While scouring the 'net for tips and inspiration for my next visual
novel, I ran across THIS rather interesting blog entry. (Ruthlessly
edited for clarity.)
5 Rules for Writing Interesting Choices
in Multiple-Choice Games
by: Dan Fabulich
Note: Mr. Fabulich is Not a visual novel creator. He makes purely text-based, on-line "choose your own adventure" games.
The hardest thing about writing a multiple-choice game is creating
interesting choices for your players. Here are five rules you can follow
to make decisions you write more fun and engaging.
Rule 1: Every option should have real consequences
If my decision has no effect on anything, why am I even making a decision?
This
rule seems pretty simple, but in practice it’s hard to follow
consistently. It’s easy to write a collection of choices where nothing
really happens; the player moves from place to place pointlessly. If you
catch yourself doing this, consider deleting those false decisions and
skipping ahead to the good part!
It’s also possible to take this
rule too far, requiring that every option needs to branch into a
completely different story. That would be pretty cool, but unfortunately
it’s impossible to write a game like that; you’ll never finish.
Traditional
Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) book stories tend to be pretty short. It’s not hard to see why.
This is a 19 page story:
This is a 117 page story:
Fortunately, there are alternatives to merely branching the story. For
example, sometimes player decisions don’t branch the story, but instead
affect the main character’s attributes (“stats”) or other variables in
the world.
The scores of these "stats" can then be used to access a hidden option
or trigger an automatic Pass or Fail on a challenge. (In RenPy, we do
this with
Variable Statements.)
Some
options may have no effect on the game, but have a big effect on the
player’s imagination. For example, choosing a gender in
Choice of the Dragon
doesn’t really change the story at all, but it can completely change
the way you think about the game, especially when it comes time to find a
mate!
Rule 2: The player needs some basis to make a decision
Even
if you’ve guaranteed that every option has consequences, if players
have no idea what the consequences of their decisions will be, it
becomes impossible to make a meaningful choice.
The classic “Choose Your Own Adventure” books broke this rule all the time. As an example, here’s the very first choice from CYOA #2, Journey Under the Sea (the 2005 edition):
The cable attaching you to the Maray [research vessel, above water] is
extended to its limit. You have come to rest on a ledge near the canyon
in the ocean floor that ancient myth says leads to the lost city of
Atlantis.
You have an experimental diving suit designed to
protect you from the intense pressure of the deep. You should be able to
leave the Seeker [personal submarine] and explore the sea bottom. The
new suit contains a number of the latest microprocessors enabling a
variety of useful functions. It even has a built-in PDA with laser
communicator. You can cut loose from the cable; the Seeker is
self-propelled. You are now in another world. Remember, this is a
dangerous world, an unknown world.
As agreed, you signal the Maray, “All systems GO. It’s awesome down here.”
-- If you decide to explore the ledge where the Seeker has come to rest, turn to page 6.
-- If you decide to cut loose from the Maray and dive with the Seeker into the canyon in the ocean floor, turn to page 4.
How am I supposed to decide whether to explore the ledge or explore the
canyon? Both of these options are exploratory; neither of them has any
clear advantages or disadvantages. Without more information, I’m forced
to decide at random.
The goal of a multiple-choice game should be
to make the player care about what happens; random decisions force
players to disengage from their options and select an option
unemotionally.
Rule 3: No option should be obviously better or worse than all the others.
If
one of the options is significantly better than the others, the player
selecting that option loses a sense of agency—the feeling of making a
decision. It’s like that Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert creates a
computer with just one big button: “We push the button for you before it
leaves the factory.”
If you’ve got one really great option, try
to improve the others to match it. Similarly, if one option is much
worse than the others, fix it or remove it.
When
you break this rule, resist the temptation to “fix” it by giving the
player less information. Hiding the consequences just turns one mistake
into another, by removing the player’s basis for making the decision.
