Unique Playthrough Challenge ideas.

[snowyonetwo]

So, a while back I was thinking 'you know what? It's kind of easy to be the dragonborn. What if I... wasn't?' and started my own challenge. Since then I've come up with a few. The idea is simple. Set up a series of rules, restrictions, and goals that the player must adhire to. These are ment to be in-lore challenges as opposed to 'play using a drumset' type stuff. So no control restrictions exist. Here are the few I came up with.

1) The Merchant.
Overview: The player is to serve as a merchant traveling across the lands. They are not some great hero or anything like that but, rather, a humble being seeking to eek out a living.

Rules: The player is to serve as a merchant. As such their goal is to amass wealth and are not fighters. As such the game is to be turned up to the highest difficulty and the player is unable to equip any form of armor. They are free to hire body-guards but cannot wield any weapon above 'iron' and cannot cast spells. They are NOT allowed to steal either except from bandits and the like (no going in and looting an entire shop. You're a merchant, not a thief). You must eat daily and 'pay taxes' via donating at least three times to a temple upon entering a city to sell. Should the player find any enchanted gear they are allowed to use it but cannot recharge it. You may not fast-travel or use the carriages either.

Victory condition: Buy/Build all avalible houses, get married, and amass a wealth equal to 1,000,000 gold across all goods and coin (not including houses).

2) The Slave

Overview: The player isn't some hero but, rather, an escaped slave. Their goal is to obtain freedom.

Rules: You should use console commands for this. Firstly, you must become wanted in all cities. If you are 'captured' you cannot wait out your term and must proceed to sneak out. Feel free to attack whoever impedes your need for freedom. You cannot remain in one location for more than a week and must keep moving. Your new location must be in an entirely different area of the map. If you come into contact with people you must immediately vacate the area. You may only use weapons and armor made 'naturally' (no iron but something using bone would be fine. If you kill a dragon you earned it) since you do not know how to smelt and are untrained with proper weapons/armor. You can sleep for 8 hours a day but only one per day and no waiting.

Victory condition: Remain 'free' for six months. Free meaning that you have not been captured or spotted by civilized humans.

3) The Merfolk

Overview: The player is a mermaid/merman.

Rules: The player isn't a normal person but, rather, a merperson in disguise seeking to learn about the world of man. As a mer-folk they are bound to the water and cannot be far from it. As such they can only last for one hour (five minutes) without being fully immersed in water. Smaller sources (such as small rivers) can stop this time but, unless you reach a place to be submerged, you'll die. A potion with the 'Waterbreathing' effect can be used once per day as well to provide a similar effect to the small river (no enchanting gear). You may only use frost enchantments/spells for offense so no fire or thunder.

Victory condition: None really.

[Olivinism]

I like to do a mix of this and Dragonborning. One key thing is that I can't equip any armor unless it was either forged myself, brought from a merchant, or looted from the body of someone the same race and gender as my Dragonborn with a similar weight value.

Also on your Merfolk idea, I tried something like that playing as an Argonian and travelling around Skyrim using the waterways as much as possible instead of walking. Was pretty nice.

[Messsucher]

The playes is LGBT, and as such being discriminated by everyone. You can't accept any work at all and you must chose sarcastic/aggressive dialogue options in all dialogue with male NPC,

[Dracon]

You are blind, but ARE the dragonborn by some wierd twist of fate.
So you have a shout that works kinda like bat echo location.
Its the ONLY way you can navigate the treacherous land of Skyrim.
Spells like Detect Life show living things in your minds eye, but not the terrain.

[Zsrai]

https://tamrielvault.com/groups/topic/view/group_id/3/topic_id/9211

Dig through that for awhile.

[fauxpas]

Originally posted by GyRO:

I like to do a mix of this and Dragonborning. One key thing is that I can't equip any armor unless it was either forged myself, brought from a merchant, or looted from the body of someone the same race and gender as my Dragonborn with a similar weight value.

Also on your Merfolk idea, I tried something like that playing as an Argonian and travelling around Skyrim using the waterways as much as possible instead of walking. Was pretty nice.

I tend to do something similar with armor myself; although I accept gear that is given to me as a "gift" from various quest rewards as well.

[fauxpas]

As for the topic at hand ... No Fast Travel; including the carriages.

[bigdale]

I've been playing the game with Diablo 2 in mind. I recall that the fun of the game was to find a great piece of loot and your build was restricted and formed by what you could find. By limiting my gear and spells to what I find as loot and get as quest rewards it makes the pursuit of loot much more interesting. It also means that at level 40 I'm still wearing steel plate, using a dwarven war axe and using the basic channeled healing spell. I also forbade purchasing skill increases to avoid the easiest way to work around my limitations.