this is an RPG. RolePlaying Game.... you act like doing some sort of roleplaying is not "playing the game". sounds a little bit ignorant.

Essentially, it's a way to have more fun. Whether it helps to give greater immersion, provide greater challenge, etc., it's all done to have more fun. From the start, you have at least a bit of a backstory in mind for your character (motivations, race, politics, occupation, etc.) in mind and it continues throughout the character's travels and adventures. You set the parameters of what you think this character would do in any given situation. Is he/she a magic user that occassionally swings a mean Orcish mace? Fine. A thief who'll steal everything that isn't locked down? Great. A remorseless assassin bent on destroying the Empire? Awesome. A hero and natural born leader that earns the respect and admiration from almost everyone? Wonderful. A simple laborer who harvests crops or hunts & fishes? You can do that, too. That's the beauty of a game like this. You can do whatever you want. Or nothing at all. You can just walk the land and meet people. Fight off a few wolves or a gang of bandits, run away from a bear or sabre cat. Take up blacksmithing and sell your handiwork.

I get a much more rewarding experience out of a game like Skyrim than in franchises like God of War or Uncharted. I love those games, too, but your choices in those games are pretty much non-existant. They have great storylines in place, IMO, and your character is all set up and ready to go at the start. Pretty much, "Here's the start, there's the finish, now do all this stuff to get there." Nothing wrong with that. I've enjoyed that stuff since Donkey Kong, and always will, but it's not as rewarding as playing out a fully-formed character that I created.

I dunno why people act like dikes and spout nonsense like "Duh, I RP cause it's an RPG", then just leave it at that. The OP wasn't rude, he simply asked a question and a valid question at that.

For some people, this may be the first time they've played an RPG to any great extent, and as such some people might not quite get the whole RP thing.

My issue is, that you can't actually win the respect or admiration of anyone. Roleplaying would be awesome, if your actions actually had any real effect on the world and people treated you differently depending on your character. Until then, roleplaying will be mostly the players' imagination.

I do care a little about how other peoples are playing, mostly because at times it gives me a 'Oh sounds like that way of playing is something I'd like, let's try it' moment. that's reason neough to keep an ear open.

To be more accurate, I'm curious about others are playing rather than caring about it.

I roleplay so that the game has replay value for me.

If i role play a warrior i will not use any magic at all. I will not do any mage-related quests such as the college of winterhold. This leaves all of the magic related stuff for my next playthrough.

Also, i don't like to rush through these games, when role-playing a character you might sleep,eat etc.. might seem boring and pointless to some but for me it is what i enjoy the most.

It gives me a reason to buy a house and decorate it too, after much fighting and dungeon crawling i'll go back to that house and read a few books.

He said he doesnt because he plays the game to play the game. It is your opinion that not RPing is boring.


Personally I do a half and half. I RP to a small extent, but I do it in a way as though the skills and item stats are part of the world. So a glass sword is better then an iron not just because of stats, not the material, but like the material makes the blade that much sharper, making it do that much more damage.

I guess you can call it a sorta "meta-RP" playstyle.

Also, I find that I become attached to my character, so I don't want to RP tons of different ones. On Oblivion I played 500 hours on my dark elf and he was my only character. I did everything with him. I didn't roleplay, I normally play a morally ambiguous character in RPG's.

I have two characters in Skyrim, a level 42 Redguard and a level 29 Orc, my issue is, I can only play one of them. I haven't touched my Redguard for weeks, because I am in to my Orc now. I wish I had the personality where I could chop and change characters as easily as most seem to.

It was annoying enough starting the Orc, having to find all the locations again and get half decent gear. I like getting decent kit for my characters.

I think some RPing goes beyond the boundaries of gaming or at least make no sense to me whatsoever.

For example, i remember years ago someone on these forums posting about RPing a city guard. Now, i'm not one for knocking anyone's play style, but all he literally did was stand at a gate in Bruma until his shift finished, went and had lunch with the other off duty guards, then went to bed until his next shift. He played the game for over 200 hours doing this.

^me
i can't do the same thing twice, feels like a chore and ruins the "surprise" that comes with it. i always have only one character and do everything with that one.

Now, I could just about get my head around this if anything dynamic happened in cities. Like Bandit raids, or robberies etc. But due to the lack of any meaningful random events. That is the most pointless waste of time I have ever heard of...

FINALLY! Someone who doesn't think I'm an idiot. I like my Orc character, but the only reason I started him is because I don't fully love my Redguard. I wish I could have created him slightly different. I got bored of the way he looks, I made him too skinny, all the light armour is huge in this game for some reason, so 90 hours in I realise he looks ridiculous.

Now, I'd love to make a sword and board Dark Elf warrior, but I think I'd be sick of the world by level 5.

For someone to do that i would guess that he had a few mods which enabled bandit raids on the city and stuff...

My point exactly. I know people jest about this, but in his case, he would have been better switching off his PC and going outside.

Playing different characters in different ways means there's plenty to do with one character that you haven't done with another. I've played for well over 300 hours (between 4 characters) and haven't taken a side yet in the civil war.

Exactly.

But doesn't it get annoying having to build up your character again? Improve skills and find decent gear etc. If I was on PC and I could instantly be level 20 with the perks, then I'd make a ton of characters probably, but as it is for me on Xbox, I lack the patience...

