Balancing narrative "Try/Fail" "Yes/But" "No/And" scenes with choices

Well, here was another theoretical idea I had in regards to stat inflation. So, I was thinking how, in real life, if you’re really really good at something, you have to keep practicing it or you’ll lose your edge. What if the game tracks whether you lose a stat, and then, during time jumps, it’ll slowly drain if you haven’t made any use of it. But maybe you also get the opportunity to practice/study between scenes (which could prevent the decrease, and maybe also give the opportunity to raise a lesser stat), only you still have a limited number of things you can do between scenes, so you can’t do everything. How would that be? :thinking:

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That is one way - I am experimenting with other ways, including using one stat structure to regulate another.

You also have to keep in mind something that @Miseri states earlier: If readers have a distinct set of expectations and these expectations differ then the “gaming” or “reader” that we experience in the pure markets. As a hybrid market we have more need of flexibility and realignment.

The biggest reason stat-inflation becomes run away train wrecks is because developers (and authors here) feel a need to reward bigger and bigger prizes at each resolution scene. (imo).

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Actually, we generally recommend that testing choices and setting choices be entirely separate. So if you have a lock that you can try to pick, in neither case should your skill in picking locks be raised. Instead it should only effect other variables. That said, “only if you’re good enough do you get points” is one of the worst ways to handle that, because it leads to a ‘rich get richer’ effect.

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Another feature of FailBetter/StoryNexus’ success system is that stat gains vary depending on the check’s difficulty. For example, a success at 90% doesn’t increase a stat as much as a failure at 60%.

I’m not sure how well this mechanic would translate to ChoiceScript. Fallen London is a grindy game, while CoG stories are typically more prudent with their actions.

The StoryNexus system interests me, but FailBetter demonetized it so to focus on the Fallen London franchise.

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Would you say this is where drains ought to come into play? :thinking: Or maybe just write in such a way that you have narrative escalation but not necessarily stat escalation?

I think one difference would be that choicescript typically doesn’t use randomness much, but checks against a static stat level. Another might be that choicescript games typically don’t have you keep doing the same check exactly… usually each situation will be pretty distinct… so yeah, any grinding type system, I think would be unlikely to work.

Still, I’m not sure that the fundamental tradeoff of success=narrative reward, failure=stat reward would be dependent on those mechanics :thinking:

I do also like the idea raised of just prioritizing which successes you most want, while noting that you can’t win them all :thinking:

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Oopsie!

a few more words…

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Narrative escalation is one solution but the drains are explicitly for mechanical stat/variable take aways. In Crusader Kings 2 (Which I know @TSSL plays) drains are for the variables of prestige, piety, gold, etc … so a narrative doesn’t work on those (you can’t say you have raised taxes in a scripted event but not show an increase in gold) - in CS games it is easier to do unless you have these specific variables built as stat-blocks, that would cause the reader to pierce the 4th wall.

So, it is both easier and harder here I believe because as authors (or at least as I do) we dream up awesome ways to explain the escalations-deescalations cycles. In most graphical/sim games they are limited in that regard by what is coded as variables to begin with but by being limited they get more protection from problems.

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So I guess then we could consider how drains would work in the context of a try/fail text-based narrative :thinking:

I mean, it’s easy with things like money, which you can spend, or someone could steal, or the stock market could crash or whatever. Skills, on the other hand… unless there’s a magic curse or something, the biggest effect I could think of would be something like getting out of practice, sort of like the idea I mentioned in the thread. But are there any other narratively effective drains that make sense to prevent this kind of inflation?

On the other hand, I think stats that rise without falling can work without a problem as long as the author’s keeping track of how much they’re rising, and keeps checks at an appropriate level… constantly raising the bar, so to speak… as long as we won’t be getting into a “rich get richer” situation :sweat:

On that topic, I do wonder, even if success never raises the same stat, but successes do keep raising other stats, won’t that still lead to a “rich get richer” situation, where losing checks early on will mean you don’t raise your stats enough for later checks? :worried: It’d be spread out more, but it could still lead to inflation.
I’m not sure I understand logically why succeeding at something would make you more skilled at something, either :confused: I’d usually think that’d make you just think “yay, I did good!”… whereas it makes sense to me that if you mess something up, you’ll think about what went wrong and do better next time.

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Maybe the trick is that even if the MC has to fail, that failure should still seem like a consequence of the player’s previous actions. You lost because you insulted someone in Chapter 3 who now won’t be there to help you, or because you didn’t insult them and they got in the way at a crucial moment of the fight. You spent all your time building up your Swordfighting skill, and the villain brought a gun.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in terms of CoGs - it can be hard to avoid an ‘always pick your best stat to win’ scenario.

