So I've looked all over and found some interesting ideas on how to role play. There are just a few things I haven't figured out for myself. Please feel free to add any info you have on RP and immersion. I'm always looking for more ideas. I'll keep it short and simple.

Keep in mind I have ADHD and I play on the PS3, and I know both of these are hindering me.

These are what I already do:
- Give my character a personality based on their race and class. (I am pretty stereotypical)
- Sleep every night (unless I am a vampire or a werewolf)
- Eat at least two meals a day (sometimes I forget)
- Use the wait feature during things like crafting, reading, chopping wood, etc.
- No fast traveling.
- Dead is dead.

These are things I struggle with:
- Walking. I get bored walking so I usually jog. I can't toggle walking that I know of.
- Fast traveling. I am tempted to fast travel because I end up turning off the game from boredom and I usually don't play for a while afterward.
- Setting limits. I want to do it all, but it ruins the RP.
- Making money. Wood chopping is efficient but gets boring. Can you make a decent living as a Hunter? Won't you run out of fresh game? Smithing can only be done with the transmute ore spell. Alchemy can be abused. Enchanting is a very expensive profession unless you collect the materials yourself.
- Combat. Obviously Skyrim was made for the combat-ready. It seems almost impossible to do anything fun while avoiding combat. Because of that, my RP characters have to have some kind of way to fight.

These are the issues that are bugging me that I can think of.

I don't walk either. I don't want to wast my precious Skyrim time moving around slowly. Not fast travelling is an important one because it helps you see alot of Skyrim that you might otherwise miss. It also stretches out quests since you find tons of stuff from point A to point B.

Here are some things that might help:

* ride a horse

* use carriages

* for a non-combatant, use conjuration and let the creature fight while you flee. ( of course riding a horse, just flee)

- get Sanguine Rose... Instant B.A. body guard, that you don't have to worry about leaving behind

* Turn off the HUD, back ground music and lower the "foot step's", turn the brightness down enough you need a torch or spell at night or in cave's, dungeons etc.

* use calm, fear and frenzy ( last two from hiding...so good sneak skill's)

* Not easy, but wait to do any traveling til a Khajiit caravan passes through and follow them closely, just darting out to get ingredients if you need them. Their might even be something that you can look on the Wiki or google to find that has there routes and timing.

* I pay my followers, a weekly sum, usually in gem's, cause trying to get 100 gold out of 2300 is a PITA.

- along that line anything I give them to wear or some weapons, they keep.

* I at least carry food and a wine bottle ( RP it's water).. if I forgot to eat.... I tose that amount of food.

- I never take food from anywhere that their was not live NPC's...vampires don't count as live, their thrall's might.

That's some of the things that help my with my RP's

I saw someone posting this idea on the Oblivion forum. Their plan was to create multiple characters and play them at the same time.

You create a character for each quest line (Main Quest, Mage's Guild, Fighters Guild, etc..).

Every time a character levels up, you save the game and move to the next character.

If a character dies, then you stop playing that character.

The goal was to see who would be the last character standing.

You'd have to take notes to keep track of all the characters, but changing characters often might help with some of your boredom.

It would probably be easier on a PC with a mod to sort your saves by character, but you could manage on the console.

And if a character for each quest line sounds like too many, then just create 3 or so and play those.

side note - just the other day, I was thinking that the quests in Skyrim sure seem to bounce you all over the map. I didn't mind so much in Oblivion, but in Skyrim sometimes it seems like a real slog just to get to the next part of the quest line.

One principle guides my roleplaying: take only those actions that are appropriate to the character.

I don't believe that sets of iron-clad, 'one-size-fits-all' rules, applied to every character, is roleplaying. Forcing every character to eat three meals a day, for instance, is not roleplaying to me. Every person in real life is different, and I strive to make every character I roleplay different too. And that means every character I play is going to follow a different set of rules.

I believe good roleplaying should take the idiosyncrasies of individual characters into account. Some of my characters sleep at lot, some sleep very little; some eat a lot, some eat very little. And so on. My roleplaying rules are tailored to the specific character I am playing right now.

As far as running/walking goes, I don't think it's necessarily good roleplaying to walk everywhere...unless it is appropriate for a particular character to do so. In real life if I want to travel to the next state on foot I'm likely to want to run every so often. As much as I can, in fact. I will walk after I become too exhausted to run. And this is what most of my characters do too.

I beg to differ. I don't always do it, but sometimes I just like to walk from place to place, especially if it's an area I visit infrequently. Skyrim is one of the most scenic games I've ever experienced. Walking or sneaking around also lets you get the drop on a lot of enemies, 'cause you see 'em before they see you.

To the OP: Try keeping a journal. Not in game, obviously, but at the end of every session, or before every new session. Write down everything significant that happened to your character, what s/he thought about it, how it might affect his or her future plans, etc. Record interactions with NPCs that stick in your mind, whether or not your character liked said NPC, etc. If you have a follower, record your conversations (they might just be made up, since the followers in Skyrim are pretty wooden) how you feel about them, and why you want to sacrifice them to Boethiah. Most importantly, create a backstory and personality profile for your character and every time you pick up a new quest or talk to an NPC try to live in your character's shoes.

IDK if this helps you any, but I created a Legacy system in which your new character is one of the kids you've adopted in a previous playthough.

As such, it helps with some of the background, and whatever the Parent Character's skills were, you're allowed to transfer two or three of them over as main combat skills. This lets you still be able to meta-game by power-leveling if you wanted to, as well as carving your own path.

The only real rules are that you can't adopt the same kids that the Parent Character did. If the Parent Character was Married, you must treat that spouse as your legacy character's parent in-game as well (you can't marry you parents).

I typically keep my walking in towns only. What gets me is, even if you're running, a companions quest from Whiterun to Riften and back on foot for 100 gold just seems like it isn't worth it. Same with the Civil War quests, they run you all over. The only solution is to buy a horse, if you can afford it, and hope it doesn't die.

Edited for spelling.

What I meant was that I don't ONLY walk everywhere like I've seen some people say that they do. I don't sprint everywhere either. I use a nice mix of sprinting, jogging (mostly), with walking and/or sneaking.

Depending on the character, mine don't walk everywhere either. A heavy armored character is going to ride a horse or walk/jog, as I think that running would tire them out more. Light armored or cloth wearing character will do what I call a "dog trot", which is a gait I read about once, favored by Native American Warriors.... though probably not called that.