As soon as you take Martin to Cloud Ruler temple.

At that point, you have no reason to think you are playing such a key role in the operation that it will fall apart without your help.

You can literally spend months ingame without returning to the MQ because as fas as your character is concerned, his/her job has already been done. Uriel's heir is safe and Jauffre as well as his Blades will handle things from that point forward.

Maybe you'll run into a random oblivion gate and that might be the cue for you to consider checking how they're doing.

Hmm, yeah, you seem to be right. I really hate the pacing of the entirety of the game, to be honest. Even at Cloud Ruler, Jauffre is asking something of you. I really, really miss the pacing of the Morrowind MQ. "Here, have some money, buy yourself a nice pair of shoes. Keep up your identity as an adventurer and do some legwork for some of the local guilds or something. Come back when you're ready and maybe I'll have your next set of instructions ready."

But I suppose that is the best time to do the side stuff. It's kinda hard to ignore the amulet because even if it's "just an amulet", only you and Jauffre know anything about Martin.

I usually never bother to go to Kvatch to rescue Martin.

They also keep you in the dark for more than half the game at the real urgency of the situation whereas in Oblivion they're all like, "DAEDRIC INVASION!" and in Skyrim they're all like, "DRAGON INVASION!"

But yes, back at the OP, this is usually the point where I stopped playing the Main quest.

Why did you feel the need to create another thread on this topic? There is an active thread still on the first page: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1488927-main-quest-rp-question/

Most of my characters deliver the Amulet to Jauffre and that's it. Not sure if that counts as taking a break though...

I do have one character currently doing the MQ, but that's only because I used an alternate start mod for him, without realizing that the author went to all the trouble of including Kvatch Rebuilt, only to go to additional trouble to force the destruction of it later on and providing absolutely no way to leave it intact. So he sort of got backed into doing the quest, and I'm experiencing that all over again.

I loathe - absolutely detest - the way it's set up. From a practical standpoint, you can take a break from it at absolutely any time, since nothing ever progresses unless you do MQ stuff. But the problem is that that doesn't fit in at all with the veritable flood of breathless hysteria from all sides. Every time you talk to anyone who's involved with any aspect of the MQ, all they tell you is that you HAVE TO RUSH OFF AND DO THIS RIGHT NOW!!!!11! It's almost sort of nice that there isn't really any need to rush right off and do much of anything, and you can actually go off and do whatever you want, but it's just flatly stupid that that complete lack of real urgency is paired with a deliberate depiction of the absolute need of instant action. One or the other would've been better (I'd much prefer a lack of urgency on both fronts) but the combination of the two is cripplingly unrealistic, and the biggest reason that the vast majority of my characters never touch the MQ.

That out of my system - when to take a break if you're going to actually do the MQ? That recent character has been dealing with just that, since he was right in the middle of other stuff when the mod-added messenger tracked him down to announce that the events leading to the MQ were going to be forced on him anyway. After parking Martin at Cloud Ruler is pretty good, though that leaves Baurus drinking away his days in the IC. Lemdel (the character in question) took a bit of time then, but not a whole lot, since Baurus was right there in the IC, so there wasn't much excuse for not contacting him. The real chance for a break came after delivering the Daedric artifact to Martin, since a flurry of quests follows that, and most notably, Allies for Bruma. Since Allies requires going to every city, Lemdel's taking it as an opportunity to wrap up some of the other stuff that he was doing before he was so unnecessarily interrupted.

I always just dump the amulet off with Jauffre. But you're right, it only makes sense to at least go to Kvatch, and after Kvatch you end up escorting Martin to Cloud Ruler Temple. So I agree with you.