CRPGs as Collections of Short Adventures

[Azarkon]

A single, long campaign is practically a CRPG design principle. Most modern developers seem to operate under the belief that short adventures might as well be quest chains, or DLCs. One important reason given is that players want and need time to grow into their characters, to watch them progress and develop. As a result, CRPG developers are often told to enlarge the world, stretch out the main plot, and market their games by the hour. Content bloating is common; filler are almost a rule. Think of any popular CRPG, and these practices are just about guaranteed.

There is a logical alternative. Instead of a novel, consider a collection of short stories. Self-contained adventures, like you might download for Neverwinter Nights, but stitched together by a common game world, themes, and perhaps a big picture narrative, yet one that does not pivot around a single protagonist. Such a model would allow for more narrative flexibility, since you avoid having to make the protagonist a Special Person who could sustain a hundred hours of plot revolving around them, and would encourage both content parsimony and increased reactivity, since shorter events trees = more room for choices & consequences.

The down side would be the probable absence of a persistent player character, lowering character attachment, and decreasing opportunities for in-depth character building. After all, you can't exactly have the player go from level 1 to 30 in two hours of game time. But one of the benefits, especially for companies with multiple writers like Obsidian, would be increased individual freedom, and less incoherent design by committee. Indeed, one of the motivations behind this post goes back to, you guessed it, Pillars of Eternity being a bag of ideas forcibly mashed together, resulting in a disjointed, chimeric experience that never felt focused.

It should be mentioned that the above alternative is different from the general trend of shorter games. I'm not saying games should necessarily be shorter. I'm saying that instead of making an eighty hours campaign, consider eight, ten hours adventures, instead. This is not to say I don't ever want to see eighty hours games. Rather, I don't want to see a ten hours story stretched out to eighty hours just so developers can market eighty hours of play. Long campaigns should be reserved for stories that actually deserve the length, and more opportunities should be offered for shorter stories.

With all that said, would you buy such a game? Remember, there are limitations to this format: you wouldn't be able to develop one character from zero to hero over the course of an epic campaign. Instead, to use an example, you might go from level 1 to level 5, or start at level 5, and go to level 7. But you'd be able to do it multiple times, across different level ranges, and while experiencing different stories and making different choices.

 

[an Administrator]

I want my character to start as a hobo and end the journey as a demigod.
Choices and Consequences can go home!

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

So a western style Live A Live? I could do with that.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

It's a good idea, especially when you consider that Age of Decadence is practically just that. Each character-type or route (member of each noble house, merchant, assassin, thief, legionnaire) besides sharing some locations are side-quests are largely separated. It's a good thing you've mentioned Obsidian. In a traditional long RPG, one bad big location or big quest is detrimental to the rest of the story, using that approach you can let good writers shine, and bad ones not mess-up too much.
Also as mentioned above, Live a Live did exactly that and was brilliant. It's a shame that so many games tried to copy Final Fantasy, but none (except that one Touhou fangame) tried to make another Live a Live. If you didn't play it and don't hate anything Japanese with a burning passion you should try it.

 

[Skittles]

It's a concept that interests me. One recent (non-cRPG) release that used this concept was Hard West, by the way, comprising about eight 1 - 2 hr. scenarios that are loosely connected. It's not a stellar game, but you might be interested in seeing how they attempted this approach.

I think you can keep that sense of mechanical progression easily enough. A couple of obvious approaches include treating the game like a table top group that goes from module to module--persistent characters whose identities are not tied to the story side step one of the issues you're trying to fix, I think, meaning taking a character from 1 to 20 would be workable; if it works better to have a new set of characters in each module, getting to roll characters who start at higher levels each time would be great; lastly, a meta-layer where completed modules improve what's available in future modules, e.g. collected items, the amount of gold or even the level you start each module, could help preserve a sense of progress even if each module has a set of fixed, pre-generated characters (one could create a framing device like a single guild of adventurers or a series of important events in the history of one town/region). So I'm not convinced that you'd necessarily need to scrap a sense of mechanical progression.

Without mechanical progression? Well, designers might have the even more difficult task of creating modules with enough mechanical or at least narrative variety to keep me coming back. This is the biggest limitation. You'd need a set of systems robust enough to support eight modules that are interesting enough to carry their own weight. Picturing a table top game doing it is easy--but it seems a colossal task to try to craft a game that offers that much variety in style. Where does the variety come from? Different settings? Different primary mechanics (exploration, dialogue, combat)? Vary too much and it's like developing different games.

