Choice/Consequence Generation

[ruy343]

Did any of you ever play the old "Quest" books? they were a choose-your-own-adventure book with hundreds of entries that you would turn to depending on what happened in your game. One of the coolest parts about them was that you could make a choice at one point, and you would be asked to check a "keyword" box. Later in your adventures, you would come to a different entry that would say, "if you have that keyword, go to 247, if not, go to 310", causing long-term effects on the game that you may have forgotten about. It meant that the story had a measure of continuity, even with small choices that may not have seemed to matter at the time.

I was writing something in another thread earlier and I realized that one of the things that my games lack is small choices and consequences like that which make the world feel more real. Often, I just get caught up with the big story, and it ends up feeling rather linear, where there are only a handful of big decisions that matter. I want to be able to generate a lot of these and have a random encounter generator that I can turn to. Then, I can record their choice and tie it back in when the PCs need a hand (or need a good backstab).

Some of the things I came up with earlier were:


A piece of treasure that the players find has unexpected value, and if they hold on to it, others come hunting for it.
While traveling in a rarely-traversed region, they encounter a cave containing a dragon's hoard. If they take the gold, the dragon tracks them down.
A man is running from an asylum (or a prison), pleading the characters to hide him from the authorities. If the authorities are helped, they might perform favors for the PCs; if the man is helped, he provides them with [whatever the DM wants this mysterious man to be able to do for them]
An orphan boy asks for assistance; If helped, he can show up unexpectedly to warn them of a danger later, if he's denied, he and his friends show up later and throw rocks at the characters.
An old priest asks for escorts through a dangerous area, but offers no reward. If denied, they discover his body later on, but if helped, he provides a heal or two later on.
They discover the ghost of a mother who wishes to ensure that her son can find her when he dies. She gives them a spectral cloth that she asks them to carry with them on their adventures (and maybe display prominently). Later, they would encounter an old man who recognizes it and thanks them/blesses them for their act.



These are the kind of things that aren't quests, per se, but that do give the players a more active role in their surroundings.

Do you have any other suggestions?

[Tanarii]

I'd say your biggest problem will be the same as big choice plot branches, but more so: Don't set up dead-end branches, or ones that feel like them.

Think of those old-style puzzle video games, where you had to figure out that you needed to do something like collect the pie, and later on feed it to specific monster to continue. If you didn't pick up the pie, game over. If you ate the pie, game over. If you fed the pie to the wrong creature before this creature, game over. Obviously those are extreme examples ... you probably won't stick the players into 'game over' scenarios. But forcing the players to worry about easily overlooked and normally inconsequential aspects of their environment ALL THE TIME because they might just 'need' it (or gain a massive advantage from it) later on might start to annoy them.

That's how you end up with paranoid groups that crawl along checking everything for traps, secret doors, hidden nooks, and try to take everything that isn't nailed down. If that's what they enjoy more power to them. But if you're trying to maintain a high fantasy/adventure feel, you might lose it.

Edit: Great idea though. Actions having consequences makes the world feel more real. (Assuming they realize that's how real life generally is. ;) )

[randomodo]

Well, here are some things I've got in my current campaign. I like to try for complex consequences and choices a la Dragon Age, in which things are rarely so clean-cut as 1) help someone and they help you later or 2) screw someone over and they screw you over later.

So I've got:
A local castle is haunted, and nobody can sleep anywhere near it due to the nightmares it induces. But the haunting also has the effect of keeping marauding humanoids and other monsters ever further away. So ending the haunting opens the local communities to being raided by the local orcs (et all)

A "faerie princess" gives the PCs assistance to defeat the being that's haunting the above castle. She's really a Green Hag, and wants the ghost out so she can have access to the local villages.

Dwarven stonemasons hired to build a fortress for a human noble are unwittingly assisting a demon cultist (the noble). But convincing the dwarves to sabotage the construction simply results in the noble having them all executed.

Giving a platinum coin to a homeless child simply made that child the target of bigger, older, nastier thieves. But at the same time, that generosity can convince a previously-antagonistic NPC that the characters are in fact honorable.

Allowing (or failing to prevent) a vampire from escaping its extradimensional prison won't result in the vampire being nice to the PCs; but the vampire won't go out of its way to attack the PCs, and the PCs and vamp do share a common enemy, which may lead to interesting role-playing and ethical arguments in future sessions.

But by all means, still include things like NPCs being more inclined to help the party if the party helped them (or hinder the party if the party hindered them).

So, those may or may not be your cup of tea (probably not), but those are some of the things I'm doing in my current game.

[ruy343]

Think of those old-style puzzle video games, where you had to figure out that you needed to do something like collect the pie, and later on feed it to specific monster to continue. If you didn't pick up the pie, game over. If you ate the pie, game over. If you fed the pie to the wrong creature before this creature, game over. Obviously those are extreme examples ... you probably won't stick the players into 'game over' scenarios.

You've been adventuring around Daventry recently, huh? If I ever decide that I hate my players, I'll run a KQ-like campaign :P

Thanks for your suggestions Randomodo! Keep them coming!

[N810]

You probably should make some choices that actually have good outcomes.
Rather than just "no good deed goes un-punished" type of outcomes all the time. :smallannoyed:

[randomodo]

Oh, yeah. Happy endings. Yes, have some of those too.

[pibby]

Basically just make sure this inclusion in your game rewards those who engage in RP but nothing else. It shouldn't punish players for not following up on those cues because trust me, players will do everything in your campaign except go in the direction you want them to go.

[Socratov]

I think that it's fine as long as you see it as some sort of investment scheme: the party will need to sink some resources into the investment to reap its benefits. If you don't sink the resources into it, you don't get the benefits and maybe even a hindrance. I think it woudl be useful to calculate the benefits/hindrances on a risk/reward system where the risk is the bad stuff happening and the reward the good stuff. I also think that the reward shouldn't outdo the risk by a factor of 2 and vice versa.

so mathematically speaking:

M = risk (from malus)
B = reward (from bonus)
I = investment

I = |M| + |B|

where |M| <= 2 * |B|

and

where |B| <= 2 * |M|

this way you don't have a set yield rate for the party's investment, but not too big of an impact.

[JackPhoenix]

In my Eberron PF game, my players got their hands on a tome containing rituals to open portals to other planes (not really intended, they...aquired...the tome from a wizard's lab) when one of the portals resulted in a small devil invasion. Later, they promised to return it to authorities (influential wizard in Sigilstar), but the party's sorcerer forgot (honestly forgot, he only wanted to keep it for a day or two to check if there's anything interesting in there) and took it with him when they left the city. Now the sorcerer is afraid to get back to the city, in case he'll meet the wizard. And a planar portal to Irian created by the ritual from the tome may help them in the future, when they'll have to power up an eldritch machine with positive energy to create huge blast to stop a zombie apocalypse without killing the survivors and destroying the city (and likely restarting the Last War in the process). My original plan for that storyline was them getting the parts for the machine and then looking for a way to power it up (with high level magic being rare in Eberron, propably including some travel to Flamekeep or search for other powerful enough caster willing to help, while the undead plague kept spreading), but with the tome that was only originally included for the flavor, they may be able to skip the second part.

[randomodo]

Nice Eberron example. The ability to flex and figure out "okay, now what?" is key to being a successful DM (since if you give players three clear choices in any given circumstance, they'll pick option #4. Or option #27).