After spending too much time thinking about character concepts I got fed up and decided to play the game and see what came out of it, going back to my natural way of playing instead of forcing things.

Did Skyrim change the way you play compared to Oblivion and Morrowind? My most successful Oblivion character was a Sorcerer (premade class) w/Atronach birthsign, now I lean more towards the Crusader type character, strong healing and some destruction, mostly runes and cloaks. Mace in one hand and Shield/Resto/Destro in offhand, Skyrim brought out the warrior more than just sticking to pure magic. I still use some utility spells from other schools like Soul trap, Muffle, Oakflesh and even summons when my magicka pool allows it. Being a packrat I spent thousands of gold to train Pickpocket for the Extra pockets perk, and since my Speech is high I put points in Merchant to sell my loot to everyone.

I feel I'm all over the place with this character but at the same time focused when in combat, not sure what class I would be if I were to label myself, Cleric/thief if going by Baldur's Gate/D&D definitions, maybe Bard as well.

What would your character look like if you went in with no plan and no goal and just used things that felt natural to you and not something you forced yourself use?

Did this change from when you first played Skyrim and now and could you RP such a character?

In Oblivion I played it as a game. But when I played Skyrim for the first time on console, then saw all the mods on PC, I thought that the open ended, rather lacklustre ending, might well hide very, very good potentials for RP and continuation of a well thought out character. That's what caused me to create Chadric.

Before Skyrim I planned characters out in advance. I could spend up to two months creating detailed back stories, making a unique house in the Construction Set, choosing which quests the character would do, what gear they would equip and at what point in the story they would equip it, ect. It was a lot like outlining a novel before writing it.

Skyrim taught me to "discover" a character as I played. Nowadays, instead of planning an entire game in advance, I'm more likely to send my characters into the world and improvise. My roleplaying these days often takes me in directions I never anticipate when I begin a game.

I would compare my method of roleplaying in the earlier games to controlling the movements of a toy car with a radio controller. My method of roleplaying since Skyrim is more like winding up one of these old-fashioned, non-electric toy cars and pointing it in the general direction I want it to go. What happens to the car after I let go is often a huge surprise to me.

Not really no, even with the removal of attributes, classes and birthsign i pretty much play the same way i've always done. I come up with a concept and a character and just run with it. The games rules and restrictions have never really been the starting point for me, just something i work with.

What's diffirent is a can play a character that changes focus during gameplay without cheating, for example sometimes i like the play a Conan the Barbarian inspired character that starts out as a thief that later develops into a warrior.

In Oblivion the leveling system was messed up, because you could potentially get minor skills higher than major skills. You had to rig the system to do exactly what you wanted and you needed a lot of patience and some grinding. Things I did in Oblivion would be making smithing a minor skill then grinding those repair hammers or casting certain spells over and over. And the skills I was grinding had to be minor skills so you could get them higher, but they leveled slower than the major skills.

Thank the gods Skyrim's leveling system works much better. But now with perks and no spell-making I have to be more focused, but I like Skyrim a lot better because I'm doing a lot less grinding to get where I want. I just have to keep the character focused though, not try to do everything.