This had been super useful. I think the fact each implant will have a physical image in the game will help players to understand that each perk comes from a real body improvement like a cyberpunk setting video game.
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If you remove an implant and put another one, do you lose sanity again? Or does removing the former sort of pay the sanity cost for the latter? This is irrelevant to your question, I’m just curious. 
Ok, so here’s the lowdown:
CHYOA are stories and games, and games are things people play, and I 100% assure you people are immediately going to process “implants do things, but cost sanity” as an opposed stat of Sanity versus Number of Abilities, and they’re going to math in their head, consciously or not, whether each implant is going to be worth the sanity cost, what’s the lower limit of sanity they’re willing to go to for abilities, and which implants they’re willing to go without to not break that limit.
Because you’re often assaulted by feelings of self-doubt and, dare I say, self-loathing, allow me to be very extremely clear and emphatic in the following: if that isn’t the thing you wanted, THIS IS NOT A YOU FAILING. Literally anyone would run into the above, face-first. It’s just how games and people and people playing games work. Games have parameters, and installing an implant at the cost of sanity is just people shifting parameters for the character they want. It’s fundamentally the same as building a character with stats, and choosing to put points into one and not the other, because that’s what it is, in effect, doing.
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I know, I know. But thematically there is a difference. And good luck to them trying to mix max a game where the stat checks are not number based. Sometimes choose using and implant ability would be the worst possible opcion.
When a game is not based on numbers it is hell difficult min max something
As less sanity doesn’t mean worst only a different way of playing and different endings but both will have good and bad endings.
There is no a win either. There are only choices and consequences
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I feel when you include “game over” states (deaths) you need to be hyperaware of the impact of your use of these on your readers.
There are many who will have a background (i.e., rpg gamer) that will make having such endings acceptable, but the majority will not necessarily accept even the most thought out and well executed mechanic.
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This is actually extremely easy, and regularly done. I min-maxed power choices in the old Lone Wolf game books, for example. I min-maxed Gift choices in Book of Hungry Names in the early parts, and let me tell you right now I did not go for the numerical ones.
No, there is. A “win” is defined as “the player reached the ending they wanted”, which is not, necessarily, what the game or creator would term a “win”. For example, in Book of Hours, MY win is the Forever Librarian ending or whatever it’s called, which isn’t one of the game’s major victories and is, in fact, much, much, MUCH easier to achieve than those. RIDICULOUSLY so. Like, you unlock the ability to do that ending comparatively super-fast, it sidesteps a bunch of mechanics that you absolutely have to go in-depth for the others, and it needs you reveal only a small part of the map. And the reason I favour that ending has zero to do with how easy it is to achieve (in fact, I keep playing far further after I unlock the ability to do it).
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Damn You are make hate players. Lol. 
I hate mix max for me destroy games and stories.
But I will focus on the story and if they want to destroy the experience that is their choice.
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whispers Come here.
You, yes you.
Come here.
looks shiftily to both sides
Imma tell you a secret. People minmax everything all the time. ROI and risk assessment happen all the time, every time, about everything.
- “Do I cross the road now or is that car too close if it accelerates? The time I’d spend waiting for that car to pass, do I need it for something?”
- “This product is more expensive, but tastes better. Is the better taste worth the extra money?”
- “I can afford to eat out, but is the less work I have to do if I eat out worth the money I’ll spend? And even if so, I can’t afford to eat out all the time, is today a good day for that? I’m pretty relaxed today, should I make a full day of relaxation of it, or should I save the eating-out money to counterbalance a shitty day?”
You may not notice your brain is doing this, but it is (I have an exceedingly annoying brain, so it keeps handing me these fucking cue cards with these calculations, the asshole).
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I’m feeling a bit… fuzzy? today, so instead of trying to focus on something I can’t focus, I did some rapid prototyping as a follow-up for that character design hang-up. (I do like looking at pretty things, alas.)
Featuring work done with AI image generator and a trading card maker, and some random icons I grabbed from here and there.
(I wanted to name Mær as Mara, since that’s the Nordic form of the name and their people speak Old Norse for some bizarre reason, but I didn’t want to insult our Mara!)
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reporting back to HQ
April was fine, the problem was in me, it’s a skill issue
I’m stuck with structuring between main stories, day-to-day management, and random events for my Harvest Moon copy WIP
so many things to do, it’s fun but frustrating at the same time 
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You have my Poisonous permission to use Mara. (lol, I havent the Mara name licensed) But I feel honored. If you made the character evil and charismatic bonus points.
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They’re mostly just cranky at that point, but the origin of the name is the creature that gave nightmares their name, so maybe that counts?
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Cool being grumpy is always a bonus on my book!
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Making fun skill/stat checks is feeling like the bane of my existence right now.
Can’t just have every skill apply every time, and it feels wrong to have specialities always be an automatic success, but every time I get into the design, I just feel like I end up with an exploding decision tree that takes so much work to finish.
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My advice is you see those scenes as if you were a Dungeon master.
And imagine each character is a rp and they are throwing dices it helps me to imagine oh it would be fire if there were a chance of a critical failure what do a rp character do if that happens.
That helps me to design outcomes to events.
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Mm, how to put this - I am OK with designing outcomes, my struggle is that I wind up having something like
Option A
*success case
*fail case
Option B
*success case
*fail case
Option C which always works
Option D which leads to something slightly different
and then before I know it I’ve signed myself on for another few thousand words of tree.
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It is a way to design choices. But I personally don’t do that way. I will never put a direct success or error based on a stat. that will directly made people never ever choosing anything else and mix max.
An automated success or error should be based upon prior choices not one stat imagine this situation.
You have to repair a panel to allow electronic devices work and you could access a computer and hack it.
If you savaged pieces of terminal previously or put fire to the room then yes a very direct failure only savageable if you have x skill of object makes sense
But in each situation, only makes your game growing number of situations you won’t be able to manage.
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Checking in for May. Right now my to-do list is all about working on other projects, life stuff, and regular maintenance, like finding a blog to review Moonrise for Pride (any suggestions?), checking on book & game news (Google Docs locked out a user for writing explicit content. Deeply worrying) and updating my new/old blog (you can find it here).
On a more fun end, have y’all heard of Dracula Daily? Dracula is an epistolary novel, right, and this group emails you sections of the novel in chronological order. Or you can listen to an audio production on the day’s entry. I read Dracula years ago, and I’m really enjoying digging my fingers in that texture again. Jonathan has just arrived at Castle Dracula, and the nature descriptions do such an amazing job conveying mood and atmosphere. Knowing that Dracula ate all his servants and has to do all the little chores himself makes the horror like 2 paragraphs away from comedy, which is my favorite type of horror.
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I just reread Dracula a couple weeks ago myself.
As you’ve observed, Dracula doesn’t have any servants in his castle, so that wonderful dinner that was laid out for Jonathan the night of his arrival must have been prepared by Dracula himself.
Although most of the characters refer to Dracula as “the Count” later on in the book, Dracula is actually, by his own description, a boyar, a title of Eastern European nobility. When he writes notes to Jonathan, he doesn’t use any title at all; he just signs his name as “D.”
From all this, we can conclude that Dracula is Chef Boyar D.
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[screaming in laughter] oh my gooooooooooood 
Thank you for this gift of a joke. I’m telling my entire family.
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Doesn’t Dracula have 3 vampire ladies living with him? I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of them had the wherewithal to cook something. It is a Victorian book, after all. Or maybe ordered something from a restaurant?
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