Id just like to share my personal play style and rules I stick to while playing Skyrim as my main character.

First of all, I play on master difficulty. I find this is the best way to make becoming more powerful feel a lot more rewarding, including when I find good gear and better weapons. To begin with some things might seem too powerful, though there's a way around most problems (just save the game before taking on something new) and BEWARE of trolls!!

A few personal rules I play by - No fast travel, there is so much you miss if you choose not to walk to your destination. The majority of the time traveling on foot I find myself stunned by the beautiful scenery and amazing atmosphere, not to forget the insane random moments that occur when your out exploring.
No Buying, this might sound a bit odd but I find being able to buy materials (Leather, Bars, Soul Gems) and rare items/weapons usually found in drops or master chests at the end of dungeons ruins the excitement of exploration. One might ask how I get my smithing up, while I don't fast travel I come across a lot of animals which I gain furs from to turn into leather and I visit the appropriate mines to gain the ores I need to make bars. This helps bring the world to life for me. (Of course I do buy houses and anything that can only be obtained from buying)
Only Smith found items, I play by this rule for quite the same reason as the last, smithing gives far too much access to high level items early on in the game, so I only smith items I've already found in the world, this again makes finding certain weapons and armor much more exciting.
No Training, I found that on past characters when I used my hordes of gold to train up my main skills the leveling process ended too early for me, knowing that one day DLC will come out I don't mind taking my time as far as leveling goes so I still have a few skills to level up by the time it arrives. I find alchemy is one of my favorite slow leveling skills since I always enjoy picking all the herbs I can during each journey and storing them in my home for later use, when alchemy is done I completely ignore the herbs, making traveling on foot slightly less rewarding.
No abusing smithing and enchanting, this is one of the most important for me since on my first character I abused the hell out of these. Ill probably still use enchanting to make some smithing gear later on though ill not be taking potions of any kind to boost either skills beyond their intended purpose.

One of my itches about playing Skyrim on the Xbox is the fact that I cannot turn off the compass without having to hide the entire HUD, otherwise no compass would be included in my play style since having no HUD up during exploration makes the world look so much more fresh. Seeing my health appear during combat is important to me though as a part of game play, I feel on edge enough while fighting tougher enemies without knowing what my health is at.

Well that about does it, in case anyone is wondering what race/class I chose to play as, I made a Breton, heavily armored with sword and shield, as I reach a higher level ill get the dual wield perks, I also occasionally summon a flame atronache to help me deal with trolls.

If anyone has any similar ideas or game enhancing rules that make exploration a bit more fun please share with me! Let me know what your thinking!

No Smithing, Alchemy and Enchanting exploits.

No Potions: It's too easy to stock up on Health Potions and chug down 20 in every battle.

Don't level up Smithing all at once - that's it for me, the game's pretty fun for me.

I started being a 'NO FAST TRAVEL' sort of person, but it got old. I'm not the most patient of people, and when I want to go from Markarth straight to Riften I'd rather fast travel. That said, it's not like I always fast travel. I went for a walk from Solitude to Whiterun today, for example.

I would not call it a rule, but i haven't used blacksmithing. Not even on my warrior, who plays on master.

What's the point of not buying stuff? You got the gold, you use it.

Agree with op somewhat... I tend to use the stores to sell what i find.

The only items i do buy are alchemy ingredients. Tend to find most of what i need in the wilds.

No HUD is easily the best thing I do in my game. The game is literally 1000 times more enjoyable that way. Go no HUD, and you wont look back.

I've always been hesitant to do that because I suspect it results in tonnes and tonnes of surprise-deaths because you can't really read the strength of your enemy. Is that true?

Beyond that, I'm with the OP. I went with smithing on one character and it broke the game entirely for me. RPGs should never be about obtaining the best of the best, they should be about having the best of times without caring for efficiency.

One thing I thought of the other day is fast travel and when to use it/not to use it. It can often be very enjoyable not to use it when you're alone and have some quiet time to gaze upon the world, but what about those of you who have a family around when you play? I occasionally do, and it pretty much drags you out of immersion, making non-fast travel more of a tedious task than a matter of quality.

My interest is in roleplaying. So I don't believe making up one set of rules that governs every character I play. That's not roleplaying to me. That, to me, is the same thing as powergaming or metagaming, only in reverse. Roleplaying should be about the character, not the player. So, with one exception, the rules I make change with each character.

