So, I've compiled a list of ten things I do, on stock vanilla to make the game much more believable - and all of them work wonders, believe me. Oblivion has potential to be a great game - you just have to use what already exists to the fullest extent. So here's my list - add to it, comment on it, bash it (please don't) or just read and use it. They are all simple things that really work and add so much to an already stellar game. You are insane if you don't do at least one of these things to improve the gameplay.

• Play in the first person - I imagine we all do this, but stick to it so you feel as if you ARE the character
  
• Use stairs and steps - Don't just spam [E] and leap over the little paths leading to shops; walk up the steps, don't run; same goes with buildings
  
• Don't travel after dark or use torches - Don't wander the dark, pretend you actually WANT to sleep. Which brings me to:
  
• Sleep every day - in your own hosue, or at an inn. Sleep from 7PM/10PM to 5AM in the morning; get up with the sun and go adventuring!
  
• Eat and drink - each night, make sure you buy some food and eat it; eat each thing individually and wait for the effect to end, as if you were chewing. You can drink ale without abding to this rule though.
  
• Get drunk! - if you have just had a harrowing adventure, go back to town, drink five lots of wine and ale and then use the persuasion window to 'chat up' the young bartender; make sure you click all the wrong things though!
  
• Why walk? - get a horse as soon as possible and NEVER fast travel EVER! Walk or run to every destination, don't fast travel. It's a big one that I initially struggled with, but when you walk all day and collapse into your bed at night, you really FEEL as if you are the character
  
• Don't rest to heal - never ever ever EVER use the res(T) command to heal three thousand HP when you get hit. Not even for 3 HP. Just never use it. Potions or go to sleep for AT LEAST 5 hours to heal!
  
• Browse the shop - when you go to buy or sell, look around the store as if you are going to buy something that is there, it adds to realism a hundred fold
  
• Don't use menu freeze - in battle, don't just freeze the gameplay when it gets hot and spend ages swallowing potions - if it's not hotekeyed when you had the quiet chance to do so, you don't get to use it now. Golden rule for me.

This is an interesting list. I found it interesting enough to come up with a reply to each point - and I mean that as a compliment. So I hope that what follows does not sound overly critical. I don't mean it to be.

1. I have no interest in this. It's not my goal to feel that I am the character I play. I roleplay that my character is someone else. I travel along in an advisory capacity - we are a kind of "party of two." For this (and many other reasons) I will always play in 3rd person.

2. I mostly agree with this. But occasionally I play a character who is unruly and rambunctious. It would not be good roleplaying on my part to force these characters to walk up stairs and to follow paths. In my opinion a true roleplayer allows the character to make the decisions. The instant I step in and start making decisions unilaterally, I cease to roleplay.

3. Again, it this should depend on the character, should it not? Some characters may prefer to travel at night. I might be roleplaying a thief hiding from the law, a hunter stalking nocturnal beasts.

Also, you're going to have to explain to me how not using a torch is going to make a game feel more real. When I need light in real life I use a flashlight, matches, anything I can get my hands on. If my goal is to make my game feel like real life then my character is going to use a torch. Unless, that is, my character is afraid of fire or has some other roleplaying reason to avoid fire.

4. I agree that characters should sleep. But how much they sleep, when they sleep and where they sleep is up to my character, not me. It is not going to make sense for some characters to sleep in a house (some of my characters have never owned a house) or an inn (some of my characters never enter a city). And forcing my characters to sleep only during certain hours goes against my idea of roleplaying also.

5. I agree also that characters should eat and drink. They won't necessarily eat and drink at night and they won't necessarily buy the food, though. My characters wait for the effects of ingredients to wear off too, for the same reason.

6. Some characters like to get drunk and some don't. I like your idea of saying the wrong things to NPCs under the influence, though. It's never occurred to me to do that. That's good - I'm going to try that next time one of my characters gets drunk.

7. Some of my characters, for various idiosyncratic reasons, do not ride horses. Most of these characters run/walk everywhere (I use a mod that slows everyone, my character included, down to a walk when Fatigue hits zero). They also use a mod that adds Morrowind-style transportation.

I see map-based fast transport as a kind of magic. So my magically-inclined characters use it. I roleplay that this is a pretty advanced form of magic, one that requires much study and dedication to master. So these characters usually do not "learn" this power until after level 15.

