To rekindle my enjoyment of the game, I've started to play with magic, which can get challenging at level 56 with almost no magic skill. I've also started to follow some simple rules that restrict me from fast travelling. I'm only allowed to use horse or hire a carriage to each of the main holds. I can only fast travel to the same location I'm at too re-spawn my horse/dead thrall. I also have to sleep every night, and after curing myself of Lycanthropy, I have to watch out for several diseases (no vampirism thank you). I'm considering adding a food and health mod, but we'll see.

How to you play to keep the game fresh, exiting and challenging?

TIP: For those that are sick of seeing the same old creatures everywhere, check out The Monster Mod. Great addition to the world.

I tried not fast travelling for the first few hours of my new character. It was fun! I discovered a lot of new things I hadn't seen before. Eventually I gave up not fast travelling, it became too much of a hassle - but I keep exploring the world, trying to find every little thing - while not even touching any of the major quests (I've done those like three times already). It's amazing how much content I've missed even though I had already spent 200 hours on previous characters.

I did do something like this for one of my Fallout: New Vegas characters, though. I created a melee alcoholic on hardcore. The basic premise was that I had to drink all the alcohol I could find, no matter the cost, and I could only use my fists to fight stuff. Got me into a lot of trouble, let me tell you!

My only rule is to kill all Khajiits I see. No matter who they are, I kill them. Why, you may ask? My friend said Khajiits were were the best race in Skyrim. So now I just kill them all just to make him mad. Makes me wish I could stuff a Khajiit's body and mount it on my wall in Breezehome. That would show him!

I keep a diary for Lydia.

Skyrim's about freedom, man.

My Rules.

1. All spiders must die.
2. Anyone caught not trying to kill nearby spiders, must die.
3. Anyone found in the possession of or found fraternizing with, spiders, must die.
4. The Altmer suck.

That's about it. I really hate spiders.

If it lives, make it stop.

HAIL SITHIS!

After reading http://uesp.net/wiki/Differences_Between_Morrowind,_Oblivion,_and_Skyrim, I decided that it would be simpler to try Morrowind for the first time this weekend. That game has a whole bunch or awesome rules, built-in!

@Cubidog1 said:

My only rule is to kill all Khajiits I see. No matter who they are, I kill them. Why, you may ask? My friend said Khajiits were were the best race in Skyrim. So now I just kill them all just to make him mad. Makes me wish I could stuff a Khajiit's body and mount it on my wall in Breezehome. That would show him!

You sir, have the right idea. It would be fairly easy to make a mod for that, now that I think about it...

I refuse to fast travel. That's more or less it.

To rekindle my...

When i amke a character every action i make or quest i take on must have some sort of lore reason that would make my character perform the task, for instance Dravins lost bow was taken by thiefs, my Paladin type character would help him out because that is the way of the light but my thief would rob him that night for smack talking the guild.

mostly on my thief i do the thiefs guild missions exclusively until i finish the quest then i move onto randomly breaking into the holds castles and taking my pick, im thinking of pushing towards dark brotherhood quests on her but so far i havent found a good reason to go in that direction with the story.

I wish Bethesda would include a "Harcore" mode like in Fallout: New Vegas. It was a lot of fun playing that game on Hardcore and might be the achievement I'm most proud of earning.

Not fast traveling can be fun until you have to go back and forth between the same two cities for certain quests. That's when I make an exception.

Have fun, oh and always be cheesewheeling.

I haven't been playing this POS watered down TES game.

I haven't started the civil war quest, but since a few days ago I've made it my mission to exterminate every Imperial camp I come across. Also any farmers who walk by saying that they just signed up.

The Stormcloaks are next.

@Cubidog1: You could get that Khajiit follower, then have him come to your house at Breezehome and murder him.

@Illuminosopher said:

I haven't been playing this POS watered down TES game.

Good for you! Meanwhile, the rest of us are enjoying our time with it instead of bitching about it!

Anyway, I haven't really placed any rules on myself beyond what my character is. In other words, my character is a rough, but good individual who won't randomly hurt anyone who hasn't hurt him. If you do hurt him, or hurt someone else, you'd better watch your back real close. I have yet to do the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves' Guild questlines simply because they don't fall within my character. He doesn't steal, he doesn't hurt people who don't seem to have done anything wrong, and most importantly he's not very quiet.