Not at all. That's the beauty of being able to build/create different characters. The different skills and ways to play add to every playthrough. I've got a battlemage who also smiths. Pretty much a hero character with 200+ hours. I've also got a thief/assassin that'll probably never finish the main quest. There's a (more-or-less) "pure" mage who hates the Empire. I recently started an Orc warrior who will fight for the Empire once he's gotten his feet wet.


Certainly not something I'd do, but if that's what he liked to do, more power to him.

Are you serious? I litteraly laughed outload at this post. I take my roleplaying as seriously as the next roleplayer, but I cannot imagine anyone doing that for 200 hours. That's dedication. I have heard of folks in Oblivion who roleplayed mountain men that never entered the cities, hunted all day and slept in tents at night. I even tried that for a while, but it got old quick, especially because there was no one to sell my pelts to as you have to go to a City to find a merchant who will buy pelts. Skyrim has lots more opportunity for this type of roleplay, since you can find other hunters and travelling Khajiit to trade with, and you can make stuff with your pelts, not to mention mining.

But I digress. To answer the OP: Yes, I roleplay and for the same reasons mentioned in other posts. It is fun, it allows me to feel more connected to the game world (more immersion), it increases replay value, etc. etc.

Also, roleplaying lets you spend some time thinking up new builds and then seeing how they will far in the world. That is something I did a lot in Oblivion, and although the "class creation" has been eliminated in Skyrim, there is still some opportunity for creating some interesting roleplaying builds (although not as much as Oblivion and Morrowind).

Roleplaying lets you be someone else. So, if in real life you are basically a nice guy who would help a nice old lady across the street, in the game, you can roleplay a thief who pushes her in front of a carraige to create a diversion so you can pick that nobleman's pocket with his noticing.

But it doesn't. I can't push an old lady in front of a carriage. That's essentially my issue with Skyrim and roleplaying in general. You can set your own rules, but the game does a poor job of actually letting you live out your fantasy. Nothing has any effect on the world, it's frustrating.

If you play the same character, it get's boring. But I play something different every time, to figure out how to do everything with that type of charcter, that's different from the one I used before. You figure out how to do it with heavy armor, dual 1 handed and only restoration. Get to the level cap. Then figure out how to get to the level cap with a mage-type. No weapons and no armor. And then a light armor type with a bow and alteration.

Limiting yourself is what makes it fun. Though I've seen some proclaim differently, wanting the game to limit their characters for them.

Fair enough. I've never been a big magic user at all. Things like Illusion, alchemy, conjuration and restoration go pretty much untouched the whole game.

Explain exactly what that means, please. Because I don't get it. "Play the game to play it" is what anybody does. And how do you not set limits on yourself? Everything you choose to do sets a limit on you, because you can't choose to do something else (at least not at the same time).

Role play just means you apply a set of rules to those choices that is internally consistent with some theme (character type, personality, whatever) not directly enforced by the program. If instead your only goal is to get x-box achievements or some such... well, that's also pretty damn limiting! (Both immersion wise, and literally; there's things you simply can not choose to do and events you will never see if you want to get every achievement, earn maximum cash, level as fast as possible, whatever.)

Because it makes the game last so much longer.

If I played straight from 11/11/11, I could have easily completed every quest line, most miscellaneous tasks, visited most places, got to the max level and got all the shouts in under 50 hours.

But then...I've played the game. Sure, I could go back, but that's just a bit...meh.

I'm almost 100 hours in. I've not completed a single quest line. This is still the same character that I made on 11/11/11. He's a battlemage, and therefore I have no interest in the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild quest lines, and he wants to stay out of the civil war.

I'm not someone who refers to my character by a name and proper "hardcoe" roleplays them, but if you like doing that, then go for it. But just by simple roleplaying you can really get the most out of the game, literally make it last x10 longer and have x10 more fun out of it. Make it a world, not a game.

Honestly, I actually enjoy that part quite a bit, as long as I am roleplaying it. I understand what you are saying and I can see why you would not enjoy it. The Azura's star quest grows tiring real quick in Skyrim and Oblivion if you start a bunch of different characters that all want to do a lot of enchanting. But for the most part, when I have different characters, they use different types of gear. So my Sneak thief Khajiit pays no attention to heavy armor or two handed weapons. If they are valuable, he might take them to sell, but he never uses them. After playing him for a while, I start a robed mage who uses no armor or weapons at all. Then after a hundred hours or so into each of those characters I started a Nord warrior who uses heavy armor and two-handed weapons.

Building up my Nord's gear is fun because it is new, and I am now learning about the different heavy armors and two handed weapons in Skyrim. My Khajiit was the Harbinger of the Companions but did not know what Wolf armor was because it was heavy armor, so I ignored it. So, when my Nord started building up his heavy armor gear, he came across Wolf armor and decided that was the armor for him, at least for now.

Sure, after several playthroughs it may start to get old building a new character, but that is when it is time to play a different game for a while, and then come back in a few months refreshed and ready to roleplay something new.

A roleplaying style may not be for everyone, but it is why some people can still enjoy playing games like Morrowind some ten years after it was released.