Not much progress today; I’m struggling with the problem of props. I have a number of ideas floating around in my head, and I still haven’t decided among them.
One idea is to assign each prop to its own pair of encounters. In the first encounter, Arthur obtains the prop, usually be means of some trade. This then enables a second encounter in which Arthur gives the prop to a character. There are several problems with this idea. First, the second encounter might not come for some time after the first encounter; what to do about that? Do I need some sort of linkage mechanism?
Another idea is to give priority to the gift-giving process. Arthur keeps a collection of props; at any point, he can decide that a character needs a prop, and then select a prop to award. The problem here is that Arthur needs a mechanism for selecting characters, then another mechanism for selecting the appropriate prop. My clever solution to this problem is to rely on either Merlin or Guenevere to confront Arthur with the problem and recommend a solution. In other words, either Merlin or Guenevere approaches Arthur and announces that they’ve heard ominous things about character X. They recommend that Arthur give X some gift. I think that this will require a series of encounters, one for each character. But how can I trigger such encounters?
I’m beginning to think that I need Merlin to act as Fate in some sense. He has to be able to monitor the situation and take independent action.
Clearly I shall need to add more fields to the encounter data structure.