I'm playing an Imperial who looks almost identical to Sparticus from the TV show (the guy who was playing him before he got cancer, not the new guy). I like having the speech racial bonus, especially early in the game, because it helps get you better prices for your loot and it opens up dialogue options with people that aren't there with a low speech skill. Sometimes this just gives you more background on a character but other times it leads to side quests, which leads to decent loot. I talk to everyone and typically do everything they ask me to do, and with this games quest system I can probably keep playing forever if I wanted to.
I am playing a rogue-like assassin character, so I chose the Thief guardian stone at the beginning of the game to level my rogue-like abilities faster. I chose to put a lot of perk points in speech to charm information out of everyone and get better prices. Once I level it up all the way I can sell anything to anyone, and have merchants have a lot more gold, which so far has been a problem for me trying to find people to buy all my loot. Being able to sell stolen goods will be huge as I tend to have sticky fingers if nobody is around to watch me. I'm definitely maxing that tree out and I have a good head start from the racial bonus.
I'm leveling sneak as well. I pretty much sneak everywhere outside of towns and I stay off the roads a little and pick up flora when I see it, and hunt game with my bow when I come across it. This has gotten me a respectable sneak and archery skill as it levels both when you make a succesful sneak attack. I'm also leveling alchemy and smithing at a good pace just from all the flora I pick up while traveling and all the animal hides from hunting. Archery used to suck in Oblivion and Morrowind, but its much improved in Skyrim. I'm using it as my main source of offense; I start the fight from range while sneaking and get the big bonus damage, killing almost every regular enemy/animal in one shot. The tougher ones I keep pumping arrows into while they charge me then once they're in melee range I bust them in the face with my bow to stun them for a second, whip out my daggers and dodge and dip in and out while stabbing the shit out of them until they die. Most of my damage is done before they know I'm there though. I'm really rather weak against a heavily armored target, so I've been using some destruction magic a bit to compensate for that but its more of a secondary skill.
I also started in the Dark Brotherhood and got the first set of armor. Its made my life so much better, the set bonuses on the armor really help my type of character. I can pretty much stay hidden everywhere except right under a torch and it gives me an extra bonus to sneak attacks. I also just started the thieves guild, which will probably benefit my character a lot.
I'm pretty much going for the lovable rogue character. I talk to everyone, charm them, do their quests, etc. I have a decked out house and a lot of money, I'm starting to get rather famous, and I'm the Thane in Whiterun. What they don't know is I sneak into their houses at night and steal all their stuff, and kill them without hesistation if someone is paying me to. It makes for a pretty cool experience if you're the type to immerse yourself in the game.
I pretty much went all out in speech, sneak, archery, lockpicking, and have leveled one handed, light armor, alchemy, and smithing just from circumstances. I'm basically ignoring magic except destruction for heavy armored targets, I make enough poitions to heal myself. I'll probably play a mage on my second playthrough so ignoring magic in this one just means I'll have a less boring second game