Hmm. I think we’ve departed from my point about player punishment, which was mainly ‘don’t smack your players with a ruler for playing a game the way they find most enjoyable’. (If you don’t want to include morally questionable stuff; then don’t. The worst anyone ‘can’ do is complain about it, and you don’t have to listen to me or anyone else.
If it’s not questionable, personal distaste may be blowing it out of proportion.)
I don’t think you’re engaging in problematic behaviors here @LiliArch , it sounds like you have a particular problem you want to solve, which the ORC check might help you balance depending on what you are specifically trying to write. If you want there to be an ending where things go up in flames, I’m saying that you should signpost to the player ‘hey, things are starting to fall apart; you might want to look into that’ and give them options to make an attempt to remedy it, rather than blindsiding them with the equivalent of ‘you lose (you loser)’ after investing the time to get that far through the game.
I’m not saying you give them all the answers or that the outcome of every choice should be completely predictable – just that players should not feel baffled or aghast at how you implemented what they chose to do.
As long as you clearly tell your players the game is a thriller, they should know what they’re getting into (that’s them making a choice, eh?) Assuming you execute those genre expectations well, I don’t know that you’re going to have an issue.
Without knowing the specifics of your design (and I’m willing to take a stab at it if you want to move this conversation elsewhere), I would say that you mainly want to avoid writing a situation where your players could be made to feel foolish for experiencing reasonable caution, and thus reluctance, about trusting a professional liar with a known track record.
If there are two routes, one where you distrust and betray this person and one you do not, and the latter is all smooth sailing and provides the mentioned powerful support; that could happen. (Reward for risking a bad outcome: but if it seems as though there was never any skin in the game (all good stuff on that path); what then was the actual price?)
I will also add that it’s important to avoid changing the facts between paths: if you tell players who betray their potential ally that ‘they were super shady and planning to backstab you anyway’ with some hard evidence so they feel vindicated in their choice – it’s bad form to then turn around and flip the script on the trust-route and say ‘nah, that never existed.’
If you want shady betrayals to be off the table in order to reward players with powerful backup for risking engaging with your NPC, you can say ‘they were planning on it – but they changed their mind when they saw how good a partnership you both made.’ (Don’t take these as hard suggestions, I’m just mocking up examples. You do you.) That sort of thing can feel a little hand-wavy though, exposing that the character is only trustworthy because the-author-said, evidenced by the lack of ability to play through the path where you make a bad partnership and they have no reason not to go through with the claimed original plan. Some people may want to experience that, if only for interesting replayability.
Like I said, not all ‘bad’ outcomes have to be a bad experience - what happens to the character isn’t a 1:1 relationship of what happens to their pilot. (Some people find it compelling to navigate the complexities of a character with a different morality from their own; as they would never act that way in real life and it provides a different perspective and new play experience. It won’t work if there are no hard choices, just a simplistic ‘baddies never prosper / goodies are naive chumps.’ Choices aren’t tough if there’s an obvious answer; or only good results.)
The consequences should feel sensible and earned: the trick is to hit ‘I knew the risks and did it anyway / I could have seen that coming if I had let myself’ – some people really want to trust your character on the off-chance it turns out. ‘Consequences’ doesn’t have to have a negative context – it’s merely the reasonable cause-and-effect of something linked.
‘Strong’ consequences might be giving those players the chance to build a personal and/or working relationship with that character, or allow them to make a personal sacrifice at a critical moment which saves the ally considerable grief, causing them to change their mind about the worth of the PC – which then determines how it plays out rather than assigning a fixed ending – allowing players the opportunity to experience the game they hope for.
Though to start with, considerations for you the author also depend on what notes you’re trying to hit with ‘your crowd’ of players and whether it manages to do that; because it is your game and you do need an intentional design. Whether you expand it to appeal to a greater audience is a choice you make once you can handle that scope.
The best thing for you both (author and player) is to clearly communicate what sort of story experience can be expected, so that the most suitable matchup is better able to find one another.
