Providing Meaningful Choices?

[Rechan]

Bare in mind, I have also been asking "What have you done in YOUR games?"

So if you have a choice, and options A & B thought out, and they pick Z... you can go back and still add a consequence to that choice.

Yes.

I guess my point is this:

How do you make the situation that the PCs will choose. What elements are there. Ones that the PCs will care about instead of just passing up. Sure, the consequence is important, but that's afterwards. The choice has to feel like it's important when the PCs come to it. What's the difference between a situation where the PCs stop, weigh their options and debate over it, and one where the PCs just shrug and go "Whatever" or chose at random.

I give my examples because of either moral choices, or ones dealing with resources/goals, because those are pertinent to the story, easiest to conceptualize. The PCs care because they are related to their goals. And some PCs care about moral ones.

 

[Rechan]

I'm not trying to recreate DA:O, just using those concrete examples because I think they illustrate the "Here's a situation, what do you do?" The game has finite options, but even at a tabletop, the PCs must respond somehow, and that response will be a meaningful choice.

 

[Scribble]

There are situations where the PC's response has nothing to do with any sort of plot. But it's meaningful. "You're running on a clock, but these people over here need help right now. Do you stop and help, or keep moving?"

Oh I think this is something Dms should be on the lookout for whenever possible...

An example from my own campaign... PCs were transported to the feywild, and looking for a way back home.

Along the way they met up with a Satyr that gave them a few options...

1. There was a hag that knew of a magic portal, and would be happy to sell them the key. The portal, however was guarded by the dreaded Moucha-Tar. (And the hag wanted one of the character's smile as payment.)

2. He suggested possibly heading to the nearest Eladrin city... They might be able to get help there.

3. He also knew the entrance location to the Troll Market, where they might be able to find other options.

Their choice(s) ultimately lead to a string of fun adventures.

 

[Barastrondo]

How do you make the situation that the PCs will choose. What elements are there. Ones that the PCs will care about instead of just passing up. Sure, the consequence is important, but that's afterwards. The choice has to feel like it's important when the PCs come to it. What's the difference between a situation where the PCs stop, weigh their options and debate over it, and one where the PCs just shrug and go "Whatever" or chose at random.

It's an interesting question because to set up a specific decision point with this intent, it seems as though you need to have your players care enough about a given thing that you know they'll be very much into a notable choice regarding said thing. At the same time, though, if they care enough about Thing X, then they're likely to go proactive, and there's no need to set up notable choices in their path, just to react accordingly.

Probably the most dramatic "decision point" I recall played out over several sessions. The context was a colony of political exiles in a massive abandoned underground city, and the question was "how do we get everyone out?" Multiple complications existed, though. For one, regular dropoffs of more exiles happen, so if you get everyone out at once, the ones who are dropped off in coming months will be screwed. For another, some of these exiles are innocent, but some are bastards for whom exile is a merciful "pulling strings". Do you really want them back in society? And if you take the best people and leave the worst behind you're really screwing new arrivals.

That was the context of the game. The "decision point" played out over five levels, because there wasn't anything obvious. I had my own aggressive plot -- the arrival of a blasphemous temple army on the other side of the city -- but it was an optional thing, basically. At the same time, the players were faced with a raft of meaningful choices: how to ensure security for the colony, who to back, who to protect, who to try inspiring with a new reason to live, who to drop into "tragic accidents" involving giant centipedes. The game practically ran itself.

The big trick I learned, I think, was saying "Okay, here is a negative situation (you're all imprisoned). Now why hasn't anything been done about this before?" And the answer wasn't "because the NPCs can't kill the Big Bads causing the problems" (though that tied into certain adventures). It was because the NPC leading the colony was facing a hard decision he couldn't resolve. Once I figured out that decision, blam, the PCs had stuff to do.

 

[delericho]

Basically, to get a meaningful choice, you need a choice (obviously), consequences for each path, and some basis on which to make the decision.

"You see two doors. Do you go left or right?" seems like a choice, but since the PCs have no means by which to decide, what's the point? Even if there's a dragon behind one door, and the dragon's horde behind the other, unless the PCs can determine which is which, they still don't really have a choice, just a guess.

By contrast, if the players want to get from Rivendell to Moria, then they can be given the choice: go over the mountain (climbing skill challenge; potentially fatal to halflings), go under the mountain (stealth skill challenge; but there's a Balrog), or they can take the Gap of Rohan (safe; but no chance of secrecy).

By presenting both the options (in broad terms) and the consequences up-front, the players then have a basis on which to make their decisions. Whichever path they take has consequences, and none of the paths are easy, but they at least have a basic for making the decision.

And if the PCs instead choose option Z? Well, that's players for you. Guess you'll just have to wing it.

 

[weem]

I guess my point is this:

How do you make the situation that the PCs will choose. What elements are there. Ones that the PCs will care about instead of just passing up. Sure, the consequence is important, but that's afterwards. The choice has to feel like it's important when the PCs come to it. What's the difference between a situation where the PCs stop, weigh their options and debate over it, and one where the PCs just shrug and go "Whatever" or chose at random.

I give my examples because of either moral choices, or ones dealing with resources/goals, because those are pertinent to the story, easiest to conceptualize. The PCs care because they are related to their goals. And some PCs care about moral ones.