Meanwhile, rules on fast traveling or having to sleep at night - nah. I don't generally fast travel unless the place in question is far away, though, and even then I'll think about it a bit. Once you've gone from one spot to another and back and then to a different spot and back, you start to realize the value in fast traveling.

Do not use the console commands for cheating. Only rule I have, ruined my first playthrough.. But then again haven't touched this game in a long while it got very boring very fast. I think the "openess" off the game isn't for me.

@believer258 said:

Good for you! Meanwhile, the rest of us are enjoying our time with it instead of bitching about it!

Cool. enjoy it!

I don't need rules, I have standards.

I find that what can take away the fun for me is the huge difference in the leveling of skills. Most of the time I end up just leveling blacksmithing/pickpocketing/alchemy and before you know it, things become trivial. Feels more like cheating than anything else. Games are most fun while breaking them, but then they tend to become stale afterwards. Seeing as Bethesda doesn't seem to focus on this kind of player/"problem", I do indeed have some rules to keep things interesting!

• Max difficulty.
• No purchasing of alchemical/blacksmithing componments.
• No purchasing of soulstones that have souls in them.
• No leveling of alchemy/blacksmithing/pickpocketing/enchanting beyond my current highest skill.
• No revisiting of known dragon hotspots (dragon walls and such).

Golden rule. Don't be a dick. I did a load of quests in Riften and was on good terms with everyone in town. Now I cant bring myself to do the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves guild questlines.

I played a second character that didn't fast travel, didn't do the quest that activates random dragons, and got enchanting up all the way. Had fun with it for over 60 hours or so, but even aimless wandering loses it's fun after a while! I may try a twohanded heavy armor dude next, but not for a while probably!

Buy all the houses, lure an attractive woman inside it, murder her, and leave her naked body lying around.

Do everything I possibly can to break the immersion.

I'm trying to commit as many crimes as possible to see how high my bounty will go.

I tend to grab any alcohol I can when it's not considered theft. Keep it all in a chest in my house.

I don't like non-fast travel rules because that shit is boring, yo. Just take me to the next dungeon.

My first playthrough was as a Thief, so I resolved to think like a Thief. So:

• No random Dungeons/ Mines/ Tombs. I'm a thief, not a crusader; I'm not walking into a pit of monsters without knowing there's something worth stealing.

BUT... I will sneak through a dungeon if someone is paying me to find something or a I hear a rumor of treasure in a certain location.

• I only steal what I think a Thief would steal: valuable, easy to carry, easy to fence. Typically this limits me to: money, gems, jewelry, scrolls, and valuable potions. I'll make an exception for lightweight enchanted items if I want to learn their effects. If I can disenchant them on-site, all the better. I refuse to believe you can sneak around with steel platemail in your pack or an Ebony Warhammer strapped to your back.

Limiting what you take keeps you from becoming rich too fast and breaking the game. I also find it fun to to launder my gems and precious metals by crafting them into jewelry before I sell them.

• I avoid fast-traveling from the map but make liberal use of the wagons to travel from city to city. I usually know where I'm going, and since Combat is not my specialty there's no need to get killed on my way there. I'll use a horse to travel from towns without wagons.
• When in doubt, Escape. Thieves are strictly "live to fight another day" types, so I'm not above running or hiding. Gold doesn't spend well when you're dead. Having a horse makes this much easier when I do have to travel overland.
• Henchmen tend to get in the way of a Thief. They'll often fight when you want to sneak or flee, and it doesn't feel quite right having my Housecarl witnessing me commit crimes. If I do have one with me, I'll leave them at the town's Inn while I go thieving.
• Don't stick your neck out. One of my favorite experiences in Skyrim so far is navigating a cave full of trolls by shooting arrows against faraway rocks to draw their attention elsewhere while I sneak past. I had no chance against them but still managed to pinch my item and get away clean.

These rules allowed me to play a long campaign in Skyrim, fulfilling the Theives Guild questline and several sidequests, but caused me to skip over a ton of content. This means that while there may be some overlap with the next character I play, there will be so much I'm experiencing for the first time that it will feel like a unique game. I'm hoping my putting rules in place for a Sorcerer, Imperial, Stormcloak, and Mercenary will result in several engaging playthroughs instead of seeing everything at once and starting over.

