Oh definitely, I agree that the roleplaying was as someone who had to live that life out of necessity and I liked that, and I don't think Fallout should ever present a world one would want to live in (unfortunately having played only 3 and New Vegas, my knoledge is quite limited about Fallout, I've generally been a TES and Bioware guy since the 90's.) But I'm a geeky medieval-fantasy-head, and though I am loving everything I've seen and played in Fallout and it has opened my eyes to the beauty of post apocalyptic fiction, I'll always be the type that prefers to RP as a ranger with a bow rather than a scavenger with a gun. Both FO and TES are equally RP friendly, is what I should have said, but I prefer the TES style.

Great. That's comforting to know.

No, because I am using mostly characters from previous games..... Of course with varied reasons why they have lived so long.

I prefer the no bagground route

Isn't that basically an oxymoron? Someone complaining that they need to think of a backstory before the start pretending they are the character?

Well considering morrowind was a prison ship, Oblivion was a prison,this could be the phase of Getting Arrested/enslaved/captured.

Would be cool to start out similar to the first Conan movie where your parents are killed or maybe just after they are killed and as a child you are chained to one of those big horizontal wheels like Conan was and it shows a very quick progression ov the years as you grow into an advlt. Maybe even had a separate sequence for each race ending being sold to someone as a slave or prisoner and this is where everybody's story begins ?

I didn't like starting as a kid in FO3 and I don't want to start as a kid in Skyrim.

I loved Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, but haven't truly liked a Bioware game since (and I'm not sure why; because they all look great and seem to have decent gameplay. :shrug:)
I'm replaying NWN and the expansions alongside Baldur's Gate. I think a big part of it is that Baldur's Gate was a party based RPG, and most no longer are; I've not played Dragon Age yet.

Fallout is a great RPG. I've seen posts from members that played TES, and FO3, even campaigned against the original series fans in the forums, and yet some eventually decided to play the games, and a few of those came back with changed opinions; at least one posted that they "now understood what the older fans were talking about"; a few actually apologized.

They are old games, not to everyone's taste (not even then); many can't stand turn based combat (A few ~perhaps only for not understanding it). They are dirt cheap these days. If you find one with the manual, its worth playing. **The thing to remember though, is that these games were designed for a computer with less RAM than a $2 flash drive and a cpu that could not decode an MP3 in real time. (the game requires sixteen megabytes system ram)

Well, PnP games let you either craft a personality, with ethics, goals, and a past, or you get pre-made characters that each fit into the story. Both usually have as much background as you need.
In cRPG's you usually don't get the choice, TES is a good exception in that it does provide a truly blank slate to decorate as your own... But :shrug: everyone else in the game is blind to it, so its kind of a larp.
In PnP RPGs the technology (that being the human mind) is capable of reacting to (and even incorporating) a custom history and even custom ethics and behavior. Until that can be done with AI, you cannot get a customized story for your custom PC ~but you can currently get a good story that is tailored to a PC with a known (or at least partially known) past. Look at the Witcher, look at Baldur's Gate; Planescape; "Arx Fatalis" starts you with no past at all (you wake up in a prison), but it slowly reveals your PC's past as part of the main quest.
With FO3 they started you as a kid and did provide a bit of background and motivation. I wished they had kept (and made use of) the original text box narration, and put in appropriate (or humorous) comments at times (as the series was known to have). The PC's first glimpse of the Sun was just blurry vision, and went by without remark.

Technically you have to start out as a prisoner, not in prison. Also you weren't a prisoner in Daggerfall (or the spin-off games but I don't count them as TES games, though they are entertaining.) I wonder what the story will be for your character in Skyrim. Also, a bit of trivia, Arena and Oblivion have the same start areas, though they look nothing alike especially since you don't have magical portals to hop around with in Oblivion.