Oh, I see. You're trying to look at the choice itself as a challenge. I was looking at the choice as a small component of a larger challenge. Or, really, a piece of two larger challenges, with the dilemma being that choice A gets you closer to succeeding at the first challenge, but further from succeeding at the second, and vice versa. So the two challenges are: a) maintain your purity, and b) get the girl. (For whatever larger purpose both serve.)
The choice is what's been presented as the challenge. This is the first instance of the example choice being part of a larger, interconnected story. Even there, I'm not clear on what you think the challenge is, or how the choice leads to success or failure at the challenge rather than just another part of a larger choice tree. I can see choice as part of an actual challenge only if you're making the choice blind or partly blind as to whether or not it will lead to ultimate success at the overarching goal. What I don't see is your duality of challenge being either maintain your purity or get the girl -- this is a naked choice, not a challenge. There's no fail state here, nor is there a success state, it's just a choice between two different states.
To illuminate, swap your goals to a) get the piece of pumpkin pie, and b) get the piece of apple pie. Either way you get a piece of pie and don't get the other, but this isn't a challenge, it's just a choice. For there to be an actual challenge, you have to be able to fail at what you attempt, and there's no attempt here, just a choice between outcomes.
As I say above, I can see choice being part of a larger challenge tree, where your choice of pie is actually part of a larger goal, but that goal cannot be determining which pie you get, it has to be something that the choice of pie affects. Even then, depending on how it's set up, the nature of the goal may still not be a challenge. If it's just tiered choices, where the outcome that's achieved is directly in line with the choices made, then this isn't a challenge. If the result is something that has a fail state -- you don't get what you want -- and a success state -- you do get what you want -- then it's a challenge. I'm having a difficult time envisioning such a challenge based on choice alone and without any mechanic to determine a result. Even diceless systems have mechanics to determine results.
All this isn't to say that the above play isn't fun -- it is. I put hard choices in front of my players all the time. Nor is it to say that you can't have character development using this play -- you clearly can. What it says is that it's not a challenge and you aren't putting your concept of the character at risk with this kind of play. In other words, it's part and parcel of the play where the player declares their intended actions only and the GM decides the results vice being able to make rich action declarations on behalf of the character where both the action and the outcome are determined. In this play, you're staking that action AND outcome and a failure may mean you get both a different action and outcome than you intended, because that's what was at stake.
I tried earlier to explore what kind of play this might be, and no one except [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has bothered to engage it. I suppose it fell flat for the rest of you, either in conceiving the play presented or caring about it.
