Episodic narrative RPGs

[rusty_shackleford]

I am not referring to video games that are developed or released in an episodic format. I am referring to something more like Dungeons & Dragons Online, where (nearly) each quest was part of an overarching adventure with recurring elements. There are many different adventures overall.

Are there any other RPGs like this?
Dragon Age Origins is sort of like this with its expansion modules, I really wish they made more of these and I liked them a lot.

[Oyster Sauce]

Adventure Quest/DragonFable if you're 12 and you live close enough to school that you can go home and play during lunch.

[Roguey]

Dragon Age 2 - Prologue's about escaping Darkspawn, Act 1 is about raising money to join a Deep Roads expedition so you can buy a house, Act 2 is about the growing Qunari crisis, Act 3 is about the growing mage/templar crisis.

Pathfinder Kingmaker - at Chris Avellone's suggestion they tied them all together, but in the original adventure path the six modules were all unrelated. Wrath of the Righteous is a bit similar (six arcs with their own climax) though it was a bit more tied together with a clear ultimate goal from the start.

I suppose there also games like Hard West and Woke West where instead of one character going on multiple adventures you play a series of characters with their own goals.

[rusty_shackleford]

Neverwinter Nights was originally intended to do something like this

Our original plan for the NWN story called for approximately 30 2-hour missions that people could play together, enjoy a wonderful experience, and exit from the game. However, market research led us to believe that a vast single-player story was important to end-users; they did not want to see Mechwarrior-style missions where the party would be briefed, charge off like raging lunatics, slay and loot the villains, and then return to the tavern for a nice cup of mead. Thus, the story was reorganized into four chapters, which meant six times as many creatures and objects to deal with in the same amount of RAM!

https://web.archive.org/web/20121111000 ... unt of RAM!

[rusty_shackleford]

My thoughts:

However, market research led us to believe that a vast single-player story was important to end-users; they did not want to see Mechwarrior-style missions where the party would be briefed, charge off like raging lunatics, slay and loot the villains, and then return to the tavern for a nice cup of mead.

I really don't see why you can't do both, just have a single story thread throughout.

[Atlantico]

My thoughts:

However, market research led us to believe that a vast single-player story was important to end-users; they did not want to see Mechwarrior-style missions where the party would be briefed, charge off like raging lunatics, slay and loot the villains, and then return to the tavern for a nice cup of mead.

I really don't see why you can't do both, just have a single story thread throughout.

Bioware execs are often Canadian and not very bright

[logincrash]

However, market research led us to believe that a vast single-player story was important to end-users; they did not want to see Mechwarrior-style missions where the party would be briefed, charge off like raging lunatics, slay and loot the villains, and then return to the tavern for a nice cup of mead.

Isn't that what Mass Effect 2-3 were, kinda? You would fly from hub to hub and do specific missions with briefing and post-mission bottle of whatever they drank on the Normandy.