What do you do beside the quests? I found out that is the main reason why I always start new characters. I do not see what should keep me motivated aside the quests. This is especially difficult when roleplaying a character (e.g. an Assassin that only does DB and maybe TG), so there are not many quests to do. Its from the start on: I dont want to do the quests already because after this I would have no motivations anymore, but then again I just walk around and don't know what to do.

I think this roleplaying is much easier with a Knight character because nearly all quests are suited to them. But the problem is that Im really related to the Dark Brotherhood. I love them. I love Sithis, I love the Night Mother, I love the armors and I love all the characters in the DB. Antoinetta will always be my characters love, no matter what char I start. Gogron and Mraaj-Dar will always be like my brothers, with Gogron being the one I get perfectly along with and Mraaj-Dar being the one that always makes trouble but whom I love nevertheless. Lucien will always be a father for me. Vicente and Ocheeva will always be my mentors whom I can talk to when I need help.

This is my characters family.

But that forces me to play a "dark" character. Its okay. Im perfectly fine playing dark, meaning hiding in the shadows and fight with underhand methods. But I don't want my character to be fully evil. Its not fitting to him at all.
So what to do beside the quests? I can't imagine of anything. A Knight could go into dungeons and extinguish the evil, a Archer could go into the forest hunting animals, a mage could visit old Ayleid Ruins for expeditions and research. But what can an Assassin do? Just killing random people? Nah. As I said, I dont want him to be a mad killer. He should be a authentic person.
And I don't like this "pick a person, observe him and kill him afterwards". Its not my style of game. Even if I would make up a decent background story for this assassination.
There must be something more. Something I miss. Greater goals, something that actually has a reason to do it. Like expeditions for mages. They do it to acquire more knowledge and find interesting things. Knights go into Oblivion Worlds to kill the demons in it and maybe find something that they can use against the evil.

So I want to be more than just an assassin. My character should have deeper interests. Find out what Sithis is, what the Night Mother is. This could be something my character could work for. But how to do this ingame?
And this can not be the only thing. There must be more, but I lack of ideas.

I hope anyone here can help me. I will also write down what my general character idea is like.

Race: Breton
Birthsign: Shadow? Thief? I don't know. It should be fitting to his background story, which I don't know yet. I don't care for the usage of the Sign at all.
Class: Assassin I guess?
Skills: Don't really know yet. Something with Sneak, Blade, Marksman, Armorer, Light Armor, I think.

Personality (just some keywords to create an imagination of what he should be like in the end):
- curious (dont know if thats the right word Im German)
- open-minded
- reflective
- thoughtful
- passionate on what he does
- seperation anxiety

Thats it.

Do you have any ideas or advice for me?

Thanks in advance.

I've never done the DB but I've just completed the Main Quest and am Arch-Mage, Fighter's Guild Master, Arena Champion, Divine Crusader, have most of the houses, KotThorn, KotWhite Stallion. It was a nice long game that's nearing its end. Aralyndria was a great character. I'm on PS3 so have to let her go because I get hit with the A-bomb and my game will freeze up.

For a few days until FONV comes out, I'm now working on Master Training and getting less-used skills trained up. I've never seen the perks on some skills that come with higher levels...like the zoom on Marksman when you hit 50. That was new last night...not intensely exciting, but new and now I want to go exploring more ruins to put it to use. Maybe something I've said will help you decide what to do? Good luck.

I know you said you dislike the stalker idea, but have you tried it on bandits, necromancers.
Find a cave think of some role the bandits take, pick one out as the dark villian, and kill him without killing any others as per your contract from a family he hurt.

