So I've made a character which I role play as a good character, who only steals when it's necessary. Then without thinking I managed to join the Thieve's Guild and now I need a good excuse for my character to have become a thief. The best thing I could think of was that the Thieve's Den place made me consider thievery as something that isn't all bad after all. However, that isn't quite good enough for me. I don't want to start over, as I quite enjoy this character and what he's done so far.

I've already decided that he will accidentally become a vampire, and he will lose himself to evil somehow which will cause him to join the Dark Brotherhood later on.

I see two areas worth addressing here. Bear in mind that there are many ways of roleplaying and my observations are the result of my own thinking - which only has the validity that one subjectively assigns to it. That is, feel free to read and ignore, for having fun in your own game is what really counts. :tops:

I would submit that you can come up with the mental gymnastics to justify anything, but is that roleplaying or pressing a round peg into a square hole? Have you considered asking your character what they want to do, since it is their butt on the line? If my character unthinkingly managed to get herself into the thieves guild, I suspect she would slap herself, walk away and chalk it up to a learning experience. If you have to rationalize something, that ought to set off warning bells.


If you have already plotted out your character's future, is that roleplaying or marching them through a script? Is your character an actor performing a directed role or are they living their life in Tamriel?

Good point, though I'm not hardcoe roleplaying. Just slightly more so than an average runthrough. I try not to fast travel, and I try to come up with a reason to justify everything I do.

Well, it could be successfully argued that both of those situations are different kinds of roleplaying. Just depends on whether it's the player who's playing the role, or the character playing the role.

I agree, though. There's absolutely no reason why a character has to continue with a quest line that doesn't fit them. I've found that I usually get bored with a character really quickly when I start trying to manipulate them into doing something they don't really want to do. On the other hand, those characters that I've let loose are the ones who really become special.

Sigh. You guys are no help at all. I was basically asking for someone to help me come up with a very small story for my character to justify something I've done accidentally. I wasn't asking to be criticized on the way I like to play the game.

Sorry, you got answers from roleplayers. Please don't take it as criticism. It's more the way we see things.

Okay, ask yourself this. If you yourself were faced with the temptation to turn to a life of thievery, what would you tell yourself to justify it? If you can answer that, you can probably come up with a good backstory for your character. What would be a strong enough motivation to force you into a life of crime? Poverty? Love? Ambition?

That's the way a roleplayer looks at this stuff. In the long run, it really helps if you have some idea of "why" your character would do something, even if it doesn't matter to your gameplay style.

The other thing is, you don't have to follow through on the Thieves Guild thing, if it was an accident. Your game isn't harmed if you (or your character) decide that it wasn't what you intended, and simply walk away from it. That's what we were saying.

Thank you. I'll try to figure something out.

Actually, you yourself already have a legitimate justification for having joined the Thieves Guild: You simply let your guard down. One seemingly small transgression from virtue led to another. Before you knew it, you were a card-carrying criminal. You might even role-play as a reluctant villain, who feels remorse over his actions but thinks himself trapped in a life of crime. Or, as someone else mentioned, you could of course simply repent your thieving ways and return to the straight and narrow.

-Decrepit-

Ok, let's try to rationalize the TG for a basically good character. I see a couple options beyond the fine rationale suggested above by Decrepit:

1. Approach it from a Robin Hood perspective. The Gray Fox watches over the unfortunate and protects the beggars. Stealing from the rich to help the poor. Trying to keep the Legion from harrassing the beggars.

2. I view the TG as basically a love story (If you don't know the questline, it would be a spoiler to provide more details). If your character somehow mystically gets a vision of this, it could easily justify embarking on the questline.

Hope one of those helps some.

One of my characters sort of fell into the TG. She's really a very "good" character, but she has a tendency to just follow her whims. If something catches her attention, off she goes. She had a bit of a problem with it early on, but she found that she really enjoyed the missions themselves (sneaking was a LOT of fun, and she got better at it than pretty much any other character I've ever played), and she assuaged her conscience about the independent thievery by only stealing from jerks (she completely cleaned out Alval Uvani's house - even took the worthless stuff, just because). She followed the quests all the way through, then walked away and hasn't looked back. She doesn't regret it - it's just a thing she did. (Though she did regret the fact that it hurt her reputation, so the next thing she did was set about restoring that).

If it fits a character to do something, whatever it might be, then that's the thing to do. The key is simply to be aware of who and what the character is and figure out what s/he would do in a given situation. That's why we can't really tell you what justification you should use for your character's actions. From a roleplaying perspective, the only "person" who can tell you that is the character himself. If you get to know him and listen to him, he will.

Two great ideas. I'm already master of the FG, and I've decided I simply wanted to know for myself weather or not the TG existed. Now that I have done the first actual mission, I've learned of the Robbin-Hood type nature and it interests me. I was going to just stop the TG questline after I'd found out for myself that it does infact exist, until I read your first suggestion. I'll tie mine to yours so that I can do it with good reason. Thanks :celebration:

You could actually role-play the Robin Hood part of it, by donating to (bribing) all the beggars everywhere. Just bribe each beggar up until you max out his/her disposition.

We'll have you into full-scale roleplaying before you know it!

Not a bad idea! Only problem is I probably haven't stolen enough for that yet. Ha.