I am now in the process of re-organizing the encounter sequence into three major groupings. The first provides the context. It is mostly expository, with only minor effects upon Arthur’s stature. Its purpose is to give the player a feel for the social situation. It is mostly done, but as yet needs some more material on each of the characters so that Arthur has a better idea of whom he is dealing with.
The second group begins when the katerfaks are ready for combat. Arthur begins a series of raids into Saxon territory. In each raid, Arthur is accompanied by one of the kinglets, the better to gain an appreciation of their personality. This section also presents Arthur with challenges to his military leadership.
This, by the way, allows me to make an important change in the personality model. It currently uses the standard three personality traits (Bad_Good, False_Honest, Timid_Dominant). I have found no good use for False_Honest because that requires a sequence of events in which Arthur makes a promise and then must later make good on the promise. The only way to make the latter decision difficult is to insure that fulfilling the promise imposes a cost upon Arthur, and there are few costs to impose, because there are no goods in the storyworld. I could have a few tests that pit one promise against another, forcing Arthur to choose which of two characters to betray, but I deem this decision to be too rare to be of much utility.
Instead, I shall replace False_Honest with Incompetent_Competent. This personality trait refers to Arthur’s competence as king, primarily his military competence, but also his judiciousness. In the second section, Arthur will have to make difficult military decisions, and his success in these will determine the overall perception of his competence.
The third section begins with Mordred’s growing insubordination and ends with Mordred’s rebellion and the last battle. The decisions of the characters as to which side they’ll pick will be the primary determinant of the final result. There is a huge problem here that I have yet to address: how do I make the battle representative of the sides the different characters have chosen? I think I can do it using Prerequisites and Disqualifiers, but I might need to make custom changes to the engine to make this work.