Or during the quests expand on the story, make things up, find evidence anything in their houses can work notes are good, or plant it, follow them and make sure if they deserve it, tail them when they eat, sit next to them and drink when they do..

here are pics from when I did the paronia quest, and just loved setting scenes up that would implecate other people, or make it look like suicide..
http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g376/Indep/Oblivion2010-10-0623-55-01-92.jpg
http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g376/Indep/Oblivion2010-10-0623-56-00-29.jpg

My character actually does very little official questing. She tends to invent her own. She's at her max designed level (20) with over 500 hours. Her guild is the mages guild and she is very active with them - she is a graduate of the University, but as an archer, shown no interest in trying to get a silly mages staff yet. She does seek out and look into the Daedric Shrines, but more often than not, balks at what they want her to do. Often, when she does do a quest, she takes it in a completely different direction and makes a huge production of if. So what does she do?

Travels. She has a portable campsite and saddlebags on her mare, so she is well equipped to spend time on the roads and wilderness. She loves exploring, and will often investigate random dungeons she encounters. She is also quite the cartographer, and if there is a blank spot on her map, she wants to fill it in. She loves waterfalls and gets quite excited when she finds them (she has 9 on her map), often spending a day or so just camping and playing in the water and perhaps hunting for her dinner.

Friends. She has loads of friends throughout Cyrodiil and she loves to visit them. She will happily take a most leisurely trip from her home in Bravil out to visit her friends in Anvil for example. With her short attention span, it often takes her weeks to get there. Most of her friends have very detailed backstories and sometimes they need help or get into danger - so she helps them. Sometimes these things are related to in game quests, sometimes not. Imagination helps alot here. Sure, her firends may like to talk about mudcrabs, but she hears so much more than that.

A good example of things might be the Clavicus Vile quest. Buffy would learn at Pell's Gate of the wood elf Umbra being cursed and possessed by an evil sword. She might make it her business to seek aid from Clavicus Vile, but be quite disappointed in what he offers. She might then proceed to take the sword from Umbra without harming her and destroy it, thereby allowing Umbra to be free of the curse and return to Pell's Gate. That is kind of the way she quests.

Yes! The joy of roleplaying is you make it up in your head and you don't have to worry about what the programmers put in the game. It's like table top dungeons and dragons back in the day when it was just three flimsy booklets and you had to make up most everything yourself. That was back before all you kids were born of course. Before xbox and ps2. We used read books and things like that for entertainment (you know those old blocky things your parents have on shelves with lots of papers bound together with words printed on them). oh the memories.

but i digress like a cantankerous old man

Anyway,
I have an assassin character (dunmer agent) who is the spy lord to the emperor. Inpired by Queen Elizabeth I's spy lord, Francis Walsingham. Except, in my case, he has blue skin and red eyes and is also a vampire. So he searches out people who are disloyal to the emperor and works against them in some way . . . which may or may not include assassination. The Deadra cults are a favorite target of his. They are the scurge of the empire and undermine the religiopolitical foundations of the state--the Nine and the sacred dynasty.

But, there are endless possibilities. A good starting place is to think what are your characters loyalties? Who/what are his/her fears and hates? Once you have some kind of motivation you can start acting on that, and then it is up to you how elaborately you want to think about plots, relationships with npc's, obligations, etc.

Some wacky ideas for assassin roleplay:

• a fanatic Deadra worshiper
  
• an exiled assassin who is disfugured by a terrible scar/burn on his/her face and whose family was murdered by a noble. He/she lives in the sewers by day and sneaks into the city by night to rob and kill the rich
  
• a skooma dealer who intends to corner the market by killing rival dealers (use your imagination to decide who the rivals are--there are couple actual ones in the game but you could make it more interesting)
  
• someone who was betrayed by the thieves guild and has made it a quest to kill every single member of that organization.

well, you get the idea. I could probably come up with a dozen more.

Hah. I'm waiting to run out of things to do! After 2 years of playing!

Ok thank you all so far. There were already some very helpful things.



Nice idea. This is much better than just killing a random chosen, innocent person in a normal house, because its actually a challenge.





I never thought about that, but this could also be interesting. Manipulate quests to fit to my character. I will see in how far this is realizable.