I'm trying to think of a way to add variety to a set of different modules that doesn't end up sounding like much more work than stretching a game out--DHoU and Darklands flash before my eyes. I guess making a game just as long as it needs to be results in something like ToEE. The only real way around it that's been tried so far (I think) is something like FRUA or even NWN, where the work of creating all the extra content was given over to fans.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I think this is a terrible idea. There is a reason why novels are much more popular than short stories. No one wants to meet some character or learn about some gameworld and then BOOM, a couple of hours later you are done. If I invest all that time into learning the game systems, UI, background lore, and so on, I want to get a lot of playtime out of it.

Moreover, you may have 3 wives, 25 kids, 5 jobs, and lots of real life commitments which make it difficult for you to play as much as you did back when you were a human being. I get it and I commend you. But that doesn't mean you should now be trying to turn this excellent hobby into something you can do in between your 3rd job and writing out alimony checks to your ex-wife. Games are glorious BECAUSE they are long and huge, and you can absolutely get lost in them. To try to deal with filler in games by making them short is like trying to deal with a widening global inequality by cutting the taxes on the rich and the corporations. Untrump yourself, my friend.

 

[Wayward Son]

Seems kind of like the Gold Box game/FRUA module format

 

[Alienman]

What is up with everyone wanting shorter RPGs nowadays?

 

[grotsnik]

The down side would be the probable absence of a persistent player character, lowering character attachment, and decreasing opportunities for in-depth character building. After all, you can't exactly have the player go from level 1 to 30 in two hours of game time.

I do think this is a massive issue - not necessarily because it lowers character attachment, but because it's likely to cut it off mid-flow. If I'm getting into the spirit, say, a rogue character in a given game (either in gameplay terms or story terms, or both), nothing's more likely to spoil the experience than a fade to black followed by 'CHAPTER 2: 3-4 HOURS OF PLAYING AS WIZARD GUY NOW OVER HERE'. Because no matter how hard you work to make every build and every storyline exciting, I'm always going to have a preference, which means that there'll almost definitely end up being sequences when I'm just grinding through thinking, 'Fuck, I hope I get to play as Rogue Guy again soon'.

The Game of Thrones RPG cut back and forth between a couple of characters, and it was definitely novel, but it also turned story and gameplay into a bit of stop-start affair like that.

But yeah, it's definitely a cool idea. Equally, you could turn the RPG into a short story collection about a single character in a way that transformed so-called 'endslide C&C' into part of the ongoing landscape of the game. Play Chapter 1 in a certain way, and 20 years on in Chapter 5 when your character is old and grey, the religious fanatics are burning heretics and your hero has a disfiguring scar to reduce their charisma. Play it differently, the temples are burnt husks and your hero is well-loved but traumatised by their experiences in a way that reduces their morale.*

*I think one of the Dragon Ages claimed to do something like this with time-gaps, but basically didn't at all

 

[Excidium II]

Aren't there JRPGs like this?

 

[Azarkon]

It's a good idea, especially when you consider that Age of Decadence is practically just that. Each character-type or route (member of each noble house, merchant, assassin, thief, legionnaire) besides sharing some locations are side-quests are largely separated. It's a good thing you've mentioned Obsidian. In a traditional long RPG, one bad big location or big quest is detrimental to the rest of the story, using that approach you can let good writers shine, and bad ones not mess-up too much.

To address the AoD example briefly: in that situation I would not split the stories into different adventures, as the goal there was to provide different paths through the same story, so as to create a prismatic experience and appreciation for the significance of background choice.

But you guys are right, it's not a new idea. Live a Live is an example of this format, and there have been other games through the years - it's more common in other genres. The challenge for CRPGs, however, is that CRPGs usually assume a persistent player character that experiences a dramatic growth in power through the course of the game, which is less compatible. Which brings me to this:

It's a concept that interests me. One recent (non-cRPG) release that used this concept was Hard West, by the way, comprising about eight 1 - 2 hr. scenarios that are loosely connected. It's not a stellar game, but you might be interested in seeing how they attempted this approach.

