With that said, I absolutely love RPGs which focus on the roleplaying. I mean, I’m currently writing an tabletop RPG rulebook, so this shouldn’t be terribly surprising. I love creating a character, imagining their backstory, way of life, attitude towards the world, and interacting with a story through that character’s eyes. However, many RPGs aren’t exactly built to make this possible or satisfying. So, here are some important things to keep in mind if you’d like your RPG to allow this kind of player investment.

In RPGs where the player character has some semblance of a pre-defined personality it’s fine for the character to have their own goals. This is why it’s fine for Commander Shepard from Mass Effect to always ultimately want to save the galaxy: this character has a name, they have a motivation, they have a goal. The thing left up to the player is how they achieve that goal, and who they want to romantically involve themselves with along the way. However, if the player character is a blank slate which the player moulds, it’s best not to tell the player what their character is supposed to feel and what their goals are. It’s as much their creation as it is yours as the game’s writer.

The main narrative of Fallout 3 has received considerable criticism for requiring that the player invest in the player avatar’s father, a figure which the player has little reason to personally care about beyond their apparent importance to their particular floating camera. However, the main plot of The Witcher 3, which chiefly concerns a hunt for the player avatar’s adoptive daughter, has received no such criticism despite presenting a similar scenario – why should this be? Well, the chief mechanic in creating investment in such a story is not in making the player care about the missing character personally, but in making the player empathise and relate to the player character’s strong motivation to find them. In order to have this strong motivation the player character needs a clear personality, a pre-existing sense of right and wrong, and defined relationships with not only the character they care about, but the world that surrounds them. This is why Geralt’s mission to find Ciri is so much more compelling than [Insert Fallout 3 Player Character Name]’s search for their father – unlike the FO3 PC, Geralt has a clearly defined relationship with the missing character, a coherent and recognisable outlook on the world (even if the details of their specific actions are left to the player), and is highly driven to do what he is doing. In contrast, Fallout 3 defines as little as possible of your relationship to your father so as not to invalidate any later decisions the player might make, to such an extent that it’s not at all clear why your character is driven to do this – they are because the game tells you that they are, and you, as the player, better play along.

It’s easy to roleplay in The Witcher 3, even if it’s only really possible to roleplay your subtly different version of Geralt, but that’s fine. The problem arises when a game tries to play it both ways by both allowing the player to create their own avatar and then dictating their character’s goals and desires.

So the question may be asked, how do you create a sense of investment when the player avatar has no pre-defined personality? Well…

The best way to make the player feel like their created character has a tangible influence of the narrative is to provide a world in which the ultimate conclusion of the narrative are defined by the choices that the player makes, as laid out within the confines of clearly signalled options. A good example of this being done extremely well is in Fallout: New Vegas. In F:NV, the player is confronted with various factions, each of whom have a vision for the future of the wasteland and your character’s place in it. By taking on jobs with the various factions, the player can learn about their respective visions and make decisions as to whether they’d like to help or hinder them. The final conclusion of the player avatar’s story depends entirely on the way in which the player interacts with the world, thus giving a satisfying and logical conclusion. In Skyrim, there is no escaping Saving the World unless you ignore the main story questline entirely; the way that the player interacts with the world has no bearing on its eventual fate on any meaningful level.

Included in this is the implicit implication that players will not get all of the story in one play-through, and that’s true. However, I’m willing to bet plenty of players will be invested enough in the world that’s been created to play through multiple times (he said wistfully as he glances over at his total playtime of Fallout: New Vegas).

New Vegas gives every player a standardised starting goal (in this case, “get revenge on the men who tried to kill you”), but this goal is nebulous and vague, and mostly serves as a way for the player to explore the world they find themselves in. The player is supposed to get sidetracked by all the other stuff they come across in pursuing that goal, as they inform the player’s decisions in the main narrative. Doing sidequests for the NCR in New Vegas teaches you about the NCR and their enemies, and influences your later  decisions. The same goes for sidequests in the first two Fallout games, by Planescape: Torment, and even by Dragon Age: Origins and Inquisition, to a lesser extent. Some RPGs, including those made by a certain company I’ve already referenced too much in this article, present sidequests as either closed circuits which do nothing to expose the player to the world, or as a means to deliver shoehorned moral choices which don’t play into the broader narrative. While neither of these are intrinsically bad, they are not optimal uses of sidequests. The optimal use of sidequests is to provide context and worldbuilding which can be used to reinforce the themes of the main narrative. It also gives players opportunities to define the worldview of the character they have created in advance of having to make the Big Decisions.