Most of the mods I’ll be using are the mods I use when playing actual heroes in Skyrim, and they’re there because I like them, can’t be bothered uninstalling them, and they have little to no impact on actual gameplay. In case you’re curious, here’s a summary.
The Essentials: I use SkyUI, Categorized Favorites Menu, the Unofficial Skyrim Patch, A Quality World Map, and a few other things that make the game generally nicer to play without doing anything intrusive.
The Purely Cosmetic: I use a bunch of texture replacements to make people and terrain look better. I don’t use anything that changes the actual flavor of the game: if you’re familiar with vanilla Skyrim, then you’ll be able to recognize the people and landscapes that you see in my screenshots.
The Mostly Cosmetic: I use Climates of Tamriel and Realistic Lighting Overhaul to make nights darker, weather harsher, and interiors prettier. I use Wearable Lanterns to make it easier to function at night (although my character won’t be taking advantage of the hands-free aspect, as dangling a lit lantern close to one’s intimate areas seems like something only a tough guy would do).
Convenient Horses: This mod has many features that I don’t want for this playthrough--it makes horses a little too convenient--but I’m going to refrain from using these features rather than uninstalling the mod altogether. I think it’s pretty sad that Nordrick died because of the nuttiness of his animals; having a horse that isn’t psychotic isn’t too much to ask. (Of course, having an aggressive horse is helpful in fights you can’t avoid. If I die owing to lack of combat support from my horse, then, well, the joke’s on me.)
Random Alternate Start: This mod allows you to skip the standard introductory sequence and start the game without the main storyline active. It’s possible to achieve something similar using the console, but you have to avoid areas where the main quest triggers. I haven’t tried this mod before, so I’ll just have to hope that it doesn’t cause any serious problems.
Realistic Humanoid Movement Speed: If the comments attached to Chris’s Nondrick/Nordrick blogs were any indication, then the single most astonishing thing about his efforts was his ability to play a character that actually walked everywhere. I admit it: there is absolutely no way I could replicate this feat in vanilla Skyrim. I just don’t have what it takes. I find the player’s walking speed achingly slow--it’s much slower than the NPCs’ walking pace, and every Skryim player is familiar with the infuriating walk-run-walk dance that you have to do when you’re required to actually follow an NPC somewhere. Fortunately, this mod speeds up player walking and makes the player and the NPCs move at the same pace. (It also slows down running, which is why I’m not tempted to use it when I play normally.)
Realistic Needs and Diseases: Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t go near a mod like this, but I think that the benefits will be considerable for this playthrough (unless the mod turns out to be horribly glitchy). I could just remember to eat and sleep without having a mod to prompt me, but having it installed will make deprivation more interesting, if it comes to that.
Interesting NPCs: In a massive oversight, I forgot to mention this mod when I wrote this summary in March. (As I write this, it’s the 20th of August.) This huge undertaking adds (at last count) about 150 fully-voiced NPCs to Skyrim, the intention being to add richness and color to the world. Interesting NPCs is one of the main reasons that I still play Skyrim at all--not only does it add dozens of new quests, but many of the NPC followers from the mod have things to say about existing locations and plotlines that inject new interest into the same old stuff. I couldn’t have started 201 And All That without it.
That’s it for the mods. On to the protagonist!