I think you can keep that sense of mechanical progression easily enough. A couple of obvious approaches include treating the game like a table top group that goes from module to module--persistent characters whose identities are not tied to the story side step one of the issues you're trying to fix, I think, meaning taking a character from 1 to 20 would be workable; if it works better to have a new set of characters in each module, getting to roll characters who start at higher levels each time would be great; lastly, a meta-layer where completed modules improve what's available in future modules, e.g. collected items, the amount of gold or even the level you start each module, could help preserve a sense of progress even if each module has a set of fixed, pre-generated characters (one could create a framing device like a single guild of adventurers or a series of important events in the history of one town/region). So I'm not convinced that you'd necessarily need to scrap a sense of mechanical progression.

Indeed, this is what Neverwinter Nights did. But while such a compromise is obviously viable, it is not ideal, because first, it imposes limitations on what the player character can be; and second, you wouldn't be able to make use of continuities between adventures, unless you imported those continuities, in which case we're dealing with a model more similar to episodic content, which is just another variation of having a long, single story campaign. I'd like to get away from that in the abstract.

Without mechanical progression? Well, designers might have the even more difficult task of creating modules with enough mechanical or at least narrative variety to keep me coming back. This is the biggest limitation. You'd need a set of systems robust enough to support eight modules that are interesting enough to carry their own weight. Picturing a table top game doing it is easy--but it seems a colossal task to try to craft a game that offers that much variety in style. Where does the variety come from? Different settings? Different primary mechanics (exploration, dialogue, combat)? Vary too much and it's like developing different games.

I'm trying to think of a way to add variety to a set of different modules that doesn't end up sounding like much more work than stretching a game out--DHoU and Darklands flash before my eyes. I guess making a game just as long as it needs to be results in something like ToEE. The only real way around it that's been tried so far (I think) is something like FRUA or even NWN, where the work of creating all the extra content was given over to fans.

I think you bring up a very important observation, which is that CRPGs have, in some sense, been using mechanical progression as a crutch, similar to MMORPGs, which offer persistent character progression as a substitute for constantly exciting gameplay. The idea is that you can get people to do boring quests & long stretches of repetitive monster killing through appealing to their vicarious identification of character progression with self progression. That is, people treat many tasks in MMORPGs as "work"; yet are willing to do this "work" to get stronger because of their psychological investment in their character. A weaker effect is in play in CRPGs.

But I think we need to challenge this design pattern, because it is detrimental to the overall quality of content across the genre. When you're allowed to get away with boring, repetitive tasks as gameplay, that's what you end up getting. Yet perhaps even more importantly, people eventually see through the illusion. MMORPGs have practically died as a genre because of it.

To this end, I think the answer is not necessarily to offer variety in style, but more in content. The system for a game like this has to be strong, just as you said; yet the same system can support a variety of gameplay, even within the same level range. For example, Dungeons and Dragons can support level 1 adventures fighting goblins and wolves, but it can also support those same adventures crawling in a sewer. Horizontal depth enables the format, but the primary motivation is probably narrative and situational diversity.

To use a popular example, consider a list of sample vignettes:

* A village is attacked by undead. After holding back the initial attacks, a group of villagers decide to break out to get help.
* A powerful mage is dying. He decides to pass on his secrets to one of his apprentices, but must select the most capable and loyal among them, through a series of trials.
* A band of thieves steals a powerful artifact, but gets into a fight over who gets to keep it. Murders and betrayals ensue.
* The king is looking for suitors for his daughter. He issues a set of heroic challenges, and to the victor goes the kingdom.
* A mercenary gets caught between competing loyalties: his home and his group.

Every one of these situations is different, and have their own attraction. Yet none are long enough to justify an eighty hours treatment. The reason I think this format has promise is because I think there is a much wider range of stories you can tell, and situations you can create, when you don't have to make it long. The current industry wisdom in this situation is to reduce the short stories to side quests in a longer narrative. But I don't think that's the right way to go, because I don't believe quests should be independent of the main story, and the restrictions imposed by the main story & persistent protagonist both limits your narrative options and generates loss of focus, when the quests become too incidental. We see many examples of this problem in recent CRPGs, where the side quests often feel completely disconnected from the plot & serve to distract, rather than to reinforce.

This format provides a solution for when all you have are short story ideas.

 

[Karellen]

At face value, the idea does make some sense. It's very common in PnP RPGs to play oneshot games or notably short minicampaigns, and especially with the former it's common to have premade characters and have little to no character growth due to the brevity of the game. Even so, this activity is unmistakably roleplaying, so who's to say you couldn't you imitate this kind of activity in a computer RPG?

