How can I construct a branching narrative that allows for multiple replays?

[Deckhead]

I've been working on a sort-of-visual-novel for a while now called The Last Boundary. I never intended to make a visual-novel type game, but that's where I ended up (I was just aimlessly developing the rough idea of being Captain Jean-Luc Picard).

So here I am in need of creating a branching narrative. The way I thought it could work is that the player makes decisions in story events as well as when deciding which star-system to next visit. This, in my mind, gives me ample opportunity to have branching narrative, and I think it's almost expected of a game like this.

What I wanted to try was have the player uncover the remnants of a long-dead civilisation. There's a war-like space-probe that protects a system, which hides a secret I guess, and the player also witnesses the self-destruction of a kind of generation ship. So because things are branching, I figured the player can uncover different things each play-through.

All of these things are true. None of them override the other. So to get the full picture, the player has to go through a few times.

But then, because the narrative is branching, it requires there to be multiple endings. I know it doesn't require it, but I would feel cheated if I played a choose-your-own adventure type game that didn't give me different endings. I'm not sure that I want any of the endings to be "bad" or "death" endings, but I'm happy to hear what people think.

Finally, for the endings to be significant, to get players through the first play-through, and to make multiple play-throughs more interesting, I also need to have an interesting character story develop in front of the players. This character story could involve the players randomly generated crew-members. This character story needs to be branching in a significant enough way that the story unfolds interestingly.

So I thought that maybe, there's a few choice spots were the player makes a decision about which crew members gets sent etc. This then uncovers different info about the crew sent vs the crew staying behind.

My problem is that I have no way how to accomplish any of this. I've downloaded Twine, but outside of that... how do you even begin to write something like the above? I've some small experience writing novels, but nothing like the above.

[100goats]

I suggest to use your programmer logical mind by abstracting this problem to something simple and abstract. After successfully doing this, you can go into details of what is happening within the branches.

I would use polymorphism and some sort of git like branch system for developing different story paths.

For something simple, the differences between story paths can be change in resources, loss of a party member, specific location that imposes conditions on players, etc.

I hope this helps. It is a very interesting idea!

Edit:
You can write something like this by just doing mad libs https://madtakes.com/libs/182.html
or writing out events of a story that can be combined into a novel with characters and problems(man vs nature, man vs villain, man vs society).

[Deckhead]

I suggest to use your programmer logical mind by abstracting this problem to something simple and abstract. After successfully doing this, you can go into details of what is happening within the branches.

I would use polymorphism and some sort of git like branch system for developing different story paths.

For something simple, the differences between story paths can be change in resources, loss of a party member, specific location that imposes conditions on players, etc.

I hope this helps. It is a very interesting idea!

Edit:
You can write something like this by just doing mad libs https://madtakes.com/libs/182.html
or writing out events of a story that can be combined into a novel with characters and problems(man vs nature, man vs villain, man vs society).

Thanks, since I wrote this I've decided on doing the following:

• The events that the player takes part in, that uncover the overall story remains as is
• The player can visit colonies and space-stations. This is new. These visits are where the character development parts will come in.
• However, I've decided that none of the players crew will develop. I like the idea that the player can sort of make up their own characters for their crew members. Instead, I thought the character development part would be focused on non-player characters, like the player ferrying messages between them on colonies and space-stations; or just recognising family names etc.

I think this will work....

[100goats]

These are good ideas.

I look forward to trying out the game.

I'm glad you have a direction now and made some decisions.