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Maybe don’t make everything about stats? I have three stats, and they have different purposes. While they can overlap, one is mainly for fighting, another for figuring stuff out, and the third for speaking to people. Times when you can use all three stats are rare, and generally the stats are used for flavour text. Sure, if you fail enough checks, you can end up dead, but that just takes you back to the start of the battle. Stats should’t be as important as individual decisions.

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I think in your case, the genre does have a bit of an impact too, since those stats distinctly relate to character approaches in your genre :thinking:

Other styles might involve rather more skills :thinking: we could look at ZE:SH as an example with an oodle-ton of skills… and in that case it mainly is a matter of failure and success. But those skills aren’t built up based on establishing choices throughout the game, either… they’re mostly built in the character generation at the beginning, plus gains between chapters… which is a rather different system itself.

I would say that your approach does provide a good example where stats that keep rising without falling works alright, since the skills checks are balanced against that assumption :thinking:

I would also say that I seem to have a much easier time thinking in terms of yes/no variables than stats :confused: like, the consequences of whether or not you did a certain thing, and all the aftereffects of that, rather than continuous variables. But that does tend to add up after a while :worried:

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Ok wow this topic is interesting, so thank you for raising it @Eric_Moser. I agree that we need more discussions around game-building, especially for newbies like me just getting into designing our first games.

I will say that CoG have attempted to address a lot of this in their Writing for CoG document and in various Game Design articles on the CoG blog, but the topic is a big and complicated one that definitely deserves lots of debate.

@Gower I really like this idea and I think it can often work well, even in non-comedy games. Take a look at Guenevere, where @jeantown has already stated that all main characters will have plot armor until the last chapter, yet the decisions in her game all feel compelling and, oftentimes, difficult. As others have mentioned, using the “A but not B” methodology can often resolve the issues present in the “Try/Fail” or “Yes/But (bigger and bigger)” setups. (Other games are great at this as well, of course.)

As others have mentioned, stats just often get in the way of the “Try/Fail” method. Either the game becomes about min-maxing and always choosing the “right” choice for your best stat, thus avoiding the “fail” part of “Try/Fail” and minimizing the story value, or (and I’ve experienced this in a game or two) “Try/Fail” become “fail fail fail” with no “win” at the end.

The “Yes/But” can work well as Eric said by using it just a couple times in the game, but I think it can be easily overused and get out of hand with stat inflation.

@Miseri I love the way you’ve thrown a stat on its head there. I think that’s the sort of creative thing more authors need to be exposed to when planning their first game. How can we make stats more compelling and interactive?

In my game I’m hoping (note: “hoping”) to create a balance using time—you’ve got a time limit pushing you to go faster, but you’ve also got problems to deal with that will need you to spend time or face bigger problems if they’re left unresolved. (Certainly I’m not the only one to have a system like this.)

@TSSL I like this and I think it can be much more effective than win=gain.

Alternatively you could have something happen when a character fails that doesn’t happen when they succeed. Taking the lockpicking example, what if a character who succeeds easily manages to get inside the room quickly but misses out on the bad guy running by the room just after they get in? While a character who tries and fails spends so much time in their effort they’re still around when said bad guy goes by and are able to confront him? Again, the “A but not B” idea.

@Eiwynn Drains, yes! Excellent post. Maybe we could start a spinoff thread about the setting and application of stats? There are so many ways to handle them but it can be so challenging as a new author to think about percentages vs opposed pairs vs numeric stats vs fairmath vs booleans vs uncapped stats vs skill stats vs personality stats vs establishing of stats vs testing stats and ohmygoshtherearesomanythingstoconsideraboutstats. :dizzy_face:

I’m especially interested in hearing how some other IF systems handle and promote stat usage, like the FailBetter/StoryNexus system. CoG has their best practices but of course it’s only one way of trying to handle a very complicated topic.

Noooooooo this was my idea and you can’t have it! :rofl:
Really though, this is a big part of the RPG system I hope to make (after CoG Contest is done). Why? Because suddenly you have more conflict in your choices—if you only ever use your best stat/skill, you’ll lose all your stats/skills. So at what point do you sacrifice being the absolute best for having more skills available for various situations? Done well, I think it can really increase the value of choices.

But to go back to “A but not B,” I think that’s really a good starting place for promoting interesting choices. Rather than succeeded or failing, using choices mostly as a way to just make different, but equally compelling, stories can free up authors to focus on the narrative rather than just worrying about stat checks.


How awesome would it be to get a group of experienced authors together, give them some story dilemmas to start with, and have them write short examples of what kind of stats they might put in play, how they’d employ those stats, and how they’d thoughtfully use “Try/Fail,” “Yes/But,” or “A but not B” tactics to make interesting choices. Ahhh but I do dream.

