January 21st
There’s a problem arising from the ply sequencing. Each Encounter has three plies:
The first ply presents the situation.
The second ply consists of the options available to the player.
The third ply consists of the reactions of the antagonist to the player, as well as the selection of the next Encounter.
The problem arises from the fact that the system only recognizes two actors: the protagonist (player) and the antagonist. There’s no three-way interaction. There’s no way that a third actor can get into the thread. That’s a ghastly failure; two-person interactions are extremely limited. I need a way to permit a third person to get into the action, but that’s going to be clumsy. For example, if antagonist-Tom does something to protagonist-Joe, and protagonist-Joe responds with an option, then antagonist-Tom must choose the next Encounter. Now, antagonist-Tom might choose an Encounter with another actor as antagonist, but that’s rather difficult to organize under the current system.
Indeed, I must completely dispense with the whole “Exclude Actors” feature — that’s inappropriate for the sequencing system. This in turn means that the Antagonist must be specified for the Encounter. I must collapse the twin list of checkboxes into a single popup menu. And that popup menu goes inside the Next Encounter window. Ouch! That’s a big change.
However, this would permit more complex sequences of events. You have an encounter with one actor, which can be followed up by another actor.
I am considering a standard barroom brawl storyworld for the example.