I had an idea for an RPG game where you work for a mining company in a fantasy world and most of the game play is made up of quests that you have to do to go up in the company's ranks. Some quests will open up while others will close depending on what your choices are. Here is the first script for one of the first quests:

Crate Resupply

As your first task you have been asked to collect two dozen wooden crates. The last of the company’s crates have already been used for shipments. You have been given [certain amount] of gold and directions to a local carpenter.

1 - You arrive at the carpenter’s shop only to find that the carpenter has run out of wood and his latest order has been delayed for another 24 hours due to an overflow of shipments. You notice a large amount of crates in one corner of the shop. You confront the carpenter with this and he tells you that those crates were ordered by somebody else and he is not interested in selling them to you.

1.1 – You can wait 24 hours to obtain your crates from the carpenter.

1.2 – You can steal the already made crates that are in the carpenter’s shop.

1.3 – You can offer the carpenter your services and buy the wood yourself so that neither you nor the carpenter have to wait 24 hours for the wood/crates to be ready.

1.4 - [same as 1.3 but instead of buying the wood you steal it]

Outcome –

1.1 – After 24 hours of waiting you can return to the carpenter’s shop and get the two dozen wooden crates. The carpenter will appreciate your patience and will have a better disposition towards you and the mining company you work for giving you discounts in future trade. Unfortunately your boss won’t be too happy with you for waiting 24 hours to get the crates and your pay will be decreased for this mission.

1.2 – Stealing the already made crates will get you the normal pay from your boss for this mission, but the carpenter will know it was you and he will increase the prices of his products whenever you buy from him again.

1.3 - The carpenter will be extremely grateful and give you a bit higher discount [higher than 1.1] on his products and he will tell your boss how you helped him out which will get you a raise in pay for this mission.

1.4 - The wood company will accuse the carpenter of stealing the wood, who in turn will accuse you [later on after making you the crates] of stealing the wood. From now on the carpenter will raise the prices on his products [more than 1.2] when you buy from his shop. Your boss will be infuriated with what you did and you will not get paid for this mission.


Please tell me what you think.

Well, do you want each quest to have one clear "good" choice? Will it actually make for a good gameplay experience if the players make any of the bad choices? Will you create a situation where players restore to an earlier save or use a walkthrough to make sure they always make the best decision?

You might want to consider making the choices and outcomes more balanced, such that a player might have a legitimate reason to take any of them, depending on that player's strategy and goals within the game.

It sounds like a lot of what I call hand-crafted puzzles.

It's OK to have one right answer as long as there's some engagement in finding that answer. Phoenix Wright works basically as a reading comprehension game dressed up as a lawyer story and you get a limited number of chances to pitch an answer. If you have a Nintendo DS or iPhone, get a copy and play it.
What you might do - and I suspect that the Sims 2 does this in these little pop-ups while your Sim is "at work" - is that each choice has a potential good and bad outcome and which you're likely to get depends on things like character stats and previous experiences.

If you do that, these things ought to be true;

1) the system should be transparent enough that the player knows what's happening (so they trust that you're providing them with an actual game)

2) should require intellectual effort on the part of the player (if it's too obvious than it's not engaging)

3) Both wins and fails ought to be entertaining reads. (Sims 2 does this really well and you should play that too if you haven't.)

I like that you didn't polarize the options into an A/B scenario - with good/evil or similar - but it is obvious even from only the briefest scan of the scenarios that 1.3 will benefit the player best and thus eliminates the need for any other option. While this might not be obvious to the player, obscuring it is more likely to piss them off than do any good because if they chose the 'wrong' option when there was a right one the feeling of failure and having been cheated by the game will be predominant - the power of having no 'right' option is that the player feels less pissed off and more thoughtful when making a choice as there any number of rewards and trapdoors waiting for him; having a clear cut 'bad' choice with only negative feedback just reinforces the players anger and feeling of betrayal and makes them less likely to continue.

However, if I got option 1.4 I'd seriously rage quite - that is just horrible from any number of perspectives; though I doubt any player would be foolish enough to choose it unless they deliberately did so. If this is thought as a 'choose the right answer from the above' then yeah, it's fine. BUT! If you actually intended each option to be a valid one then this is just not it.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I can see that I need to work on my game design skills quite a bit : D
In any case, I'm going to think it over for a while and I'll post a recreation of this mission and some more details on the background of the game.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I can see that I need to work on my game design skills quite a bit : D
In any case, I'm going to think it over for a while and I'll post a recreation of this mission and some more details on the background of the game.

When you do, choose whether to post here in Writing or over in Game Design, depending on the focus of the feedback you want:
- If you mainly want feedback on your story and the writing of it, that belongs here.
- If you mainly want feedback on your game and how it's to be played, that belongs in Game Design.

It's OK to have one right answer as long as there's some engagement in finding that answer. Phoenix Wright works basically as a reading comprehension game dressed up as a lawyer story and you get a limited number of chances to pitch an answer. If you have a Nintendo DS or iPhone, get a copy and play it.
What you might do - and I suspect that the Sims 2 does this in these little pop-ups while your Sim is "at work" - is that each choice has a potential good and bad outcome and which you're likely to get depends on things like character stats and previous experiences.

My impression was that in Sims 2 the correct answer to such a question was random, so that it changed every time. At least I think it's like that for the kid's school questions.