So, I wandered into Riften and got into a conversation with some scuzzy dude who seemed to think I had agreed to pick some guys pocket for him, despite my not having actually said so - I had encouraged him to spill the beans on his plan in hopes of tipping off his victim, but I was then given no option to do so. The quest has only one resolution, in which you do exactly as you are told by a petty criminal you have just met, because, you know, that's how world-changing heroes act.

So, fine. Irritating to even have this lowlife quest sitting there in my journal, but whatever. I just ignored it and went on my way.

Fast forward several levels. I meet Delphine, and she tells me her old comrade Esbern is hiding out among the criminal element in Riften. To meet him, I'm supposed to talk to the same thief from before.

Except the thief doesn't want to talk to me about Esbern. All he wants to talk about is the petty crime he tried to involve me in weeks ago.

Am I stuck? My character is not going to rob some random shopkeeper's stall. That is just not a thing that will happen. But it seems that I can't continue with the main plotline without finishing the stupid thief sidequest I never wanted.

Anything I can do?

Go down in the Ratway warrens. Keep going to lower levels until you find a padlocked door.

There's your old blade waiting!

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:A_Cornered_Rat

You don't have to do anything with the Thieves Guild to get to Esbern. I don't think you even need to talk to Brynjolf about his little "job" in the marketplace, altho it's very hard to avoid because he will waylay you into discussing it any time you get near him and I think that once he does that he leaves it with "talk to me when you're ready to make some coin" or some such even if you tell him to get lost... and then you can't ever get rid of that journal entry.

I wasn't able to avoid him this playthrough, but I didn't do the job and had no dealings with the Guild except for that first conversation where I told him I wasn't interested. I knew how to get into the Ratway and just went there without any direction or invitation. I just breezed through the Ragged Flagon on the way in and out, nobody there cares as long as you don't start any trouble with them. Pretty sure if you can find the entrance without ever "meeting" Brynjolf it would still be the same.

I wish I'd known that the first time around, since I was told to talk to Brynjolf that's what I did and thought I had to do the first couple of TG results to get access to the Ratway. Personally I think it's a lousy way of sending you off to Riften as it's likely to get you stuck with unfinished TG stuff in your journal that you will never get rid of. At the very least you should be able to refuse Brynjolf outright and have it go away, but I guess they thought they had to leave it open-ended like that in case people wanted to skip it then and go back and join the TG later.

i got sent off to riften to get a jarl a damn drink lol

Yeah, gamesas could've handled a few of these faction quests better. You're forced into joining the Mages Guild to continue the main quest, no two ways about it, though the others are semi-forced as they're hard to avoid (such as Mr. Brinjolf. He stands in the markets, right where people go to buy and sell things. )

And you can't avoid him even when he leaves the market, I just wandered into the Bee and Barb looking for Marcurio and before I could even adjust to my surroundings after the cell loaded I had Brynjolf standing there telling me it was obvious that I didn't come by my wealth honestly.

You can go to Septimus' cave and continue the MQ without visiting the College at Winterhold.

You are never forced into the thieves guild. Just follow the markers and you will bypass all of that.
Just because you are given the first quest doesn't mean you are a part of the college. You tell the gate keeper that you are the dovakiin and need to speak to the librarian, so they let you in. Getting the quest is mor of a "While your here, why not partake in some of our classes" gesture rather then forced addmission.

It always kinda bugged me that, after having completed the main quest, the Companion's quests, the Legion quests, the College quests and 99% of all the misc quests, and having a noble, upright Dovahkiin, I couldn't choose to clean up Riften. Slaughter the Black-Briars and the thieves guild and remove corruption from the system. You're the motherskjhfd Dovahkiin!

FFS, this should have been stated somewhere in the game!
AUGH.

But who would know that on their first time playing? Or where said cave is? Early on, you ARE railroaded. It's only later, after you've been playing a while, that you realize you don't have to follow the script.

