I've tried to start roleplaying on FO:3 again, but it's hard for me ;P

The whole vault storyline at the begining makes feel like it's already sending me down the set course of the MQ..

Can anyone offer me tips/suggestions on how to keep focus on specific roleplaying?

this would be things such as what places are good for roleplay and not forcing you into quests that you have to be a bullet-sponge for, and just any small tactical ideas for RP?

Well for me characters often have a signature weapon, and set of armor, or in the case of one character he went the other way and was always switching weapons and armor in search of the 'perfect' weapon/armor. What weapons you want to use then dictate tactics. In terms of being influenced by the MQ, I keep a save just before leaving the vault cave, you have a chance to make changes then, so you can recreate your character from scratch if you want.

Divide your brain.

There are some things, that must be done, to advance your personal story.

So step outside of your character, and perform some "mechanics" or "maintenance" by completing parts of the game, that will allow you to get back to your story.

I only advance the MQ in my game for example, to determine the enemies I find in the wasteland.

I might have to play through Vault 101 to get out into the world, but by no means do I have to pretend that I started there.

Yes, there are times when the game really wants you to look for your father. I just avoid that dialogue, if I so choose. And pretend that it is a game mechanic, not a personal story mechanic.

Also, just to make it more clear, I prefer hardcoe RP (Not getting shot 30 times and taking a stim, needing to eat drink rest etc)

This character (Stacie) I want to get as quickly as possible to 'join' Reilly's Rangers, (Do the quest, get the armour, do the geomapping and kill supers)

So any weapons, recommendations on how to get to Reilly's as soon as possible, etc. Things to make it a more hardcoe RP experience. All very appreciated.

What I have done, is I made a save slot just before I exited Vault 101 for the first time. Now, when I start a new character, I just load up that save and make what ever changes I want then play on. This way, the whole Vault 101 episode fades from my mind and I can start the game doing what ever I want. In fact, I need to go back and do the tutorial one more time, as the last time I did was the week the game was launched.

CCNA and Sevrin both great ideas, I'll set that up. Smart.

If your not on PC , you can do self modding by ignoring parts of the game.

For a hardcoe experience ... try setting it to medium or just below , to get rid of bullet sponges. Give yourself a high luck for criticals , and take a low endurance.

Then just ignore the vats system and the ability to use your pipboy during combat (only hotkeys for weapon switching , limit them for your prefered realism) Also no fast travel if you want.

Never use stimpaks , beds or water sources. Except the stimpak in conjuction with the wait function , 1 stimpak = x amount of resting to recover health.

Then pick 1-2 injestable you will only use for recovering a small amount of health outside of doctors and stimpak resting. And ignore the rest.

Giving yourself a death penalty can up the excitment. For example just fast travel to your nearest settlement with a vendor after death and reloading. Then sell most or all of your stuff beyond the caps limit they have.

Then you have to restart with that little amount of caps to simulate being left for dead/robbed and rescued by some nice soul that nursed you back to health and gave you what they could.

If you do have a PC , you can still do the self modding , plus you can use the console command to set yourself up how you want and skip stuff in the quests.

Like read up on the Reilly ranger quest , locate it in the geck , and use a COC command, or MovetoQt.

These are just some of the tactics I think you were asking for?

But the RP , is just going to be about trying to stay within the bounds of your conception of your characters state of mind.

And like Big Daddy said , Split it up in your brain , then understand what parts are necessary within the mechanics and should be ignored or atleast rationalized differently than is presented.