Roleplay Guidelines

These are the guidelines I will follow for Gwenneth Gut-Rippers playthrough of Skyrim;

• Have at least 2, preferably 3 regular meals a day.
• Sleep at an appropriate place each night for an average 7-8 hours If circumstances prevent me, I'll either catch up on some sleep during the day, or have a very extended period of sleep the next night.
• No fast traveling. If carriage rides are real time, those will be ok.
• No looking at the ingame or paper map. In the event I find the equivalent of a skyrim map ingame (like a map on a table, or a book describing the locations of villages, cities, lakes and rivers), looking at the paper map will be ok. Handdrawn maps made during gameplay are ok too (If I make any I'll make sure to post them on my blog), but I will need to find writing material ingame before I'll be able to do it.
• No quest markers. If I will master the spell of 'show path to destination', I'm free to use it, though with my current character it will be unlikely I'll ever master that spell
• No Compass. I planned on playing with no HUD, but I ended up covering the compass part on my screen instead, leaving the rest of the HUD on. It's a shame HUD elements can't be turned off seperately as an option. 
• No waiting to speed up time. Waiting for roleplaying purposes is ok, for example I might wait for 2 hours to simulate I got really drunk and dozed off on my chair in the inn.
• No drinking potions while in combat. Running from an enemy in order to be able to quickly gulp down one will be ok, as long as I create the realistic time to do such a thing before combat resumes. Healingspells, if I master any, will be ok too since they take realtime to execute.
• Hunt/fish/gather to provide in my own food as much as possible. Buying food when I have to will still be ok of course.
• Stay true to my character. Make decisions based on her race, personality and experience.
• Not actively hunt for quests. I'm just as likely to talk to a non quest carrying NPC. Depending on my character I might accept some quest I stumble across, decline others.
• Having a job. As soon as I spend a prolongued time in a village or city, I will try to make a living of a regular, non-quest related activity. Like treecutting, smithing, hunting (and selling the meat/skins) etc.
• I'll also allow events in the game to make slight alterations to my characters personality and choices. I might become more liking/disliking to certain races, switch jobs due to local economy etc.

How to handle death:


I'm planning to reload the latest save when dying, or else this might become a very short blog. However, I will always play my character like she has only one life and avoid taking any unnecesary risk, run from overpowered enemies, etc.


In the case I will die, I will always redo all I did upto my death, so for example I will still enter the cave where I died. Then after living through my previous steps I will:


Penalize myself. For example, after falling to my death, I will reload and move to the location where I fell, then simulate I lost my backpack (or whatever you hold all your stuff in) by discarding my entire inventory, except for what I'm wearing. When I got hit by a floortrap I might discard my 3500 gold boots of elventrampling to simulate they got destroyed by the trap, and only walk (not run) for the next 5 days. Or I might simulate I got heavily wounded by drinking several poisonous potions.
Whatever the penalty will be, I will make sure it will always be severe.

In other words, when I die ingame, I will always replace that by reloading the last save and roleplaying something really bad happend, with real ingame consequences. I'll make sure it will hurt one way or the other.