Even so, I think that the crucial question is not whether there's merit in having eight ten-hour adventures but rather if there's merit in playing one ten-hour RPG. At the end of the day, these individual adventures would have to stand alone as individual products in a way that adventures in a bigger RPG wouldn't have to. I think that short games have merit, but at the same time, this undercuts the things that computer RPGs are actually good at doing. There's a reason CRPGs tend to be about zero-to-hero - CRPGs will never have problem solving and interaction as interesting as actual PnP RPGs, so it's best for them to go all-out on providing a sense of progression, reactivity and broadening understanding of the world instead. If there's no space to make the most of these things, one must wonder - why make this game an RPG in the first place? I've played many short games that I've enjoyed a lot that deal with situations that RPGs rarely explore, but most of those games are adventure games of one type or another and have few, if any, RPG elements.

Finally, if you're making a short RPG, wouldn't it better to craft the system to suit whatever game it is that you're making? If you did have a game with a single game system supporting multiple adventures, you'd inevitably have to facilitate a much wider array of character levels than any single adventure needs, which will, if anything, hurt the quality of an individual adventure. Rule systems tend to have a "sweet spot" which provide the greatest amount of fun, and it seems to me that creating entire adventures outside said sweet spot is somewhat self-defeating. Mask of the Betrayer suffers (in my opinion) a great deal from the level range it's designed for, because it overshoots by far the point at which D&D is most fun to play. It also confounds the imagination of the designers to create reasonable NPCs and opponents, so you end up casually killing a level 20 pirate in an arbitrary bar room brawl. The game would've been much better as a stand-alone game in its own right.

 

[deama]

Aren't there JRPGs like this?

I think they're usually pretty long. There's a bunch I haven't finished.

 

[almondblight]

It's a great idea, and I've often wished for a game like that. The only RPG I can think of that was kind of like this was Blades of Exile (Blades of Avernum), where Vogel included 3 mini-scenarios (but that was more to show off the editor).

 

[almondblight]

Aren't there JRPGs like this?

Some of the Saga games (Unlimited Saga and SaGa Frontier).

 

[Sneaky Seal]

With all that said, would you buy such a game? Remember, there are limitations to this format: you wouldn't be able to develop one character from zero to hero over the course of an epic campaign. Instead, to use an example, you might go from level 1 to level 5, or start at level 5, and go to level 7. But you'd be able to do it multiple times, across different level ranges, and while experiencing different stories and making different choices.

That might work as shorter narrative helps to build an intense and concise story with clear character motivations. If we tale Diablo II for example - it might very well work to have a new character for each episode instead of bringing in your old one. Not RPGs but Age of Empires 2 and Heroes of Might and Magic had those individual campaigns for different characters you could play.

Another thing a developer might do (and many jRPGs do) is tell a number of stories in one game that take place at the same time (but very often in the past/future as well). This way you get to play a variety of characters and experience different stories with a common larger story arch. That is actually what we want for with our game's story (we have 3 parallel storylines with 3 main characters).

It's a concept that interests me. One recent (non-cRPG) release that used this concept was Hard West, by the way, comprising about eight 1 - 2 hr. scenarios that are loosely connected. It's not a stellar game, but you might be interested in seeing how they attempted this approach..

Was going to bring up this game but you beat me to it I think it's a great example of how this might work.

 

[Plane Escapee]

Absolutely yes, I would play it and I wish it was the industry norm.
Very few competent writers are capable of dishing out more than 300 well written pages worth of a single coherent story, I'd make the claim that even fewer competent game writers (and designers) are capable of creating a role-playing game of more than 40 (-ish) good hours of content within a single coherent narrative.
Unfortunately the majority of people who play role-playing games and the majority of people who make role-playing games are brought up on 800-page long "epic", soulless, boring, awkwardly written fantasy drivel and couldn't tell the qualitative difference between a Warcraft novelization and Nabokov, all they know as measures of worth is quantity. The number of hours, the number of words, the number of badly written sexual encounters, the number of stock fantasy races, the number of numbers etc.
I'm afraid they aren't familiar enough with short fiction, novellas or even fairy tales to write shorter narratives of their own accord...

80 hour games composed of 3-10 independently coherent and self-contained "main" storylines is a very good idea. ESPECIALLY for Obsidian and other companies with too many, too inexperienced or too incompetent writers.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Got some concerns, and some benefits:

1. Seems like an invitation to episodic content, which I've never seem implemented better than a full game;

2. Can be an invitation to half-arsery and fan-made-content-level-stuff. SoZ was woefully underrated, but part of that strikes me as endemic to the style - I loved the style. I just wish it inspired the kind of love that developers will throw into a MotB.

