Skyrim: NPC challenge

A-Stump

A-Stump

There's a lake of stew and whiskey too
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Nov 10, 2013
The challenge is simple enough and has been done before. Start up a new character on Skyrim and play it as a boring old NPC. Here are the ground rules

No exciting quests. You must play as a boring NPC. You may take quests if you find them to be sufficiently mundane (like fetcher or crafting quests).

As an NPC you must follow a living schedule. Eating, sleeping, ect must be done at least once a day.

No stealing. All of the gold you own must come legitimately from work. Example includes mundane quests, mining, hunting for furs/meat, alchemy, smithing, ect. No delving into dungeons for loot. No joining guilds just to take all their free stuff.

When you start you must not accept any items at Helgen and you will basically treat the events of Helgen as if they never happened. Your challenge only starts when you have found a city you wish to start in.

No running unless you're in combat or other similar dangerous situations. No fast traveling unless using a cart. You may also use horses if they've been purchased.

Last of all, if you die once the challenge has started, you're dead. No starting over. So does anyone want to run the challenge?
 
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If I lived in Riften wouldn't being some small time thief count as a boring NPC?
 
You want to play a game where you are a regular person and have to tend to your needs, just like in real life? Really? I don't see the fun in that.
 
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Obnoxion said:
You want to play a game where you are a regular person and have to tend to your needs, just like in real life? Really? I don't see the fun in that.
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It's called a challenge. And if you lived in Riften...I'd say it'd be ok to steal in that ONE city.
 
This challange does sound pretty boring. Surely there is a way to spice it up while keeping it mundane. Could we role play a guard?
 
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exball said:
This challange does sound pretty boring. Surely there is a way to spice it up while keeping it mundane. Could we role play a guard?
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I've tried it before. It's more interesting than it seems at first; taking the slow path around an open world lets you see a lot of detail and random encounters that you ordinarily would miss completely. And it's quite challenging in some games where the economy is almost 100% tailored for an adventurer.

I did it in Fallout: New Vegas. Just start with all the regular clothes and equipment you get when leaving Doc Mitchell's and start yourself at the Mojave Outpost. I did make some small changes to the formula to better suit the Fallout universe: you can take non-adventuring quests like checking out the smoke coming from Nipton or clearing the highway of giant ants, and you can freely take items from abandoned locations to sell (it is a post-apocalyptic world, after all). There's a backpack mod for the game as well (a good one that actually has the backpack as essentially an equippable container) and some carry weight mods if you want to be 100% realistic.

I rapidly discovered that the New Vegas economy was not even close to tailored for this kind of play style. It started out legitimately difficult to avoid going hungry (I did have a low Barter skill as well), and once spent almost all of my caps on just two bottles of water. But once I set out on the road to Novac, you find so many caps and valuable items basically just lying around for the taking that you have to force yourself not to pick up and sell everything you find to avoid rolling in thousands by the time you hit the next settlement. You can even find a grenade launcher in one house in Nipton.
 
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exball said:
That's why you take a high survival skill.
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Even that became unnecessary pretty rapidly. I wasn't kidding when I said that you have to force yourself to not become rich in that game. There's so many mods that you need to apply to make the economy more difficult that you're no longer really playing New Vegas by that point.
 
Hhrmmm.. I play Skyrim on my PC with survival mods that require me to protect myself from the cold, eat, drink and sleep. Bethesda should have really brought New Vega's survival mode into Skyrim. Anyway, I understand your idea of playing it as an "NPC", but I' have to agree with the others that after a while it would be a bit of a strain after a while you did all the available quests for your city.
Maybe devise a set of challenges per NPC class? You could have set challanges for "Guard", "Miller", "Hunter", "Merchant", "Farm Worker" and "Miner".

I
 
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Venusaur said:
Hhrmmm.. I play Skyrim on my PC with survival mods that require me to protect myself from the cold, eat, drink and sleep. Bethesda should have really brought New Vega's survival mode into Skyrim. Anyway, I understand your idea of playing it as an "NPC", but I' have to agree with the others that after a while it would be a bit of a strain after a while you did all the available quests for your city.
Maybe devise a set of challenges per NPC class? You could have set challanges for "Guard", "Miller", "Hunter", "Merchant", "Farm Worker" and "Miner".

I
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You don't have to stay in the same city. You can travel but without running unless you're in danger. You could be a hunter NPC living in the wild as long as you have a bed and food.

Really, it's just role-playing as if you were Joe Spaghettio, common Skyrim nobody, rather than a dungeon conquering demigod. The real challenge comes further if you don't loot bodies of anyone you defend against and just get things you actually work for.
 
Do I have to do this with Skyrim? What about a prior TES game.
 
exball said:
How would you live in Daggerfall or Arena?
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Well for starters Daggerfall has a few simple noncombat random quests that just involve travelling to a guys house and giving him a book he ordered. I wasn't thinking of those two though. I just think it'd be more interesting in a game like Morrowind or Oblivion.

Especially considering Morrowind drains fatigue if you run which is one of the parameters of this playstyle.
 
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Cuddlebug said:
Well for starters Daggerfall has a few simple noncombat random quests that just involve travelling to a guys house and giving him a book he ordered. I wasn't thinking of those two though. I just think it'd be more interesting in a game like Morrowind or Oblivion.
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Oblivion honestly feels like the best choice for this. Maybe I'm just biased because Oblivion is my favorite TES game.
 
exball said:
Oblivion honestly feels like the best choice for this. Maybe I'm just biased because Oblivion is my favorite TES game.
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I say this as a person who's favorite TES game isn't Oblivion. Its probably the best choice for this style of play. Especially considering you can fail quests in Oblivion.
 
So basically, I'll play Morrowind
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Venusaur said:
Hhrmmm.. I play Skyrim on my PC with survival mods that require me to protect myself from the cold, eat, drink and sleep. Bethesda should have really brought New Vega's survival mode into Skyrim. Anyway, I understand your idea of playing it as an "NPC", but I' have to agree with the others that after a while it would be a bit of a strain after a while you did all the available quests for your city.
Maybe devise a set of challenges per NPC class? You could have set challanges for "Guard", "Miller", "Hunter", "Merchant", "Farm Worker" and "Miner".

I
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iirc pre-release Bethesda said they weren't particularly keen on Hardcore mode in Skyrim and they didn't think it contributed much to the game. Unsurprising given FNV was an Obsidian title. Skyrim also removed a lot of things that were clearly removed just 'cuz. Like hand to hand and item degradation.
 
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