@Tehani - THANK YOU for bringing up this discussion, because it is actually something I have wrestled with, and I am not sure if I have made the right choice. So this is not just a reply to you, but to anyone who want to weigh in on the ‘what will I do when I am a villain’ discussion.
Some background:
Originally, the way you make your debut was a fixed point in the story, just like the start. Your choices/stats would influence the details of what was done, but the actual action was the same. Let’s for argument’s (and not to give spoilers) sake go with something completely different and call it ‘kidnap the president’ (because that was NOT the option I had in my script).
So, in my hypothetical original I had a single event which would have been kidnap the president. If the MC was careful and more of an unwilling villain, this would be a simple kidnapping for publicity and to make people aware of their cause. There might be options to let the president go if they looked like they might be at risk of getting hurt, and on the other hand there would be paths that ended with the death of the president because the MC just didn’t care, or actively killed them because hey, villain. The point is that this all started with a single choice, which gave the player no choice but to do it, and then lots of choice once the show was on the road.
But, then I started to hesitate. What if they players felt that there was too little choice? What if they felt railroaded and trapped? This is a choice of games thing after all, I should provide options. So I started to think about other things that might lead to enough of a similar conclusion so I wouldn’t have to write three completely different games. Let’s call the other paths ‘graffiti the whitehouse’ (used the same setting) and outright ‘kill the president’, separating out one of the branches to have that be the intention all along. Sort of a sliding scale from graffiti to murder. In essence, this would be three separate entry points, which would eventually merge into a similar endpoint. This would give the player more choice what they had their character PLAN to do, but less choice in where they would end up from there.
- So, tldr, my original option was one action splitting into several paths, then ending in a new status quo.
- My new idea was three actions merging into a single path then ending into a new status quo.
In other words, the original idea would be all about how a single action can careen out of control, but you would get no choice in what that action was.
And here is the important thing:
I have not yet written this, but I have started to now (still in the buildup stages).
How do you guys feel about these choices/motivations? Is anyone actually going with the robbery route? That was the most left-field one for me added mostly because I am a sucker for having three options to things, and because it was a classing supervillain thing to do. But maybe not for this MC? I thought so a year ago, but revisiting this I am starting to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t just go with my gut and drag people along for the ride whether they want to or not.
Please let me know your thoughts about this, because I honestly don’t know right now.
…Or maybe they’ll just think the “new vilain” is a destructive force of evil. ^^’
I am more than eager to see my MC try and fail her redemption!
