C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

At the most basic level, a choice is a decision.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

Context is the information that informs a choice.  The choice to follow the path or go off into the woods is meaningless unless one has some idea what each choice means.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

Consequences are what happen as a result of making a choice.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

Ideally, the consequences of any given choice lead into new choices.  Rather than simply arriving at the village, you arrive at a village where a man is being beaten by a crowd.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

When your game seems to be lagging, it is most likely due to either a lack of apparent choices or enough context to make those choices meaningful.  The easiest way to renew the energy of a game session is to interject a new choice, or to provide some information that enhances the context of already existing choices.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

One of your major jobs in presenting a published scenario is to examine that background – that context – and figure out how the players can learn bits and pieces of it.  Then, when play falters, you have something more to ratchet up the excitement than another wandering monster.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

One of the reasons that combat is popular in role-playing games is that the choices are clear, both in context and in consequence.  The context is, “That bugbear is trying to kill you!” and the consequence is “If you don’t stop him, he will!”  Much of the beauty and excitement of combat can be understood by thinking of it in these terms.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

A creature whose presence is foreshadowed is often more effective than one who is simply thrown at the PCs out of the blue

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

As another example, imagine that you are devising a campaign milieu in which you imagine that a great deal of the action will take place as wilderness exploration.  How do you control pacing?  How do you make the wilderness interesting?  Once more, our old friends, Choices, Context, and Consequences come to your aid.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

After all, it isn’t enough to simply select a compass direction and trudge along…we want our choices to be meaningful.  And to be meaningful, they require context.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

We can first provide context by including some landmarks.  Landmarks in a role-playing game do the same thing they do in the real world.  They provide us something to steer by, to aim toward, and to fix our location with.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

Landmarks can have reputations that provide further context.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)

Created: 2025-02-08

Among other things, context (1) foreshadows potential encounters, (2) foreshadows potential rewards, (3) allows the players to set goals, (4) allows the players to understand the goals of other creatures within the game milieu, (5) gives clues that allow for “aha!” moments when the players put things together, and (6) makes choices meaningful because context foreshadows consequence.

See in context at C is for Choices, Context, and Consequence (Part I)