Welcome to the boards, crpgnut! [img]graemlins/happywave.gif[/img] May you soon find reward with your travels in the Gael Serran.
You certainly can play without cheating. Generally, it's up to you and your self-restraint, and your definition of what a cheat is
Later on, you can get a ranger with fletchery, who will make arrows in his spare time. Selling those is probably the "cleanest" way of making lots of gold... fletchery was part of the original game design, and you can fletch magic arrows as well as regular ones. There's a really good market for Dragon Arrows blessed to 11 or 12 damage... [img]graemlins/twocents.gif[/img]
Most CRPGs make the game harder by making gold harder to come by. W&W is no exception, really... if you're shy on gold, you're in serious trouble. I use arbitrage, which involves buying magic arrows for one price and selling them for a higher price. It's quite profitable, but as you can see in the peasant game, it doesn't help a whole heck of a lot. They're still getting slaughtered... and we're almost halfway through the game!
My first time through, I didn't know about any of the cheats or other things. My characters still finished as demi-gods.
I eventually found record of the cheats here, but aside from guild-hopping and arbitrage, I generally ignore them. I played with the "dropping items in stores" cheat last game, but it's pretty much pointless; if you're going to do that as much as I was, you might as well just use the character editor and set things where you want them.
I'll echo Wyvern... keep us posted on your game! There are always interesting things going on... we'd love to hear about them.
And I'll echo my sympathies on your mom's passing. The fact that you bought W&W for her says that she was a very unique and special person.