Interesting Choices, part 1

One of the key aspects of game design in general, and one of the most heavily emphasized areas in the design of Fate, is the concept of "Interesting Choices". Anyone can tell you what a choice is; you have the option to do A or B, where the actions you take to perform each option are different to one degree or another.

However, there's a very big difference between a choice and an interesting choice. An interesting choice requires that there are consequences for every possible option, and that the risk:reward ratios between the various choices are reasonably balanced. As an example, if you have the choice to either A) Kill the big bad boss instantly with no chance of failure, or B) attempt to fight him the traditional way, where no matter which choice you make the rewards are the same, that is not an interesting choice. The rewards are the same, but the risk levels are vastly different, making one choice obvious and therefore boring.

Similarly, if you have a decision tree that branches out to points C and D, but no matter which choice you take, the rewards are essentially the same and you end up back at the same point E, that is also not an interesting choice. As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to make the argument that it isn't a choice at all, as there's no substantive difference no matter which option you take.

Now that I've explained the general theory behind Interesting Choices, how does that relate to the design of Fate? Well, a better question would be "How doesn't it relate?". I've taken the concept and applied it pretty much everywhere I could think of, right down to the nuts and bolts of the experience system design. As I mentioned previously, characters are not forcefully restricted from being able to "do everything". Instead, the player must make a choice about what areas to focus on and what areas to leave by the wayside. If the player chooses to focus on a limited skillset, the character will be quite proficient at that skillset, but will be ignoring several other skillsets which could potentially provide it with performance increases. On the flip side, spreading out your experience over several attributes and skills means that your character can do more different things and will likely be at least partially relevant in any situation, but you're sacrificing the ability to reach the upper tier of effectiveness with any of your choices.

That same type of choice -- width vs depth, risk vs reward, conservative vs aggressive -- pervades the design philosophy. I detest "easy choices". If a choice is too easy, it ceases to become a choice except in the masochistic sense. There is certainly a market for that kind of thing -- a good example is Iron Man modes in games, where saved games are deleted upon loading, so that you can't save-reload to avoid bad consequences -- but in my opinion it needs to be restricted to metagame concerns only. Difficulty levels, Iron Man, options that you would find in the game's configuration menu. Easy choices once you're actually IN the game just fall flat.

I think that's enough for now. In part 2, I'll explore how the Interesting Choices combat affects the balance between fighters, rogues, and spellcasters.