Providing Meaningful Choices?

[Rechan]

Sly Flourish recently put out an articile on providing meaningful choices to PCs. They also mentioned it in an earlier article on lessons from Dragon Age: Origins.

There’s piles of discussions on the net discussing the benefits and disadvantages of games run on the rails versus games run in a sandbox. Dragon Age shows us how a game can essentially follow a single storyline from point A to point B to point C and so on without feeling like it’s on the rails. There are tons of decisions to make in Dragon Age, with many of them feeling like they will have a heavy impact on the story. In reality, however, you’ll see the same general situations regardless of what choices you make.


Learning how to do this in our own game can make an on-the-rails plot driven game feel like a sandbox game. We can do this by placing decision trees throughout our games that don’t necessarily impact the overall plot direction but change how the players get THROUGH that plot direction. It’s a hard lesson to learn but very valuable when learned. It can make any single-focused campaign feel like a rich and deep world full of choices and opportunities.

Now, the initial article mentions some ways to provide meaningful choices, but I'm sort of not stuck on it just yet. My brain hasn't gelled on ways to do this.

How have you provided choices? How DO you do it? Engineering a situation so that the players feel as though their decisions matter?

 

[Crothian]

Engineering a situation so that the players feel as though their decisions matter?

By showing them in game that they do. IMC they can usually see a direct effect based on what they do. Their actions have consequences, both good and bad. They create enemies and allies and shape the way the world can react to them.

 

[ExploderWizard]

How have you provided choices? How DO you do it? Engineering a situation so that the players feel as though their decisions matter?

Presenting false meaningful choices seems like a lot more work than providing real ones so I'll just keep doing that.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Simple rule: for every action there is a reaction.

The best way is to generate ramifications to the actions of the players and have them show back up in the game world. Quick example of this is if the players get into tavern fights and the tavens keep burning down; the players start seeing wanted posters for arsonist matching their description.

As players go up in level, they should be creating ripples in the campaign area. What they are doing is news, they are bringing riches into areas, opening areas up and maybe being seen as dangerous. Once the players, know this and they realize they have a vested interest in the game world they start thinking about the outcomes of their actions.

 

[Rechan]

Simple rule: for every action there is a reaction.

For this thread, I'm not interested in reactionary decisions. The old "I break the window, and come back, and the window is still broken" is obvious and assumed. That's a consistent world. That's old hat as far as I'm concerned. The PCs just deciding to set the tavern on fire is one they created, or one that was created spontaneously. I would expect that level of consistency. Not what I desire to discuss.

I'm talking specifically about creating a scenario with a "Decision Tree". The DM presents a situation with some options. If PCs make choice 1, x occurs, and if they take choice 2, Y occurs. 1 and 2 have meaning, and X and Y have meaning.

The same way you would present a room with two doors and ask which they so choose. The same way with creating moral choices.

What I want is to, like the articles presented, make the players feel as though their characters are important and those decisions matter. Burning down a tavern doesn't really matter to the players, except the wanted. It's not an impact to the players or the overall story.

 

[Desdichado]

The choices we present the PCs are more implied rather than overt. These aren't like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books with really strict decision trees. We just describe stuff, and the PCs can make choices at any time.

I guess I'm not following exactly what your question is.

 

[Crothian]

Also, the choices they make are not binary and the results from the choices do over lap a lot. It is not like two seperate doors that lead to two different areas.

 

[Scribble]

What I want is to, like the articles presented, make the players feel as though their characters are important and those decisions matter. Burning down a tavern doesn't really matter to the players, except the wanted. It's not an impact to the players or the overall story.

I would say, from what it seems you're asking, that you want to create a larger overall story- Balcoth the Primordial is returning to the world, the PCs must stop him from destroying it... In the end, the PCs will eventually be part of a huge battle against Balcoth and his (its?) armies...

Along the way though, you can present the PCs with several meaningful choices... Do they bother to end the bitter rivalry between two waring nations? If so, they have the chance of 1. Making the end struggle easier (more soldiers) 2. Making sure more people live to see the end (without teaming up, Balcoth's forces will probably walk right through nation x, leaving nothing in their wake!)

Also stuff like, do they destroy Balsamuge the Dragon, or spend that time finding/retrieving the Sword of Balance... without the sword, the end fight is harder, but letting Balsamuge live means more deaths, and his probable joining with Balcoth. (People with Bal in their names always join forces.)

Things like who they befriend or make enemies of should matter in the end, or along the way. Even looking at the various advanced class options (paragon paths, prestige classes- whatever you're playing) and seeing how whatever way the PCs go could effect the world... "You know, if a blade warrior returned to the world, it might give the Knights of Evandia some reason to rally together once more...

Choices still get to be made, while keeping the larger plot intact.

 

[Plane Sailing]

One of the main things that I tend to do is to have a world where there are a number of things going on, and the PCs can decide what they want to investigate or get involved with - and things which they don't get involved with continue on their way. It may be that some of those things become bigger problems later on, it may be that some of those things turn into flavour or colour for the game world.

The decisions which they take and the decisions which they don't take have consequences in a game world which is alive outside the view of the PC's camera, if you like.

One of the side benefits of this is when the PCs come across a situation and recognise that it results from something in the past, they love 'uncovering' the connection. Or sometimes hate it

Cheers

 

[ferratus]

I completely disagree about "Dragon Age" not feeling like a railroad, because I felt pulled along the plot the entire time. I knew when I played my dwarf noble that my brother was going to betray me, and that I would be exiled... but there was no character dialogue options for me to do anything about it. Whenever I did have a choice, it would essentially only lead back to the same result in the end.