8. I don't understand why resting to heal is forbidden but using potions to heal is okay. To my way of thinking, resting to heal is more realistic than drinking a magic potion. And why is resting bad but sleeping is okay? I walk 40 miles a week in real life and I can vouch for the fact that resting - with eyes closed or open - is very rejuvenating!

I will more often take the opposite approach. Many of my earlier characters have been warriors who are suspicious of magic. These characters would die rather than drink a potion. But they would rest/sleep anywhere at any time, if they could get away with it. My more magically-inclined characters, on the other hand, had no problem drinking a potion.

9. This is great. I do this too...when it is appropriate. As with everything else, it depends on the character and on the situation.

10. In theory I agree with this. And generally I abide by this too, when I can. But in my opinion Oblivion's hotkey system is terrible. Mages in particular accumulate spells quickly and those 8 slots can fill up real fast. Some items and abilities and spells just can't be easily hotkeyed. I'm sorry, but my character is not going to go without something she needs just because Bethesda did a poor job of designing their user interface.


One single all-inclusive set of rules might work for you, especially if you're only playing one character. But for myself, I play many characters. For me, this kind of approach is unworkable. I believe that one set of rules for all characters is poor roleplaying.

I tend to prefer roleplaying by doing things according to my characters' personalities, rather than what would be necessary for survival or realism. For example, Rosalind eats berries whenever she feels like it because she likes the taste, and for no other reason. Furthermore, I can't be bothered to have a consistent eating or sleeping schedule in real life.

I do try to do some things realistically, though.

1. After drinking a bottle of alcohol, I'll jerk the thumbsticks around to simulate stumbling.
2. If an NPC greets me, I'll stop and "nod" at them.
3. Limited use of fast travel. Although, this is not so much for roleplay reasons as gameplay reasons. I used to abuse it, now I find the game boring with it.
4. When on PC, I'll walk when inside cities. I don't bother with this on PS3, because it's too awkward pushing the thumbstick partway.
5. I really try to get into my character's head. Like, it if I got shot with an arrow and think not "Oh, Akatosh/Azura/etc, the pain!" but "Woohoo, free arrows!" then I'm doin' it wrong. ...Unless, of course, I am playing a character who is really into archery and really tolerant of pain. Sorry, I kinda wandered off there.
6. I carry around only about half of what I technically can carry. Like right now Rosalind's encumbrance is 150, so she only goes up to 75. (All little over is okay, but once she's at 100, stuff gets dropped.)
7. Must change clothes everyday, and put away old clothes.
8. Not really sure if this applies, but in the guild halls, I try to take a: only things the character will use, and b: only things inside containers. That way, the guild halls won't look all barren from taking things off shelves and tables.
9. Furthermore, I like to pretend my character has to earn the right to take things in mages guild halls. They can eat there, sleep there, read their books, and buy stuff from the guild alchemist (no haggling) before completing the recommendation quest, but that's it. Haven't decided what to do about the fighter's guild.
10. This one is the ultimate for me- try to justify NPCs' occasionally bizarre AI. If I can't think of something good, "touched by the Madgod" always works.

Although I have sometimes in the past 'become' my characters, such is not the case with my current character. Rather I travel with her as a spirit that flows within and around her. Therefore it seems perfectly natural to change views between first and third person rather frequently.

I don't really make any rules for my character; rather, I get to know her. Over time, she has developed her own set of rules. She does indeed get tired, hungry, thirsty, injured, dirty and experiences the full range of elven emotions and bodily functions. She tends to those things as she needs to without any prompting from me and, in fact they occupy a fair amount of her time. She even feeds her horse.

I have never known her to 'wait' to heal. She is quite accomplished and comfortable with restoration. She is an empathic healer and can only heal by laying on of hands. By doing so however, she can assess wounds, diagnose and even determine some of what is in the heart of her patient. She must accept some of the pain from her patients to heal them however. She is also rather adept with alchemy.

Speaking of alchemy, she carries quite a precise collection of food and drink with her. One of her favorite drinks is appleberry juice made from Angel's recipe (apple + blueberry). She labels vials of the juice by name. Similarly, she labels restore fatigue potions 'Water' to simulate the content of the goatskin water bags she carries. She probably goes through about ten vials of water daily. Her hair conditioner contains just a touch of ectoplasm, along with some rosemary oil and aloe vera for conditioning, glow dust for shine, and some finely ground bergamot for a nice citrus scent.

Every rider for the Black Horse Courier has a name, as do most of the foresters and many of the Legion Riders she encounters in her extensive travels.