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Reflecting more on this… I could also see other characters acting differently if the MC has a string of success as opposed to a string of failure. I could affect whether they feel like the MC needs their help, for example :thinking:

I’d be interested in learning more with a thread like that :thinking:

To be fair, I think the universe came up with the idea first :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

But yeah, it just gets down to thinking about “okay, so… what prevents actual human people from being good at everything.” And that’s one of the factors… people need to keep up their skills.

I’d think it’d have a stronger effect for very high skill levels, and not much, if any, at more moderate levels. More of a discrepancy that would just be the case based on fairmath alone.

I think you raise a good point about how that’ll make more of a difference between playing someone who specializes in a skill and more of a generalist, too :open_mouth: it could make that distinction more prominent.

The thing there is that the stat checks would also need to work in such a way that both specialists and generalists are viable. Some games definitely cater to one or the other.

And your RPG system sounds really interesting :smile:

Well, we could toss around some possible dilemmas and brainstorm ideas of how one might handle it in a game, by way of example and inspiration :smiley:

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Since we’re discussing FailBetter Game’s StoryNexus, let’s comb through their documentation. Like Choice of Games, Failbetter has their share of articles. :grin:

http://wiki.failbettergames.com/

At first glance, there’s a Patterns of Choice page. It doesn’t go in-depth, but it gives a quick list of moral choices.

Oh, and another element of failure in Fallen London are Menaces qualities, where failure increases a negative quality. For example, failing a Watchful check usually increases Nightmares, and when Nightmares gets to level 8, your character is stuck in a special area until they lower their Nightmares to zero. This isn’t compatible with traditional CoG mechanics, since it’s grindy, but if I recall correctly, previous Choice games have incorporated similar stats that affect the endgame.

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Having written some tabletop RPG stories my opinion on the fail fail fail win stories might be a bit skewed.

In tabletop modules/stories a no-win scenario is never used. It’s complete taboo. And I somewhat agree in that complete failures should never be a thing without a chance at minor victories (unless the dice decided on it becoming that but that’s a feature unique to tabletop). It’s frustrating to have no player agency and sucks the tension out of that part of the story making it somewhat a souring experience just as always winning would.
Every fail should come with its own possible small victories and SOME victories should come with their own small failures.

Is the player going to get caught breaking in no matter what? Give them a chance to use their skills to find minor stuff relevant to the plot.
Is the orphanage going to burn down no matter what? Give them a chance to try and save some kids favorite toy for a mushy scene … or give them a chance to pour some more gasoline on there because there’s always going to be THAT type of player around.

The hopeless boss fight trope on the other hand is my most hated thing in games and stories. Most of the times because there’s no proper motivation for anyone to participate in a fight they know they’re not going to win.

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If you do a skill check for example (a stat established by the player), it is best to raise another stat that reflects how they are doing/acting and have it affect the narrative in some way. If a player comes upon a lock and happened to select lockpick high enough, maybe Joe (an NPC) is really impressed with the MC and rel_joe goes up. Bypassing the lock leads to a reward, but it’s unpredictable and has an impact on narrative. It may also alter the MC’s trustworthiness stat, because other NPCs view the MC as thief-like.

In ZE:SH, I try not to reward playing one single way (all Ranged Weapons), because it is easy to just pick that skill. As a writer, I want to present choices that answer the question, “who is the person playing this game?”, track their decisions, and deliver a story and satisfying (not necessarily) good ending.

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I think having NPC responses change can be one of the more satisfying acknowledgements of your choices as well. (And this is where I, like you, start to become a boolean-er :anguished:). No matter what you choose to do, or whether or not you’re successful at it, you have an impact on those around you, and that in turn impacts your story in possibly unexpected ways. And even if it doesn’t have a dramatic impact, simply acknowledging it adds to immersion and the sense of fulfillment from the story.

@chihuahuazero Thanks for the links. Their Patterns of Choice page at least offers a lot of interesting ideas for choice mechanics, and puts names to them. That kind of information is really useful for adding dimension to games. Definitely going to check out some of their other articles!

@WaNeZot Yes, this is great. Of course railroading can’t always be helped, but giving some kind of success or unique occurrence to every choice at least keeps the feeling of excitement going. Nice examples, thanks.

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Great discussion so far. Too bad I’m beyond internet access for a few days, I have a lot to say about the topic. If this is still going on after four days or so, I’ll definitely join it. Might be able to squeeze a huge post before I go, though, so I can see what people think of it when I’m back.

