Since the game doesn't implement different "characters" or "profiles" (that I can find, anyway) I'm wondering if there's any other way to have multiple in-progress games going at once that won't be overwriting each others' autosaves and checkpoints, or if there's at least a way to meaningfully differentiate the save file names between playthroughs.

Thanks!

Copy your save folder to desktop/documents/wherever then rename it for identification. Then when you want a different character just drop the relevant folder back in it's original location. Might not be ideal but it'll get the job done.

Alright, I came up with a hacky fix, but it works for me. I really only need two concurrent saves: one for me and one for my wife. By default, Witcher stores your save games in a folder in My Documents. So I went into C:/.../Documents/The Witcher 3 and made two subdirectories: one for me, and one for my wife. Then I made two windows batch files that are going to live on my desktop beside the shortcut to the game. One deloads my save files and loads up my wife's, and the other deloads hers and fires up mine. Here's the outline of each:

/////////////////////////////////////
@ECHO OFF
IF EXIST "C:\...\The Witcher 3\ [subdirectory 1 name] \gamesaves" (
move /-y "C:\...\The Witcher 3\gamesaves" "C:\...\The Witcher 3\ [subdirectory 2 name]"
move /-y "C:\...\The Witcher 3 [subdirectory 1 name] \gamesaves" "C:\...\The Witcher 3"
echo Loaded [your name here]'s files!
) ELSE (
echo [your name here]'s files already loaded!
)
pause
///////////////////////////////////

If you want to use this, copy the block between the slashes into a text document and save it as a .bat file. Then do that again, but swap [subdirectory 1 name] and [subdirectory 2 name]. Just double click on the bat file with the [subdirectory 1] you want to load and away you go. Getting this to work with more than two saves would be more complicated, and I'd rather play the game now than learn about batch scripting :P

EDIT: And apparently I can't mark my own response as a solution, so y'all feel free to keep pitching ideas :P