With all the anticipation of Skyrim I figured I might experiment with Tes Construction set a bit. I am very experienced modder from the Fallout 3 community on these very forums. The goal of this mod so far is to hijack the charactergen quest and spawn the player in a new (Fairly small sized) world using all of the already existing assets custom balanced for a different style of play. A lot more brutal, more heavily balanced against the player in general much in the same way a Rogue like might play. I currently plan to use assets from Shivering Isle as well as the default game but I am undecided about this as of yet.

Inspiration comes from the survival aspects I enjoy while playing a heavily modded Fallout 3 style game. Post apocalyptic fantasy? lol
Heavily discussing the importance of a hunger system in the latest version of Minecraft got me thinking about what it takes to really design a game where such a concept feels like a good thing rather than just an annoyance. I insisted that in Fallout 3 the concept actually enhances the game when it is implemented correctly through mods. For the most part it is not a mainstream concept to place in a game and most people I have talked to simply regard a hunger system is a horrible concept...

Another thing about this style of play is making everything generally more deadly. How will it feel when one smack in the face from a war hammer will kill any humanoid in even the best armor in the game. Being caught in a fireball from a high tier spell results in an almost guaranteed fiery death. How will it feel to turn a corner and be chased around by 20+ pissed off monsters that can all rip your head off in two hits? There will be no back story to this world, the goal is your story, what you do. You will encounter fights that will be much too hard to win. You will be asked to size up your opponents and pay attention to your choices. You cannot win you are going to eventually die. Its a very different mindset from the style of play found in Oblivion.

Permanent death is a very common concept in this style of game play. (Though that is typically hard to implement in Oblivion)

Currently functional Brain storming

• Starting a new game places you in the new world and you are then able to create a new character.
  
• Rebalanced Races and birth signs
  
• Magicka does not regenerate but you have a much larger Magicka pool by default ( Potions and food are the only way to recover Magicka )
  
• Fatigue does not regenerate but it goes down much more slowly ( Simulates a hunger system in some respects now )
  Should it be possible to starve to death if fatigue is at or below 0 for too long or should it just give you a considerable penalty?
  Should I bring in the concept of fatigue being drained to refill your health or should fatigue go down depending on actions you do?
  
• Sleeping in a bed does not regenerate Magicka or fatigue/hunger
  
• All damage multiplied by 3x. All monsters, all weapons and all magic will hit very very hard.
  
• Various different NPC factions in the world that have their own agenda. There will be no consideration to what factions like or hate you on my part.

Current thoughts on balance and need for feedback... ( List WIP )

• Alchemy too easily can make simple potions that throw balance off. ( Is there a way to make this not so off balance? )
  Fatigue/hunger out the window. An apple and a loaf of bread might as well be an entire feast with a good mortar and pestal.
  Poisons created through alchemy will be lackluster when one considers that all all damage is vastly increased... I have much better hand placed poisons but this is kind of lame regardless.

Any other thoughts or feedback is welcome

This is a good thought you have there TheCastle.

That said, a similar experience can be had by a combination of a few existing mods:
- TIE or FCOM
- Duke Patrick's Melee Combat
- Hunger mods such as Basic Primary Needs
- Add to the mix Audacious Magery/Fizzle
- Realistic Fatigue (Don't use this, but I believe it lets you tweak fatigue regen)
- A bunch of mods that alter racial aspects, such as RBP, tejon's mod (forget the name)

Ah yeah
I can imagine some more research would be a good thing on this. The goal is mostly experimentation with design. Most of the work I think will go into new leveled lists and environments with characters/factions, items/weapons/potions/food/spells and re-balancing races/birthsigns. I want this to feel a bit like a new indie game using oblivion as a base. I might have to request help for people to detail environments after I do all of the groundwork. I don't plan to do quests yet and dialog will be limited to very specific npcs such as merchants.

Building a decent sized terrain with a decent number of places to explore will most likely be the biggest task creating the experience will be dwarfed by the tasks goals.