She does not use magic to travel, but does use magic to teleport her horse to her side within her game. It is an imaginary magic she learned called 'The Call of Corsair'. It can be accomplished in the game by fast traveling to her current location (which effectively summons your horse) or using the command console (moveto player).

We do occasionally use fast travel, but it is done as an administrative task like saving, exiting or starting the gameplay session. Having walked or ridden every inch of Cyrodiil during her very very long career, we have no problems focusing our time together on something we want to do. While we travel the roads and overland extensively, we have no problem at all sometimes simulating an uneventful trip, or more often, just a portion of that trip.

Although we do use mods, our list is not extensive. In fact the mods we find most helpful for roleplay are a set of portable camping gear and saddlebags for her precious black mare, Superian.

I really like the idea of using Restore Fatigue potions in lieu of 'water'.


Classic Buffy... :tongue:


Great way to apply immersion to the 'Your horse has been stabled outside the city walls' message.

There's a great, configurable mod out there called "Combat Fumbling" that stops your character in his tracks for x amount of time if he spends more than y amount of time in the menu during combat. An essential mod for me. Along with OOO and dead-is-dead gameplay, combat gets absolutely heart-pounding. And I don't have to "pretend" I don't want to be out at night. I REALLY DON'T or a mountain lion could sneak up and three-shot me.

For me, the "rules" change depending on the character. One of my current characters, for instance, has taken a particular interest in the doom stones and rune stones. She has discovered that it is possible to fast-travel between these magic stones (I use a mod that enhances the map, and adds the stones, wayshrines, and ayleid wells as we "find" them.) She's very self-reliant, getting everything she needs from the wilderness, or from the occasional bandits she encounters; she only goes to town to sell the skins and loot she's found, and to pick up occasional fighters guild contracts.

One of my characters had a "rule" about fast-travel: He could only fast-travel after mounting his horse, because fast-travel for him was "fast-riding." This was our way of maintaining immersion with the "your horse has been stabled..." message.

For most of my characters, sleeping is only "safe" in a town. "Safe" takes on a whole new area of worry if one is spending the night at the Skingrad Mages Guild, though... These characters will only "wait" at a campsite, simulating sitting at a fire through the night, or sleeping fitfully.

I agree with Pseron Wyrd on the menu-pausing business. The game only gives you 8 hotkey slots. My keyboard has more than 100 keys, but the game only allows me to use a small number of them, and spell management for mages is a big issue. I can't hotkey every item that my character might need during a battle. I won't do something like going into inventory to switch to a different weapon, or to put on armor, but for spells and potions, it's simply a matter of there being more options than can be hotkeyed.

I use a bunch of these things already, I also have a thief character that I purposely leave at lvl 1 for many reasons(picking main skills you never use to stay lvl 1)

This makes it so when your skills get high level you can set the difficulty so you 1 shot reg enemies when sneaking, and things die quickly.... but at the same time you die fast aswell.

It makes it so creatures are threatening without the leveling system, and things like rats and goblins don't stop being around because you have new armor.

It also makes it so plate armor is hard to get, people are using iron armor and leather/fur the most while the shiny cool armor is only used by guards and deadra. Which is historicly accurate.

I also give him a vice, skooma. This drains money and gives me a reason to steal.

Why go through all that? Just sit really close to the screen.

Im kidding; when RP-ing I follow all the steps up there; and truly love it that way.

Wow guys! Thanks for all the replies....my poor typing got something confused though:


I meant:
Don't travel after dark or IF YOU DO, use torches

Bad grammer, sorry! :facepalm:

I get the point that some people may roleplay differently and I'm sorry if the 'rules' sounded like it was for all classes - yeah, a vampire or a thief will travel at night, an unruly character will jump around the place etc...the rules I typed up were for a spellsword character, so a little refinement was probably in order.

Admittedly with the fast-travel, I once created a fake spell at the mages guild called 'Fast Travel', that drained magicka and some stats, but I would then fast travel as if my magic. I still travel by horse though - for one reason because if you just bounce between cities, you never get to explore and immerse yourself in the world of Cyrodiil and discover caves/ruins etc.

In response to:


The other thing I have tried is "5 second slow-mo", where I imagine my characters senses become heightened and he is able to get a weapon from his bag really quickly -- basically, I open the menu and have only 5 seconds to get what I need. It's fun and frantic.