3. Jarring tones. There are some differences between perfect TB rules implementation of AD&D and a sit-down PnP session. I'm no defender of the 'cinematic style'

Spoiler

(as, weirdly, the games that have succeeded the most at giving me the 'feel' of a great genre movie haven't been cinematic at all, but instead, mastered the very game-specific elements that create mood via interactivity and environment with gameplay synergy - FEAR (the 1st one, not those sequels that were rumoured and quickly canned when everyone realised there was no need for a sequel. Really glad they cut that idea for a last-second jump scare as cheap sequel-bait, would have really undermined the perfect pacing + mood of the ending), the System Shocks, Deus Ex, Azrael's Tear, SH2)

, but it would be very hard to 'forget' that it's a holistic product, where you expect there to be some consistency in tone, and some thematic thread throughout.

That last one isn't impossible - in fact, it's the kind of thing that could be absolutely brilliant if done well. A series of short campaigns, without necessarily having a through-plot, but where there's enough of a feel/theme to it that they don't feel totally disconnected. Breaking my own rules here, but a tv analogy might help - think of the old Incredible Hulk tv series. There were some ongoing story elements,

Spoiler

Most notably, the journalist who's tracking the Hulk, and his increasing obsession as he loses everything, going from the country's leading investigative journalist, to becoming a laughing stock, losing his job then his family, questioning his sanity, making him even more desperate to prove the Hulk exists because it's the only way he can get his life back. It's great example of the kind of tv-specific craft that's fallen by the wayside with increasing budgets; the show couldn't afford to have big army scenes with tanks and lots of soldiers, so instead of using General Ross as an adversary, they turned an adversity into a strength by making the character a journalist. Having him rely solely on his cunning and ingenuity to track the hulk, instead of having any authority, makes him feel more dangerous, because there's no question he's an intellectual match for Banner, and it means that both he and Banner are good men trapped in a hunt that's destroyed their lives due to their inability to overcome their one character flaw)

but mostly it's just a different town, a different set of characters and a new self-contained story every episode. Lots of variety in the style, even the genre. One week there'll be an action show with Banner facing off against drug-lords terrorising a Mexican town. The next week there'll be a drama/tragedy, with a rich but emotionally dead heiress surrounded by money-grubbing suitors, pseudo-friends and other hangers on, all out on a yacht when there's a murder that Banner tries to solve, but with most of the focus on him and the heiress trying and failing to find to find someone they can connect with because they recognise each other as kindred spirits.

Except they all end the same way - with Banner walking down the highway looking to hitchhike a ride, leaving yet another town he can never come back to. It was the 80s, so the TV series was entirely 'gentle giant' version of Hulk, no grimdark stuff, and Banner is always a standup hero. Even the show's catch-phrase "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry." is usually reserved for episodes where he's faced with an unambiguously evil villain. He's not a whiny angsty-pants brat like a lot of recent 'tortured heroes' either - even as Banner, he's very much the strong silent type. But by having that same ending (really, it's the show's closing credits, but they'd tie in the episode's story so that it leads into it narratively), it gives this feeling of the character mentally kicking himself as he realises that, fuck, he's screwed up again, and that there's only so many times you can get run out of town for being a hero until you have to start contemplating whether maybe you're the problem.

Good episodic television would usually have that kind of thematic thread. Something that doesn't get in the way of the short stories, but still makes it 'a series', not a bunch of disconnected skits. We already have the latter - there's plenty of player modules to download for both NWN games, and many other crpgs. If I'm paying for a product, I expect that extra element that connects the pieces and I expect all of those pieces to be able to stand individually on their own merits. If I was to pay to hire a 'professional DM' to run my group's "series of short adventures / dungeon crawls" campaign, I'd expect the same thing - like good episodic tv, each piece would need to be enjoyable and complete by itself and there needs to be some thematic element that makes them feel like a well-crafted anthology. Otherwise, why pay a professional to do it?

I'd love to see something like that in gaming. But, fuck, current game writers can't even manage their own bread-and-butter story templates. Many of them weren't even born when that type of story format dominated a popular medium. After getting so enthused for 'games as story / games as art', after that great run of PS:T, SS2, Deus Ex, SH2 etc, and seeing it blow up in my face and having to wear the stream of shitty pretentious non-games and cinematic shooters that followed, I'm not plunging my head into that toilet bowl a second time.

