Choice vs. choice, the rematch

I've talked about Choice with a capital C and choice with a lower case c. Today, I'm going to go into more detail.

Bob Lewis has written about this on his blog issurvivor.com (and IT related blog). Somewhere deep in his archive is a similar article (which originally helped me formulate my own thoughts on this).

I differentiate in the kinds of choices we make. I capitalize the important, meaningful ones. The unimportant ones, or the ones for which the conclusion is foregone are lower cased.

Here's why. Technically, life is full of choices. Quantum theory even supposes that every choice you make creates a branch in the timeline. Ignoring the butterfly effect (can't measure it, can't go back and re-test it), there are a number of choices we make every milisecond.

Consider it this way, right now, as you read this, you can choose to do one of the following (though not limited to):
continue reading the article
stop reading right now
stop breathing
get up and kill the first person you see
walk out into traffic
break down in tears

In all likelyhood, you will do the first one, continue reading. Technically, you made a choice. However, from the list I gave, the only other palatable one was to stop reading. The likelyhood of a rational person doing any of the others is nil.

Thus, you did not make a Choice. The conclusion was predictable. A person reading an article will probably finish it. They might stop, if they're pressed for time, interrupted or disinterested. The other choices were not actions a sane person would take under normal circumstances.

If you were held up at gunpoint in the mall parking lot, you have some choices as well:
hand over your wallet
lie about having a wallet
fumble and drop the wallet, hoping to get the drop on them
grapple for the gun

Now this is a Choice. What you may choose is not predicatable. It may depend on your mood, how much money you've got on you, you're upbringing, the nature and positioning of the gunman.

The hold-up in a parking lot example is a situation that offers a decision-point. When the bad guy says, "hey, give me your money", you've got seconds to react. That's a lot of time, to figure out what you're going to do, though it won't seem like it. Technically, nothing's happened yet*. Since the bad guy isn't in motion (rushing you or pulling the trigger), you've got more practical options.

*Side note, bad guys talking are less likely to shoot, it's hard to talk and fire at the same time. This is why cops get bad guys talking and ranting, because they're too busy, they can't shoot. It's also a good time to shoot them.


If the bad guy starts in aggressively, rushing you or starting to pull a trigger, you're choices are narrowed down such that your reflexes and instincts should kick in. You should be reacting in combat to fight back, or ducking/fleeing (the fight or flight response). It is highly unlikely that you're going to try to hand over your wallet right then, or do the bumbling act to get closer, because you are about to die.


Now let's tie this back into gaming. Understanding the nature of choice vs. Choice helps you design encounters that give real Choice, and know when encounters don't offer them.

When the party peers around a corner into a room, and sees orcs playing poker, they have Choices to make. They could fight, they could avoid, they could talk, they could trick.

Once combat starts, choices are limited to combat choices, because that's all you can do (running away is also a combat choice). Casting Magic Missile versus stabbing with a dagger may seem like a Choice, but in the big view, it's just fighting.

This means, that when you spring a combat encounter on the party, via Surprise, or because the bad guys, on first sight, draw and charge, all the non-combat choices have been eliminated. Yes, it's technically possible that the bard might successfully talk down the orcs from attacking, if he wins initiative, and can say enough in 6 words before the orcs close with the party and rolls well on diplomacy or bluff. But the probability of him trying, in the face of someone about to attack is unlikely.

Thus, any unlikely action is not a Choice. From a DMing standpoint, it's alright if the players surprise you with something you hadn't anticipated (turning a choice into a Choice). You don't want to block those, just because you didn't think of them during the planning stage. Nor do you want to just accept random ideas that may be stupid. You need to consider them, and abjudicate appropriately.

In turn, when you spring an attacking orc party against the PCs. Combat is the only likely option. They might flee, but most parties don't. Since you can predict obvious choices, and the list is short, you have to recognize that you have not offered a lot of Choice to the players. However, if the result is a TPK, you can't justifiably say, "they didn't have to fight, it was their choice."


To come from the other side, it is OK to have some encounters for which there is only one choice. Not all encounters should be that way, and it is good to make encounters and Choices before that, to allow a Choice before the pre-destined encounter. For example, insulting a man in a bar, versus being diplomatic could be encounter 1. In Encounter 4, he attacks the party because of encounter 1. The party made the Choice in the first encounter, the result occurs in the 4th encounter where the only option is combat (one could even argue it's an extension of the first encounter).


The core lesson here is, how you present encounters, how you run them, enables or disables choices. If you do a post-mortem analysis on the session, and find yourself saying "the chose to do that, and see what happened," I want you to reconsider that. Did the players really have a choice. Or were the encounters setup in a way that there were few ways a rational party would react.

Like the old saying, "if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Give your players tools, and therefore Choices. Don't give them just a hammer, and then complain that all they do is whack things with it.