This Is How You Roleplay

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Abstract

Problem: What does it look like when a player truly roleplays in an RPG, and what kind of player are RPG designers actually making games for?

Approach: Tim Cain shares his discovery of the YouTube channel "Games on Hard Mode," breaking down three videos where the creator plays Oblivion, Skyrim, and Baldur's Gate 3 with extreme self-imposed restrictions — and genuine roleplay commitment.

Findings: True roleplaying means giving characters philosophies, goals, and consistent behavior — not just min-maxing builds. Players who embrace constraints and lean into character identity create emergent, entertaining experiences that go far beyond what designers explicitly script.

Key insight: The players RPG designers dream of aren't the ones who optimize — they're the ones who commit to a character concept so hard they force the game to become something new.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQMasl0cK9A

The Channel: Games on Hard Mode

Tim Cain describes discovering a YouTube channel called Games on Hard Mode and being so impressed he immediately sent a link to Leonard Boyarsky. The channel's creator doesn't just play RPGs — he roleplays them, deliberately making the experience harder by setting difficulty to hard and imposing arbitrary character restrictions, then playing with full commitment to those constraints.

Tim's reaction: "This is the guy who gets it. This guy is who I make games for."

Three Examples of Committed Roleplaying

Oblivion: Athletics Only

The first video features Allison Chains, a character restricted to only the Athletics skill in Oblivion. Athletics only lets you run and swim faster and regenerate fatigue slightly while running. That's it — no fighting skills, no conversation skills, no stealth, not even jumping.

Because Oblivion's leveling system requires gaining 10 skill points to level up, and Athletics only increases through running and swimming, the entire playthrough becomes an exercise in sprinting through dungeons, grabbing quest items, and fleeing. The player eventually picks up a companion to handle combat but otherwise commits fully to the bit — refusing to jump even when the game demands it.

Skyrim: Speech Only

Richard the Rich is a Skyrim character restricted to the Speech skill, with the life goal of owning a manor in Solitude. Speech levels up through conversations, persuasion checks, intimidation, lying, and bartering. The player hires companions for 100 gold to fight for him, then runs through dungeons letting them handle combat. Tim describes watching him sprint through a Dwemer ruin with no companion and being certain he'd die — but he made it through, grabbed the item, and ran back out.

Baldur's Gate 3: Least Played Race + Class

Twilight Eclipse combines the least played race (Githyanki) with the least played class (Cleric) according to Larian Studios' data. The character has "real Githyanki hair that is totally real" and approaches the entire game through a committed character philosophy.

Why This Matters to a Game Designer

Tim emphasizes that what makes these videos special isn't just the humor — it's the depth of roleplay commitment. Each character has:

  • A life philosophy that guides all decisions
  • A concrete goal they're working toward (e.g., owning a house in Solitude)
  • Consistent behavior in NPC interactions, quest completion, and moment-to-moment gameplay

The player forces the game to become something new by refusing to play it the "normal" way. Tim sees this as the purest expression of what RPGs are for: not optimizing builds, but inhabiting a character and seeing what happens.

The Designer's Takeaway

Tim explicitly states: "I make games for people like this." The video is a love letter to a specific kind of player — one who treats RPGs as sandboxes for character expression rather than systems to be solved. He describes watching these videos as if "he read my brain and said, oh, this is what you can do with these games."

His closing message to the creator: "Dude, whoever you are, you get it. I'd love to see you play one of my games with a character like Allison Chains or Richard the Rich or Twilight Eclipse."

References