As my stealth character I'm currently playing, when I take out bandits one-by-one instead of just rushing in, I make the effort to hide the bodies because I'm an badass assassin. I like the sleeping rule, I might start doing that. I did the fast travel thing for the first 25ish hours of the game, but I became impatient with it after a while. I do kind of avoid quests in the game and just wander, especially as my second character. I kinda wish I was playing it on PC so I could add health and food mods and such.

Do not use the console commands for cheating. Only rule I have, ruined my first playthrough.. But then again haven't touched this game in a long while it got very boring very fast. I think the "openess" off the game isn't for me.

1. Don't be a dick. No stealing, pick pocketing, intimidating, killing randoms ect.
2. Don't fast travel. I have never fast travelled in my 60 hours, except when I was warped to Markarth for the drinking quest, fuck that.
3. Don't load a previous save if my horse/companion/villagers die. I have lost many companions because they like to fight giants for some reason. 

@Neferon said:

I find that what can take away the fun for me is the huge difference in the leveling of skills. Most of the time I end up just leveling blacksmithing/pickpocketing/alchemy and before you know it, things become trivial. Feels more like cheating than anything else. Games are most fun while breaking them, but then they tend to become stale afterwards. Seeing as Bethesda doesn't seem to focus on this kind of player/"problem", I do indeed have some rules to keep things interesting!

• Max difficulty.
• No purchasing of alchemical/blacksmithing componments.
• No purchasing of soulstones that have souls in them.
• No leveling of alchemy/blacksmithing/pickpocketing/enchanting beyond my current highest skill.
• No revisiting of known dragon hotspots (dragon walls and such).

I went a little nuts w/ the blacksmithing and outleveled all of the world's "natural" loot (inc vendor wares) about halfway thru my playthrough. it ruined some of the fun and I'd never do it again should there be another playthrough.

Otherwise, I don't murder NPCs in cold blood, although mistakes have been made. I would like to do a DB/Thieves Guild playthrough and be an utterly evil bastard, but I don't like being a dick, even in a game. Lame..

Never leveling up smith/enchanting. All the best weapons are to be found on my own terms, in dungeons.

Always play on expert, then master.

@fetchfox @EODTech

Not sure if you two have gone looking for these since you made your posts, but just in case you haven't:

There's a fair number of mods that accomplish what you're looking for very nicely, with multiple layers of customization for you to tweak depending on your preferences. Personally, I've gotten use to playing with Total Realism - Basic Needs (eating, dehydration, sleeping)and Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival (exposure mechanic and craftable camping gear)for my "hardcore" immersion needs. It added a lot to the game for me after I was getting pretty bored, and they're well put together and tested so they integrate themselves with the core game pretty seamlessly. Hope it helps!

My only Skyrim rule:

there

are

no

rules.

I basically play by character traits. If I am the classic hero, I do good for the little people. If I am an antihero, I may play the middle until I have to choose, and then go medieval on some tail. The most fun was my wanderer. He went by the name Prisoner, and rarely spoke. Never staying in town for long, he would take quests as they came, but fullfill them as he found them in his wanderings. His soul purpose was to get revenge on those who would see him dead.

I try to avoid using what I consider to be game breaking enchants. I was baffled when I realized that the game actually allowed me to avoid using any mana while casting spells, it just seems dirty.

A story from my experiences last night on a new character I was playing.

I found two redguards hassling a woman out in the wilderness...it looked like it was getting ugly. I had Lydia with me and I never let her see me murder people, after all, I'm the hero of the world, I need to set the standards.

With my mighty shout, I charged in and bashed their brains through their eyes with my mace, helping the damsel in distress...only to get myself a bounty for 2 counts of murder.

The bitch.....I saved her life and she'd turn me over? I swapped to my bow and took aim as she fled, the slow-mo cam followed the arrow as it hit the back of her skull and dropped her like a sack of cheese wheels.

My bounty vanished as I strolled over to her corpse and looked at my handiwork, murder for the sake of keeping my name clear in the nearby city.

I looked at Lydia and nodded, she knew the drill. She witnessed me at my worst and knows full well the dangers of trying to turn me in to guards.

Now we take turns murdering the stragglers, the wanderers, the weak...I am the hero of this world and I have set the standards...murder is just another word for fun.

Pickpocket everyone :)

@FordFairlane: I just started playing a shady-type character and that all sounds really neat! I, however, can't imagine being able to break the habit of picking up high-value loot, at this point it's more or less unconscious.

@MysteriousFawx Love it!