This is not yet playable as a game, and won’t be for a while, but you can wander around, look at a few things, and talk to (or hack) people if you want.

The Player Character

I’m not (currently) voicing the player character’s side of the conversation, or even giving the PC a description. Customizing the PC is a big subsystem, and it breaks immersion if the PC isn’t what the player wants or imagines. It’s too much work for me to write and vary the PC-side of every conversation by the 13 tones, even if I group them. I’d rather spend my time varying responses by tone and reputations.

You can now act a tone in conversation; attack someone with a weapon, as often as it can be used; banish a daedra if you know its nyms; bind and heal people when you beat them unconscious; harvest and eat plant essences, grind them in a mortar, and fire them together in a calcinator; estimate worth of items, mark items on you and others, and then barter them; report your reputation; sleep until a specific time, relieving fatigue thrice as fast as you accumulate it; sneak and backstab, loot, or steal from someone who doesn’t know you’re there; shout peace or death to someone less healthy; shout travel to a settlement you’ve visited; and wait until a specific time, letting the world go by in the meantime.

Developing skills influences random chances: the harder you work, the more luck you seem to have. It works the other way, too: if you’re really bad at something, luck tends to turn against you. The higher your skill, the less likely it is that your skill will increase when you accomplish something (since it’s expected and routine), but the more likely it is that your skill will decrease when you botch something. To help avoid failing, sleep occasionally: a tired body doesn’t perform well, and you may forget your training.

You can, of course, die from acute exposure to sharp objects. You can freeze to death, if you’re not dressed for the weather. Experimenting too much with alchemy can be as fatal as it is useful.

The Simulated World

The game has basic rooms for all settlements in Skyrim, missing only the settlement-less roads in southern Eastmarch, but little real description beyond road signs. Added an exit lister, so the road direction descriptions will go away, replaced by real descriptions of the area. (Feel free to contribute one!) Traveling a road takes an hour instead of a minute, to give some sense of scale.

There are a few misplaced critters, who attack their last attacker (preferring you, if you also attack), in three categories: 1 divine, 3 animals or monsters, and 11 NPCs who mostly have something to say. Eventually every talking one will tell you what you can ask others about. For now, you start out the game with a hunting buddy; eventually you’ll have to earn his trust. You can tell him to “stay” or “follow”, and he has a real description and some interesting behavior. In general, you can now give orders (eg: bard, go northeast) if you’re better known and/or stronger.

Each citizen has one of 14 skills (what s/he does for a living), 13 factions (pick a side of the political conflict), and 13 groups (guilds and associations). Dead members annoy the member’s faction and the group, but pleases opposing factions and groups. You have a reputation with each skill, group, or faction, and most of what you do runs the numbers.

You can read the title pages of 29 Skyrim-related books, with web links to the content. I’m currently writing a few full “books” (more like pamphlets) for the Feast of the Dead and alchemy. A text “map” lists settlements per Hold, and dynamically updates as you find interesting locations. You can “view map” to see the graphical version.