College of Winterhold Roleplay Ideas

[Porchdrinker]

After spending over 200 hours roleplaying a crime lord character, and another 100 on a "Knight of Whiterun" Nord, I recently began a new build that started as an Imperial Soldier, but morphed into a student Mage at the College of Winterhold. I'm really a fan of rule sets and restrictions, and I have been thinking a lot about how to get maximum roleplay value out of the College and stretch the location and related questline into a year-long (game time) adventure. Here are a few ideas I've been playing with:

A Daily Schedule: an hour in the Hall of Elements, practicing non-combat magic and speaking to fellow students and instructors; two hours per day (via the wait function) reading in the Arcaneum; an hour a day in the Hall of Countenance to learn new spells and train a Mage skill., four hours of free time to explore the surrounding area, etc.

A Quarter/Semester Schedule: Each quarter lasts a month of in-game time. First quarter is learning new spells in each discipline and training up each skill point, plus two College quests. Second quarter is choosing a "major" and a "minor" and focusing on those two schools of magic (plus two quests); Third quarter is field study in one of the towns of Skyrim other than Winterhold (student must live as a pure mage with no weapons); 4th quarter is concentration on the major, favor quests for the instructors, and two more quests. Graduate study is finishing the quest line and achieving a master level spell in your "major."

Rituals and Holidays: A student is allowed to take a week off from the college to observe one holiday per month (as listed in the UESP wiki page for Tamriel holidays); Mage life rituals include a weekly ceremony of tossing one or more pieces of non-Mage merchandise off the College bridge to demonstrate faith in the elements.

Has anybody else tried a roleplay ruleset with the College? What are some of your ideas? What do you think of the ideas I'm using or planning to use?

 

[Clau]

First and foremost, my apologies for the necromancy.

I recommend the OP's suggestions. Made my first week with the College mundane and routine but very immersible. Aside from the eating and sleeping, I practice Illusion / Alteration via spamming muffle and transmute. I got so immersed that I have not finished Hitting the Books quest.

Each day, I train with an instructor for one level. Classes are five days a week and I get three days off to go adventuring.

I recommend practicing some alchemy and enchanting aside from the schools of magick. It makes for a holistic experience and trying to entail more out of it.

 

[Niq]

OP - you sir, have just blown my mind!
Im not new to Skyrim and so i have been playing it my way for awhile, which seems to start making all my chars become quite similar. I am new to this Forum and so your idea of playstyle is very alien to me! - but it sounds like a great role play experience.
it sounds very immersive and i cant wait to create a new char and enroll him on your Semester Schedule!
just a few questions -
1. whats with the having to wait? i guess this comes from my current mind set, im just used to always being busy and i have never waited once so far.
2. what level do you play this style on? i can't imagine it producing the most powerful mage for some reason... i think it requires more feild experience.
3. how long does a year (game time) roughly take any way?

 

[PoisonPen]

I once played a Rincewind-style mage who would not use either weapons or armour, and who ran away whenever he took damage. He could cast whatever he wanted, but at the first point of damage he had to run until he was no longer being attacked, and could not cast any offensive spell until he was at a safe distance from danger.

 

[Niq]

see that style of play has never occured to me.. you have to be really strict on yourself right? you know to not allow yourself to fight back or go against self imposed rules?

 

[PoisonPen]

It's no burden when you enjoy it. It's fun to give yourself restrictions, and to get into the role of the character you're playing. It's not like I was sweating and trying to keep myself from "breaking the rules." Who would care if I broke them? When doing a crossword puzzle, you can cheat all you want. You can put extra letters into boxes, misspell words, or even just look up the answers and fill the whole thing in. No one will stop you. No one cares if you do. We do crosswords because we enjoy the challenge. Likewise, I willingly take on restrictions for my Skyrim characters because it's fun.

 

[Niq]

Yea i can see where you're coming from. i am going to try this style of play, i think it may even help cure my Altoholic state, as i am trying to get really into the RP side of things rather than just running through the game and power levelling.

 

[Minstrel]

I love your ideas Porchdrinker, I am also an immersive role-player but I have never tried something quite as realistic as your idea. I think I will try this with a new character and set up a routine for him or make a list of things he must do each day. This is quite difficult for me however as I play on console and I have not mods to make the game more realistic such as the time lengthening mod which allows you to make the in-game days last five times longer. At the moment I feel like the days go by so quickly and it doesn't feel real to me. I will wake up and by the time I have gone and cleared a bandit camp it will be the next day.

I think I may take on a crime lord character like you, but would you mind telling me how you played him and what restrictions (if any) you set up? You don't have to do it on here, but perhaps on a PM? I'd be really grateful.

 

[Porchdrinker]

Thanks for the positive feedback on these ideas. After sinking 75 hours into this character, I'm on to a new one, but I truly enjoyed my experience at the College, despite the high cost of "tuition" (training) that had me cutting my fair share of wood and becoming an alchemist on the side.

Niq:
1) I tend to wait a lot to make days go by faster. Numerous contributors to this forum have good ideas about how long to "wait" after doing various tasks to add realism to the game. As much as I love Skyrim, it truly bothers me that I can read a book without any game time passing, so I use the "wait" function after reading a book to simulate the amount of time it would have taken my character to read it.
2) I made it to level 25 on this character in 75 hours of roleplay. Yes, I gimped myself by not gaining XP via experience (opting to rely on training). Still, my favorite part of the experience was the lectures in the Hall of Elements, which take place between 2pm and 3pm (I think). I would not have heard those lectures if not for my immersive roleplay restrictions.
3) in my experience, with sleeping daily, taking carriages often, and waiting after certain tasks, a year in Skyrim equates to roughly a hundred hours.

Minstrel -

My crime lord character was my first "not the Dragonborn" roleplay where I avoided Dragonsreach entirely and never advanced the main quest to the point of random dragon encounters. The goal was to amass 100,000 septims via random encounters, roleplay, and miscellaneous quests without completing any questlines. This character recruited a group of followers (1 per hold, doing all the fighting and functioning as underbosses of their respective holds). I would "meet" with each underboss on a weekly basis to choose my next course of action via dice rolls representing the underboss's advice. To make gold, i raided bandit camps, traded bandit loot to khajits and wandering drug dealers for skooma, moon sugar, and sleeping tree sap (all of which i would resell in drug deals after getting the "master trader" perk) and used the "transmute ore" spell to produce "counterfeit" ingots and jewelry. Other rackets included poison-making, nirnroot collecting (pretending nirnroot was a drug like cannibis and selling it to Arvusa Sarethi), and robbing the meaderies (I joined the Thieves Guild to unlock Tonilla as a fence, but did not advance the quest line). Using dice rolls, i would target a non-essential accomplice each month to get "whacked" for ratting me out to the guards. After I made my 100,000 septim goal, I went "legitimate" by investing in every available merchant in Skyrim before retiring after 200 hours of gameplay. Major skills were speech, archery, and alchemy, with some sneak, light armor, and conjuration as compliments. All of this is detailed in a post called "Scarface of Skyrim" or something similar, which can be accessed via my profile. I also posted some ideas about roleplaying as a farmer, a fisherman, and a knight of the goddesses.

 

[Minstrel]

Thanks, I will check that out when I have a spare moment and get to work on my character.

 

[Lunaruse]

I loved this idea. I always felt like the college of winterhold quests went by too fast. This really slowed it down and made it feel more realistic. I tweaked it a bit for myself and I'm almost done with the 3rd semester right now. The hardest thing was that she was already at the adept level by the end of the first semester so training became way to costly so she left to study the Application of the Arcane Arts. That way she was actually helping people while learning about magic.