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The Tenets of Choice
🕑 Added 2020-02-19 22:07:45 +0000 UTCI have hit a snag on the adventurer's trio event about whether or not to allow the player to choose who he should wake up first. That made me step back and ask myself what should become a choice, and what makes a good choice?
This is a question that I, of course, have already met while developing the rest of the game. However, I decided it would be best to write down a few guidelines to help me quickly decide on future things like this.
What makes a choice:
- Player agency; the game is their story and their character. Choices should change the narrative towards the one the player wants told.
- Satisfaction over a choice's impact to the world and people.
When should a choice come:
- When it's outcome is significant to the narrative. Ex: encouraging or demeaning Daisy changes her fate and more on the future.
- If their impact is not significant enough, but their non-existence would otherwise take away from player agency, it is good practice to implement them unless to do so would mean unjustifiably increasing the workload too much. Ex: dialog choices to some extent fit this.
- It is inevitable that at certain points the player will be subtly railroaded in a certain direction. But these moments must be far and few between. Whenever, and as much as possible, a choice should be presented. Ex: the player must be on the Path to Ascension.
- A player should never be blindsided by the consequences. Ex: the effect of not revealing the truth behind the curse to a reckless paladin.
Although, I, more or less, already followed these principles before. Now that they have been written down and properly articulated, it should be easier to visualize and decide on future choices and their placement. These simple rules will guide me forth on PtA's development and on my continued work on the adventurer's trio event tomorrow when I, hopefully, finish it.
