Skyrim is shit btw. Oblivion forever (oblivion is worse than Morrowind, but Oblivion was my entrance to the games so I love it)
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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Roleplaying in Skyrim is a skill issue
My favorite Skyrim RPG build is that of the ambitious Vampire Hunter, the victim of vampire nobles who killed his family; he swore eternal vengeance against all rich vamps
He crosses the border to join the Dawnguard before the main quest sidelines him. In his eyes every quest is simply an opportunity to acquire another weapon to destroy his vampiric enemies
He joins the Companions to improve his combat skills and jumps at the chance to become a Werewolf for obvious reasons
He travels to Winterhold College to learn spells that counter the art of Lifedrain
He searches for Words of Power because "If it can bring down Dragons, it can bring down Vampires"
At his lowest moment he forsakes his ideals and seeks the aid of the Daedric Princes, acquiring dark weapons and darker powers
But then, He stumbles upon the mysteries of the Dwemer and impressed by the mechanical power on display, he realizes it's not demonic magic he needs, but Knowledge, he learns everything there is to know about Dwemer technology, gets himself some poisoned exploding Dwemer bolts and a Dwemer Crossbow and becomes the stealth archer he was born to be
I've found that Skyrim is good for roleplaying if you only use diagetic fast travel (wagons, boats) and you pretend you have no idea where Amy of the particular quests and items are.
Walking town to town collecting odd jobs, sleeping in inns by the road and collecting rumours as an adventurer is neat.
I had a blast doing a playthrough as Rincewind from Discworld.
Skyrim seems like the kind of place he would turn up.
That's a satisfying-looking character. I've never seen the wizard hat, cape, or Dwemer bot before, are those mods?
Yes. So is the quarterstaff. I think the robe was, too; that mod added unenchanted variants of various robes from the base game, including a heavy armor variant of the Vigilant of Stendarr robes. That's what I'm wearing there; it was basically a 2H maces build with wiz[z]ard aesthetics.
Lmao
EDIT: it's funny to me given the context of this whole thread.
Raw-dogging vanilla Skyrim is kind of like fornicating with a cheese grater. It's fun once.
You gotta explain to me how the cheese grater thing would be fun even once
To be entirely fair, you can do this kind of roleplaying in any video game. You don't have to be Gordon Freeman in Half-Life 2. You could be a civilian imposter that just looks like him.
Roleplaying in RPGs should intersect with the mechanics of the game, usually limiting you via stats and gameplay options. So, if your character is a vampire hunter, for example they should be more specialized in weapons that vampire hunters use. Your character's dedication to weaponry would mean they're less, idk, charismatic or whatever. That creates interesting gameplay scenarios, connects you to your character more and encourages you to replay the game to experience what you traded off in one playthrough.
Since Skyrim, Bethesda has started to lean into 'infinite leveling,' which means every character will eventually become the same ultra-competent bandit slayer. They also very rarely restrict content depending on your characters choices.
Funnily enough this is precisely how I play the character, in the most common iterations the Vampire Hunter starts out naive and stubborn; he wants to get into the meat of the fight and trade blows with the Vampires, but as he matures (and heals constantly), he learns his skills aren't in hand-to-hand combat, the Vampires are simply too strong
So he's forced to adapt, slowly trading a sword for a bow (which plays into infamous combat mechanics of Skyrim)
Instead of becoming an all-powerful hypermage, he finds he only has magical talent in casting Runes, Vampires are fast after all, and laying down a Rune trap while he pulls out his bow or crossbow is simply good sense learned through experience.
In some iterations after learning he's not as physically adept as he wished, he becomes a master of alchemy, rendering the Vampires helpless through ingenious poisons that rob them of their speed
It takes a degree of restraint to play this way, but for me overcoming the limitations of the vanilla game is simply part of the fun
You're imagining your own limitations that the game doesn't want to impose. That's the sort of roleplaying you can do in any game. I used to do it all the time when I had run a game dry, but it's a poor measure of how good a game is as an 'RPG.'
I guess it depends on what qualities one believes a 'good' RPG should possess; for me personally, the lore and how it inspires character versatility and diversity of themes are more important for what I consider a 'good' RPG, most games never come close to accomplishing that. If limitations aid those qualities, I'll take them or make them up as long as they gel with the lore; if not I'll ignore them until the game breaks my patience or suspension of disbelief
the thing that makes an RPG and not some other kind of games is the systems, and when people evaluate the RPG quality of RPGs they're generally looking at the interactions with what the game systematizes and not some media studies deconstruction where some movie and a deck of cards is your favorite rpg because you can watch the scenes out of order.
I don't know; I've tolerated god-awful gameplay mechanics and systems for the sake of the lore and storytelling, Dragon Age: Origins and KOTOR come to mind readily
origins has excellent mechanics if you dig into the companion programming, and kotor is just d20 which is fine but not horrible
I like DaO but it absolutely does not have excellent mechanics or anything approaching balance. The companion decision/behavior tree was interesting and well executed but most abilities and most character classes were absolute dogshit. Shale was the only remotely viable melee, you could win nearly every encounter by chaining fireball since it had a huge aoe, did a lot of damage and did knock down keeping melee from closing, also if I recall correctly there may not have been a save against stasis so you could just drop whoever you wanted out of a fight.
Definitely right that Kotor was just d20 modern, I think it comes across a little extra janky cause the real time overlay over turn base mechanics.
i may have rose-tinted glasses because DA2 and Inquisition are so, so much worse all MMOy and depth sacrificed for console sales.
fair
I mean I can do that, I'd just much rather do it in a game that is focused on helping me have that experience rather than Skyrim. Much like how I can reskin D&D to be a TTRPG for political intrigue and diplomacy, but I'd much rather just play a system that encourages that, instead of one where the focus is on something else entirely.
The challenge just makes it more spicy and helps build more self-confidence in one's own imagination
If you enjoy it all the more power to you. I just prefer playing systems that encourage the style of play I want, rather than wrangling some vacuus monster into a shape somewhat resembling what I'd like.
edit: Like what Certified Sinonist says - You can do that with basically every game you play
Yeah it's definitely not for everyone
Can't say I agree with that idea, most games simply don't have the worldbuilding and lore to support in-depth roleplaying like the kind I described, every iteration and build I play is canon-friendly and supported by the cumulative lore of the series, otherwise there's no narrative heft or consistency to the internal logic of the character and it becomes arbitrary daydreaming
Wether you follow lore or not isn't really what I mean when I speak about the RPG as a system. The limitations you give yourself are artificial and self-imposed, you're working around the system, not with it. The game isn't doing the work for you, the game isn't reacting to you being a vampire hunter outside of the vampire hunter dlc, where you will always be a vampire or vampire hunter, depending on what you choose.
I can role play in Crusader Kings, but I wouldn't say thats a good RPG system either.
As long as the system allows the role-playing to be lore-consistent and character variety compelling, then my criteria for 'good' has been fulfilled. Obviously that's not my criteria for a "GREAT" RPG, but "good enough" can, under a lot of conditions, have a quality all it's own