Instead,
make an effort to ensure that every option is appealing in some way;
even “wrong” choices should be fun. For example, in
Choice of the Dragon,
it IS possible for your dragon to die, sometimes rather gruesomely, but
we tried to ensure that your death would always be pretty cool. Make
the player say, “Wow, that was neat!” and not, “Oops. That was lame.”
One
particularly common way to make an option worse than all the others is
to have an “opt-out” option, where you can choose not to participate in
the story. If you’re telling a story about a big adventure, don’t put in
an option to stay at home and not go out on the adventure. Either
you’ll have to override the player’s choice, (which breaks Rule 1 by
removing the consequences of the decision) or you’ll have to give the
story a boring ending. “Opt-out” options are inherently uninteresting.
Rule 4: Know your Players.
Multiple-choice
games are role-playing games. If you can learn what it means to be a
good RPG game master, you’re well on your way to becoming a good game
designer. A great deal has been written about
how to be a good game master, including an enormous body of
role-playing game theory, much of which is highly relevant to multiple-choice game design.
One
of the most important tips for good game masters is that not all of us
play games for the same reason; different players can prefer vastly
different games. Traditionally, three types of players stand out in
role-playing games:
Gamist
-- Gamist players want to “win” the game; they win when their character
is successful. They want victory to be difficult but attainable.
Gamists usually prefer “power fantasy” stories, where they can take the
role of heroes accomplishing great deeds.
Dramatist / Narrativist
-- Dramatists want to read a great story, even if their characters are
unsuccessful; they play for the emotional impact. A dramatist would
enjoy role-playing an epic tragedy, whereas a gamist would find a
tragedy “unfair” because there is no way to win.
Simulationist
-- A simulationist strives to ensure internal consistency within the
rules; they want the game to be plausible. In multiple-choice games,
simulationists prefer options that make sense for their characters, even
if those choices don’t help them “win” and don’t make the story better.
Simulationists especially dislike “unrealistic” consequences; for a
simulationist, “that’s not what would really happen” is a damning
critique.
Multiple-choice games have another category which I think is distinct to computer RPGs:
Explorationist
-- “What will happen if I push this button?” The explorationists want
to discover what’s possible. They may become obsessed with finding every
ending—good or bad—and trying options simply out of curiosity.
Just keep in mind that most players will have more than one of these goals.
And so...!
Since
a good multiple-choice game will be played online by thousands of
strangers, it’s hard to “know your players” the way you know your
friends. However, you should still decide which type(s) of players
you’re trying to satisfy.
- Are you writing a story?
- Building a world?
- Crafting a game?
Due to the nature of the multiple-choice game format, it’s not impossible to satisfy many of these goals at once!
Which will you choose?
- The action that helps me win.
- The action that creates the deepest story.
- The action that my character would most likely choose in real life.
- A mysterious action with unknown consequences.
Rule 5: Break these rules.
Knowing when to break the rules is almost as important as knowing when to follow them.
Fake choices.
-- A decision with no real consequences can be almost as fun, as long
as you don’t let the player realize that their decision had no effect.
(Of course, players are certain to discover the secret on future
replays, so try to avoid using this technique too often.)
Unfounded choices and the spirit of exploration.
-- The old CYOA books were fun to explore, despite not always having
clear reasons to choose one option over another. Some people tried every
option anyway, just to see what would happen. If you want your players
to explore all of their options, make them ALL equally appealing and let
the players try them all.
BEWARE!
-- Exploring a large tree of
choices can become a chore; trying all the options nested within
option 1, then all the options nested within option 2, and so on. It
can feel a little like mowing the lawn.
Just do it!
-- Theorizing about games can be a fascinating exercise -- almost as much fun
as playing and writing them, but theory can also clog up your creativity.
If you’re tying yourself in knots trying to make all of your options
equally satisfying to explore every possible branch of your story, or
to satisfy every category of player, then just forget about it. If you
miss something, you can fix it later!
Enjoy!
