I lol'd at the title, because it's so obviously an angry little special thread.

That's easy to do. Don't do the main quest and just pick flowers all day or something. You're given that choice, after all.

So that you can escape the drudgery of your real life as an international man of mystery?

Yeah, I'm insignificant enough in real life. I feel no real desire to be insignificant in my escapist fantasy adventure/entertainment.

I kind of don't see the point here of the argument here. If there was a game where you weren't the big hero, then it would really defeat the point of being a game. The alternative would be doing what all the other NPCs do, and hang around in the same city all the time...

The people saying they want to be "insignificant" are really overestimating how long they would play that kind of game.

As it is, all of the games give you the choice as to whether you want to actually be the uberhero or not. The last two games have perhaps been a bit more direct in this (I played Morrowind for mothns before I even realised there was a main quest at all), but the choice is still there.

Didn't PC Gamer (or some publication) have an ongoing column from a guy playing as an NPC (who also fantasized about being a Jarl)?

First, it's not as if you're passing the ring around for others to try on. Whether they would die after slipping it on their finger is unknown. The legend suggests they will, but the entire history surrounding Red Mountain, Nerevar's death, and his prophesized return is highly muddy. There's no evidence that this rumor is true.

Second, the ring was blessed by Azura, and in fact, she is the one who grants it to you upon entering the cavern of the incarnate. If there is such a curse on it, it is the work of Azura. That she then has the power to enforce or remove such a curse at will is not out of the question. She's already thrown her weight behind the player character, so she already has reason to see you succeed.

While the main quest of Morrowind did not involve dragons and being dragonborn, the game definitely pointed you toward the main quest. You were given the name and location of your handler, a message to deliver, and told the silt strider was the safest way to get there.

idk about glitches here it is http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9048

I would just like to point out that this dragonborn thing was sort of fore-shadowed in a book about the Nords and Skyrim that's been in, I think, every TES (I've only played Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, so not sure about Arena and Daggerfall). The books talked about the shouts of the Nords (remember, you're not the only one who can shout - you just take to it more naturally). So, it would have really been a major letdown, after building up the Shouts in the lore for several/all of the previous games, to not include shouts in Skyrim.

I suppose they could have made it more of a training thing, instead of absorbing dragon souls, but Dragons, and Alduin specifically, have also been a central theme in the Lore about Skyrim going back awhile, so they kind of needed to do something with Dragons in Skyrim. Basically, Skyrim was always going to be about Dragons and Shouts.

One more thing I would add. . . I've not had *too* much of a problem with the way TES games tend to cast the player character as somehow "special" - your character starts out humbly enough, but if you think about it, you really train up fast. What takes others years of training takes your character weeks or months. Eventually, you can outshine almost every other human in the world, mastering pretty much every skill available if you choose, and while that takes awhile, it doesn't actually take a *lifetime* which is what would be required for even the most intelligent, athletic, cunning, nimble human(oid) - you're obviously supernaturally talented and gifted compared to all others.

So, being the Nereverine (or if you prefer, the emmisary of Azura, if you don't actually think you're really Nerevar reborn), or destined by the Aedra, or the Dragonborn, or whatever, gives some sort of context for why the player character can achieve such greatness in such short time.

That is one of the things I loved about LOTR. Frodo is not an uber-hero, nor is Sam. They are just regular joes thrust into events they feel they have little control over. They follow their consciences and do the best they can, and in the end they save the world. I like this precisely because they are not superheros. They are just as ordinary as your or I. That means that ordinary people can change the world, and we do. Every day we all make the world what it is, by what we do and what we do not do.

The main characters of all the games are "heroes." They are able to rule their own destiny and are often more powerful than others. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Hero

Of course, they do still end up saving the world, and having crowds & kings bow down to them in honor. They're still central to the story / protagonists. Whereas the "playing an insignificant person/non-hero" thing seems more along the lines of..... that town handyman who lives on the other side of Bree from the Prancing Pony. Or a Hobbit farmer in a corner of the Shire that Frodo & company don't go anywhere near in the books. Some tradesman who lives in the Third Circle of Minas Tirith.

Considering that you always start as a prisoner with no noteworthy skills and in the matter of a few months become a world saving hero of demi-god proportions, mastering skills in that short period of time that NPCs apparently spend their entire lives trying to master, I'd say yes, you are always something special.

I hate the title of this thread, by the way.

Agreed, she will protect people she has an invested interest in. Also not everybody she helps is a resurrected Dunmer hero, just look at the seer at her shrine in Skyrim. Azura speaks to several put invest in those she feels is worthy she is a Daedric Prince after all.

In Arena, you were supposed to be a friend or an apprentice to Ria Silmane.

You were imprisoned by Jagar Tharn's forces for just this. You had not real additional powers, just the thought of fixing up the problem with the Emperor.

You may have become a Hero(ine) but even at the end, after you won the day and restored the Emperor, they kicked you out of the Castle without any real acclaim.

You finish, then you are sent outside the Gates and you can not go back in. Could I at least have kept the nifty Staff? No.

At least in Oblivion, the "Hero" Character got a neat set of armor.

Hero, don't give me hero. I just sort of knew what was "right" and I worked towards it. My characters have been the most reluctant of "heroes" in all the games.

The thing is though, Frodo and Sam are still regular guys at the end. They do not have a big red "S" under their civilian clothes. They were not born with special powers that only the "Chosen One of X" possesses. They are regular guys who stepped up and sacrificed, and succeeded. That is what makes heroes in the real world. The Sergeant Yorks, Audie Murphys, and Pappy Boyingtons, etc...Those men were not born with uber magical powers granted them by the gods either. They were just men, the same as any other, working regular jobs until they were called to something greater. The difference between them and those hobbit farmers and handymen is that the latter did not step up, did not risk their lives for what they believed in. The reason many of us are drawn to play that kind of character, someone who is not born with incredible powers and a heroic destiny all laid out before them in advance (a destiny which they cannot fail to achieve because they were given a slew of advantages without having to earn them) is that we want our characters to feel like real people.