I've seen a lot of posts on the pros and cons of doing the main quest before doing the civil war quest. I'm curious, though, whether anyone has any advice on doing the civil war quest — or any other non-main quests, really — before your character even discovers s/he's the dragonborn. CAN you do the entire civil war quest without ever even knowing that Ulfric's not the only dude in town with the power to shout? I kind of like the idea of limiting myself to major powers and just playing a dedicated Imperial soldier instead of letting "the dragonborn" define my whole character…

you have to start the main up to when you kill the first dragon to do the civil war quest..

^This

You cannot complete the Civil War Quest without killing a Dragon. Not that anyone actually cares you are a Dragonborn of course.

Oh well. Thanks for letting me know, though!

Must say I'm enjoying my new character doing the DB quests and being able to explore and fast travel WITHOUT having to fuss about with random dragon spawns all the damn time.