I do the following:
Eat and drink and sleep when I need to (I use Imps Complex Needs mod).
Wear appropriate clothing, i.e. full fur for cold weather, leather for rain, hats and gloves etc., and shirt off in warm weather. No mod for this, though.
When in the wild I camp once a day to sleep and eat, and I carry a tent with me for that purpose (weighs 30 flippin punds).
I only loot what I and my follower need, or if I find something really precious like magic items.
I make all of my own gear.
I make all of my own potions.
I go hunting and gathering whenever I'm at my house, so I "take a day off" to do that and cook new meals and potions.
I attack Thalmor on sight.
I intervene in fights and help the innocent peoples of Skyrim (I'm a good guy).
I actually stop and talk and listen to NPCs.
I use carriages and never fast travel.
I go swimming in lakes and rivers to freshen up.
I prioritize quests according to their importance to Skyrim and its peoples.
I wear my finest threads when in town and visiting with Jarls. Always carry them with me for that purpose.
I have a backpack mod so I actually have a place to put all my gear.
And more stuff I can't remember right now I'm sure.

If it fits my character type i'll do it. Alot of times though the temptation is tough when i come across a cool piece of heavy armor yet my character uses only light armor or i come across an ultra powerful mage staff but my orc is a warrior who only uses melee weapons. At least orcs have this thing about collecting treasure to get rich off and take back to Orsinium so i can still loot the ultra powerful mage staff.

I also eat and drink on a regular basis to simulate hunger and thirst. When at taverns i'll buy a ton of food and drink to party down with before hitting the sack for the night. When traveling i wear armor or clothing which covers the entire body in cold environments and wear breathable attire in warmer climates. When faced with a large body of water i'll hesitate but out of laziness alot of times i'll cross it instead of taking the long walk to the nearest bridge.

None of that is particularly roleplaying to me. To me roleplaying is simply creating a believable character and attempting as much as possible to play as that character.

I create a backstory, and a personality, essentially, for my character. It helps give me reasoning for each decision that I need to make. I also sleep ten hours per day, except when I'm caught in a cave/dungeon, and I never grind skills. The playthrough should feel natural.

This is just about as far as I take it.

In Morrowind, however, I got into my character quite a bit.

This. Although for me, the world needs to follow my story - the in-game events often form significant events in the lives of my characters. I like my character to be a part of the world. Fortunately, Skyrim does this almost flawlessly. It makes me feel that my character is a part of the world, is a part of the community.

Other than giving my characters different personalities and skill sets, nothing really.

Heh, funny that I've never played D&D or something similar and I am actualy new to RP, but I feel the same. This is a game where I can play a cat, who found herself in somehow hostile environment and as not particularly liked minority. Hell, it even allows me to make my very own group of cats, each with their own personality and agenda, who try to make a honest living together. And I have a lot of quests which actually suit my playstyle and provide me with something to do with them.

I find it amusing that Skyrim did a lot of things somehow crudely, like shooting bow is as primitive as it would be in quake 1, followers are implemented worse in some parts than scientists and guards in halflife 1, some quest need a lot of 'handwavium' if you don't play them 'with proper nord superhero', yet I find it so much enjoyable. It's just first game which allowed me to make a character that I care for, can relate to her somehow and even made playing with them fun enough, and that's why I can overlook a lot of issues Skyrim has.

I roleplay a little bit or as much as the mod I use require me to. I use http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11163 and http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=10639 to enhance my game and give it a hardcoe style. These mods alone make me have to plan what I do and when I do it. For example to travel during the day when it is warm to avoid snow storms at night etc

We use this, it's not bad so far.

Frostfall would be great as an optional "hardcoe" feature. i think that if hardcoe mode was added, i'd also like a list of hardcoe options to choose from, so you could choose wether or not to have hunger/hypothermia/fatigue(if not sleeping enough) etc

Nice topic.

For me, im moderately into RPing but not as hardcoe as to use hypothermia, food/water necessity mods cause i think those will be a hindrance to my enjoyment of the game.
I do however try to remove the objective compass arrow cause i think that makes the game too easy.
I also generally don't use fast travel at all and if i need to travel to somewhere fast, i'd rather use carriages.

For my pure mage character, i would go as far as not to use a single lockpick to open locked doors/chests, but rely on open spell mod.
She is a bookworm kindda character and i absolutely cannot live with the spectacles mod.

For my assassin character, i'd actually wait for nighttime, when the contract is alone or asleep to approach them.
Every kill will be calculated, cold and meticulous. If my target is walking about in the daytime, i would actually wait till nightfall when he/she is alone before i strike.
Her name is Illucia Whisperwind, and i try to live up to her name by using only archery kills, in which the flight of her arrows sounds like a whisper in the wind.
(Yes lol i know i got this name from Tyrande, but IMO i think it fit quite well in a assassin character)

I do not seek shelter as I use clear skies and carry on with my explorering.

AKA 'summon aurora', mah pers'nal fahv'rit.

Anyway, i would like more opportunities to donate. 1 septim to a beggar, and 5 to the temple, just doesn't make me feel generous when I have 200 grand and three housefuls of Ebony.

