Mine was a Nord. I was an absolute noob, I had literally no idea what I was doing. I picked a Nord because I thought it was the sensible choice. The Nord looked like a typical human. I obviously missed the Imperial.

What about you guys?

Khajiit cause I liked the idea of sneaking around and seeing in the dark with catlike reflexes.

Nord. Sturdy sword/boarder to begin investigating the game. In order to make sure Cyodiil was fit for a wood elf.

I can't even remember

The one thing I remember about them...is that i had to delete them because the MQ was bugged to hell.

I remember my second though, t'was a wood elf.

Breton. Back when Oblivion was new Breton Warriors were the only things I ever played. They were all I played in Morrowind too. I have since discovered, to my astonishment, that there are other races and classes available to play.

I was coming off a long and successful Morrowind play as a Breton and chose based on that. Chose Assassin class, leveled myself and the world through poison making and sneak-sniping with the bow. In fairly short order if I encountered more than one opponent the second one invariably killed me because i lacked any melee combat skills and hadn't done anything to preload endurance and build up HP. I consulted a forum and was immediately told 'oh, that class is basically broken'. Thus began my long love/hate relationship with Oblivion.

Breton.

That counts as the first race I've ever played in the entire series. It was a tossup between an Altmer or Breton as I wanted to play a mage character. I ended up choosing Breton for looks. Went with a barefoot, tree-climbing, acrobatic hand-to-hand fighting mage. I'm actually re-playing that character at the moment and will resume once I find an animation replacer for On Touch spells that makes them into punches. No luck so far. :c

Anyways, since Oblivion I've played a Breton as my first character for every single Elder Scrolls game. It's become a tradition of sorts to play both a male and female Breton (usually related) first before even touching the other races. My main character is also a Breton mage. She's the most fabulous and my most favored of all of my Breton characters. Well, my Skyrim battlemage comes really close, but he's not fabulous at all so he loses points.

I thought it seemed appropriate and lore-friendly that a Nord of all people would have to engage in his people's time-honored tradition of doing all the dirty work involved in pulling the Cyrods out of the fire for the nth time.

In roleplaying games with racial choices, I always start first with whatever is the toughest, dumbest "tank" the game offers, and I power-play that character for just a few hours, to get the gist of the game. In TES, that has always been a Nord. I always then create my new "real" first character, and begin roleplaying. That "real" character in Oblivion happened to be a Nord, because I was having so much fun with my test character.

So, yeah, another Nord.

An interesting approach. Dosen't that ruin immersion? I've never heard of anyone doing that.

Imperial. I wanted to play it safe and play as a race native to Cyrodiil. Don't ask me why.

Breton, favourite race in TES games.

First character was a Redguard. I knew nothing about Elder Scrolls races and lore going in, and just wanted to make a character that could hit things with swords and do it well. The whole "natural warriors" bit sold me.

Haven't gone too exotic since then--main characters right now are a breton and an imperial.

Khajiit, because they're fuzzy. :3

Redguard honestly because they were black and I named my first character Will Smith.

Even though I've now played all but Arena, Oblivion was my first game and back then I really didn't care.

I was trying to find something that was closest to those LOTR elves. And I picked Altmer first, they are my favorite race ever since.

My first race in Oblivion was an Imperial given that it's their native land and culture and since I was a nooby at the the time their cosmopolitan and educated nature interested me.

Of course my perspective on the Imperials has taken a 180 degree turn since then...

This is my story, Oblivion wise. It's well known that my decrepit avatar was conceived as a short-term throw-away character with which to learn game mechanics. Nord race, stock warrior class, warrior birth sign, yadda yadda. Only, we bonded and have been together ever since. In all three previous TES titles my avatar was a customized dunmer/dark elf. It is likely, though not certain, that my Oblivion avatar would have followed suit had things gone as planned.

In retrospect, I think one key factor to our bonding was that I took time to create a well nigh ideal face, the first TES title in which we were allowed to do so. I suspect that were Oblivion's non facial customization options on par with Daggerfall (which remains my hands down favorite in this regard) I'd have been much more tempted to rebuild at some point.

-Decrepit-

My first was a breton. I abandoned him inside the Oblivion gate at Kvatch because I had entered there without repair hammers and suddenly I had neither armor nor sword, and I just got tired of dying over and over, so I made another character.

(Edit: The reason it was a Breton was because I wanted to make a character out of myself and I look most like a Breton. I've tried a few times to create "me" in TES games, but they are never long-lived.)

I can't be certain, but considering they're me favourite race, I think it was Dunmer.

Voted Can′t remember

Edit: For those who don′t know, my first (and only) race was Dark Elf

I went through a half dozen characters in rapid succession until I decided that I needed to reload after a death; at least until I knew how the game was played. I have mostly played Bretons or Imperials. Never tried the beast races.

Breton, always a Breton.

Argonian. All the other races scared me when I went looking through the races.

My first was Imperial. I had never played a video game before, and I was absolutely clueless about how these things worked. I made an Imperial male because that was what I saw on my character creation screen. When Pseron asked me what race I had picked I had no idea what he was talking about, lol.