ore for the next several hours, and then made it back into the city in time to smelt the ore and craft daggers to sell to Adrianne. She really wants to be like Eorlund and I admire that about her. I feel bad though because she never gets to see her father because he's so far away up in Dragonsreach. I sold her 15 iron daggers. I don't know why I do it, but making countless iron daggers just calms my spirit...I think I'm becoming a better blacksmith from making the same thing over and over...maybe tomorrow I'll travel back to Riverwood and take what I need from Alvor's shop, within reason of course..."

I'm sorry, but I wouldn't be able to play Skyrim only 1 hour and 12 minutes per day and I don't feel like changing the timescale. Nice idea though!

What I did before is only play that specific character one day at a time, and then if I felt the need for more Skyrim, I would load another character and do whatever I wanted.

I will do this, so it starts on the 15th?

17th.

Cool, I will be back in the states by then and right before a new semester starts up. I am hoping to have completed my first run through with Skyrim (picked it up for the first time during the steam sale a few weeks ago). I have played and beaten all 4 TES games but never have I played any of them like this, nor has it ever crossed my mind. Should be fun and something I should be able to do since I will be super busy with schooling but to play in a short session day to day will be ok.

Great idea but it would be hard to play your character for only 1 game day per real day.

This is a brilliant idea - it would never have occured to me to play this way. I think I'll try the DiD idea as well. It'll be interesting to see how long I last

I like the idea, but i'll never actually do it

I just double checked for my own sake and a new game file does, in fact, start on the 17th. It also starts at 7:00 am in the morning so depending on how quickly you get through the caves you could still have quite a day ahead of you. I've usually made it to Riverwood and sold the extra stuff I don't need by the time it's getting dark. Camilla could probably even point you to Bleak Falls Barrow if you hurry, but this adventure is only going to be for the patient so it might not be in your best interest to hurry your way through. Of course you could always make it to that first tower before the barrow with those 3 or 4 bandits and then sleep and save there all within the first day.

Nevertheless, the point is, the game starts on the 17th of Last Seed (August 17) which is next Friday. So get prepared.

Yar, im prepared!!!