Some of my characters travel by foot, some use carriages and some use map-based fast travel (I roleplay that fast travel is a form of advanced magic so map-based fast travel is available to my magic-using characters). One of my characters did not use any form of magic: no enchantments (including pre-enchanted gear), no spells, no scrolls, no Alchemy. That character did Smithing. Another character did no Smithing but did do Enchanting and used spells and scrolls.

Some of my characters buy and sell a lot. Others sell, but never buy anything. Some train, some do not. Some run everywhere, others walk when they are in towns. Some wear armor everywhere, others unequip armor and weapons when they enter towns. Some do a lot of quests, others never do a single quest. Some of my characters use certain weapons or armor only, others will wear anything they can get their hands on. And so on.

The one exception is eating, sleeping, drinking and bathing. All my characters do these things, regardless what kind of personality they have or what kind of background they come from. But even in this case the way they do these things varies from character to character. Some characters drink only wine, some drink only water. Some are vegetarians, others eat mainly meat. Some characters sleep only in Inns, others sleep only in the wild. Some bathe regularly, others irregularly. Some only in an Inn, others bathe only in lakes and rivers.

When you roleplay it all depends on the character.

This. I do try to not fast travel, but games are essentially about having fun. If I'm not enjoying myself walking from one end of the map to the other, then I won't bloody do it, mmk.

No fast travel, and no looking at maps outside of towns

Yeah... no fast travel is great in theory; I even had it disabled in Oblivion.

That was before I had 3 kids.

Now, when I have an hour or two to play, it's much more important to me to do stuff that seems fun at the time, rather than walking between Whiterun and [insert city name here] for the 300th time.

That said, *most* of the time I do try to limit FT outside of the carriages. It's just hard to do when you're working on a particular quest that has you going back and forth in an illogical manner (like the Legion questline, or the MQ, or...)

I've been no fast travel since Oblivion... when they added fast travel. Now if I do have to cross the whole country I will hire a carriage.

for me no HUD whilst exploring is essential, I'm on PS3 so this means no health bar etc. It took a little getting used to but it was worth it. Although I do turn it up slightly whilst in cities so I don't accidentally steal stuff, also without it in cities you cant tell whether a shop is open for business and end up picking locks by accident.

I also do not allow myself to use the in game map unless I am in a city or at a location, so whilst exploring I have no idea where I am. Personal choice because for me from a RP perspective I shouldnt have a map that tells me exactly where I am. If i'm lost then I really am lost and have to find a road and follow it until I find a signpost. I do allow myself to look at the map if I meet a non hostile NPC, RPing that I could ask them where I am lol.

May sound a little extreme but it works for me, which is whats great about this game. You want to power level and fast travel through the game? Go for it. Want to take it slow, enjoy the sights and live the game? Do it!.

I agree, the ability to down potions repeatedly feels like cheating, technically if you have enough potions your invincible. All healing and restoring potions could have had a cool down timer of something like 10 seconds, then perks in alchemy could have lowered it.

I like collecting books, I don't like having doubles or carrying anything that I wont use or sell for a good profit, because it just takes up space. Being able to see what I'm stealing (done this a lot on a test play with no HUD) and what said book's title is, helps a lot. Your right, I don't want to go back to having a HUD though there's elements fixed to it that I find important. It would be nice if Bethesda could patch this for the consoles so people can just turn the compass/radar off.

These aren't rules. It's what you want to do in your game and have fun while doing it.

That's PC only, as I keep saying. On the consoles, you can't turn off the HUD without also hiding item names and the health bar.

Having an impossibly difficult time trying to rationalize that.

My rules:

Never kill animals. IF attacked by one, I use Kyne's Peace shout. Wolves/bears/tigers not included.
All stormcloack, imperials, and traveling farmers to join one of them, dies on sight. Thalmor included. The prisoner they are escorting dies as well.

Wow, a lot of these are great suggestions to improve game play!

My next character will now hire carriages to travel from one city to another whilst traveling on foot or horse to get to the nearest town from the wilderness.

My rules: No HUD no fast travel (one acception to the rule: if I have rare time to play), no training, my character has to eat, drink and sleep.

I can't think why.
Towns are the only places she can get a map to look at, the rest of the time she has to make do with a compass and dead reckoning.
Makes perfect sense to me.

There should be a limit on stomach size; and foods and potions take some time to digest.

Another rule I set for myself that I forgot to mention was No waiting, I sleep to pass time for quests and while waiting (lol) for shops to open. The reason I call them rules is because I would take displeasure in having to break any of them, rules are breakable you don't have to stick to them. If you don't like the term how about personal laws?

Lots of great ideas people!