Something that has nothing to do with his "job", but I like it. He could take a vacation into the forests of Cyrodiil to put some daylight between himself and his bloody work. Yes, I like this one.
But can you tell me where to get this "campsite"?



Another great idea. I couldn't find that much NPCs that I like until now, but this could be a motivation to travel around Cyrodiil. I saw a Companion Mod a few days ago, maybe I could use this to travel around with friends a bit.




I already made up a backstory for him.

He was a child without parents that grew up in the Waterfront District of the Imperial City. Sometimes he went to the other districts to pick the pockets of the noblemen in order to have something to eat from time to time. One Night, at his 12th birthday, he saw a man with a black robe and thought he must have something valuable, so he made a grab. He hoped to get enough money to buy himself a birthday gift. Sadly, the man catched him. But instead of bringing him to the guards, he said: "You have talent, lad. To see a Speaker is not an easy thing, especially one who does not wish to be seen. We have a need for those as gifted as yourself. If you've grown tired of how you live, then follow me, and we will show you a different way." My character decided to follow the man who announced himself as "Lucien Lachance". It was the beginning of a very long education.
During this time, he was introduced into a new family that in time became his real family. He grew up with them, they gave him food and made him feel happy for the first time in his life. But there was the day. But not only that, they also teached him to hide in the shadows and to have no pity for anyone. He was educated to be a murderer and to worship Sithis and his new mother, the Night mother.
But there came the day when one of the Sanctuary members died. My character just celebrated his 18th birthday, and he couldn't believe it and cried for many days. He realized that it was the biggest pain he ever felt and he sweared himself that he would do everything to prevent this from happen again. Since then, he has incredible separation anxiety.
But he was not only sad, he was also angry. Very angry. He got to know the name of the person that killed his brother and went to take revenge. He did, in fact it was his first murderer ever. And it felt good. Shortly afterwards, Lucien appeared once again and congratulated him. As a reward, he also gave him his first contract - Killing Rufio in the Inn of ill omen. After doing this, he would finally be a full member of the Dark Brotherhood.

But I dont get any ideas what to play out of this story. Maybe I should rework it.



Can you tell me some things you do?

Well, for exmaple, there's Luci Pheria, my dark elf witch. She is involved with zero quests because she's supposed to be this evil crone who lives way out in the forest. So far, she's completed just the minimum amount of quests (Tutorial Dungeon, maybe one other quest) to get out of the sewers and that's it. Whenever she hears somebody moaning in a corner ("ohhh, my poor potatoes...") she just laughs to herself and doesn't get involved.

I only mention all that because you said you didn't want to do all the quests over again or something in the OP.

So that's what Luci really is: my excuse to just play the game without the pressure of doing quests. She does lots of exploring; loves the Great Forest especially. Luci left the sewers, and then started her own personal "quest", which was to find a safe house to dwell in so she could sit around making poisons and potions (one of her only skills is Alchemy). She's got a constant bounty because she loves torturing and murdering NPCs.

The only time she forces herself to go in a town is if she needs to buy a new spell from somebody. Usually, she'll get arrested, but there was one time i managed to get her within the city of Chorrol using Invisibility potions, and into the Mage's Guild to buy her next big spell.

She's the witch of my childhood nightmares, basically. I saw Wizard of Oz when I was like 4 or 5 and it scared the heck out of me. To this day, I still feel this childhood fear, even as an advlt! So that's what she is, the witch of my childhood nightmares, and there's sort of an idea to get you started. Not that you'll make a Luci Pheria, but maybe you'll use your imagination to come up with something of your own.

Selena, you asked about a portable campsite mod. There are several, but here is a link to the one I use: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5684

It's a very simple, small mod, but one of the most important ones for our play.

The story's good, very detailed :thumbsup: .

As for your question see how each contract makes your character feel when asked to do it, speak to all the DB members and figure out what they're like and if you fit in.
Then spy on the contract make them more fleshed out, read their books, see how they live, ask yourself what is the real motive behind the killings..

