I kinda love how simple Skyrim’s RPG systems are. like:

• you have skills, which represent how good you are at Doing Something on a scale of 1 to 100
• also you have health and magic and stamina and it’s really clear what those do because the bars are on your screen the whole time you’re playing the game
• there isn’t a super convoluted level up process; you literally just get better at doing things by doing them, and then you level up and get to increase the size of one of your bars and give yourself a perk
• you’re never put in the position of stressing out about making the “wrong” build choice and ending up with a character that can’t complete the game. everything is so straightforward that you can’t screw it up, and every skill that you’re using is automatically getting better because you’re using it
• there are no stats that are even one step removed from gameplay. there’s no “each point of strength gives +2 endurance which increases health-gained-per-level which affects-“ fuck that. speech makes you sell things better. one-handed makes you stab things better. health makes you less dead more often.

like okay I’m not saying that Skyrim’s RPG mechanics are good but I’m definitely saying that I like them more than 95% of RPGs I’ve played

@kasdeya there's a certain elegance to it that i miss whenever i play older Bethesda titles. for all its faults, it's still very easy to see how Skyrim has such widespread and lasting appeal

I just realized that all of my bullet points more-or-less describe OSRS too so I guess that explains why I like OSRS as well despite it being (I think?) extremely RPG