be careful about killing chickens in riverwood.
i killed one as soon as i completed the first quest, just to see what it would give me...
and everyone ganged up on me and killed me.

oh, and if you never open the LVL screen, you never actually level up

you can't pick perks, but I think it's more fun to have trouble taking down a giant instead of power attacking it 3 times at LVL 40

the only things you can do, start quests, kill stuff, with the option of bringing something back, start next quest
here's the thing, you have 50 quests open at the same time

so in short, help half the population kill the other half

then when you're finished the quests, kill the other half.

after you save, because that's what you do before you go on a killing spree!

but watch out for those guards.