A good story has to reach many people. Stories can do that well while rp is harder for that. In a story you only have to interact with yourself, so the story is able to go to places that would be out of bounds for roleplayers. This is because when you rp with others you have to respect their character as much as your own. While a story is free of such considerations.


As for origins, TES universe is the best franchise out there for varied origins. An example is a Knight. In most game universes there are knights, usually some group in some city and thats it. So a knight's origin is that they are of that order or were of that order and that's your options. But in TES there are dozens of options due in part to the major love given to the series lore. You can be a noble dark elf lord, a breton of any number of orders, a follower of Stendarr' Order in Cyrodiil, really anyway you would like.


So while there are a few archtypes in games like this, TES gives you the lore flexibility to get creative with your origin. If you would like a good source of lore to help you set up good stories try the Imperial Library.

http://www.imperial-library.info/

It has every ingame lorebook from every game as well as lore talks and AMAs frove devs of all the games. A great source of background info and a good place to get ideas also.


All that aside, to your question on deviating from standard story builds, yes, I do it all the time.

By no means are you constrained to starting a story with your character being a mercenary or a merchant.

For example, my main's beginning started out when she ran away from home. She lived with her parents, and could barely be considered an adult.

If you feel like you're up for the long read, the link's in my signature.

@Totalitarian I have to admit I did read through your story on uhh Monday I think it was. I enjoyed it very much (yeah I'm that type of player, got to read EVERYTHING).

@Eirikir Thanks - I can now try and wrangle these scribbles I have going on to something a bit more understandable