Games

Divinity Original Sin 2 is exactly what you’re looking for.

Baldurs Gate 3 will be out soon and is in early access. Check it out after DOS2.

IMO WoW is not a good game at all if you are looking for "role playing". It's a multiplayer online game and all the quests boil down to simple linear stories. There is very little player choice, and the other humans playing the game make it impossible to suspend your disbelief and actually imagine your character as a real person in the game world.

I would recommend Dragon Age: Origins. BioWare games in general have always been great at letting you build a character where role playing choices matter a lot. Other games I would recommend for RPGs with a capital R and a capital P:

Tyranny (choices matter a lot in this one. There are basically 4 or 5 distinct stories in the game depending on choices you make)

Fallout New Vegas (any of the fallout games are good, but this one has the best writing IMO)

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (play all three in order)

Pillars of Eternity 2

Pathfinder (Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous)

Divinity Original Sin 2

Baldur's Gate 3 (Early access right now but should be releasing soon)

If price is an issue, my top recommendations are definitely Dragon Age Origins and Fallout New Vegas

Consider Disco Elysium.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is for you!

Larian did an incredible job with that game and it's truly a masterpiece. If you have friends, you can play online co-op and have a blast.

And if you have a SO, make sure to try it out as well! The split screen implementation for this game is amazing, and the controller support is second to none.
In fact, I switched from M+K to the controller just because it was so much better.

By the time you're done, Larian Studio's Baldur's Gate 3 will have been released (Aug 3rd), and it seems it's going to 1-up every other RPG out there by a mile!

I hope they can implement the same controller scheme and split screen system with BG3 as well, since it's so much better for couch co-op.

I have a couple of suggestions that I liked a lot.

-Disco Elysium, very well written. Get the directors cut version, it's fully dubbed. One of the best crpg I played. There's pretty much no fighting in the game. Almost everything is solved with discussion.

-Divinity Original Sin 2, great crpg with a "DM" mode and can be played in multiplayer. Great story and lots of different paths.

-Planescape Torment, such a beautifuly written game. The enhanced edition is currently on sale for like 5$

All three have a very different vibe to them. And I think all three are a must play for fans of the genre.

Really you can’t go wrong with most of Obsidian’s games. Pillars of Eternity is a fantastically written game with excellent role playing. You can literally have an in-depth conversation with one of the gods of the world with a certain background that I thought was surely going to be flavorful only.

A certain character asks you if you are real and your response options are: -Yes -Yes (lie) -No -No (lie)

It’s absolutely incredible. There’s a ton of thought out into the world and often your class and background offer alternative dialogue options with characters.

I’ve also played Divinity Original Sin, and while it’s a great game for interesting combat interactions, there’s not a lot to bite into for role playing imo. You get some dialogue choices, but they aren’t very interesting or flavorful, and I’m pretty sure they don’t change based on any factors other than maybe if you failed a quest rather than succeed. It’s a fun game, but not much of an interesting story. It’s got couch co-op, so it can be a fun to play with a partner or a friend if you want a better role playing experience.

You could look at the Bioware games (Mass Effect, Dragon's Age, Knights of the Old Republic). The old Elder Scrolls games let you play the way you want. Final Fantasy has an extensive free trial as well

Most classic RPGs have lots of combat. What I don't see mentioned here so far is Neverwinter Nights. Especially the first expansion of the second game. Mask of the Betrayer. Lots of combat of course, but a story that your behaviour has an impact on. Search for a cookie cutter build, lower the difficulty. You can skip through the combat parts quickly that way, if you don't like them.

Also mentioning Planescape Torment again because it's weird and not so combat focused.

OG Fallout 1 and 2 are pen and paper games mechanically. Must plays.

Lord of the rings online. Yes it's old, but it's still a beautiful game. You customize your race, appearance, class, etc. You can play solo or join a kinship (guild.) Some kinships are roleplaying exclusively, some are not. I've found the community to be more welcoming and friendly than other MMOs. There are multiple servers with different countries of origin and some servers have more roleplaying too. Check out lotro-wiki.com if you're interested.

The Pillars of Eternity games provide some of what you’re looking for, as they’re heavily inspired by the old Baldur’s Gate games (which were themselves built on D&D).

Baldurs Gate would be just for you then. You can find 2 for real cheap, or wait for BG3 to release in…. Days? Weeks? Soon.

You might also consider MMOs. Theres always a few guilds that do the RP thing. Not my personal cup of tea but people seem to like it.

The Baldur's Gate series has some roleplaying involved in that while the story is fairly scripted your characters behaviour affects the outcomes of various events (with some unique trees branching off). Additionally, the more your actions diverge from the team's alignments the greater the odds members will outright leave.

It's not perfect, but you really won't get that from any game without multiplayer involvement. In the end almost all roleplaying in electronic games can be boiled down to simply making multiple-choice decisions that result in a predictable chain of consequences/output.

Mass Effect is similar to Baldur's Gate in this respect though much more dialogue driven. Fallout Series is another that you might like too.

Maybe Wartales would work for you.

https://wartales.net

It’s a really good RPG, lots of content and customization so every game is different, your choices matter, and supports up to 4-player co-op. It’s fairly similar to TTRPGs in a lot of ways.

To add to some of the suggestions in the thread, check out Solasta: Crown of the Magister, it didn't have as big of a budget as something like Baldur's Gate 3, but it's a fun little game that uses the D&D 5E rules (the ones that were in the SRD, to be more precise).

I can see it's on sale now, but I will say that some content is locked behind DLCs. It also has support for steam workshop, allowing people to make custom campaigns, and I recommend the Solasta Unfinished Business mod, which adds a whole bunch of stuff that's missing from the base game, for example multiclassing.

You know honestly this is what I do in Skyrim after getting past the starting quests. What's that the graybeards want to talk to me, na I'm good, let me go do some dungeon crawling instead. Saving Skyrim can wait I'm sure.

This is a bit of a different tack to the other suggestions, but you could look at Crusader Kings. It's a strategy game, but instead of playing as a country or similar, you play as specific person. When that person dies, you play as their heir, in whatever situation you left for them. There's less depth to some of the role playing systems than there would be in an RPG, but on the other hand it has thousands of characters dynamically simulated to do their own things, so stories emerge from that instead. 2 and 3 are both solid, 2 has a bit of a steeper learning curve and isn't as well balanced as 3 but it is cheaper and has more systems expanded through DLC if you do get in to it

Baldurs Gate 3 comes out August 3rd on PC, Sept for consoles. It's right up your alley. Early access is going on still if you want to try it. You can fully flesh out your character in pretty much every way. 10/10 would recommend.

Thanks for all the suggestions! Lots of stuff for me to try out.

The cryptic mmos are micro transaction based but its a mix of costuming and pay to get powerful fast. Light grinding over time will give you a top tier character. Role playing is not needed to play the games but they all have guilds of some sort that do it you just have to find one. The three games they have run a good gambit of world types. superhero, future high tech (startrek specifically), and sword&sorcery (neverwinter). One note is they have lots of customization for abilities but also chacter look. So much so that folks roleplay other franchises on startrek (starwars, stargate, doctor who) and like verything in champions as its costume options are insanely varied (its pretty much in maintenance mode but costumes are the things regularly added). All the games are relatively easy to play if you build your character well but neverwinter is a bit more "get gud" and maybe the most pay for power.

The original deus ex

Try Crusader Kings 3. Very mod friendly and a lot potential for lore building.