My Development Preferences

RPGs and Player Agency

Tim's most fundamental preference is making RPGs — he grew up playing tabletop RPGs and it's his natural inclination. Within that, he's deeply committed to reactivity: player agency, player choice, and meaningful consequences.

He tells the story of someone complaining "I can't believe your game let me kill a child." Tim's response: the game didn't make you do it, it just allows it — and there are serious consequences for doing so. He never wants to restrict player agency just because an action is morally wrong. Restricting choice means restricting consequence, which imposes a morality on the player.

Gray Morality

Tim loves gray morality in games. He doesn't want to tell the player "you're the sheriff, uphold the law." He prefers to let the player choose whether to be good or evil, then live with the consequences. He's had to make allowances when working with existing IPs (like D&D's built-in alignment system), but his preference is always to avoid imposing moral frameworks.

Original IP Over Sequels

Given the choice, Tim would always rather make an original IP than work in someone else's universe. He has so many ideas of his own that spending time implementing someone else's feels like a missed opportunity. D&D meant something to him personally, and Vampire was already started by co-workers, but his personal preference is always original work.

This extends to sequels — even before Fallout shipped, he was telling his bosses he didn't want to work on Fallout 2. After three and a half years on Fallout, he had other ideas that didn't fit into that world. He admires people who work on one IP for a decade or two, but that's not him.

That said, he had great fun working on Pillars of Eternity (Josh Sawyer's IP) and Tyranny (Brian Heins, started by Chris Avellone) — he especially enjoys exploring an original IP when the creator is right there to ask questions.

Humor and Fun Over Balance

Tim has tried to add humor into every game he's ever made. He believes games should be fun, and has stated multiple times that he prefers fun over balance. An extremely imbalanced game isn't fun, but it's okay for some character builds to be more powerful than others — that's part of the challenge.

Custom Character Creation

Tim wants the player to make their own character. He dislikes handing a pre-made character to the player. When forced to, he makes that character as generic as possible.

For Fallout, the "voted out of the Vault" setup was deliberate — it lets anyone get kicked out, regardless of their stats. A super-dumb character? They weren't sent to save anyone; the Vault just wanted them gone. Similarly, in The Outer Worlds, Phineas was rushed and just grabbed a random frozen colonist — leaving the character's background entirely up to the player.

Settings with a Twist

Tim always works in his preferred order: setting → story → system mechanics. He likes making different settings and doesn't want to stay in one too long. Every new game, he tries to change the setting and include a twist:

• Fallout — Post-apocalyptic, but with retrofuturism (the future the 1950s imagined)
• Arcanum — Standard Lord of the Rings-style fantasy, but undergoing an industrial revolution
• WildStar — Science fiction, but with spellcasters and working magic
• The Outer Worlds — Hard science fiction, but dystopian corporate colonies (a "pre-apocalyptic" setting)

Nonlinear, Player-Driven Stories

Tim prefers nonlinear stories driven by the player. When a narrative designer pitches a story hitting beats A, B, and C, Tim immediately asks: "What if the player doesn't do B? What if they never go to that location?" The nonlinearity should be driven by player choice, not external forces. He wants the story to react to the player, not force the player to react to the story.

Unique Mechanics in Every Game

Tim never wants to ship a game where someone says "I've seen all that before." Every game needs at least one novel mechanical idea:

• Fallout — Perks (possibly the first CRPG perk system) and dumb dialogue for low-intelligence characters
• Arcanum — Fate points (earned from major quests, spent to force critical hits, full heals, or enemy critical failures) and the magic-tech meter (a continuum where you couldn't be both full magic and full tech)
• Temple of Elemental Evil — Party alignment (restricting party composition so a paladin and assassin couldn't coexist) and opening vignettes based on party alignment
• WildStar — The path system (based on Richard Bartle's player types: explorer, killer, achiever, socializer) letting you tell the game how you like to play
• The Outer Worlds — Flaws (disadvantages inspired by GURPS, offered based on tracked player behavior — e.g., getting critically hit by robots too often triggers a "robophobia" flaw offer)

What a Tim Cain Game Is Not

Tim explicitly notes things he does not require: complicated system mechanics, a game that ends when the story's over (he's fine with open-ended games), or any particular level of mechanical complexity. Many fan assumptions about his preferences are wrong — "people seem to have no idea of how right or wrong they are, they're just very confident."

References

• Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj60AoeWvAE