Even if you just do the quest as normal, a story will emerge that will continue to build in my experience.

Just as an asside--I don't want to spoil, but it's probably okay to say that you're not going to finish the DB questline without a heavy heart and at least some tarnish on your character's soul. I mean DB is all about killing people after all.

I know, and thats the interesting about it. I don't know what I will do when it comes to this "special" point. I want to just play and learn more about my character and when it comes to this point, I hope Im that much into my character that I can feel what I have to do now. I dont know yet what is more important for him: His family or Sithis.


However, I started playing yesterday and till now its quite fun. I used my background story to have a reason to come into the DB and I pretended that I told Vicente about the Amulet and we discussed about what to do now. In the end Vicente told me to bring the Amulet to Fort Farratgut where the Black Hand will take it in charge for now. Probably the Black Hand will have a special meeting. My character hopes to be invited.

I once picked a certain armor/weapon type... did it with dwarven... and just went around collecting a complete set, and finding enchanted weapons of the type.

Then I would find a nice secluded spot, and make a pile of the stuff. Of course, you have to remember where the pile is, so you can add to it, cause I wasn't able to carry it all at once.

For me, playing Oblivion is all about the character. I would become very bored very fast if I was pushing a crash-dummy around. When I roll a new character, I try to make it someone with distinguishable traits. Severus Snape was based on the Harry Potter movie character. He even looked like him thanks to the facemaker. Sarrah was based on the character from the Jim Henson movie 'Labyrinth'. Angel was inspired by a forum thread pointing out that there are no children in Cyrodiil. I made her a child prodigy Mage using the console to reduce her to child size.

I play the game as if I am a guide but my character is free to be true to themselves and play it the way they feel it. I would never join the Thieves Guild but Angel, for all her sweetness did. She was my first character to ever do so and I have played TES since the Daggerfall days. She doesn't really steal but for a while, she had a bad habit of using the pickpocket techniques to peek into what people were carrying. She also stubbornly refuses to pay fines because she was once falsely accused of stealing (a game glitch that occurs just outside the Skingrad main gate.)

I've never been much into practical jokes but Sarrah loved them and would use heavy chameleon cloaking and a flare spell (low power fire damage) fired at the hip pocket of any rude citizen or guard she encountered. I have to admit, I laughed right along with her as her victim ran around like their pants were on fire.

I only play one character at a time and if they die, I start a new one. That lets me get to know them and to watch them evolve over time. They have quirks, and secret dreams. They have likes and dislikes. They make mistakes and have to live with the consequences. Like real people, they are mortal and fallible and endlessly interesting.

I think playing as a vampire hunter is always fun...especially if you are a vampire yourself. Ah...the delicious irony!

This is how I play too. I see my character and myself as a party of two. We travel together. I offer suggestions, point out places that might be interesting to investigate, but in the end it is my character who makes the decision about where we go and what we do. This is also the major reason why I play in 3rd person. 1st person just doesn't work well for me with this method of roleplaying.

I've always gravitated towards Sithis and the Dark Brotherhood myself, and I can understand how the game could be more confining than being a goody-two-shoes.

However, I've adopted the philosphy that while my character is an agent of Sithis, that does not necessarily exclude her from other roles in guilds, so long as they do not violate the Five Tenets. On the contrary, being a member of the mage guild grants certain perks which strengthens the character and, by extension, the Night Mother. Having a highly-placed agent in that guild also gives the Dark Brotherhood an ear to privy information that may interest them. A previous poster mentioned hunting necromancers. My character in particular has a distinct loathing for necromancers, and doesn't Mannimarco himself seek to challenge the Night Mother through his lust for power? At least, that is my (perhaps flimsy) justification for a Dark Brotherhood agent joining the Mages Guild.

Amusingly, the only guild aside from perhaps the Blades (and I think one can justify that easily enough) that excludes philosphy of the Dark Brotherhood is the Thieves' Guild, with what their "no killing!' doctrine.