I recommend the Witcher 1. It has great characters, story and gameplay. It also avoids the too large of an open world you want to avoid. The game has lots of exploring, but will keep you focused, and is broken down by acts (which have different regions), so you won't end up all over the place.

You might also find worth reading some of the suggestions made on this thread.

Get Shadowrun Dragonfall. Like Vampire, Torment and Fallout, it has a setting that's less typical and used up than the average fantasy RPG, it is very focused on the storytelling, with good writing, and it is rather linear, even if you get a bit of freedom in the middle part about which side missions to take on and in what order, but you'll always have a clear goal about advancing in the main story (and all the side missions feature interesting stories, too, no tedious grinding). It's available for OSX, doesn't have high system requirements, and the current sale price is a steal.

I have now bought Dragonfall, Aranum and KOTOR. I feel like I have a world of fun in front of me. Underrail looks very interesting. (It received a great review by RetrospectiveGaming on youtube. Please search for it. Strangely I can't seem to be able to post links at this moment.) Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available for mac. I'll have to look into some wines later perhaps.

So I'm quite happy with the replies you've given me already, but keep discussing and posting to your hearts content. :)

Dragonfall and Arcanum are really excellent games, if you love RPG's you'll most probably love them as they're (in my humble opinion) top-of-the-pops. I recommend in the later that, if you go for a magician build, consider maxing out the Time magic (if I recall correctly the terminology was somewhere around those lines), once you get Tempus Fugit it feels aweeeesome.

Fallout 1+2 and Torment are 2 of my favorite games - I haven't yet played VTM:R or VTM:B, but they're on my soon to play list

imo, BG and BG2 are very overrated

I'm going to 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) the recommendations of:

UnderRail
Arcanum

and add the recommendations of:

Age of Decadence
Gothic
Inquisitor

I don’t really like the Star Wars universe all that much. The original trilogy I find okay, the "new" trilogy I actively dislike, and everything newer than that I didn’t see and probably won’t before a while…

But I *love* the KotOR games!

tinyE stands corrected.

Well, let’s not forget you were right on the crucial part: these are great games ;)

I would not bother with the Mac versions of The Witcher 1 or 2. Neither one of those "ports" are particularly good, especially #2 is supposed to be in a pretty sad state of affairs.