I had an idea today. Here, on the modding forums, we could come up with ideas and rules for special games of Oblivion. By special games, I mean games with specific mods and specific restrictions on them. I'll try to lay out a template for such a thing here with my first idea, which is a wilderness bandit. Which means that you'll need to be careful, pick targets, and know when to stay out of the way. Because you'll likely have a very high bounty, it means no or limited town visits unless you use regional bounty, which still effectively bans you from IC and makes legion patrols something to be avoided, especially with OOO. Foresters will also give you trouble, but you should be able to take them. You can still visit other towns so long as you don't commit murders in their township, since the guards won't know you, unlike the legion.

Title: Bandit

Required Mods:

• Alternate Start Arrive by Ship
  
• A campsite mod(bedrolls / deployable tents, etc)
  
• OOO or at least MOBS.
  
• Something to stop bandits from spawning with daedric/glass if you won't use OOO.
  
• Cobl
  
• One or more of the mods that adds traffic to the roads, EX Tamrielic Travelers.(who are you going to rob? Other bandits?)
  
• SM Regional Bounty and/or Reneer's Guard Overhaul. (this game is pretty much impossible without it)

Recommended Mods:

• A magic mod(Supreme, LAME)
  
• HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Some manner of spell tome mod, either official or unofficial, since obtaining spells normally will be all but impossible. Mods that allow learning from scrolls are also a good choice.
  
• Realistic Fatigue/health/leveling
  
• Saddle bags
  
• Thirst/Hunger mods, to force you to kill travelers or go hunting to survive.

Optional / Iffy:

• CM Partners - Would be recommended, but the companions have varying morals, and they don't tell you. If you do use this, try to stick to the nonessential ones
  
• A mod to add you to the bandit faction so other bandits ignore you. With something like that you could even go out to raid with them or live with other bandits early on. Could make things too easy though.
  
• FCOM - If you want this to be even harder go for it.

Rules :

• Housing mods - Castle ownership is conspicuous, so no castles or other luxurious homes near towns. Pocket dimensions are okay only if they have a decently hard quest associated with them, since they could make the game really easy. No homes in towns whatsoever, incl. official. Deepscorn is okay, frostcrag is up to you, since its kinda conspicuous.
  
• SI is okay, since you could use your loot and savings to start fresh there. The backstory is that you're a bandit to make ends meet, and you'll be known as such in Tamriel, but no one in the Isles will know, so you could use your gold to dress up and mingle if you wanted.
  
• No main quest, your character is not "The hero of Kvatch."
  
• No Fighters or Mages guilds. Thieves guild is not recommended, but up to you. Dark Brotherhood is perfectly fine, but you'll have a hard time killing the mark in The IC, since you'll have a high legion bounty.
  
• For immersion purposes, try not to stay in town longer than a few days. Assume the legion will find you. Do your business(DB, quests, selling loot, etc) Again, no town houses. Cheydinhal is the obvious exception, due to the fact that you can stay in the DB sanctuary. IC waterfront and Bravil are also acceptable / debatable.

Anyway, that's mine. What are some of your ideas for self-imposed rulesets? Feel free to comment or suggest things to me, since I plan on actually playing that game.

I played a Khajiit Thief/Archer who had these rules:
Avoid water if possible
No horses
No killing of innocents
Do it to the baddies before they do it to me

Avoid water meant there were som quests I couldn't complete and some loot I didn't get.
No horses means slower travel and no pack horse, but also less chance of crashing due to VRAM overload
And sneak and snipe was great fun!

I don't know if I would go about setting out guidelines for what mods to use (as everyone uses a custom and specific combination tailored over large periods of time), but I like the idea of setting out rules for playing.

For my thief, I follow these rules:

• Do not live in large apartments or houses. The farther away from town or the hidden the better, excepting Bravil. (I'd suspend this rule if there was a renting mod that allowed for reasonable houses and a high cost)
  
• No fancy clothes. You're a thief, not a lord.
  
• NO WEAPONRY LARGER THAN A CONCEALABLE DAGGER.
  
• Killing is shameful and unnecessary in most circumstances. Avoid it. A thief who kills is nothing like a warrior who kills.
  
• Avoid magicks excepting potions and scrolls. Unless you spend a lot of coin on training. Use spell delete to delete them, to avoid temptation.
  
• No companions except for short terms or as "mules" for heists.
  
• Horses are practically necessary. Only fast travel if you have a horse. (one of the Morrowind style travel mods offers a function to disable fast travel except on a horse)
  
• Try to buy what you need. Accumulating money is a bit weird if you're role playing a poor thief. This one's a product of my own RP though.
  
• It's better to take the smelly causeways (sewers) and rooftops than the ground while in a city.
  
• Own a hood, and use it when in cities, unless it's your "home" city.

Those are mostly just my own personal rules. I can't say everybody would agree with them, though. I'm just tossing up mine for those interested in trying something different.

There's always OOO/FCOM DiD, Dead is Dead. Gives you a real motivation to run like hell if you can't handle something since you're not allowed to die unless due to a bug.