Every year or two, I do a winter playthrough of Skyrim and set different rules to try to keep the game feeling fresh.

This year, I’m doing a rogue character so have focused on stealth, pickpocket, and generally avoiding battles as a primary method of completing quests (granted, you can’t really do a “no kill” playthrough). I’ve avoided wasting perks on Enchanting this time around (rare for me) and have mostly made due with the stock special armors (Nightengale armor, Dark Brotherhood shrouded armor, etc).

As for my gameplay rules, I went for a sadistic approach. Some of these were decided on before I started the game and a few others I added as I went along.

• Play by the “Yes, and…” philosophy. Talk to every random NPC and say yes to every quest offer no matter how mundane.
• No fast travel except by carriage. This has forced me to stack and “traveling salesman” my quests. I also saved up and bought a horse very early in the game.
• If a place marker comes up on the map, go explore. Even if I’m en route to a quest objective. I’ve found locations I’ve never visited in any prior playthrough this way.
• No waiting like a psycho in front of a store until it opens. If I need to pass time, either go rent a room in the inn, sleep in a campsite/abandoned shack/whatever, or if I only need to kill an hour or two, go to the inn and sit in a chair while listening to the bard.
• If I can steal something, steal it (I am playing a rogue, after all). I have all three Hearthfire houses, and pretty much all of the building materials were stolen while also leveling my smithing skill (now lvl 100)
• Only steal what I can use directly or launder. e.g. It’s too much effort and wasted skill perks to fence every stolen gold ingot or flawless diamond, but I can smith those stolen materials into legit gold diamond jewelry and, while leveling my smithing skill, make a nice profit.
• No console commands unless there’s a major glitch and loading a save doesn’t resolve it. If Frost or Vigilance die, they stay dead. I’ve reloaded saves many times to bring both of them back to life, though.
• Don’t abandon my family like I always tend to do. I made it a point to visit the family home every so often.
• I’m not using the mod for this (the game is unstable enough in Wine as it is), but I make myself eat food at regular intervals, most of it I cook myself in-game. My inventory has about 50+ salt piles at any given time.
• Every time I come across a group of Imperial soldiers with a Stormcloak prisoner, pickpocket all the equipment from the solders, give it to the prisoner, and free them. They’re on their own from there.
• Don’t kill and soul trap Heimskr and put his black soul gem on display in my house like I do in every playthrough. I did pickpocket his clothes, so now he’s raving in his underwear.
• Quicksave and load are permitted

So far, I’m at level 59 and have just started the Dawnguard questline. Aside from the main Alduin questline and the civil war quest, most all of the major side quests have been completed. Haven’t decided which side of the civil war quest I’m going to do this time because they both suck lol. I usually alternate, but will probably do Imperials this time. I don’t owe Ulfric shit just because we escaped Helgen together, and he’s pretty insufferable with his self-righteousness.

Edit: I forgot. I did allow myself one console command: fov 90. That zooms the view out slightly and gives you better peripheral vision and just makes the FPV a little less claustrophobic.