But you wouldnt know that unless you had done the mages guild before, or read the wiki. Its all bethesda's effort to strongarm you into doing the poorly-written "guild" questlines even if you're not f'ing roleplaying a mage or a thief. This was probably the biggest pissoff for me in skyrim.

Ironically on my first playthrough I was a stealthmage type deal and was already in both the theives guild and winterhold so I didnt notice until my second playthrough when brynolf wanted me to join his dumb guild. It's not like he has a majority interest in the world not ending. Why should he help dovakhiin?

Actually, I did do it that way my first time through, by accident. I was poking around up north, found the cave and did the Hermaeus thing. I had no idea what the scroll was for, but stashed it figuring they're pretty rare. A lucky move.

The biggest one for me was not being able to do the civil war without also being forced to start the main quest too.

I just used the persuade check to bypass Brynjolf's proposal during the main quest. I just wish it didn't replace the one misc. quest objective with another. Players who don't want to join the Thieves Guild are forever stuck with the objective of listening to his scheme. Accepting his scheme and then walking away, then telling him that stealing is wrong, doesn't change that. It would actually make things worse, giving you a listed quest instead of a misc. quest. All that we can do is ignore the misc. quest altogether.

You can tell Brynjolf he's got the wrong person and he leaves you alone. Then you can ask other people, like the Argonian innkeeper lady, who will point you to the Ratway.

Not as rare as calipers.

What are you talking about? You can do the MQ without joining the guilds. You can also easily get rid of Brynjolf the first time he jumps you by immediately hitting B (or TAB), you don't even have to listen to him. There are multiple ways of bypassing the TG.
As for the Mages, just like Echonite said, you don't have to even participate in the first lesson or talk to Mirabelle, just go up to the Arcaneum after Faralda opens the gates.


Now THIS is a true thing!

Me too. I tried to do the CW on my non-dragonborn character, and bring about regime change in Riften, but got locked into the MQ when talking to the Jarl. I had to back out of the convo and reload the Dragonsreach autosave - abandon the CW - and abandon my plan.

I just exited Brynjolf's dialogue this time since my character has no interest in joining the TG. He hasn't bothered me since.

And if you end up with that quest in your journal... Well, my journal also tells me to talk to Aventus Aretino just because I asked an innkeeper about rumors... Took me half of my first playthrough to figure out where I got that directive and where this person was (and when I discovered what questline he was involved with I decided to ignore it, since I didn't want to do it with that character).
"Talk to the leader of the Companions" also shows up just from talking to an innkeeper.
Unless you plan to do all the questlines I guess you must live with some unfinished quests in your journal.

WRONG!

If you haven't played before oh well. In a "real" scenario the hero might have to make friends with mages and thieves to get the job done. If you hvaen't played before you shouldn't care about having to experience the game.

This is a game, so how come so many people don't assume they'll need to think their way out or into stuff in order to achieve their goals? Following the path of least resistance is how to be a spectator. Thinking and strategizing my way to my goals is how I'd expect to play a game. Keep loading up a previous save and trying something new until you get what you want. Or just keep exploring for an alternative. A lot of the time this pays off.

Technically, it's true. But here's the thing- for a person who's playing Skyrim for the first time, what's the liklihood of them understanding that you can do this? It's only after the second playthrough and/or communicating with other people do they learn the who, what, and how to bypass these "forced" iniations.

It's forced because you're given absolutly no indication beforehand that you can bypass these questlines entirely, and at least one of them "forces" you to be iniated into one of the factions if you play the main quest as-written and do limited exploration outside of quests. THIS is what people are PO'ed about.

I didn't know about it the first time through - but before I got very far in Riften, I looked it up on the wiki. Especially since you overhear Mjoll's commentary, and then run into Maul, and then Sapphire.... about that point, I decided reading about the city and the TG was going to be a VERY good idea.

NO YOU ARE NOT! I'm tired of people always saying you're "FORCED" to join all these factions, when, in fact, YOU ARE NOT! For the mages guild, you can simply show your shout powers to the gatekeeper and she'll let you in.