Top Five Modern RPG Masterclass

1. The List's Purpose

This is not a "best games ever" list. Tim frames it specifically as: these are five RPGs you should study if you want to learn how to make RPGs. Each game does something better than anyone else, and aspiring developers should pay attention to them whether they personally like them or not.

2. 1. World of Warcraft — Masterclass in Accessibility

WoW proved that making games easier makes them more fun. Tim played EverQuest before WoW and loved it, but EverQuest was hard. A WoW developer told him their philosophy: "In the carrot-stick model, we decided less stick, more carrot." Tim says WoW is "pretty much all carrot."

He told a coworker who was a hardcore WoW raider that the raids are essentially "timing and motion — you might as well be playing Dance Dance Revolution." The coworker was offended, but Tim's point isn't to belittle WoW — it's that fun trumps realism, and fun trumps just about everything. WoW was built fun-forward, and that's its most important quality.

3. 2. Elden Ring — Masterclass in Rewarding Difficulty

Immediately after praising WoW's easiness, Tim picks Elden Ring — which proves the exact opposite: that harder can also be more fun. This isn't a contradiction. Games can have different design pillars, and if they execute well on their chosen pillar, they become a perfect example of that pillar in action.

Tim chose Elden Ring over Dark Souls or Demon's Souls because the open world lets you come back to a boss later, explore beautiful non-boss areas, and dig into lore at your own pace. He especially admires the status gauge system — where poison or other effects build up in a visible gauge before triggering, giving players things they can do to prevent the status effect. He sees rich RPG mechanic potential in this approach (making gauges fill slower, making them bigger, adding drain effects).

4. 3. Skyrim — Masterclass in Exploration

Skyrim is an "absolute masterclass in exploration." Tim highlights art variety and level design as the keys — caves, icy caves, water-filled caves, underground cities, forest villages, mountain-crag villages — all gorgeous unto themselves.

He calls Skyrim "the closest I've ever come to playing D&D on a computer — the way it seems in my head when I'm playing the tabletop version." There's a reason people are still playing it 12+ years later and it's been ported to everything.

5. 4. Fallout: New Vegas — Masterclass in Modernizing a Legacy Franchise

Tim identifies three things New Vegas did exceptionally well:

5.1. Extending Storylines and Factions

It brought the NCR, Brotherhood of Steel, and other factions from Fallout 1 & 2 into a modern 3D era in a new location (California → Nevada), showing how they'd interact in a new context.

5.2. Humor

Parts of the game were hilarious — in dialogue, environmental storytelling, and the situations you find yourself in. Tim notes this is "hard to do, really hard to do."

5.3. Reactivity and Meaningful Choices

Choices weren't presented in black and white, and they had significant consequences. Joining House vs. Caesar's Legion vs. Yes Man led to wildly different outcomes — not fake choices where A and B turn out the same. Tim says when he finished New Vegas, he "immediately wanted to play it again," which he considers the sign of a really good game.

He gives props to Fallout 3 for bringing Fallout from 2D to 3D (especially turning the called-shot mechanics into VATS), but thinks New Vegas took everything a step further with perfect tone.

6. 5. Baldur's Gate 3 — Masterclass in Proving the Doubters Wrong

Tim is "super happy that turn-based is back and in vogue" and that pure D&D is considered fun again. He loves the character customization — wildly different characters that behave wildly differently in-game — and the extensive player choices with real reactivity.

But what got him most: he loves when "industry know-it-alls — developers, critics, fans — get proved wrong" when they say RPGs are dead, turn-based is boring, or D&D is niche. BG3 proved them all wrong. Tim pushes back on the "exception that proves the rule" framing: "No, it's the rule. The problem is nothing is really gone." Adventure games aren't gone, PC gaming isn't dead — these things are only as good as the games made for them.

7. Runners-Up

7.1. Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines

Tim excluded it because he worked on it, which felt unfair. But he praises its atmospheric storytelling, characters, and dialogue — none of which he personally worked on — as "freaking fantastic."

7.2. Half-Life 2

Not an RPG, but a shooter "with everything else" — story, characters, puzzles, vehicles, physics-based gameplay. Tim also mentions Half-Life: Alyx as proof that Valve's design principles translate into modern VR gaming.

7.3. Vampire Survivors

Not an RPG and indie (not Tim's area of expertise), but included as proof that you can make a great game with simple pixel art, Unity, and a small budget. Tim was addicted to it for about a month during the 2022 holiday season. He says it "does so much with so little" and belongs in some masterclass — just not an RPG-specific one.

8. The Throughline

Tim's overarching message: study these games even if you don't like them. Each one excels at something specific, and there's a lot to learn from how they execute on their design pillars. Play them, study them — they're great.

9. References

• Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqKhMeAcKTM