Over the course of even the first few hours of Skyrim you'll start accruing quests as if by random. Anyone from children to guards, mages and more will pop up only for the camera to zoom in as they give you a quest - or by talking to randoms too. The issue with this was occasionally it's hard to know where to get the best of the lot, instead your log fills up with any old tosh ranging from things like quelling a child's aggressive bully to returning an item from a mountaintop. The clan-specific tasks went a small way towards regaining focus, but if you were really wanting to role-play what you may do in the world itself, chances are you don't not want to join every single clan to experience all mission types. Instead why not have specific places within towns - like Far Cry 3-style noticeboards or postings - where core quest types are stacked up? If you only want to play as some arrow-flinging hit-elf, you can travel the world doing just that, accepting bounties and nothing else - safe in the knowledge that whoever you talk to isn't going to automatically add on a request to retrieve a book instead.