Choices need to gain the PC's something AND cost them something.

If the choice is only "gain", is it really a choice? Of course they will take it. And if it is only a "loss", they will avoid it. If the choices have neither, and they are simply cosmetic, then there is no reason for them not to choose at random.

A couple of things regarding this...

- The amount of gain and loss will vary and can weigh more heavily one way than the other depending on the choice.

- In some cases, there will be multiple gains and/or multiple losses.

I think when you know what the PC's goals are, you understand what would be a gain and what would be a loss at point X in the campaign where you would like to present some meaningful choices.

Here's an exercise you might try if you find yourself thinking, "I want to present some meaningful choices now". I'm just now coming up with this - never used it or anything so bare with me...

1) Consider the goals of the PC's and how those goals can be furthered and hampered. Maybe even list them out separately as gains/losses. And for each gain and loss, assign a value to represent impact (how strongly will this effect the situation)... 1 being minor impact and 5 being major.

Gains...
a) Money to help fund X [2]
b) a meeting with a noble to get information X [4]
c) rumor of help needed on a ship which would also provide quick travel to X [3]

Losses...
a) detour/red herring that costs time [2]
b) major disagreement [breaking ties] with helpful NPC [4]

2) Mix and match some of these including at least one loss and one gain. Some examples...

[Gain "a" and "c"] + [Loss "b"] = The players can take a job that quickly gets them to their destination AND makes them money, but if they do this, the man helping them decipher these mysterious scrolls will no longer be available and will in fact see the move by them as leaving behind important work.

[Gain "b"] + [Loss "a"] = The players meet a noble who has valuable information, but is unwilling to share it unless they do something for him.

Even if you don't write it out in such a way, thinking about it in that way might help you come up with some ideas while reminding you that there should be pro's and con's to each choice.

Anyway, just a thought

 

[Celebrim]

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.


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?

It's almost impossible for a video game with current technology to provide meaningful choices to a player, because a video game is very limited in its ability to imagine new meaningful scenarios in responce to player choice. A skilled video game maker can provide the illusion of meaningful choice, while still basically moving the player along a predefined path, but this is not the same thing as actually giving the player meaningful choices. A video game maker can perhaps accomodate a few meaningful choices by essentially creating two, three, or four parallel games each resulting from a particular meaninful decision, but there is a limit to how much the video game maker can do this because content creation is so expensive in a video game (relative to the cost in a PnP game). Consider for example how expensive dialogue is to create in a video game, compared to the cost of dialogue creation in a PnP game. A human GM can cheaply spin off believable dialogue and in that one seen provide many more meaningful 'dialogue choices' than any video game is currently capable of providing.

So generally speaking, a video game maker gets more 'bang for his buck' by providing a single story line with nearly 4 times the content of any one story line in a game that has 4 meaningful choices resulting in separate stories.

For these reasons, you simply shouldn't be looking to video games for a model of how to offer meaningful choices to a player. Video games almost inherently can't offer meaningful choices to a player.

There is another thing that bothers me in this is, and that is that a sandbox doesn't necessarily provide meaningful choices to the player either. Sandboxes can provide meaningful choices, but they can also simply provide non-linearity, which isn't necessarily the same thing. If I must do A and B before I do C, a non-linear design lets me do either A or B first. But simply having the option to go left and then go right, or go right and then go left, isn't necessarily a meaningful choice in itself. In order for the choice to be meaningful, going to B first must meaningful impact the story in A (and C!), and vica versa. Many sandboxes are simply isolated and disconnected events without any great meaning. Computer sandboxes to the extent that they remain pure sandboxes and not sanboxes 'on the side' of a larger plot are in fact frequently like this. The sand box elements in many computer games are often little more than hamster wheels to turn in between scenes in the main plot. Now, I'm not saying that necessarily bad design, but it shouldn't be your inspiration for providing meaningful choices.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

One complication I've been trying to wrap my head around is that while I love making the PCs make ethical or moral choices, it's tougher to do when say, in the Underdark involving monsters, or in the outer planes involving devils/demons etc.

 

[Celebrim]

One complication I've been trying to wrap my head around is that while I love making the PCs make ethical or moral choices, it's tougher to do when say, in the Underdark involving monsters, or in the outer planes involving devils/demons etc.

Although maybe tangental, that's a really good point. It's almost impossible to have a meaningful ethical dilemma when the bad guys are one dimensional. The more truly demonic or diabolic your infernals are, the less meaningful choice you have when interacting with them. The only ethical delimma I've ever seen revolving around devils/demons or what have you involve humanizing the beings to the point that they cease to be devils/demons and become humans with an exotic appearance. Similar things are true (but obviously to a lesser extent) when you have any race which is inherently evil by definition, whether it be drow or orcs.

Of course, some might say this is the dark lining on a silver cloud, since much of the point of dipping into that well (as I understand it) is to have a foe for which moral ambuigity doesn't apply and you are free to oppose them by any means available.

 

[sev]

The trick, for me, is how to demonstrate to the players that their choices matter. I try to keep track of the plot hooks they pass up, and determine what happened after the characters move on -- and then make sure that they hear about it later.