Creating meaningful choices

It's all about having the opportunity to make the big decisions that will permanently change things, and having that opportunity fairly regularly.

Before a campaign starts up, I usually trace a railroad of where I expect the campaign to go (note I said expect, don't be railroading), then along the path I note (or add) key decision points. The mayor says kill the goblins who are living in the sewers, the goblins say they were kicked out of their homelands by the mayor's new dam. Then I jot down a few obvious solutions (kill the goblins, convince the mayor, destroy the dam, find somewhere else) and the major outcomes of them.

It's a lot of prepwork, and there's a good chance that the players will miss some if not most of the decision points, but scattering around Big Decisions with Big Consequences makes the players feel like they have a ton of agency. Small decisions are also important, but they can feel like rearranging the furniture in the titanic sometimes.

>>54796562
Oh also dont forget the outcomes you note down are guidelines. If the players convince the goblins to kill the mayor and lead them to his sewage inlet, then you've got something you haven't planned for, but since you've got plenty of other examples it's nice and easy to improvise the outcome there.

Meaningful choices are any choice that the GM rolls with and allows to become a bigger thing.

The best choices are the ones the players make w/o the GM's planning.

>>54796593
That ties into another question, then: How do you account for players' every whim in such an efficient way, it becomes a meaningful consequence?

>>54796511
A lot of meaningful choices in our sessions come up not as part of the GM's plans, but instead as we try to recover from something going horribly awry.
I think the first time we had a moment like this in my group was when we had a dying ally, and saving him required killing another (We were playing in a system where healing magic requires life essence from elsewhere). The GM didn't really expect anyone to die this session, and certainly didn't expect us to murder his important NPC to save a friend, but we did, and a major part of the story changed because he was dead (GM didn't just bandaid a new NPC to fill the role, he totally changed how things played out.)

>>54796599
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>>54796577

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>>54796511
I am a simple man. To me meaningful choices are connected to

>Go somewhere
>Do something that makes party famous
>Next town over the party is welcomed more warmly because of their heroic actions.

Basically
>Party does something
>The world reacts to them doing thing, for good or for worse

I will be monitoring this thread with interest, there's some good potential.

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>>54796511
>Any stories of interesting branches or painful dilemmas? Personally, I feel like video games conditioned me into trivial choices of little to no consequence, and now it shows.
>>interesting branches
>>video games conditioned me

Yes they did.

The key to GMing is to keep things modular. The plot doesn't branch, it skips from island to island as the players direct. That gives meaning to their choices without invalidating the work you put in to the plot.

For example, one early plot I had planned involved the players joining a local merchant guild, to have an excuse to send them to remote locations. When they met the NPC I had as their representative, they didn't like him. He never even got to his spiel before they picked his pockets and moved on.

So later, I had them run into another NPC from a competing merchant's guild in another town, looking for someone to help sabotage this guy's organization and muscle in. Which they gleefully signed up for, and the plot started up with the world being slightly richer for it.

>>54797634
Man, I sure have some un-videogaming to do. thanks for the example, too!

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of PCs are used to railroading or set-ups where there can only be one choice. They'll wait for you to tell them what happens, for something to happen, or for the obvious choice to be made by somebody else in the group.

Tangible consequences help a lot. I'm doing a game that's a mix of modern IRL setting and dips into shadow realms, and I was very pleased when two PCs were trying to gather information and were offered the chance to break into a public building(high school) to search for it. They declined because of respect for the word of law, since they were already trespassing and felt breaking and entering was too far(for their characters, at least.)

Another big decision driver is to have competing interests, characters and factions. You have to put in the set up and legwork to make them care about NPCs and ideals those factions/NPCs hold, but once you do you can set up situations where they come into conflict. You can help one. The other will hate you. Both sides are sort of right, sort of wrong. What do you do? Maybe it's as easy as "we help the guys we like", but the world can change from there. I find this matches how I play a lot of videogames and campaigns as well, I feel better helping those I've grown to like.

If you've ever played Telltale's Walking Dead titles, they do a good job of your first playthrough tugging at your heart. Every playthrough after that you realize how shallow and meaningless your choices are, but that first time you really think "fuck that guy" or "I have to help my friend!"

A personal favorite of mine is what I call dual-plot-developer. I give my PCs a set of story hooks, and they choose one. However, as a result of them following one story hook, the other story hook goes unresolved and develops into a larger threat for the next adventure.

>>54796511
>Nevermore this way
>Nevermore

But those are pigeons, not ravens.

Plan out your story in a world where your PCs didn't exist. If they weren't around, what would the villains do, and how would everyone else react? Then have the world follow that script unless your players step in and intervene.

>>54798528
...shit. How'd I not notice?