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I'm trying to write a story that is probably way too complex for a beginner, but it runs along the lines of something like a "Dark Pictures Anthology" game, where you have a bunch of characters you attempt to keep alive until the end. My game has six characters, but I realized pretty quick that later on there was going to be some serious problems with scripting and different paths. The issue is that if one of my characters dies during a playthrough, It'll usually be a culmination of earlier choices affecting a variable. At any point for the rest of that game, though, any reference to that character, it seems that on-page scripting would be the solution, or a different path altogether, but I don't think it's possible to do that because there's no variable tied to the actual text saying a character dies. 

My next thought was that maybe when a character died it could make a new link appear that led to a different path an block the other links, but I don't know how to do that either, if that could be done. 

Is there any way to get around this without having 8,000 pages with near identical text? because that would be an editng nightmare.

-Morsmordre

It would make more sense for the story to just change if certain characters died wouldn't it? Feels like if the story is identical with or without them, the impact of the death is negligible.

The story can occasionally be very different without certain characters, i.e. another character fills in the same scene, so there's a lot of variety for scenes here. I need a way to enable me to set things up in this way, so everything can play out as intended without any compromises because I don't understand the scripting.

Sounds like you need to use link scripts to dynamically take it to different result pages depending on whose alive.

https://chooseyourstory.com/help/articles/article.aspx?ArticleId=65

Deals with changing the destination of a link, in the "Page Recall" section, you just need to add the logic.

My next thought was that maybe when a character died it could make a new link appear that led to a different path an block the other links, but I don't know how to do that either, if that could be done. 

You don't need scripting for this. Simple variable stuff. Make a variable Katydead. Katydead = 1 for the link to open on different path. Katydead = 0 for all the other links as requirement. You're done.

Well, and tie a variable for their death. 

My general rule for techi inept people like me is: if you don't have to script, then don't.

What is the specific help you need with On Page scripting?

It's still just going to be looking at that %KATYDEAD variable just the same as if you were working with link restrictions or any rerouting with $DEST, but it probably is the best thing if you just want to occasionally tweak a line or two.

I'm trying to write a story that is probably way too complex for a beginner

Yes you are, try to limit your characters to four or three. It will make things a lot more manageable. 

I don't think six characters is too many at all, but just making the plot be affected enough by deaths that it doesn't leave them in an endless copy paste situation would be the real way to cut down on technical complexity.

I assumed that he wanted to stick with that copy paste thingy. If he wants to do that then he really needs to cut some characters to lower the amount of variables/possible situations he needs to account for. Or he could go along with your suggestion (the better option imo)

Was contemplating to do kind of the same thing with one story till it turned out to be too troublesome.

Thx for all the help you guys

I don't know if I can rework the story to have less characters but you're probably right that having more variety in the game would lessen the difficulty. 

Thanks again