Requesting some beginner's advice, and 'transition' from regular RP-players

[AChubbyBlackCat]

@47haven

• Establish early on, so there’d essentially be a separate chapter where the game hashes out you and your history, and then building the story based on that, locking off certain routes from the start
• Establish on the need to know basis, where you build the history, and perhaps your appearance, based on the stories that you’ve read so far, locking off routes proactively

Both blank slate and pre-established characters have their benefits and drawbacks. Personally I prefer to know enough ahead of time that I don’t feel overwhelmed when making choices that the author implies are important.

@47haven

• A detailed written description of their appearance and personality, locking several few traits in so the further writing will assume those characteristic
• A relatively blank slate where you can choose their appearance and personality, with the further story having callback to these choices, locking you to a certain responses/route depending on the characteristic of other characters

Personally, I’m against locking out. It can be a dealbreaker in some instances.

If I’m 80% Quiet that doesn’t mean I might want to actually speak out at a given point if I feel it’s important enough. Have personality traits add flavor text rather than determining what choices/options the readers can take.

@47haven

• Choices that result in a relatively minor outcome
• Choices that outright results in a different route

It’s up to you. You’re the author. You’re going to be the one writing this possibly 150k or more story. Do what’s in your best interest. And if it doesn’t work the first time, you can always go back and edit.

@47haven

• Stats, money, equipment, type of house, connections, allies, invisible stats, GIMME EVERY DETAIL
• Just stories with the only thing barring you from getting to certain route/picking certain choices is the choices you made before

Usually, I don’t like stat heavy games. The more stats an author has, the more they seem to have less impact. Tin Star has a lot of stats, but you only need like a couple of them to finish the game.

Even for stories that I do like that have quite a few stats (VtM - Night Road), I go with the stat load out I’m comfortable with whenever I replay it and don’t branch out.

I don’t mind having certain choices that I made previously lock me out of future choices.

@47haven

• Less text, more choices, so much more minor choices that may not impact the story that much aside from little details
• More text, fewer choices, so most of the choices would be a major one that’ll decide the endings

That’s up to you.

@47haven

• Shorter story, but with more routes to take to encourage replayability
• Longer story, but with fewer routes, or just a single one with different endings

You might want to read the contents of this thread.

The value of replayability?

I have browsed the wiki and a few threads which have discussed the fact that writing a ‘wide’ game (which has lots of choices and branches) is not particularly worthwhile. Apparently most readers do not replay a game. This was mentioned specifically in the random section of the choice script documentation. This struck me as highly unusual as the point of a story with meaningful choices is that it is meant to be replayed. So I was wondering if CoG have published any stats on this? I’d especiall…

And here’s a quote from a published author about his experiences with his stories:

Summary

@Samuel_H_Young

As an author of 4 hosted games and 4 WIPs, I can confidently say that most readers don’t give a solitary shit about replay ability. In fact, more often than not, they seem to be annoyed by it because it drastically decreases the all-important playthrough length.

What most readers seem to want is to be fooled into thinking their choices matter with varied, interesting, and well written fake choices. Here’s why I say all of this:

• My game, The Magician’s Burden, is 230k words with a playthrough length of 60k. That means the replay value is very high, and I considered this to be an asset. In the markets, this turned out to be the opposite. I’ve had a very significant amount of bad reviews saying that certain ROs are bland, lifeless, and not there, while others are well developed and engaging.

This is because of the replay value: depending on your choices, you could see all 4 ROs an equal amount, or you might see certain ones very little in one playthrough and then a lot in another. But instead of viewing this as a positive thing, lots of readers simply assumed that various characters had little screentime at all. So all of that extra work just amounted to a big drop in sales and ratings.

I will not be doing that design again, where entire mini scenes with characters are hidden behind choices that cannot all be seen in one playthrough, or even a few playthroughs. There’s a reason why CoG has recommended against this system. The only exception I will make is for romance routes, like date and sex scenes.