During the development of these quest I decided to put front some moral decisions, an example of this can be seen in Chapter One of Reminiscence of the Sea, where player found themselves with the decision to help a Corporative ship makers business to sabotage a business owner trying to make its way into the market of the sea, in exchange of sum of gold, while in the other hand player can also know more about this business owner and help him out with some un expected accident , in exchange of future help with transport or building necessities.
Which are the consequences of their actions?
Its difficult to define given that there is no way to predict how player might handle the situation but following my core idea, their choice will affect how their will transition to the next chapter and the events on the finale of the history, each decision taken will be presented as a resolution or a problem at the climax of the story.
I am also taking into account if players drag on their inactivity with the presented problem(Usually this situation is given when players find themselves prioritising other activities) , this will cause events to develop naturally. Example, if players decide not to interact with either of both parties, the business owner will have its business destroyed, and will found herself in the street trying to survive. Players eventually will realise given that I will discreetly guide theme to check the outcome of events.
But all its not lost, players can still help her out or continue with whatever they desire. As expected this will trigger another path to continue with the story line
There are endless options when playing DND, but in any case I wanted to stablish a base decision tree in order to have a guide when distancing from outcomes planned, and therefore we able to define a new quest structure having as reference the other possible outcomes which player didn’t chose. The following graph would be an example Reminiscence of the sea Chapter One.
Consequences would directly affect how the next chapter is approached but also who’s is gonna be on your side and what resources are you going to have when facing the final moment of the story line.