>>1517694I suppose that it depends on how much time and dedication you are willing to put into it for a given level of detail. Mount and Blade is a good series for that, your rise to the top interacting with your companions, lords, bandits, peasants, etc. which leave room for a good story. Star Sector as well, you and your underlings having to choose a role and find a place in a hostile galaxy, how will your actions change the order of things. You could do it in CDDA, or BN, but NPC's are a bit rough around the edges, the main role-play in that game is how you manage your own character, what you do to survive and thrive.
>>1517996 XCOM is a great option, your characters can die very easily, so you can create some neat stories around the soldiers that manage to survive while all their friends die, trying to save the world; just make sure not to save-scum, it will ruin the game. In the same vein, Door Kickers 2 has a campaign mode in which your characters can permanently die, which you can get real attached to completing so many missions with them, then having them die to some Taliban grunt.
>>1518352 Song of Syx is a city simulator, the individual characters aren't really modeled in much detail except name, race, physical characteristics, and some basic aspirations, and it's really not that easy to track one. Rimworld is on the opposite end, interactions between individuals is the core of the game, but because of that level of focus, there is less room for imagination. Dwarf Fortress really is the perfect middle ground, allowing for complex individual stories and multi-generational civilizations; the ui and controls take some getting used to. Really though, you can do it with just about any game, like that one mega autist that made entire civilizations in Terraria using multiple accounts, 30 open at once, to simulate wars and economies. At that point you might as well just write a book, pic related.