 

[Night Goat]

What is up with everyone wanting shorter RPGs nowadays?

Speaking for myself, I want shorter RPGs because I've realized that most of the content in long RPGs is worthless filler. If someone made a hundred-hour rpg and all of it was fresh and fun that'd be great, but the reality is that RPGs are padded with trash combat and pointless walking around because then they can advertise the game's length and people will assume it's a good thing.

 

[an Administrator]

What is up with everyone wanting shorter RPGs nowadays?

They are getting old

 

[V_K]

SR: DF and SR:HK are stuctured kinda like this: you have a start and end missions framing the campaign as a larger story, but the midgame (which takes up the bulk of playtime) almost wholly consists of independent and self-contained runs. I think the framing story is still necessary though, not having the overall plot culminate in something is rather disappointing.

 

[Azarkon]

I think this is a terrible idea. There is a reason why novels are much more popular than short stories. No one wants to meet some character or learn about some gameworld and then BOOM, a couple of hours later you are done. If I invest all that time into learning the game systems, UI, background lore, and so on, I want to get a lot of playtime out of it.

I don't think there's a problem with setting continuity, as efficiency of economy encourages using the same game world across modules. Think Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and not Nine Worlds, Nine Stories, even though the latter could be much more exciting in certain ways. There could also be limited character continuity. For example, a famous NPC might be involved in more than one adventure.

Moreover, you may have 3 wives, 25 kids, 5 jobs, and lots of real life commitments which make it difficult for you to play as much as you did back when you were a human being. I get it and I commend you. But that doesn't mean you should now be trying to turn this excellent hobby into something you can do in between your 3rd job and writing out alimony checks to your ex-wife. Games are glorious BECAUSE they are long and huge, and you can absolutely get lost in them. To try to deal with filler in games by making them short is like trying to deal with a widening global inequality by cutting the taxes on the rich and the corporations. Untrump yourself, my friend.

That's not the motivation behind this post. I'm not against games with eighty hours of play time. I am, however, arguing that there's a different way to spend those eighty hours than through one long narrative. Many stories cannot sustain such length, and when developers try to stretch them out with side quests and time sinks, the end result is often a loss of focus. Much of the time during hundred hours games, I'm left wondering what my goal is supposed to be and why I'm wandering around the world taking care of people's random problems. There has to be a better way to motivate CRPGs adventures than being a Fix It All.

 

[Azarkon]

The down side would be the probable absence of a persistent player character, lowering character attachment, and decreasing opportunities for in-depth character building. After all, you can't exactly have the player go from level 1 to 30 in two hours of game time.

I do think this is a massive issue - not necessarily because it lowers character attachment, but because it's likely to cut it off mid-flow. If I'm getting into the spirit, say, a rogue character in a given game (either in gameplay terms or story terms, or both), nothing's more likely to spoil the experience than a fade to black followed by 'CHAPTER 2: 3-4 HOURS OF PLAYING AS WIZARD GUY NOW OVER HERE'. Because no matter how hard you work to make every build and every storyline exciting, I'm always going to have a preference, which means that there'll almost definitely end up being sequences when I'm just grinding through thinking, 'Fuck, I hope I get to play as Rogue Guy again soon'.

The Game of Thrones RPG cut back and forth between a couple of characters, and it was definitely novel, but it also turned story and gameplay into a bit of stop-start affair like that.

Don't think it necessarily has to be about playing different classes in each story, but yeah, it is a problem since we all have preferences for stories & situations. But at the same time, there might also be more opportunities for finding a story or situation you like, since there'd be more of them. I can certainly remember games in which a particular side quest entertained me more than the main story. Witcher 3 being a recent example.

But yeah, it's definitely a cool idea. Equally, you could turn the RPG into a short story collection about a single character in a way that transformed so-called 'endslide C&C' into part of the ongoing landscape of the game. Play Chapter 1 in a certain way, and 20 years on in Chapter 5 when your character is old and grey, the religious fanatics are burning heretics and your hero has a disfiguring scar to reduce their charisma. Play it differently, the temples are burnt husks and your hero is well-loved but traumatised by their experiences in a way that reduces their morale.*

*I think one of the Dragon Ages claimed to do something like this with time-gaps, but basically didn't at all

I remember playing Neverwinter Nights modules that tried to do this; time jumps most definitely deserve more exploration in CRPGs. The fact that most CRPGs have you go from 1 to 30 in the space of a year, during which the entire game plays out, is a weakness of the current design.