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Well… everything has its ups and downs, the “Try/Fail” sequence can be very frustrating sometimes for someone who hates losing and failure, but for some laid-back people or people who just don’t really think about it to much at all the “Try/Fail” sequence can be quite entertaining especially if done in such a hilarious way, just like @Gower said before, but comedy is a very relative field… some people might find the joke to be hilarious while some other people might find the joke to be pretty annoying and ridiculous. the “Try/Fail” sequence is pretty realistic too in my opinion because in real life we must fail and try again for like a thousand time so then the skill of a master can be achieved, so… it adds the realism part of the story. The “Yes/But” sequence is great too, but it can get pretty boring easily just like some folks already said, especially if the “Yes/But” scene is followed up by another “Yes/But” scene… but in my opinion “Yes/But” sequence can be pretty amazing if the author KNOWS how to make a scene to be pretty amazing, it is all about experience and of course the readers themselves.Then there is the “Win/Win/Win” sequence… hmm… i have mixed feelings for this one… the gamebook “Diabolical” sequence is ALMOST like this but with a little twist, you see… in “Diabolical” there is this stat called “Planning Points” i think the way to get this Points is to choose the choice in which your stat is the most high… i don’t know how to word this… ok back to the point, after we get the “planning points” we could use it to choose the choice that seems the most beneficial at a very crucial time… so i use all of my “planning points” only to know that i could still win the fight without using it at all because all of the “planning points” i gather are actually only need to be used at the last fight with the big villain so i can actually win the fight, if we don’t have enough “Planning Points” we end up losing… i guess? I quickly restart my game when the villain defeat me to change all of my choices… so technically the sequence in this game is “Win/Win/Win/Fail” or if you played your cards right “Win/Win/Win/Win”, this kind of sequence is nice but it would be unrealistic, because it would seems like that the player is perfect and capable of doing anything, but it WOULD be realistic if the player that choose the “Win” option lose an oppurtinity to bond with a character like some folks already said before this kind of thing is already happening in “Choice of Deathless” where there is an option to “work alone like a lone wolf so you would be more popular and capable in the eyes of your boss, and also more rich” or the option to " work with friends because it would be a lot more easier and of course to finally get a chance to hit on that hot co-worker over there" it would be more enjoyable that way and of course realistic. Now for the stats… i did not know that stat inflation is such a problem before… but if it is… i agree with @TSSL answer for it, the " if you abandon this stat it will decrease but don’t worry you will get a chance to recover it" this answer remind me a lot of how 'Hollywood Visionary" stat mechanism works, you see in “Hollywood Visionary” it is impossible to have stat inflation unless if you want to get a bad ending, but this mechanism gets pretty frustrating sometimes especially if the choice are " repair this stat that is suffering because of your action" or " spend some time with your RO" but good gamebook always knows how to give heavy choices to its readers, it is alright to use frustrating mechanism sometimes because people sometimes get intrigued by something that frustrates them, i played a lot of puzzle games, the more frustrating the puzzle is the more intrigued i become BUT if the puzzle becomes too frustrating and ends up becoming annoying i would stop playing the game, this same mechanism can be used for players who loved to achieve the best ending in every gamebooks and don’t mind some challenge… man that is a lot… but in the end it depends on how the Author writes the story and how the readers feel about it, after all we humans are all different :grin: (( i am really sorry if it does not make any sense, my mind is in a haze))

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I love, love, LOVE this. So much yes. Couldn’t have said it better myself, so I won’t, but I wish I could have given it ten more “likes.” :hugs:

I also like this approach, though I will say, I think it’s a fine line between leaving a reader/player feeling like “Yeah, that was a fair trade, obviously I couldn’t achieve everything in one go,” or “Wow, what a rip off, why couldn’t I just do both?”

For example (I’ll go with a VERY simple one here for clarity, I hope), games like CCH or WWU where you have a scheduled class and you can only choose one project partner or person to sit next to make sense: a class is only going to be for a set time and its generally assumed everyone won’t just be allowed to sit in a big circle and leisurely chat, a choice must be made who you will work with and, I assume, impact your relationship with that person. But when an MC has time off and they have hypothetical hours and hours to spend doing whatever, yet you are forced to chose only one activity that clearly wouldn’t take up the entire day, there is this feeling of being unrealistically limited and that the MC must have spent a lot of time sitting and twiddling their thumbs before and after their lone lunch date. :sweat_smile:

So, I also think there a component of trying to consider semi-realistic time or resource management within the world you’ve created. I wish I could recall more specific examples of when this was done well or when I went away feeling a little cheated, but hopefully that all made sense anyway. I guess, whatever the situation, an author should keep the stakes in perspective. Yes, our stories can be fantastical and magical, but presumably there is always a relatable human element underpinning it somewhere. If a choice or risk is enough to break your immersion or think “that wouldn’t make sense to my character in the story or to me IRL,” then the balance is off somewhere. There should be escalating danger or rewards, whether they succeed or not. Can’t make the fails or choices all of roughly the same size and shape too many times in a row, even the seemingly minor ones, or the whole plot starts to plateau.

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