I've never played a Tabletop gaming before but to my knowledge, tabletop games do not have an emergent narrative. What they have is a Regressive Narrative. A world full of preset narrative that regresses based on what the GM created.
To this effect, what you are really saying is you want CRPGs to be more Life Sims.
and consoles/computers will always have trouble replicating the social aspect of tabletop
Setting aside the real/fake player paradigm, computers are much better at this than tabletop unless you include only quality tabletop experiences. Especially when satirical narrative is excluded, tabletop can degrade or upgrade. Computer rpgs are simply what you see is what you get setting aside patches and mods.
The main advantage tabletop gaming has always had over CRPGs is the ability to adapt and react to the players actions through the use of a Game Master/Referee
Not necessarily. FFTA has a game master (AI) that adapts to the player's actions but that isn't fun is it?
It really depends on the quality of the reactor. The mechanics alone provide the opportunity, not the reality.
Templated individual quests plugged into templated story arcs are the way that I believe can achieve this. An Individual quest would be something simple like get an object, deliver an object, get information, persuade someone etc… Something that is very simple in its purpose and is templated in ways like who is the quest giver, what is the objective, and what opposition is there (if any). The individual quests can then be plugged into a larger story arc. For example a story arc could consist of quests to retrieve a number of objects and then to have them made into a powerful artifact.
Close but wrong. For example, Depths of Peril have this and 7th Saga had this but are either of those possessing emergent narratives compared to your basic CRPG? No.
What you're basically saying is that given the choice to mod, quality mods would flourish. But on a more targetted variety. It's a delusion set forth either by your own bias as to how great you are as a GM or you're really that great and like a lablel, you fail to take into account the not so great.
The proof of this is your statement of quests. Quests are not part of emergent narratives, they are there to plug in the flaws of narratives.
In truth, quests are the original quest markers for quests especially as CRPGs can't have their sandbox if they don't have their distractions. Just because it's less obvious doesn't mean it still isn't a quest marker.
In contrast Life Sims (setting quests aside), creates emergent narrative from your desire to be either a maid, royalty, swordfighter etc. Even quests creates interdepency. What severity of warrior do you desire? What severity of outlaw do you desire? From there, flawed as they are, life sims produce emergent narratives where the key flaw is there's no easy to use diary for you to plugin your own emerging narrative.
Say for example all of your pieces of artifact are initially locked away deep in underground dungeon locations for safekeeping. If the player is able to investigate and get to them quickly it is simple dungeon crawling. But what if the player is dawdling and doing other things or a faction opposed to the player has caught wind of the player’s plans and recovers one of the pieces first. The quest for the recovery of the piece would then involve discovering where that faction has taken it and retrieving it from them. A magical or crafting inclined player might be able to follow an alternate quest of recreating the piece needed or jury rigging some way to make it work without that piece.
It still won't have much of an emergent narrative effect. Play the demo for Empires and Dungeons and you'll see what I mean if you don't already.
What is used to fill the templates can be based off the player’s previous actions and decisions. The opponents they face can be pulled from things the player has interacted before such as reoccurring opponents or loose ends from previous experiences. The same thing can be done for quest givers and helpers. Rewards can be made so the player has an interest in doing the quests and penalties for not doing/failing the quests can threaten things the player has a positive interest in.
Again, 7th Saga/Depths of Peril. Still not much of an emergent narrative. GMs get away with this because even a great GM have flaws with connecting a narrative without some form of swap. Only instead of palette swap you have motive swap in the form of recurrance.
You could even have story arcs plug into each other like a story arc about slaying some terrible beast that needs a specific weapon/artifact could plug our example story arc in the place of retrieving the weapon/artifact.
You can but that would be a story arc. A bonus optional "good ending". VN makers call these shrine unlocks or something.
The idea is basically this: Create an action/unlock an action either on the next playthrough or the next arc.
The thing here though is that you are just basically sidestepping the creation of a sequel.
To create an emerging narrative, the player must be the reason for not only who the beast is but how and what form the beast came to be. Even with this, you won't guarantee that players won't hack it per their desire to unlock all paths in replays.
This was the problem when you used a walkthrough or replayed Dragon Valor and Phantasy Star III.
To truly sidestep this, you need to create the opposite of a chess world which is a Go world.
Problem is many perceive chess to be complex and wrongly used, the complexity of Go ends up becoming Othello or worse, kills the power fantasy player from reaching the utmost power which just causes them to restart.
Another game mechanic that would be useful would be some sort of investigation mechanic. To help determine what kind of information you are able to get as opposed to the quest giver telling you everything you need to know. It could encompass things like research, social interaction, and spying/thieving. If it were set up as some kind of game mechanic as opposed to individual quests doing that it could provide the player more options/flexibility on how they want to handle something and fewer things that need to be specifically written.
Investigation mechanics are cool but again your GM experience is blurring your idea of emergent narrative because you pre-know a certain form of outcome.
In true videogame implementation, investigation mechanic has little to do with emerging narrative.
It would also be helpful to have game mechanics in place that allow the player to dig deeper and get more information from a scene (provided they have the skills in place to do it). This should help with the repetition since it makes it more like a game mechanic and people tend to notice repetition in game mechanics less than in specific descriptions.
Basic background impression should do. For a hint of this, see Choice of Romance and play up to Choice of Intrigues.
A rich person would have an impression of a rich person npc which in turn would create a rich person quest.
Comic Book Hero also has an interesting take on this. You as a new hero must befriend certain heroes to unlock the locations of villains as one option. Another option is to seek specific villains with a low percentage of success. Finally you can just go on patrol.
As a mechanic, it's unoriginal and basic. Potentially though, what you really want to do is step away from investigations and again fall back on Life Sims. Let the Life Sim create your alignment and focus and the only real aspect you should switch and switch the classes concept of Life Sims and turn it into quest ladders. From there you will get your emergent narrative but I won't say you would like the final result. See the complaints for the flash sandbox game Caravaneer.
Even with a walkthrough if the game designer can't handle the emerging narratives, all he has created is a sandbox but the worse part is that regardless of his talent, if his audience can't be receptive to emergent narratives all he has created is a sandbox.
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