To continue this:

With my Assassin's (most played character archetype), the one I just started last night has a full stock of food including bread, a cooked meat (usually venison or fish as they are relatively easy to acquire whilst in the wilderness), Eidar cheese (my characters' personal favorite), Honningbrew and Black Briar Mead, a tankard, and usually a Sweetroll for desert. He only eats once per day (an evening meal), and I'll wait an hour after eating everything to simulate the time taken to enjoy a hot supper.

He sleeps typically during the day and handles his shopping trips during the late afternoon hours.

I don't fast travel with him, though I do take the carts every so often.

He carries two sets of Fine Clothes just so he can change into a clean set every so often.

He uses daggers and bows only, and genuinely spends a majority of his time in the Sanctuary when not out handling business.

Clarifying the topic above of his devotion to Sithis, my Assassin (Nocturne, BTW... ) doesn't just pay homage to Sithis after slaying a random person, he actually goes out and finds a victim and uses their murder as a sacrifice to the Dread Lord, and takes everything from their corpse. He leaves a solitary sprig of Nightshade behind in the corpse's inventory to designate that Soul to the Dread Father.

He has a cover business as a traveling Blacksmith, and so he works in the various cities that he travels to as a way to keep up a visible income that way no one would guess his real "job".

Because of the destruction of his homeland, he has a severe bias against Argonians. How got over his wrath towards them long ago, but he still hates them and kills them as he sees them. He slowly stalks them, plans the perfect time, and leaves them as his sacrifice to Sithis. He views this as helping to rebuild Morrowind by removing Morrowind's enemies, one at a time.

He takes no Followers as no one who sees him in his Shrouded Armor can be allowed to live. Also because of this rule, he currently has a body count of 35 City Guards... but he's stealthy so he has yet to acquire a bounty.

And that's basically how I play my Dunmer Assassin, Nocturne.

Some other oddities that I just sort of came to with my main character ...
He loves boiled cream treats and will purchase/pilfer them wherever they are available.
He does not like mead but will drink the high quality stuff. In general it is ale or wine. He commiserates with the guards that just want a beer.

Little things like that round out my characters personality and make him feel more alive. Completely unnecessary but to me lots of fun.

This is not roleplaying. Eating, sleeping etc. That is immersion.
Roleplaying is acting on a set of principles you construct for your character, having the world reflect your choices and then working off those choices.
You can do that in say, New Vegas, since if you are a psychopath you can attack a certain faction and the ENTIRE faction will get hostile. And then you can decide what that means for your character. But in Skyrim the world is static and doesn't react. Bethesda creates fantasy action games. Obsidian makes roleplaying games.

The world reacts to plenty of it.

Agreed with this.


Not with this.

Tried to turn off the hud yesterday only to see that it also took off the warning if I am stealing books or taking books/items, I really hate that, rather not being in sneak mode the whole game since the sneak thing is broken half the time I can be across from a person in a hardly darkend corner and be totally "Hidden" so its not like I can rely on my mindset of "omg I am so hidden even know said person is staring at me"

I also don't like about turning it off with not knowing what book title you are reading I feel they could have done it better like turn off all hud on screen options BUT have it checkable to just say keep item names that will float up or someting idk, I don't want to see even a hint of the health bar so I have to have it completly off, they did do the crosshair checkable box correctly so why couldn't they do it for the hud and such??


Anyways I LOVE to RP my characters and am getting more and more into it as I go along but feel this isn't really done well I mean the law system svcks balls when it comes down to me murdering a whole village, should I be put to hang? If people don't like that than go run along and play marry but I want it to be more dire than just paying off a bounty or going to jail for a few weeks time :/ I want consiquences for all my actions to stealing a sweet roll to stabbing someone in the bank and being able to defend myself in some sort of coart system since I am dovakin and well known they can either hear my pleas for why I killed him and if there is no prompt for a "I just did it" than send me to jail or TRY to kill me, I get the chance to escape death but with a "You can't come back to this town for *depending on crime* so many weeks or months or even years in game time (which goes fast so it won't be to long) and once you get back after that time of being attacked on site and not being able to go into town at all and assassins coming after you and a bounty on your head you have to pay a huge ass fine for escaping your death and all the murders and if you can't get tossed out of town for longer, it might stop main quest but you did it to yourself...

Idk that is what I would love to see in TES, sorry for huge rant

I don't agree with this at all.

I believe the actual opposite is true.

Obsidian wouldn't know how to make an RPG if they got smacked in the face with a D&D book...

Call it whatever, it amounts to the same thing

A rose by any other name . . .

That's a good one!


Yeah, the whole immersion v roleplaying thing just sounds like semantics and hair splitting to me. I mean, yeah, if we want to sit down and write a college thesis on the subject, I suppose we could come up with some good arguments to split those hairs, but seems like a purely academic excercise to me, since immersion and roleplaying go hand in hand.

Exactly turija, they might be different in aspects, but the both make the game more enjoyable.
To me, saying one includes the other, role playing includes immersive elements and vica versa ??

Agreed. They're both a part of each other. You really can't do one without the other.