Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Chris Avellone: Narrative Paths

There are only three days to go to the end of the Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Kickstarter campaign -  Chris Avellone shared some insight on how to create a CRPG:

Chris Avellone: Narrative Paths

Translating a Pathfinder Adventure Path like Wrath of the Righteous is no easy task. Wrath, like Pathfinder: Kingmaker, has the enormous challenge of translating one of Paizo’s Pathfinder Adventure Paths into the digital realm.

For those not familiar with Adventure Paths, they are a series of six interconnected modules that take Pathfinder adventurers from Level 1 to… well… a frighteningly high level. A table top playthrough of an Adventure Path can be akin like playing six seasons of Game of Thrones, it’s that epic. And intricate. Also, in Wrath’s case, it also comes with a healthy splash of demons and demon lords.

The effort in translating the core story line doesn’t even take into account the additional story layers the Mythic Paths and the companion interactions provide the core story experience – it’s like taking the core story, adding six more interwoven stories (now 8, with the stretch goals met – thank you all!), and then interweaving the companion stories on top of that.

So the question is how to adapt this amount of narrative content into the computer gaming realm. I’ll go into some detail about how it’s done from a narrative standpoint, courtesy of the efforts of our writing lead, Alexander Komzolov.

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